Renée Méndez Capote

Cuban journalist and writer, known as "The little Cuban girl who was born with the century," as she described herself in her memoirs. She excelled as a chronicle writer with sharp humor, and as an author of children's literature.

She was born in La Habana, from a Cuban marriage of the highest bourgeoisie, that of Domingo Méndez Capote and María Chaple y Suárez. Her family had a patriotic tradition, and her father was vice president of the Republic of Cuba in Arms during the War of Independence.

She completed her primary and secondary education at home, with English and French governesses. She learned French, Italian, and English languages. She studied music, painting, and Spanish ballet, and practiced sports such as swimming, rowing, horseback riding, and tennis. In April 1917 she published her first article, "El primer baile," in the magazine for alumni of La Salle school. In 1918 she created and directed, together with her sister Sara, the magazine Artes y Letras. She was a French teacher at La Luz school.

Together with journalist Berta Arocena, she founded the women's organization Lyceum y Lawn Tennis Club de La Habana, which aimed to promote cultural and social development. However, she was later expelled from its membership for defending the right of Black women to join the institution.

Likewise, she worked as director of Fine Arts in the Secretariat of Public Education and Fine Arts, between 1933 and 1934. In that latter year she was promoted to head of the Section of General Culture in the Department of Culture. In 1928 she visited Spain, thanks to her activity in the prestigious Sociedad Hispano-Cubana de Cultura.

From a young age she defended socialist ideals and maintained an active political life.

In 1934 the government of the Hundred Days entrusted her with the consulate of Cuba in Paris. On September 8, 1934, before taking possession of that diplomatic post, she departed to New York on the ferry Morro Castle, which caught fire during the journey. Renée survived the disaster, but she was unjustly accused of having caused it, due to her radical political trajectory.

She participated in the strike of March 1935, for which she was imprisoned on several occasions and deprived of her job. In 1940 she began working in the Ministry of Education, where she held various positions of responsibility until 1959. Between 1943 and 1946 she was a radio author at the station CMZ. She continued her activism on the left, participating in the clandestine resistance movement against the de facto government of Fulgencio Batista, from 1952 to 1958.

After the triumph of the 1959 Revolution, she worked in the Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba José Martí—between 1960 and 1964—and served as director of that institution's magazine during 1963 and 1964. At the head of the magazine, she undertook the translation from English of unpublished documents about the taking of La Habana by the English, which occurred in 1762.

In 1965 she was part of the delegation of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas Cubanos (UNEAC) that participated in the activities of the First Week of Cuban Culture, in Moscú. She collaborated as a writer and journalist in various publications, such as Diario de la Marina, El País, Grafos, Social, Bohemia, Mañana, El Mundo, La Gaceta de Cuba, Unión, Verde Olivo, Mujeres, Revolución y Cultura, Cine Cubano, Actas del Folklore, Correo Musical, and Surco. She worked as an editor in the newspaper Juventud Rebelde and the magazine Pionero.

She was a prolific author who transgressed the boundaries between the genres of testimony, memoirs, and life stories. She published numerous books; among them, essays and novels. Her work stands out for titles in which she narrated the memoirs of the era she lived through and was part of. Thus, she published a saga of the first republic through her recollections, recounted in several books, the first—and most outstanding—of which was Una cubanita que nació con el siglo, published in 1963.

Renée Méndez Capote contributed to revealing, in a pointed, joyful, and poetic way, the customs and characteristics of Cuban society and its most prominent figures. She knew and cultivated friendships with personalities of the caliber of Ernesto Lecuona, José Antonio Ramos, Fernando Ortiz, Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, Luis Felipe Rodríguez, Antonio Guiteras Holmes, and Alejo Carpentier. She narrated anecdotes about the Puerto Rican patriot Lola Rodríguez de Tió, the Cuban mambisa América Arias, the pianist Luisa Chartrand, the poet Juan Marinello, the pedagogue Enrique José Varona, and the Russian dancer Ana Pavlova.

From 1964 to 1966, she worked with the Editora Nacional de Cuba, in its Editorial Juvenil, for which she translated and adapted, in 1965, Ivanhoe by Walter Scott, and, in 1966, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. From 1974 she belonged to the permanent advisory group for children's and youth literature of the Ministry of Education.

In 1985 she received the award La Rosa Blanca, awarded by UNEAC, in its first edition. Her political and intellectual work was recognized with the Order for National Culture, the Distinción Alejo Carpentier, the Orden Félix Varela, the Orden José Joaquín Palma—for being an outstanding collaborator of the press—, the Orden 20 Aniversario de Gente Nueva, and the Replica of the Machete of Máximo Gómez. She traveled through México, France, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and Hungary.

Her work has been translated into Polish, Bulgarian, Russian, and Hungarian. She used the pseudonyms Suzanne, Berenguele, and Io-san.

She died in La Habana on May 14, 1989.