Juana Borrero
Juana Borrero was a Cuban painter and poet. A native of the Santos Suárez neighborhood of Havana, she died in Key West, Florida. She was the daughter of the writer and patriot Esteban Borrero Echevarría and of Consuelo Pierra, and began painting when she was five; she wrote her first poem at seven, and spoke multiple languages by the time she was ten. The poet Julian de Casal was a family friend and became her literary mentor. In 1887 she entered the San Alejandro Arts Academy; by 1891 her poems were being published in magazines around Cuba, including La Habana Elegante, one of the leading periodicals of the time.
She died of tuberculosis at only eighteen, and was buried in Key West, Florida, in a tomb belonging to friends of her family. Her gravesite was unidentified until a 1972 study by the Cuban Society of Archaeology and Ethnology in Exile. Her body was exhumed and transferred to her own tomb, with the inscription "Glory of Cuba" on her tombstone.
