Mercedes Matamoros del Valle

Distinguished Cuban writer and poetess. Considered one of the first Cuban poetesses and a pioneer of eroticism in feminine poetry in Spanish America, —a current later culminated by Delmira Agustini, Alfonsina Storni, and Juana de Ibarbourou—, her work is known only in very narrow circles.

Born in Cienfuegos in 1851, for a long time it was believed that Mercedes Matamoros had been born in 1858, that is, seven years after the true date. It was Hortensia Pichardo, in her doctoral thesis in the field of Philosophy and Letters dedicated to great lyric poetry, who corrected the error upon finding her baptismal certificate. "It is noteworthy that the error—according to the prestigious historian—originated during the poetess's lifetime. We must think that Mercedes herself contributed to the mistake or that at least she did nothing to correct it, due to natural feminine vanity."

In 1867, at age 16, she published her first customs article. From then on she collaborated with various periodicals until 1884, the year she temporarily stopped doing so and dedicated herself to teaching.

Shortly after, her writings reappeared in various publications under the pseudonym Ofelia. She also made translations from English, French, and German.

Called in her day "The poetess of sorrow" or "The blind lark," having lost her sight in her final years, her existence was a permanent struggle against fate. Even when her last love came to her door, it arrived too late.

"Lover and unloved," in the words of researcher Cira Romero, journalist Antonio Miguel Comoglio is seventeen years younger than the unhappy songstress. "For more than a decade he visited her daily at her house in Guanabacoa to share poetic tastes, without uttering a phrase that might give hope to this woman, who, they say, was very ugly in appearance."

An orphan of her mother from a young age, her production began in prose with customs articles that earned her very favorable judgments. "Before turning 16, Mercedes—as Hortensia Pichardo says—carefully observed what was happening around her and satirized types and customs in articles of wit and keen observations. It is true that her style is humorous, but what social analysis for one written by an adolescent!"

Dedicated to the study of several languages, especially English and French, after the Pact of Zanjón was signed, she published in the island press her first translations and her first original poems, highly praised by critics and also included in magazines in Europe and South America.

To this period belong her "Sensitivas," a collection of purely lyrical compositions, of which it is affirmed that they may be the outlet of a first failed love.

She was a friend of José Martí, who wrote beautiful verses about a fan of the young songstress, offering them to her. There are authors who affirm that the perfection of her style must have been influenced by her frequent dealings with the Master in the salons of the Liceo de Guanabacoa, of which she was a member and he was secretary of the Literature Section.

Matamoros wrote poems that testify to her ardent libertarian aspirations, to the pride she felt for her native land. She dedicated her "Siemprevivas" to the medical students executed on November 27, 1871.

She attended the function at the Villanueva theater on the night of January 22, 1869, with her hair loose and a blue ribbon in her head, as a show of Cuban spirit. And in the dramatic hour of Dos Ríos, she was, it is believed, the first woman to write a poem about the fall of our Apostle, "On the death of Martí" (May, 1895).

Circumstances did not always allow the great Cienfuegos poetess to let her imagination fly. Dramatic events enchained her wings. Her father was ruined and lost his reason. Mercedes, whom economic hardship would never abandon, dedicated her days to caring for him. Only charity made the survival of both possible.

In her return to poetry she rose defiantly. Neither conventionalities nor censorship stopped her. In a letter to a friend, doctor Manuel Serafín Pichardo, Matamoros criticized the hypocrisy that obliged her peers to "read in secret what was forbidden" and confessed that she had launched herself to "write each day with greater freedom."

With this vigorous language Mercedes, at 50 years old, broke with social prejudices deeply rooted in her time, because—as Doctor Pichardo affirms—"never before had a woman dared to speak of love in such a raw and at the same time sincere way, and this in sonnets that, according to one of her critics, 'have few rivals in the Castilian language.'"

Mercedes Matamoros died in Havana on August 25, 1906. She wrote until her final days. Despite her extraordinary merits, today the great majority barely knows her work. Without a doubt,—Cira Romero warns us—, hers "is one of the saddest cases in our literary history."