171 Luisa Capetillo, Free Love and the Falda-Pantalón CHRISTOPHER CASTAÑEDA California State University, Sacramento “The human being by nature is an anarchist . . .” Luisa Capetillo, Mi Opinión. Sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer, ([San Juan, P.R.]: The Times Pub Co., 1911), p. 151 “I am fighting for the time when we can all go down Fifth Avenue in overalls.” “No Volunteers for Trousers,” The Kansas City Times, July 1, 1912 One sunny summer day in 1912, Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922)— identified in the US press as the “Porto Rican Jeanne D’Arc”— strolled down New York City’s Fifth Avenue. She created quite a stir, not because the public knew who she was, certainly the vast majority of those who saw her had never heard her name, but because of her clothing. She was dressed, according to a reporter on the scene: . . . in a trouserette costume of the sensational sort guaranteed to stop traffic on any thoroughfare and which she is trying to