Salomé Camila Henríquez Ureña

Essayist, literary critic, notable professor of Hispanic literatures. Due to her extensive work as a promoter of national culture, she is considered a Cuban intellectual.

She was born on April 9, 1894 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Her parents were the prominent intellectuals Francisco Henríquez y Carvajal, a physician, educator and important politician who became president of his country in 1916 and was overthrown by American intervention; and Salomé Ureña de Henríquez, a valued poet and pioneer of female education. She was the younger sister of Francisco Noel, Pedro and Max Henríquez Ureña, the latter being notable researchers, essayists, critics and professors of Hispanic American literature. Her uncle, Federico Henríquez y Carvajal, was the great friend of José Martí, to whom he directed his famous political testament of March 25, 1895. Her brother Pedro, ten years older than Camila, exerted a notable influence on his sister's intellectual formation.

On August 10, 1904, at just ten years old, Camila arrived in Cuba with her family and continued her primary studies at the Escuela Modelo de Santiago de Cuba. Her father directly oversaw her instruction. According to Camila herself, he taught her the rudiments of French, which she would later perfect.

In Havana she studied secondary education at the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza, and after entering the University of Havana, she obtained degrees of Doctor in Pedagogy and in Philosophy and Letters. "The Pedagogical Ideas of Hostos" was her thesis to obtain the degree in Pedagogy. Camila Henríquez Ureña completed in 1917, at twenty-two years of age, her doctorate in Philosophy and Letters. She presented her Philosophy thesis, "Francisco de Rioja: his true significance in Spanish lyric poetry" on February 7, 1917 and it was graded as "outstanding." Many years later, on December 21, 1970, permanently settled in Cuba, she was recognized as Professor Emerita of this center of higher learning.

In 1916 she traveled to the United States to continue her studies, and in June 1920 she obtained a "Master of Arts" from the University of Minnesota, took advanced courses at Middlebury University and at Vassar College. In 1921 she returned to Cuba and resided in Santiago de Cuba where she was a professor in private academies. In 1932 she moved to France and studied at La Sorbona. Two years later she obtained a Chair at the Escuela Normal de Maestros de Oriente, in Santiago de Cuba.

In the nineteen-thirties, Camila Henríquez Ureña became fully involved in feminist struggles. In 1935 she collaborated with the organization "Unión Nacional de Mujeres," and in 1936 she was elected to a vice presidency of said corporation. Under her management the III National Congress of Women in Cuba was organized, which was to be held in April 1939. Among the sponsoring activities of the Congress, Camila offered at the Lyceum, on March 9, 1939, her already famous words on "Woman and Culture," of illuminated anticipation and disturbing relevance. She also delivered the opening speech of the First National Women's Congress in Havana, on April 18, 1939. Her combative and internalized feminist stance, grounded in more general concepts of human problems, are related with perspicacity in her Congressional speech where she describes that the characteristic of the conscious woman of that time was "the universality of intention and respect for individuality" and that Cuban feminism is "the demonstration of the degree of development that consciousness of freedom has achieved among us."

In 1936 she settled in Havana for six years. During that period, she presided over the women's society Lyceum, where she deployed intense cultural and social work. There, on Calzada and 8th, the lyceum members met, and in fact much of the artistic and intellectual avant-garde that resided in or passed through Cuba. The objective of this society was to elevate the spirit of women through activities of a cultural, social and sports nature. Its magazine had quarterly periodicity and published in it, among many materials of a cultural, charitable and social nature, the lectures given in its halls. One of its first directors was Camila Henríquez Ureña herself.

She was also a diligent collaborator in one of the richest cultural ventures of the first half of the twentieth century in Cuba: the Institución Hispanocubana de Cultura (IHC), founded by Fernando Ortiz, and which counted with intellectuals of the caliber of Juan Marinello. Supported fundamentally in the holding of lectures, during its two stages (1926-1932 and 1936-1947), the Institución Hispanocubana de Cultura carried out a highly varied and unprejudiced intellectual endeavor, within the most progressive and advanced thinking of its time, times that were moreover complex not only within Cuban historical events, but also on the international plane. The motto of its emblem advises that one must go "Plus ultra," that is, beyond. Of broad scope, this Institution early foresaw the gravity of marginalizing women, of preventing their full incorporation into culture, and straightforwardly and without paternalism incorporated from its inception the consciousness of the intellectual equality of women and men. María Zambrano, Mirta Aguirre, Gabriela Mistral and, of course, Camila Henríquez Ureña, among other distinguished intellectuals, gave various lectures during this second stage of the Institución Hispanocubana de Cultura, on literary topics and matters of a political and social character. On July 25, 1939, Camila offered her ideas about women in a dissertation on "Feminism" that aroused interest, and even the praising comments of her brother Pedro. There she spoke about the need for women's social and sexual independence, as well as the need of her time to break down barriers and prejudices surrounding the female condition.

Also in 1936 she compiled with Juan Ramón Jiménez and José María Chacón y Calvo, the anthology La Poesía en Cuba en 1936, of enormous significance in the history of this genre in Cuba.

In 1941 she attended as a delegate the conference of the "General Federation of University Women," in the United States. She spent most of the time in the next twenty years beginning in 1942 in this country, where she held chairs at Vassar College, and offered courses at Middlebury University and at Center College of Kentucky. At Vassar College she became "Chairman" of the Department of Spanish.

During a sabbatical year, from 1946 to 1947, she worked as editor-advisor at the prestigious publishing house Fondo de Cultura Económica (FCE), in Mexico. In 1958 she made trips through Spain, France and Italy, returned to the United States and obtained her professional retirement.

Her intellectual and pedagogical worth consecrated her as a lecturer at universities and cultural institutions in the United States and several countries of Latin America, such as Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Mexico.

After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, she returned to the Island to join the newly created School of Letters and Arts of the University of Havana, as a professor of literature in the Department of Spanish Language and Literatures, where she remained from 1962 until her death. At this center, she collaborated in the formation of generations of young people who today make up university faculties, direct cultural institutions or are recognized writers.

Between 1960 and 1962, she provided services at the Ministry of Education as a technical advisor, was a member of the Cuban National Commission of UNESCO and vice president of the Pen Club of Cuba.

She published her literary works in Revista de Instrucción Pública, Ultra, Archipiélago, Revista Bimestre Cubana, Grafos, Isla, Revista Lyceum, Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional, Universidad de La Habana, the Gaceta de Cuba, and Casa de las Américas. Among her forewords stands out her «Introduction. Goethe the Playwright», in the Fausto (Havana, Instituto cubano del Libro, 1973). In general terms, during her last eleven years of residence in Cuba, Camila Henríquez Ureña participated in a relevant manner in the Cuban cultural and pedagogical movement.

She died in the Dominican Republic, during a family visit, on September 12, 1973.