Enriqueta, centuries apart

Last 2019 it was two hundred years since the arrival in Cuba of Enriqueta Faves and one hundred since the suicide of the excellent poet María Luisa Enriqueta del Carmen Milanés (Liana de Lux). It is and odd coincidence that, by difference of a century, both would face the established canons of their times, and that, with sheer courage they made history, being an inspiration for men and women who defy their times.

Faves was the first woman to practice medicine not only in our country, but also in Latin America. There are numerous events in her life that define her as a transgressive woman. She married at age 15, suffered the loss of a son, followed her husband in various battles and widowed at age 18. She hid her female nature by disguising herself as a man, and studied medicine at the University of Paris.

Exactly one century later another great woman passed away: María Luisa Enriqueta del Carmen Milanés García. Born and raised in a conservative family, with a strict education in a nun's school, it is almost inconceivable that she had an unhappy and rebellious spirit. Endowed with a broad encyclopedic culture, with mastery of languages and skills for painting and narrative art, she could not be contained in the pre-set molds of her time and so she transcended, with an original transgressive poetry, taboos on topics such as eroticism and social criticism.