The daughter of a Creole mother who was enslaved and an unknown father, she was born free in Güines, Cuba, on July 24, 1856.
[1] Her work was published in various newspapers and journals including El Pueblo Libre and El Sufragista, as well as in Minerva, a magazine dedicated to black women for which she was a founding editor.
In her work, she opposed slavery and supported racial equality and national independence for all Cubans.
[2][3] A collection of her work, Ofrendas Mayabequinas, was published in 1926 with a foreword by Valentin Cuesta Jimenez.
[4] After her death, the town council of Güines named a street in her honour.