Carmen Consuelo Marta Herrera y Nieto is born on May 30 in Havana, Cuba. Herrera’s parents, Antonio Herrera y López de la Torre (1874–1917) and Carmela Nieto de Herrera (1875–1963), are both members of Havana’s intellectual circle. Antonio had served as a captain in the Cuban army during the war for independence from Spain (1895–98), suffering permanent injury from bullet wounds to his left arm. After the war, he became executive editor of El Mundo (founded 1901), Cuba’s first post-independence newspaper. Carmela was a pioneering journalist and respected author whose books included Las Aventuras de Buchón and Victoria. She was also a recognized philanthropist and feminist. In 1900 Carmela had married the American financier John Stewart Durland, with whom she had five children: Rosa Teresa, John, Addison, Mariano, and Archibald Durland y Nieto. After a divorce of mutual accord from Durland, she married Antonio in 1913, with whom she had Antonio Herrera y Nieto and Carmen—or Carmencita, as she is known to family and friends—who is the youngest child. All seven siblings are raised together.
