Dominga de la Cruz Becerril and Trina Padilla de Sanz: “Race” and Class among Nacionalista Women in Late 1920s and 1930s Puerto Rico

Dominga de la Cruz Becerril (1909-1981) and Trina Padilla de Sanz (1864-1957) were two prominent members of the Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico (Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico) during the 1930s. These two women, one black and working-class and the other white-Creole and patrician, personified some of the contradictions within that particular political organization, as well as certain tensions across the broader movement against U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico. As part of the changes and social conflicts in Puerto Rico between the world wars, I illustrate how both women have been positioned in the history of such conflicts and in the contentious 1930s debates over the Puerto Rican national question. I discuss how both women embodied racialized differences that, in turn, were symbolic of the multiple identities associated with being a Nacionalista woman: complexities inherent to how la patria (the fatherland) was envisioned and fashioned at that time.