Teresa Fernández Soneira was born in La Habana, Cuba, in 1947. In 1961 she went into exile with her family to Miami, Florida, USA, where she has resided ever since. She studied at the Apostolate of the Sacred Heart Schools in Havana and in Madrid, Spain. She obtained an Associate in Arts in Philosophy from Miami-Dade College, and a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities from Barry University, Miami Shores, Florida. Fernández Soneira has given conferences on Cuban history, and has been invited to numerous radio programs. She has participated in the Miami Book Fair International, and taken part in panels on Cuban history at the symposiums of the Cuban Research Institute (CRI) of Florida International University in Miami, Florida. She is also the author of: Cuba: Historia de la educación católica 1582-1961, 2 vol., (1997); Con la Estrella y la Cruz: historia de las Juventudes de Acción Católica Cubana, 2 vol. (2002); Mujeres de la Patria- contribución de la mujer a la independencia de Cuba, vol. I (2014), and vol. II (2018), all published by Ediciones Universal, Miami. At the present time Fernández Soneira is working on volume III of Mujeres de la Patria, which deals with the trajectory of Cuban women in exile in the XIX century. She is also is finishing a book of photographs and poems: La Bella Cubana, rostros de mujeres en la Cuba del siglo XIX.
In this volume II of Mujeres de la Patria, contribución de la mujer a la independencia de Cuba - Guerra de Independencia (1898-1902), we find the mambisa women that remained in the island during the 1895 insurrection. We will see them fighting in the fields or acting as messengers and spies in the cities. In the confection of escarapelas, flags, hats and uniforms. Hiding materials in their houses and giving support to husbands, brothers, sweethearts and fathers in the years of the war. We'll also see them as nurses saving the lives of soldiers, and also the women of religious catholic communities that healed and assisted soldiers from both bands during the disasters, miseries and pain that the war and the Reconcentration of Valeriano Weyler. In its 544 pages, we read the biographies of more than 700 women, and recreate history in the more than 350 photographs, some of them never published before.
In vol. I of Mujeres de la Patria published in 2014, the reader was able to learn about the work of the mambisa during the Spanish domain and in the Ten Years' War up and until the Zanjón Pact. And in volume III, to be published in the near future, exiled Cuban women of the XIX century will be working at patriotic gatherings, collecting money for expeditions, and supplying the Liberation Army. These are the Cuban women that from Paris, Central America, South America and the United States, worked for Cuba's liberty. This trilogy is a tribute to Cuban women and to their trajectory throughout our history.
