Loida Figueroa Mercado (October 6, 1917 – December 14, 1996) was an Afro-Puerto Rican intellectual who was a member of the mid-twentieth century movement known as the Generation of the 50s. She was one of the founders of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party's Pro-Independence Movement (MPI) and a prominent member of the Central Committee of the party. After being asked to teach a course on Puerto Rican history and discovering there were no textbooks for students to study, she wrote a three volume history of the island, which is considered her most important work. She also wrote several texts questioning the methodology historians used to develop social histories of Caribbean nations. She was awarded the National Cultural Medal by the Cuban Ministry of Culture in 1996.