Lolita Lebron dies at 90; Puerto Rican nationalist was
imprisoned after gun attack on U.S. Congress In 1954,
Lebron and three others opened fire from a spectators
gallery onto the crowded floor of the House, firing
nearly 30 shots. Five lawmakers were wounded. She spent
25 years in prison. Independence activist

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postmortem/2010/08/newsreel-lolita-lebron-puerto.html

Photo:
Lolita Lebron is taken into custody after she and three
other nationalists fired nearly 30 shots, wounding five
lawmakers. She served 25 years. (Associated Press /
August 1, 2010)

Associated Press

August 2, 2010

Lolita Lebron, a Puerto Rican independence activist who
spent 25 years in prison for participating in a gun
attack on the U.S. House of Representatives in 1954,
died Sunday. She was 90.

Lebron died at a hospital in San Juan of complications
from respiratory disease, said Francisco Torres,
president of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico.

"Lolita was the mother of the independence movement.
This is an insurmountable loss," said Maria de Lourdes
Santiago, a member of the U.S. commonwealth's Senate
from the Puerto Rican Independence Party.

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Lebron was born Nov. 19, 1919, in Lares, in
southwestern Puerto Rico, and moved as a young adult to
New York, part of a mass migration from the island to
the United States during the 1940s. There she developed
her nationalist views and became a follower of movement
leader Pedro Albizu Campos.

In 1954, she and three other nationalists entered the
U.S. Capitol with automatic pistols and opened fire
from an upstairs spectators' gallery onto the crowded
floor of the House, firing nearly 30 shots. They
unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and Lebron shouted "Viva
Puerto Rico libre!"

No one died in the attack, but five U.S.
representatives were wounded, including one congressman
who was shot in the chest.

Lebron later said that she never intended to kill
anyone and that all four nationalists expected to be
killed in the assault. Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irving
Flores, Andres Figueroa Cordero and Lebron received
lengthy prison sentences.

President Carter granted them clemency in 1979, and
they were released.

"We didn't do anything that we should regret," Lebron
said upon her release. "Everyone has the right to
defend their right to freedom that God gave them."

Back in Puerto Rico, Lebron continued to attend
political rallies on the island, where the independence
movement holds little sway with voters.

Lebron was arrested in 2001 at age 81 when she and five
other people cut through a fence on the neighboring
island of Vieques to protest the 1999 death of a
civilian security guard killed by an errant bomb
dropped during a U.S. Navy training exercise. The U.S.
has since closed the Vieques bombing range. She was
sentenced to 60 days in jail for trespassing.

In recent years, Lebron tempered her support for
violent struggle.

"I think times have changed, and there is no need now
to kill for freedom," she told El Mundo newspaper in
1998. "I would not take up arms nowadays, but I
acknowledge that the people have a right to use any
means available to free themselves."

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