Luisa Pérez Montes de Oca

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Cuban writer of the nineteenth century, one of the most distinguished representations of romanticism in Cuban literature.

Luisa Pérez de Zambrana was born on the El Melgarejo estate, near the El Cobre mines, Santiago de Cuba. Baptized Luisa Pérez y Montes de Oca, she "lost" her maternal surname upon marrying the renowned intellectual and cultural promoter Ramón de Zambrana.

Orphaned of her father at an early age, she moved with her family to the city of Santiago where she became known as a poet; there she collaborated with some frequency in El Orden, El Diario, El Redactor and Semanario Cubano (1855). Her home was in Santiago, a center of gatherings and artistic soirées. During those days she was declared an honorary member of the Literature Section of the Philharmonic Society.

She is one of the poetesses of whom it is said "was born with the gift of poetry" and is considered among the best in Cuba and Spanish America.

Her father was originally from the Canary Islands. At the age of 14 she composed her first literary work and her verses, which she collected in a notebook published with the help of the intellectuals who surrounded her—and admired her poetry—in Santiago. The book circulated around the Island, and already in Havana, the intellectual Don Ramón Zambrana became captivated by her work, going to Santiago de Cuba to meet her and become engaged to her, once he knew her through a photograph, only to later take her to Havana where they formed a home and had five children.

For her great poetic gifts and her grace and refinement, Luisa was chosen to crown the great Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda at the Teatro Tacón in 1860.

She published some chapters of her novel Angélica y Estrella in the serials of El Siglo (1864) and El Mercurio (1876). Her historical episode "La hija del verdugo" appeared in Revista del Pueblo (1865). In Diario de la Marina she published the first part of the novel Los Gracos. She also collaborated in Cuba literaria, La Reforma (Guanabacoa, Havana) and Ofrenda al Bazar de la Real Casa de Beneficencia (1864). She frequented the literary gatherings held in the home of Nicolás Azcárate.

Because her life was marked by the constant presence of death, since she lost her husband and her five children gradually between 1886 and 1898, her work was full of sensitivity, melancholy, passion and tenderness, with religious reflections and philosophical insights about death: these last two characteristics are notable in her elegies.

After the death of her husband (1866), she was left in a precarious economic situation with her five children. Between 1866 and 1899 they died. In 1908 the Municipality of Havana granted her a pension that insufficiently relieved her material needs.

In the year 1918, she received a tribute from the Ateneo de La Habana and following this a new edition of her poems appeared with a prologue by Enrique José Varona who baptized her as "the most distinguished elegiac poet of our lyricists."

She was a founder of the Liceo Artístico y Literario de Regla. Her works were awarded prizes in the select Juegos Florales of the city of Madrid. Among said works is the book of prayers called Devocionario, La vuelta al bosque, Dolor supremo, Martirio. Of her José Martí said: "verses are made of grandeur, but poetry is made only from feeling."

Notable works: Amor matermo (1852), Angélica y Estrella (1864), El Mercurio (1876)

She lived her last years in the Havana municipality of Regla, where she died on May 25, 1922.