Rosa Leonor Whitmarsh collection

Dr. Rosa Leonor Whitmarsh Dueñas was born in Vedado, Havana, Cuba in 1930 to Enrique Whitmarsh and Rosario Dueñas, pianist and singer. Whitmarsh’s paternal great-grandfather was a Major General and Lieutenant of the Liberation Army Calixto García Iñiguez during the war for Cuban Independence from Spanish colonial rule. Her grandfather on her mother’s side was Dr. Joaquín L. Dueñas, who is considered by the National Medical College of Cuba to be the first Cuban pediatrician. Dr. Dueñas and his family, the maternal side of Whitmarsh’s genealogy, went into exile, residing in Philadelphia during the War of 1895 for aligning with the struggle for Cuban independence. The paternal side of her family was also exiled during the war, and they resided in New York and Paris until 1905 when they returned to the island. Dr. Dueñas’ eldest daughter, Leonor, married Dr. David Whitmarsh, their children included Rosa Whitmarsh’s father, Enrique, who later married Rosario Dueñas. Rosa Whitmarsh Dueñas has two siblings, Mercedes and Sergio.

As a young girl, Whitmarsh attended the Colegio de las Ursulinas, a Catholic institute for girls in Miramar, Havana run by the Order of the Ursulinas. She then earned a diploma at the Instituto del Vedado. From a young age, she studied piano under María Emma Botet at the Hubert de Blanck Conservatory. She went on to earn a doctorate in Philosophy and Letters, specializing in Letters and graduated as Professor of English at the University of Havana. She also completed post-graduate English studies at Columbia University in N.Y. For two years, 1956 and 1957, Whitmarsh taught at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. as an Assistant Professor of Hispanic Language and Civilization after being recruited by Dr. Camila Enriquez-Ureña. She then returned to Cuba where she was very active in promoting music and culture, acting as a Member of the Board of the Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club of Havana, a women’s cultural and social organization that included many of the city’s most prominent female figures, in the Vocalía de Música from 1952 to 1959, promoting Cuban music by organizing concerts, competitions, conferences, and showcases. She also worked on both editions of the publication of the Contradanzas de Manuel Saumell, the composer considered to be the father of the Cuban contradanza.

In 1960, she earned the competitive position of Chair of Spanish at the Guanabacoa Institute, which she did not take due to ideological differences. When it became clear she would need to leave Cuba, she earned a scholarship to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Ecuador. She experienced a delay in being able to leave Cuba, and her documents and scholarship offer expired so she stayed in Mexico where she lived for 22 years. There she took postgraduate courses in Hispanic American Literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico with poet Ernesto Mejía Sánchez and academic María del Carmen Millas.

While living in Mexico, Whitmarsh worked as a teacher of Spanish, English, and Greco-Latin Etymologies at the High School of the Colegio Hebreo Tarbut, as well as at the Universidad Anáhuac where she worked as a Teacher of Oral and Written Expression in Spanish and English. She was also a private English teacher in the Hebrew colony of Mexico. She traveled throughout Mexico and gave lectures on Cuban history while studying Mesoamerican cultures. Whitmarsh also helped collect provisions and even tried unsuccessfully to obtain visas for the Cubans involved in the Mariel exodus while she was living in Mexico, which she wrote about in “A veinticinco años del Mariel, en México” for Diario Las Américas.

When she moved to Miami in 1984, she taught Spanish in the Miami-Dade County Public School system for 11 years and English at Miami Dade Community College for 13 years. In the U.S. Whitmarsh also wrote extensively and was a commentator and panelist on Radio and TV Martí and a columnist for the Diario Las Américas. She wrote essays on topics such as José Vasconcelos, Prominent Cuban Women, José Martí, Spanish in Cuba, Education in the United States, The Taking of Havana by the English, the life of Calixto García Íñiguez, and she had poetry published in two exile anthologies. She served as a panelist in national and international literary and civic congresses in Peru, Spain, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. She wrote prologues for literary works by Cuban authors such as Darío Espina, Esteban Beruvides, Nicasio Silverio, and Emelina Núñez. She has won prizes for her work including the Mariana Grajales Award from the Raíces organization in Miami, Florida and the Second Prize for Poetry at the Sesquicentennial of the Birth of José Martí organized by Casa Cuba in Houston, Texas. She also sits on the board of directors at the San Carlos Institute in Key West and is a member of Círculo de Cultura Panamericano, the Colegio Nacional de Periodistas de Cuba en el Exilio, and a member of the Board de la Revista Herencia Cultural Cubana. She passed away in Miami in 2023.