Rita Pérez de Moreno

Biography

Rita Pérez was the daughter of José María Máximo Pérez-Franco and Sáenz de Vidaurri and Rafaela Margarita Jiménez de Mendoza y de Covarrubias, a landowning family from Los Altos de Jalisco. She married Pedro Moreno, a landowner from Santa María de los Lagos, on 1 May 1799 in San Juan de los Lagos. The couple had several children: José Luis Esteban Moreno Pérez (1802-1817), Josefa de los Dolores Moreno Pérez (1805-1806), María Josefa Marcelina Moreno Pérez (1807-1881), José María de Jesús Moreno Pérez (1810-1810), María Luisa Moreno Pérez (1811-1873), María Guadalupe Lucía Moreno Pérez (1812-1833), Severiano Moreno Pérez (1815-1818), and Prudencia Moreno Pérez (1816-1817).

She joined the independence struggle with her husband. At the Fort of the Hat, she cooked and distributed food and treated wounded rebels until captured, also serving as administrator. In 1813 her daughter María Guadalupe was taken prisoner by a royalist chief. Her son Luis Moreno died on 10 March 1817 in combat.

While pregnant, Rita and her small children Josefa, Luisa, Severiano, and Prudencia were taken prisoner on 19 August 1817 during the royalist attack on the Hat Fort; Javier Mina and Pedro Moreno fled. She was taken to León prison and later to Silao, where Prudencia died at one year one month old from hunger and Severiano at two and a half from mistreatment. She received news of her husband's death on 27 October 1817 at the El Venadito ranch. She was released in 1819 by Viceroy Juan Ruiz de Apodaca and returned to Lagos de Moreno amid hardships and dispossession of her properties, where she died.

Awards

Her name has been honored multiple times as a heroine of the movement. It is inscribed in gold letters in the Assembly Hall of the Legislative Power of the State of Jalisco by decree number 8,473 of January 4, 1969. In 2010 it was announced that her remains would be transferred to the Rotunda of the Jalisco Illustrious, a plan considered in 1955 by Agustín Yáñez but delayed after an investigation determined the remains had become part of the common ossuary of the San Juan de los Lagos cemetery in 1927.

The State Institute of Forensic Sciences later confirmed the legitimacy of exhumed remains. On 27 August 2010, her remains arrived at the Rotunda after a ceremony and the unveiling of a statue by sculptor Rubén Orozco Loza. On 5 May 2010, the book "Doña Rita, heroine and worthy of Jalisco" by Rogelio López Espinoza was presented at the House of Culture in Lagos de Moreno.

Did You Know?

• Her parents were Don José María Pérez and his second wife, Doña Rafaela Jiménez.
• Her family was of Spanish descent and well-off.