Tribute to my mother, Rosa Maria Barretto-Rovira
December 11, 1931 – February 20, 2008
By Carlos “Carlito” Rovira
I have enjoyed painting the portraits of revolutionary figures for several decades, as well as images of loved-ones family members commission me to paint. But in 2024, when I decided to paint a 24” X 30” acrylic canvas portrait of my mother, Rosa Maria Barretto-Rovira, it was a completely different experience for me as a visual artist. Painting my mother’s portrait was not easy, it was emotionally challenging.
My mother was a proud Boricua woman who was never mistaken about our identity as Puerto Ricans. Nor was she ever confused about what was the correct side to be on in the anti-colonial struggle.
In 1949, my mother was compelled to leave Puerto Rico in search of a better life. She was among the 63,000 people per year forced to migrate due to economic hardships created by U.S. colonial policy. This exodus took place between the end of World War II and the 1960’s.
Doña Rosa, as what many community folks called her, worked as a stitcher in NYC’s Garment District. She was a member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). When having chats with her friends she would brag about work stoppages she partook.
I remember when at just 8 years old hearing my mother tell one of my schoolteachers: “We want our independence.” She referred to Puerto Rico. Eventually, that conversation had a profound impact on me.
At the height of the repressive McCarthy Era and the 1948 Puerto Rico Law 53, also known as the Gag Law, my mother, my father, Carlos M. Rovira, Sr., and aunt, Anjelica Rovira-Nieves, were members of a New York City-based secret committee of the banned Nationalist Party.
This committee served as a rear guard to support the Party politically and financially. It functioned under the leadership of Don Julio Pinto Gandia, a confidant of the Nationalist leader, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos.
My parents were superintendents of a tenement building on Broom Street in the Lower East Side, NYC where quite often they held fundraising events in the basement. The money raised was used to provide whatever necessary to benefit the efforts of the Nationalist Party.
This well-hidden story was not revealed to me until I became an adult decades later, by elders who were also members of this secret committee.
It is no wonder why Doña Rosa wholeheartedly supported the Young Lords and my decision to join them at just 14 years of age. In 1969 during the Young Lords takeover of the First Spanish Methodist Church in El Barrio (East Harlem), she was among supporters who mobilized to provide us with food and other necessities during the occupation.
Today, I’m proud knowing who my mother was. I shall always cherish the contributions she made to my personal development, as well as for having stood by me during the years I unfortunately served six years in prison for committing a regrettable stupidity. Doña Rosa was a mother in the truest sense of the word.
From the time I was a young child she taught me never to allow myself being bullied by anyone and to strike back hard with full force whenever someone laid their hands on me. If my mother were to hear the opposite as what she instructed I was punished, with the belt or her flip-flop slippers (chancletas). My siblings and I grew up in a supposed “rough neighborhood”, NYC’s Alphabet City during the 1960s, Doña Rosa did not want her children becoming pushovers or “chumps” for bullies to treat as easy prey.
Her sacrifices as a mother, under the difficult circumstances of poverty and cultural shock are unforgettable. Her life was not easy due to harsh experiences in Puerto Rico’s colonial reality and the racism she encountered in the U.S. as an immigrant woman of color who spoke very little English.
My dear mother’s examples of character and conviction are reasons why I vowed to always pay homage to her by continuing to raise the banner of Puerto Rican national liberation. If there is such a thing as “life after death,” I want her to know that I will always love her very much.
Rosa Maria Barretto-Rovira – PRESENTE!
carlitoboricua 