The Making Of A Puerto Rican Icon By Julia De Burgos

Julia de Burgos’ was the eldest of thirteen children of mixed race, born to Francisco Burgos Hans, a farmer of German descent, and a mother, Paula Garcia, an Afro-Puerto Rican. The Burgos economic situation was further aggravated as her father worked for various landowners, however Puerto Rico’s workforce was affected by the extremely low wages of the 1910s. Although the Burgos owned land, their fruit produce, which Paula sold in town, did not generate enough to make up for their small income. Yet despite their economic hardships, Julia enrolled in school and was the only sibling to pursue any type of education. Her family relocated to the slums of Rio Piedras not for financial reasons but to pursue Julia’s schooling, which took them to University

The secondary source is a book titled Becoming Julia de Burgos: The Making of a Puerto Rican Icon written by Vanessa Perez Rosario, an Assistant Professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at CUNY. The book focuses specifically on Julia’s life in 1930s Puerto Rico, specifically with the political struggles many Puerto Ricans faced due to the US occupation of the Island. The author explores Julia’s use of writing specifically to voice her feminism and political activism and her evolution as she self-exiled to New York. Julia de Burgos early political awareness was due to her constant encounters with poverty from the onset of her childhood to adulthood as Puerto Rico was marred with economic disasters. It was at the height of the worldwide Great Depression, that Julia graduated with a teaching degree at only 19 years old in 1933. The economic crisis heightened the social tensions and it was in these conditions that Julia moved to the most affected areas of the Island after she was employed at a rural school in Naranjito. In the province of San Juan, a series of strikes in tobacco and sugar plantations spread throughout the island due the worsening