Romero Rosa, Ramón (1863–1907)

Ramón Romero Rosa (R. de Romeral; b. 30 August 1863; d. 25 April 1907), Puerto Rican labor organizer, essayist, and dramatist. Romero Rosa was a leading spokesman of the movement to create a national labor union in the years between 1896 and 1907, which led eventually to the formation and political centrality of Santiago Iglesias Pantin's Federación Libre de Trabajadores (Free Federation of Labor) from 1899 to 1930. A typesetter by trade, he served as president of the San Juan Union of Typographers and cofounded the pioneering weekly Ensayo Obrero (1897). A charter member of the Federación Regional de los Trabajadores (Regional Federation of Workers, 1897–1899) and a firm supporter of Santiago Iglesias, he was twice (1904 and 1906) elected to the Puerto Rican House of Delegates. Affirming "no homeland but the workplace and no religion but labor," as the masthead of Ensayo Obrero expressed it, Romero was equally certain that "the triumph of the cause of labor will be the triumph of the homeland in Puerto Rico." (Angel G. Quintero Rivera, Patricios y plebeyos, p. 258).

Occasionally writing under the pseudonym R. de Romeral, his incisive commentaries on the class structure and exploitative character of Puerto Rican society embodied a novel, anarchist-influenced, and socialist-oriented analytical break with a patrician-dominated discourse as well as the most broadly inclusive expression of the period's emerging working-class consciousness. In addition to writing articles for such periodicals as El Porvenir Social (1898–1899), La Miseria (1901), and El Pan del Pobre (1901), his published works include La cuestión social en Puerto Rico (1904), Musarañas (1904), Catecismo Socialista (1905), Entre Broma y Vera (1906), and the allegorical play La emancipación del obrero (1903).

See alsoIglesias Pantin, Santiago; Labor Movements.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Angel G. Quintero Rivera, Lucha obrera en Puerto Rico (1972), esp. pp. 14-32, and Patricios y plebeyos: Burgueses, hacendados, artesanos, y obreros: Las relaciones de clase en el Puerto Rico de cambio de siglo (1988), esp. pp. 252-279.

Amilcar Tirado Áviles, "Ramón Romero Rosa, su participación en las luchas obreras (1896–1906)," in Caribe 2, nos. 2-3 (1977): 3-25.

Additional Bibliography

Bird Carmona, Arturo. A lima y machete: La huelga cañera de 1915 y la fundación del Partido Socialista. Rio Pedras, P.R.: Huracán, 2001.

                                      Roberto MÁrquez