Luisa Capetillo

Luisa Capetillo Perón (October 28, 1882 – April 4, 1922) was a Puerto Rican labor organizer, reader, writer, and journalist. She organized workers in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and the United States. She also published four books in her lifetime, covering a wide variety of forms, genres, and topics. As an anarcha-feminist and social anarchist, she advocated for collective ownership of scientific advances, free love, universal education, and women's liberation while opposing state control.

Capetillo was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Her father taught her to read and write, and she read extensively, including works by influential political thinkers. In 1897, she took Manuel Ledesma, the son of a wealthy aristocrat, as her lover. The two separated in 1900, but their relationship influenced her later feminist works. She began writing for the local newspaper in 1904, and in 1905, she became involved with the Free Federation of Workers (, FLT), an anarcho-syndicalist union, helping organize an agricultural strike in Arecibo. In 1906, she became a reader at a cigar factory, meeting members of the FLT-affiliated Federation of Tobacco Rollers (, FTT) and becoming a leader in the FLT over time. Starting in 1912, she moved across the Atlantic and Caribbean, writing and organizing workers. In 1915, she was arrested for wearing trousers in Cuba and deported back to Puerto Rico. She continued to travel and organize until her death in 1922.

Interest in Capetillo's life surged in 1990 with the publication of ( 'Luisa Capetillo, History of an Outlawed Woman') by journalist Norma Valle Ferrer. After this, Capetillo became the subject of a docudrama series, and in 2014, the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico honored her with a plaque in the Plaza in Honor of Puerto Rican Women in San Juan. She is considered one of Puerto Rico's first feminists and, according to historian Jorrell A. Meléndez-Badillo, she was an influential node in an anarchist "counter-republic of letters": a network of writers who used their writing as a form of political struggle. Provided by Wikipedia