Ana Betancourt was a Cuban patriot, born in Puerto Principe, Camagüey, on February 14th, 1832. She married Colonel Ignacio Mora de la Pera, whom she married on August 17th, 1854.

Ana proclaimed the redemption of Cuban women in the framework of the Guáimaro Assembly, where she was acclaimed by the people gathered in the Public Square to express her ideas, a practice of participatory democracy, rare in the world at the time. She took the stage and with vibrant oratory, as the Apostle José Martí affirmed, she demanded the rights of women in contemporary terms for her time. Ana Betancourt raised her voice to express:

“Citizens: The woman in the dark and quiet corner of the home waited patiently and resignedly for this beautiful hour when a new revolution breaks her yoke and unties her wings.

Citizens: Here everything was a slave, the cradle, color and sex, you want to destroy the slavery of the cradle fighting to the death; you have destroyed the slavery of color by emancipating the slave. The time has come to set women free! “

The value of a Cuban woman

Ana Betancourt de Mora follows her husband into the battlefield and they both fall into the hands of a Spanish troop on July 9th, 1871. Thanks to her stratagem, she manages to help him flee, but she is arrested. She is held captive so that she can tell on her husband, which she does not do, and she falls ill with typhus.

The courageous woman draws strength to escape from her captors, she arrives in Havana and leaves for exile. In Jamaica she knows the terrible news that her husband has been shot. She then moved to Spain where on February 7th, 1901 she died, precisely in Madrid at the age of 68.

Her remains are transferred to Havana and then to Guáimaro city where she shone so much, in a mausoleum erected in her memory next to the same mansion where she advocated for the rights of Cuban women.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García