Do you know who María Enriqueta Camarillo y Roa was? Neither do most of the local Coatepecanos! Her name appears on buildings, street names and even a museum in town but when I ask no one is able to say who she was. So, here is her story.

María Enriqueta Camarillo y Roa was born in Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico on January 19, 1872. She lived here for the first few years of her life during which she enjoyed the pleasures that the small town offered: she took walks though the fragrant citrus groves, she splashed in the streams and ponds formed by the meandering rivers. In her later years as a famous author she wrote stories about those times as well as how she liked to drink fresh milk, raise chickens and plant flowers.
Around the age of 6 she started to write and to draw. She inherited her literary flair from her mother’s side of the family and her music talent from her father’s.

When she was 7 years old her family moved to Mexico City where she was able to participate in the many cultural offerings promoted by then President Porfirio Diaz. This was during the height of the era known now as the Porfiriato, a time of great culture and expansion within Mexico.

Maria Enriqueta lived a life filled with the arts. She not only loved to write but she also studied music at the National Conservatory and became a music teacher and gave concert performances. At the age of 22 she began her career as a writer, contributing to the most important Mexican magazines and newspapers of her time.
After her marriage to the historian Carlos Pereyra they continued to live for awhile in the capital where Maria Enriqueta published her first books which included the poems that have made her famous.
Before leaving Mexico in 1910 Maria Enriqueta wrote a series of elementary readers as textbooks called Rosas de la Infancia. These books were used in elementary schools through out the country and many generations of students grew up learning to read and appreciate literature based on these texts.Maria Enriqueta’s name is forever associated with these beginning literary stories.

In 1910 her husband joined the diplomatic corps and from that time on they lived outside of Mexico in various countries including Cuba, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and Spain. He was named the Mexican Ambassador to Belgium and Holland in 1913 but they were forced to abandon Brussels during WW!. They settled in Spain where Maria Enriqueta eventually wrote most of her fine works. One of her novels, The Secret, won the French prize for the best foreign novel in 1922. She was a prolific writer and even illustrated some of her own works. Many of her works have been translated into French, Portuguese and Italian. In her time she was one of the most widely read Mexican writers in the world.

During her long writing career Maria Enriqueta won prizes for her novellas and achieved world-wide fame. In 1948, a few years after the death of her husband, she decided to return to her homeland. As she landed in the port of Veracruz she was greeted by thousands of admiring fans and later was received with great warmth by the citizens of Coatepec. She decided, however, to settle in DF and died there, alone, blind and sick in 1968 at the age of 96. Her memory still lives for those who read her Young Rosa books and for her poems about Coatepec.