Who is La Borinqueña?

Who exactly is La Borinqueña?

La Borinqueña

Marisol Rios De La Luz is a young undergraduate with a fascination in geology who grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She decides to take a semester in Puerto Rico to study the unique geology there but when she arrives she finds that all of her classes have been canceled at the University of Puerto Rico thanks to budget cuts. Determined to pursue her studies and learn more about her homeland, she starts an independent study, venturing into caves and studying rocks at her grandfather’s cafe. On one of her trips, she stumbles upon five crystals that result in her meeting the Taino deities, Atabex, Huracan, and Yucahu, who give her the powers of the island and make her into La Borinqueña.

Interwoven into the story of Marisol and her family and friends is the story of Puerto Rico and its current economic and political crisis. It’s not for nothing that La Borinquena fights catastrophic weather, corporations seeking to pollute the island, as well as dealing with closed universities and schools, attending student protests and more. 

Marisol is so relatable. She’s a young person who has an insatiable curiosity about her culture and her given area of study, geology, and has a sense of what’s right and wrong. I think a lot of people can see themselves in Marisol when they were her age and now.

In 2021, La Borinquena also partnered with Chocolate Cortés, a Puerto Rican family-owned chocolate manufacturer, to release La Borinqueña co-branded chocolate bars with special new comics inside the wrappers. Carlos Cortés, Creative Director at Chocolate Cortés and fourth generation of the Cortés family, said of La Borinqueña that it was important to have a role model, which was lacking when he was growing up. “I hope that [La Borinqueña and the partnership] inspires at least one child to feel like they can be a superhero.”

How was La Borinqueña created?

Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez explained that he wanted to create “a project to engage to talk about Puerto Rico using popular culture.” This desire came out of the mid-2016 announcement by then Governor Padilla that they were going to default on the $800 million debt payment. Miranda-Rodriguez wanted to engage people in a conversation about Puerto Rico, a U.S. colony that was 123 years old, with a population of 3 million U.S. citizens who were still being treated like second-class citizens. He wanted to put front and center how the years of codependency led to this financial exposure resulting in a humanitarian crisis with schools closing, public tuition going up and so much more.

Miranda-Rodriguez had grown up reading comic books as a part of the Puerto Rican diaspora in New York. and He “always loved the potential that the stories had to inspire heroism in real life.” He remembers marching in protests for justice against police brutality and then finding himself in a comic book store because “the narratives which centered around overcoming villainy and overcoming injustice affirmed what I was doing in my real life.” 

Taking his established platform as a graphic novelist and writer of titles like Guardians of the Galaxy, Miranda-Rodriguez decided to create La Borinqueña. He explained that it “was an opportunity to reconnect to the activism of my youth, and truly bring this story of Puerto Rico’s colonial status history, its people into a different packaged discussion.” However, he knew he had a challenge to create a narrative and avoid it being too political too much like a soap box. La Borinqueña made her debut at the Puerto Rican parade in 2016 and the original outfit is showcased at the Smithsonian, which is pretty awesome. 

For me, he manages to interweave the economic and sociopolitical challenges facing the island into the plot without making them the sole focus. Instead, we’re shown the beauty of Puerto Rican culture and history and enjoy Marisol’s journey as well. The cancellation of classes at the university is what causes Marisol to do her own research, which results in finding crystals that make her into a superhero. Even issues of race and colorism come up in brief encounters — like a first meeting between Marisol and another Puerto Rican woman, who would later become a friend, at Marisol’s grandfather’s restaurant. All of these issues help propel the plot forward and help Marisol become the superhero that Puerto Rico needed. For Miranda-Rodriguez, he ultimately wanted people to not only learn about ourselves through Marisol’s journey, but learn about Puerto Rico in a new way.