El proyecto de Botánica antillana de Ana Roqué como expresión de un feminismo ilustrado

Abstract: This article analyzes the final set of notebooks of Ana Roqué's Botánica antillana . The project of these notebooks , to which Roqué dedicated some 30 years of her life, presents methodological and statistical innovations while scrupulously observing the practices of the scientific discipline. It combines a standard presentation and analysis of plant species with poems, illustrations, and historical and cultural observations, including information on the local population's practical uses of plants. In particular, it is a treatise written by a Puerto Rican woman in a context of overt subordination of women, which among other restrictions denied them the right to vote and provided them with only a limited education. The mere existence of these notebooks and the efforts Roqué made to publish them constitute an act and a program of intellectual, feminist, and national emancipation. With its scientific character, methodological eclecticism, and political significance, Botánica antillana crystallizes the multifaceted and systematic character of Roqué's intellectual project. It is a work in which the author asserts her expectation for a theoretical, aesthetic, and practical synthesis of the multiple scientific, pedagogical, and political initiatives that she developed over the course of her life.