LEONOR MOLINA (1869-1957)

 

I came across an obituary notice from the January 15, 1957, Miami Herald for Leonor Molina who was noted to be the model for the Cuba Peso coins of 1897 and 1898. The obituary states that she was the winner of abeauty contest held in Camaguey, Cuba but that she returned to New York, her home for most of her life. I did find an 11-year-old Leonor in the 1880 New York City census living with her family, including her mother Elvira Molina and grandmother Ynes Betancourt, all listed as born in Cuba. There are newspaper notices in 1897 reporting on Leonor being the model for the coins.

 
San Francisco Examiner, Aug 28, 1897 and El Paso Herald, Aug 21, 1897

However, there are additional articles in the Miami Herald shortly before Leonor died. In late 1956 it was reported that Leonor was living in a nursing home in Miami and was aforgotten woman whose beauty graced the first coins issued by the island republic. In response to this an F. Ramirez Corria wrote to the Herald from Havana. Corria stated that the Herald story on Molinawas not accurate and that the true model for the coin was the teenage revolutionary Evangelina Cosio Cisneros.

Evangelina was living in Havana in 1956 and Corria reported that she provided a photograph of an example of the coin that had been given to her by William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal. Evangelina's plight and daring escape from a Cuban prison (through the efforts of the Journal reporter Karl Decker) had been used by Hearst to drum up support for Cuba's revolution before the sinking of the Maine took over the news cycles.

I can see how Evangelina may have thought to have been the model for the coins, however the contemporary articles seem to clearly attribute the portrait to Leonor.

To read the complete Wikipedia article on Evangelina Cisneros, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelina_Cosio_y_Cisneros

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