Ana Livia Cordero

Ana Livia Cordero
Born
Ana Livia Cordero

(1931-07-04)July 4, 1931
Santurce, Puerto Rico
DiedFebruary 21, 1992(1992-02-21) (aged 60)
OccupationsDoctor and Civil Rights activist.

Ana Livia Cordero (July 4, 1931 – February 21, 1992) was a Puerto Rican doctor and political activist.

Early life

Born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, Cordero lived on the island and in New York City. Both of her parents were professors at the University of Puerto Rico. Cordero graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1953. She was initially denied a license to practice medicine by the New York State Board of Regents due to her gender, age (23 years old), and place of birth, but eventually was granted the license. The following year she met American civil rights activist Julian Mayfield, whom she married in 1954 . They had two children.

Career

Cordero and Mayfield moved to Puerto Rico in 1954, where they lived until 1959. In Puerto Rico, she conducted a Rockefeller-funded research study to determine how to provide adequate medical care to poor rural communities. In 1960 they traveled to Cuba. In 1961 they moved to the newly independent Ghana, inspired by the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah. While in Ghana, Cordero ran a women's health clinic and served as physician to W. E. B. Du Bois, tending him until his death in 1963. She saved the life of Maya Angelou's son who was misdiagnosed; he had a broken neck. She hosted James Baldwin and Malcolm X (photo in his autobiography). She was affiliated with the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Accra. While living in Ghana, Cordero and Mayfield separated. Mayfield left the country in 1966, and Cordero was expelled shortly after that, eventually returning to Puerto Rico.

In Puerto Rico she continued her work as a doctor and political activist. She advocated Puerto Rican independence, and she was one of the representatives of the Pro-Independence Movement to the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, Cuba. She was arrested for her activism in 1968. Her group maintained active contact with the African-American liberation movement on the mainland. In 1978 she was involved in protesting the Cerro Maravilla murders.

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Placido, Sandy. "Cordero, Ana Livia". American National Biography. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.013.17221. Retrieved April 29, 2021.
  2. 1 2 Cordero, Ana Livia. "The Determination of Medical Care Needs in Relation to a Concept of Minimal Adequate Care: An Evaluation of the Curative Outpatient Services of a Rural Health Centre." Medical Care 2, no. 2 (1964): 95.
  3. ↑ Finding Aid, Julian Mayfield Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library | Archives & Manuscripts.
  4. ↑ Kevin K. Gaines, American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
  5. ↑ Senate Subcommittee Hearings, Communist Threat to the U.S. Through the Caribbean. Part 19: Violence in Puerto Rico, November 27, 1968. See images in the Fotos El Mundo collection of the Biblioteca Digital Puertorriquena (UPPR) http://bibliotecadigital.uprrp.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/ELM4068 Archived 2013-01-12 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ↑ Cordero, Ana Livia, and Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico. Cerro Maravilla: Estudio Del Informe Del Departamento De Justicia. [San Juan], P.R.: Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico, 1979.
  7. ↑ Manuel Suarez, Two Lynchings on Cerro Maravilla: The Police Murders in Puerto Rico and the Federal Government Cover Up (Editorial Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, 2003), 39.

  1. ↑ "Paper: Everywhere and Nowhere: The Historical Erasure of the Transnational Activist Ana Livia Cordero (130th Annual Meeting (January 7-10, 2016))". aha.confex.com. Retrieved 2025-02-19.