La Vida Feminista: Luisa Capetillo and Radical Feminism in the Global South, 1900- 1922

Luisa Capetillo was a Latina, cross-dressing, anarcho-syndicalist. As a labor organizer and radical intellectual, Capetillo envisioned a world grounded in gender justice and economic equality. Both her life and work stretched from her home in Puerto Rico to Cuba, Florida, and the Dominican Republic. As she fought for international workers’ rights, Capetillo illustrated the intersections of sex-based discrimination and imperial subjugation as endemic to civil and human rights. This paper examines the origins of Latina feminism through the actions and writings of Luisa Capetillo. As the first Latina to pen a feminist manifesto, her ideologies illustrate the meaning and power of feminism to working-class women throughout the Caribbean. Caught in the crosshairs of the United States’ burgeoning empire, Capetillo sought to carve an ideological and physical space for women’s equality.