David Gasser

Photographer
    
Death of a Patriot
Public Project
Death of a Patriot
Copyright David F Gasser 2024
Updated Aug 2010
Location Old San Juan
Topics Documentary, Funeral, Lolita Lebrón, Puerto Rican Independence, Puerto Rico

Puerto Rican Nationalist Dolores "Lolita" Lebrón Sotomayor passed away on August 1, 2010 at the age of 90.  Lolita was one of a group of Puerto Rican Nationalists who mounted an assault on the US House of Representatives in 1954.  In the House Gallery, she unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and shouted "¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!"  She opened fire, aiming at the ceiling.  Upon her arrest, Lolita declared, "I didn't come to kill anyone, I came to die for Puerto Rico."  Convicted, she served 25 years in a US Federal Prison until pardoned by US President Jimmy Carter in 1981.  Throughout her long life, she remained committed to Puerto Rican Independence and was an important figure in the struggle against the continued US Navy bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.  She received a hero's burial in the historic cemetery of Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis in Old San Juan only steps from the tomb of Pedro Albizu Campos, one of the early leaders of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement.

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