The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Lola Rodríguez de Tió was born in 1843 in San Germán, Puerto Rico, and passed away in 1924 in Havana, Cuba. A poet, journalist, feminist, and revolutionary, she was a staunch advocate for Puerto Rican independence and women's rights. In 1868, she wrote the original lyrics to La Borinqueña, later adapted by Manuel Fernández Juncos to become Puerto Rico’s national anthem. Her feminist writings, including La influencia de la mujer en la civilización (Eco de las Lomas, 1875), challenged traditional gender roles, emphasized women's contributions to society, and championed the importance of education for women. In 1876, she and her family moved to Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Her political activism led to her exile in Venezuela in 1877, and again in 1887, when she was forced to leave for both Venezuela and Cuba. During her time in Puerto Rico, Rodríguez de Tió and her husband, Bonocio Tió Segarra, founded the satirical newspaper La Almojábana, using it as a platform to criticize Spanish colonial rule. In the 1890s, after publishing Mis cantares (Imp. de M. Fernández, 1876), she fled to New York due to political pressures, where she collaborated with Cuban revolutionaries, including José Martí. She returned to Havana in 1899, where she co-founded the Cuban Academy of Arts and Letters. Recognized as a pioneer of the feminist movement in Puerto Rico, her poetry was translated by several renowned writers. Throughout her career, she contributed to numerous newspapers, including La Almojábana, La Crónica, Eco de las Lomas, El Fígaro, El País, Patria, and El Progreso. Her published works include Claros y nieblas (Tip. Comercial, 1885), A mi patria, en la muerte de Corchado (Tip. Comercial, 1885), and Mi libro de Cuba: poesías (Imprenta La Moderna, 1893).

Works Cited

Kanellos, Nicolás. “Lola Rodríguez de Tió.” En otra voz: Antología de la literatura hispana de los Estados Unidos, Arte Público Press, 2024, p. 348.

“Lola Rodríguez de Tió.” EnciclopediaPR, Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades, 15 September 2014, enciclopediapr.org/content/lola-rodriguez-de-tio/.

Tió, Aurelio. Poetisa internacional de Puerto Rico. Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades, no. 3, 1979.

“World of 1898: International Perspectives on the Spanish American War.” Edited by María Daniela Thurber, Library of Congress, 2022 https://guides.loc.gov/world-of-1898/lola-rodriguez-tio.