María Guadalupe Cuenca

María Guadalupe Cuenca

María Guadalupe Cuenca de Moreno (1790 – September 1, 1854) was a 19th-century Upper Peru-born Argentine letter writer.

María Guadalupe Cuenca was born in Chuquisaca, Upper Peru, in 1790. After her father's death, she spent her childhood in a convent in her hometown.[1]

On May 20, 1804, she married Mariano Moreno,[1] whom she met while Moreno was studying law in Bolivia.[2] After the couple had a child together, they moved to Calle de la Piedad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A few days after Moreno left for England, Cuenca received a box which contained a pair of black gloves, a black fan, and a mourning veil.[2] But she was never informed that Moreno died on the high seas. While waiting for news of her husband, she wrote him a ten love letters that were returned unopened.[1][2] Enrique Williams Álzaga later compiled them in a book entitled Cartas que nunca llegaron (Letters that never came).[3] After the death of her husband, Cuenca raised her son alone.[1] Destituted, she asked the Triumvirate for a pension, and it agreed to give her a pension of 30 pesos.[4] She died in Buenos Aires, on September 1, 1854.

References

1. "María Guadalupe Cuenca de Moreno". dbe.rah.es (in Spanish). Real Academia de la Historia. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
2. Lonigro, Félix V. (21 January 2019). "Mariano Moreno: las desesperadas cartas de amor que su esposa le envió sin saber que él había muerto en alta mar". infobae (in European Spanish). Retrieved 22 August 2021.
3. Alzaga, Enrique Williams (1967). Cartas que nunca llegaron: María Guadalupe Cuenca y la muerte de Mariano Moreno (in Spanish). Emecé Editores. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
4. Pigna, Felipe (6 December 2017). "La viuda de Mariano Moreno pide ayuda al gobierno". El Historiador (in Spanish). Retrieved 22 August 2021.