The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Vicente Rodríguez Rivera was born in 1880 in Cayey, Puerto Rico and died in 1939 in Guánica, Puerto Rico. He was a judge, translator, writer, and educator. In 1904, he traveled to Harvard University to study English before continuing his education in the state of New York. From 1905 to 1906, he attended Onondaga Academy, later enrolling at Syracuse University Law School, where he earned his law degree in 1909. Rodríguez Rivera returned to Puerto Rico in 1910, where he worked as a lawyer, notary public, head of the Department of Public Education, and then became sworn in as a Supreme Court justice. In 1911, he was named a Yauco municipal judge. That same year, he received an award from the Red Cross for his poem about World War I, “La voz de Puerto Rico.” He returned to Cayey in 1919, where he served as a municipal judge until 1928. In 1929, his collection of poems, Tierra adentro, received an award from the Ateneo Puertorriqueño. Rodríguez Rivera was a member of the Sociedad de Escritores y Artistas de Puerto Rico, as well as local public health committees, such as the Cayey chapter of the American Red Cross and the anti-Tuberculosis League of Puerto Rico, of which he served as president. He published in literary journals such as Carnaval de San Juan, Gráfica, La voz de Cayey, Puerto Rico Ilustrado, and Revista de las Antillas. His works include “Salmo de amor” (1895), “Al héroe Cascorro” (1896), “Homenaje” (Carnaval de San Juan, 1904), Poemas Vesperales (Tip. Real Hermanos, 1918), “Brindis extraño” (La voz de Cayay, 1922), and Tierra adentro (Editorial Cordillera, 1964).

Works Cited

Paz Sánchez, Aida. Vida y obra de Vicente Rodríguez Rivera. Editorial Cordillera, San Juan, 1964.

Rivera de Alvarez, Josefina. Literatura puertorriqueña, su proceso en el tiempo. Ediciones Panteón, Madrid, 1983, p. 275.

Rodríguez Rivera, Vicente. Poemas Vesperales, Tip. Real Hermanos, 1918, pp. i-v.

“Vicente Rodríguez Rivera.” EnciclopediaPR, Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades, 16 September 2014, enciclopediapr.org/content/vicente-rodriguez-rivera/.