Isabel Gutiérrez del Arroyo

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Isabel Gutiérrez del Arroyo Mimoso (November 16, 1907 – January 2004) was a Puerto Rican historian who focused on the history of Puerto Rico. Born in Bayamón, she started work as a schoolteacher in San Juan and Caguas before earning her BA at the University of Puerto Rico in 1942 and joining the UPR history department on the Río Piedras campus.

In 1946 she went to Mexico to study at El Colegio de México, earning a master’s degree in 1948 and a PhD in 1950. Her doctoral work, El Reformismo Ilustrado y la emancipación de América: La obra de Pedro Tomás de Córdova, was published in 1953 as El Reformismo Ilustrado en Puerto Rico. She also taught briefly in Mexico (Mexico City College) and conducted research at Colmex. From 1956 to 1961 she worked as a historian for the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, and she remained at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, until 1977, eventually becoming a professor emerita.

She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955 to study the colonial Mexican intendancy system. Throughout her career, she wrote several works on Puerto Rican history and believed that studying and preserving Puerto Rican history was the best way to serve her people. In 1997 her library was donated to UPR’s Center for Historical Research. She died in January 2004 at age 96.

Her legacy includes fostering a sense of Puerto Rican identity through history. She held the 16th seat of the Academia Puertorriqueña de Historia and was named Humanist of the Year in 1985 by the Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades. A Catholic, she was part of the Third Order of Saint Dominic and she supported the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico.