Luisa Moreno’s first brush with Mexican nationality was at the tender age of seven when her family moved to Guadalajara as emigrants from Connecticut, having saved up to buy a plantation on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Her father worked on the railroad, her mother a cook at a hotel, and her brother went to college, studying engineering. When Luisa was eight years old her family settled in Puebla, a beautiful city located in the midst of Mexico’s southern peninsula. Puebla at that time was a progressive and forward-looking town, especially during those years of armed conflict and revolution. With a vibrant community spirit, Puebla’s young people were deeply interested in learning about other cultures and about politics; this would make them natural choice participants of the Mexican nation’s future struggle for social change.
Luisa Moreno grew up in a culture that valued working hard and playing smart, which often made her a helpful and determined person. In a sense, she grew up as a typical Mexican girl in a white collar environment, yet at the tender age of seven, she became very aware of her Mexican heritage and what it meant to be Mexican. As she grew older, she came to appreciate her ancestry more, and to embrace her natural identity as a Mexican.
It is this natural identity that makes her most relevant to us today. Luisa’s personal life was far less impressive than her accomplishments, but we can see her striving and her dreams through her writings. Her bold statements and her political views on social, economical and environmental issues helped pave the way for future struggles for social change.