Born: 25 September 1799, Venezuela
Died: 28 June 1866
Country most active: Venezuela
Also known as: Luisa Cáceres Díaz
The following is excerpted from 400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
LUISA CACERES DE ARISMENDI (1800 – 1866)
She was born at Caracas in 1800; her parents were Don Jose Domingo de Caceres and Dona Carmen Diaz. When the Venezuelan patriots, in 1814 had to emigrate, the Caceres family with Luisa, had to join the exodus of a people, who had been forced to leave their homes. They arrived a little later at the Island of Margarita. It was here that Luisa married General Juan Bautista Arismendi, the head of the most energetic resistance to the Spanish power in Venezuela.
It was during those dark days that Luisa was wrested from her home, and thrown into a dungeon of the castle of Santa Rosa, in Margarita, but she never showed the slightest weakness, nor could her jailers succeed in crushing her brave spirit. During her imprisonment Luisa gave birth to a still-born child. For nearly two years this noble woman was in prison, she was transferred to the Fortress of Pampatar, then to LaGuaira’s underground prisons and finally sent to a Cadiz jail on a schooner that left LaGuaira in December 1816 and which reached Cadiz some months afterwards. The then Governor, moved by pity for her sufferings tried to investigate the reason for Luisa’s deportation, and after a great deal of difficulty her release was obtained and she was returned to Venezuela and to her husband; eleven children were born to this couple. Luisa Caceres died in 1866, and she is the first Venezuelan woman who has had a statue erected in her honor.