Caring Health Center

This program focuses on education and capacity-building for the health and well-being of Puerto Rican women residing in the service area of CHC.

For more information, call: Jacqueline Johnson at 693-1016  
 
     
                          Biography of
                         Julia de Burgos
                         Poet & Nationalist
                          b. 1914 - d. 1953

Julia de Burgos was one of the foremost poets to come out of Puerto Rico in the first half of the twentieth century.  Her poverty-stricken background and African heritage were factors in the evolution of the revolutionary politics de Burgos espoused as part of the independence movement in Puerto Rico.
 
De Burgos was the oldest of 13 children and grew up in the banks of a major branch of the Rio Grande de Loiza.  De Burgos attended the University of Puerto Rico High School thanks to donations from local townspeople. After graduation in 1931, she entered the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan and obtained her certification as a teacher.  She began her teaching career working in the Barrio Cerdo Arriba in Naranjito, a provincial town some distance from the Capital. While teaching in Naranjito, de Burgos became reacquainted with the social problems and poverty that had haunted her own childhood.
 
In 1937 de Burgos saw her first volume of poetry, Poemas exactos a mi misma, privately published. De Burgos published two more volumes of poetry Peoma en viente surcos (1938) and Cancion de la verdad sencilla (1939) which won a prize from the Institute of Puerto Rican Literature, before she left Puerto Rico in 1940.  The mid-to late 1940s marked an important period in de Burgos’s life.  

In 1940 and 1941 her poetry was performed in New York City and was honored by several organizations.  In 1946, de Burgos was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, the result of years of alcoholism.  De Burgos’s mental and physical health continued to degrade and made her almost recluse during the late 1940s.  Letters she wrote to her relatives in Puerto Rico during this period show that de Burgos was obsessed with death and dying.   Her poem “Farewell from Welfare Island,” written in February 1953, indicates that she was deeply depressed and possibly suicidal.  The last letter her family received from her was dated June 28th, 1953.  In July, she disappeared.   Later it was revealed that she had been discovered unconscious on the street and taken to the Harlem Hospital where she died.   De Burgos’ remains were returned to the Island of her birth on September 6, 1953.   She received last honors from the Sociedad de Periodistas and was given a Christian burial in the municipal cemetery at Carolina.  Public praise for de Burgos and her work began almost immediately after her funeral.   In November 1953, the journal Artes y Letras produced a special issue entitled Homenaje a Julia de Burgos: su vida y su obra.

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