Born: 26 July 1825, United States (Puerto Rico)
Died: 25 February 1903
Country most active: United States (Puerto Rico)
Also known as: Mariana Bracetti Cuevas; also spelled Bracety or Braceti
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
The Revolution of Lares, a brief and unsuccessful but fiery patriotic outbreak in a mountain town of Puerto Rico, has as its heroine Mariana Braceti, “the Golden Arm” as she is known in the tales and songs of the countryside. Three hundred and eighty Puerto Rican patriots took possession of Lares and proclaimed the Republic of Puerto Rico on September 23, 1868.
“Mariana Braceti was called the Golden Arm,” Angela Negron Munoz tells us in her Biographical Sketches of Puerto Rican Women, “because of the energy and ability she displayed through-out preparations for the uprising at Lares, during the uprising itself, and in its lengthening chain of consequences.” When the secret Revolutionary Junta was formed on February 24, 1868, Mariana Braceti became one of its leading spirits, together with her husband, Miguel Rojas, and his brother, Manuel Rojas, the revolutionary leader. She embroidered the Revolutionary banner with her own hands, and was active in rousing the public conscience. The Revolution failed, and its Golden Arm was imprisoned, as were her comrades. A child was born dead to her during this imprisonment. “For her love of justice, for the iron cast of her character, for the courage with which she upheld her republican ideals in an epoch when it was a crime to think,” concludes Angela Negron, “the life of Mariana Braced is stamped unforgettably upon our history. During those dark days in prison, she emblazoned aloft in one of the most glorious chapters of that history, a woman’s place in the struggle for freedom and country.” She died at an advanced age, in the little town of Anasco. In the plaza of Lares, on the shaft commemorating the Revolution, is sculptured the dauntless feminist figure of Mariana Braced, forever lifting her patriotic banner toward the tropical sky.