La Pasión Del Obstáculo

Juana Borrero (1877 – 1896) – Modernist poet, born in Puentes Grandes, Havana, Cuba. She also excelled in painting. As a poet, she was considered a precocious girl. Her father, Esteban Borrero, was a short stories writer of and a poet, and her sister, Dulce Maria Borrero, excelled at poetry and prose. Therefore, Juana grew up in an artistic and literary atmosphere, amid literary circles and gatherings attended by other writers like Carlos Pio and Federico Uhrbach, as well as Julian del Casal. While still very young, Juana took painting classes, first with Dolores Desvernine, and later on, in 1886, at the famous San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Havana. She also studied with Armando Menocal, one of the most outstanding Cuban painters of the nineteenth century. In 1892, Juana accompanied her father to New York, where she met Jose Marti, who organized a literary soiree in her honor at Chickering Hall. She returned to Cuba the following year. Her poems appeared in the anthology Grupo de familia, poesias de los Borrero, published in 1895, also the year in which the only book of poetry published by Juana Borrero appeared: Rimas. Juanas poems were also featured in La Habana Elegante, Gris y Azul y El Figaro. In addition to valuable canvases and drawings of hers that still survive, she left an extensive epistolary that was published in Havana, in two volumes, between 1966 and 1967. These letters had their origin in the romantic relationship between Juana Borrero and Carlos Pio Uhrbach, which, because of the opposition of Esteban, Juanas father, had to be conducted through a secret interchange of personal letters. In 1895, due to Estebans involvement in the revolutionary cause, the Borreros were forced to emigrate to the United States. In Key West, where her family settled, Juana passed away on March 9, 1896. Shortly before dying, and already almost without the strength to write, she dictated the verses of her Ultima rima, which would become, in fact, her last…