[Si] TV

Remember Rosa Parks? Well, Puerto Rican history has a mujer just as brave: Doña Isabel Rosado. From the 1940s to ‘80s, the petite elementary school teacher was one of the island's fiercest voices for independence, despite being beaten, threatened, and eventually jailed for her beliefs. Yet, her story has never been told-until now. Along with two other Puerto Rican women, she's the subject of a forthcoming documentary, Our Women, Our Struggle, which seeks to uncover the buried historias of boricua female freedom fighters.

"I started researching these women, and I realized, wow, there really wasn't anything out there about them," says first-time filmmaker Melissa Montero, 26. "These were stories that had been [hidden], and I felt like it was up to me to tell them."

To that end, Montero decided to use mostly footage of the three women themselves, telling their own histories. Sounds dry? Trust us, considering the drama this trio endured, the movie can't help but be riveting.

For one, Doña Rosado served 10 years jail time for her struggle to free the island from U.S. control. Though she stood just 5 feet tall, she led protests in support of Puerto Rican independence for more than 60 years--even getting manhandled and arrested at a prayer vigil at age 72.

Montero's second subject, former newspaper editor Dylcia Pagan, was sentenced to 55 years hard time for her membership in an independentista guerrilla group, Las Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN). Pagan lost custody of her 13-month-old son as a result of her imprisonment, and served 19 years in jail. Former President Bill Clinton finally granted her freedom in 1999 after extensive protests by Latino activists. 

The third woman, Lolita Lebron, went to prison for 20 years for a controversial pistol attack on the United States Congress, but was later pardoned by former President Jimmy Carter. After her release, she became a pacifist and helped lead the struggle to stop the U.S. Navy from using Vieques as target practice.

Clearly, all three were instrumental in PR's independence fight. Yet until now, they've remained nearly invisible to young U.S. Latinos, says the boricua/Ecuadorian Montero.

"Even though Puerto Rico is basically a colony of the United States, we don't learn about [the island] in U.S. history class," says Montero, who was born and raised in Queens, New York. "And even on the island, kids don't learn this part of their history."

Instead, she says, when young Latinas watch TV or movies these days, they're way more likely to see video chicas in bikinis perreando than brave women sticking up for their rights. She hopes this film will offer an alternative. "It's not that you can't be pretty," Montero says. "But I'd like to show girls there's more to life than just what you look like, and that you can also be strong as well."

She now has 35 hours of footage under her belt; mostly interviews with her subjects and other independentistas. She's also pored through Puerto Rican government and university archives, and hosted poetry jams and dance parties to raise money to fund the project, which she estimates will cost some $230,000 to complete.

So far, Montero's edited together a six-minute trailer, and she hopes to have a full-length film finished by 2008. Her goal is to get the film shown in festivals, and then packaged for use in schools and universities.

"I'm still an emerging filmmaker and I'm such a baby at this," says Montero, whose only prior film experience was studying TV production at Hofstra University. Still, knowing she's taped the world's only in-depth interviews with Doña Isabel keeps her pushing on. La Doña turns 100 this year. "Even if it takes me seven years to finish this, I'll do it because, at this point, if I [don't] finish this film, I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror," Montero says. "There's no turning back now."