In the words of Blanca Canales, recorded in Jiménez de Wagenheim Olga’s book Nationalist Heroines: Puerto Rican Women History Forgot, “This was the moment to rise and let the world know we are a people who want to be free.” Canales, a high-ranking member of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, was the only woman to lead one of the most historic and significant rebellions by Puerto Rico against the United States government.
For the Nationalist Party, staging an armed occupation was the only option Puerto Ricans had to demonstrate their dedication to self-determination. They believed that Puerto Ricans had for too long relied on electoral politics to produce long-lasting change, as voting had only provided them with different versions of the same institution. According to de Wagenheim Olga's book, the Nationalists believed that independence for the island would be achieved only through the continued agitation of the United States, whereby the group would demonstrate to US leaders the unsustainability of maintaining a colony.
Canales, born on February 17, 1906, in Jayuya, Puerto Rico, was no stranger to the fight for the island’s independence. The seeds for her activism and political participation had been planted early in her youth: Her mother had always been an independentista, while her father was a member of the Partido Unión de Puerto Rico (Union Party of Puerto Rico).
Blanca Canales was a student at the University of Puerto Rico. After she attended a talk by Nationalist Party leader Pedro Albizu Campos, she decided to join the party, in 1931. It can be said that Canales, alongside many other young Puerto Ricans, bore witness to the island’s transition from Spanish colonization to occupation by the United States and viewed the Nationalist Party as a viable path to a Puerto Rico liberated from subjugation.
Back in 1898, after the Spanish-American War, the United States obtained control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Since then, Puerto Rico has been recognized as an unincorporated territory of the US with commonwealth status. Early in the island's occupation, the US established a military government, which ordered freedom of assembly, speech, press, and religion, and eventually introduced the eight-hour workday for government employees, the public school system, and the postal service.
The United States continued to integrate the island by granting citizenship to Puerto Ricans in 1917, upon ratifying the Jones-Shafroth Act. This also produced a bill of rights and separated the existing government into three branches — executive, legislative, and judicial — modeled on the US. Though these were all seeming improvements, the act was passed alongside legislation that disenfranchised Puerto Ricans and restricted their rights through a discriminatory implementation of constitutional rights. Specifically, a string of Supreme Court decisions, known as the Insular Cases, argued that because of the perceived racial inferiority and lack of civility of Puerto Ricans, they should not have access to the same rights and protections as white American citizens. These cases included Balzac v. Porto Rico (1922), which decided that Puerto Ricans on the island did not have the right to a jury trial in criminal cases.
The US occupation of the island signaled the start of a new struggle for liberation. At the forefront of this fight was the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, which was founded on September 17, 1922, and famously led by Albizu Campos, who was also an attorney and politician.
Beginning in 1930, the organization's primary goal was to gain independence for the island. Albizu Campos and other members of the Nationalist Party viewed independence gained through armed occupation as the only way to change the island’s political and economic status. To remain a colony would mean limited autonomy. The objective of independence became Albizu Campos’s life mission, and he lived by the slogan, “The homeland is valor and sacrifice.”
The Nationalist Party, its practices rooted in a call for self-determination, like other political parties and civil rights organizations, was led primarily by its male members. At the time, women were relegated to domestic roles and tasks, despite their participation in sometimes dangerous protests, such as the Ponce Massacre in 1937, during which Dominga de la Cruz-Becerril raised the Puerto Rican flag, and the 1954 attack on the House of Representatives, when Lolita Lebron was the only woman to participate. Today many of the roles and contributions of women have been overlooked and their names forgotten.
On October 30, 1950, members of the Nationalist Party led by Canales, following Albizu Campos’s directive to take up arms and “start the revolution to stop the Constitution,” entered the town of Jayuya intending to seize control of it. Canales and her comrades had spent a year planning what became known as the Jayuya Uprising. They taught themselves and others how to use firearms they had stockpiled on Canales’ farm, not knowing when the time would come for them to stage a confrontation.
On October 26, just four days before the uprising, the government was tipped off to the party's plans and conducted a series of raids and arrests. Canales realized the confrontation they had been preparing for was no longer an abstract future date but something they had to face now. For Canales, her fidelity to the party, its oath, and an independent Puerto Rico would be tested.
There were many reasons the rebellion had been planned, but the passage of the Ley de la Mordaza, in 1948, was ultimately the catalyst. The Gag Law, as it was commonly referred to in English, made it illegal to own or display the Puerto Rican flag, as well as to speak or write about independence, even to sing a patriotic tune. Canales and the Nationalist Party viewed this as a violation of their First Amendment rights — and an obvious attempt to silence party members and intimidate potential members from joining.
This law was another instance in which the United States wielded its control over the island and forced acculturation. On the day of the uprising, Canales took the Puerto Rican flag off the wall and asked the other members to pledge allegiance to it and the liberty of the island, a nod to both the flag’s importance in previous protests and its illegality.
As the group traveled to Jayuya, Blanca said, she imagined herself as Joan of Arc going off on a crusade. After arriving in town, according to de Wagenheim Olga’s book, Canales went to the telephone station and attempted to cut the wires in order to suppress the town’s ability to communicate, but discovered she didn’t have the proper tools. In the process of rummaging through her bag, Blanca's revolver fell out and scared the operator, who responded by saying she’d lock the station and hide. Canales then made her way to the River Palace Hotel, where she climbed the stairs to a balcony and unfolded the flag, waving it a few times as she declared Puerto Rico to be a free republic, a subversive act that rejected the Gag Law and the governmental control of the United States and the island.
During this uprising, Canales’ comrade Carlos Irizarry was shot in the chest, and because she had been responsible for transportation, she drove him to get medical attention. Before doing so, though, she passed her revolver to an associate and did the same with the flag, wanting it to be flown at City Hall.
Shortly after getting Irizarry to a doctor, Canales was arrested, charged by the District of Arecibo with three counts of attempted murder, setting fire to the Jayuya police station, and destruction of town property. Additionally, she was charged by San Juan’s District Court with conspiring to overthrow the government, possession of an unregistered firearm, and by the United States Federal Court with conspiracy to destroy federal property, forced entry into a US post office, destruction of postal material, setting fire to the post office, and damage to other federal property. In her testimony, Canales maintained her innocence regarding the fires and other charges, but the district attorneys insisted she had been the mastermind.
Canales’ role in the uprising resulted in her dismissal from employment at the Department of Health, being sentenced to 10 years in prison by the United States Federal Court, and life in prison and 6 to 14 years for three attempted-murder charges; she served 17 years before being released in August 1967. Her imprisonment mirrors the experiences of other Nationalist Party members, but also those in other groups, movements, and organizations who fight for liberation and rights.
In many ways, the actions and organizing of the Nationalist Party functioned in parallel to those of the Civil Rights Movement. Though the Civil Rights Movement was largely nonviolent, both groups were fighting for the right to exist in a society that incessantly withheld rights and liberty, and members of both groups organized protests in which they used their bodies to occupy space central to their subordinate positions. They understood the potential danger of their political acts, but also recognized that without direct action, things would not change.
Their advocacy work overlapped in various ways, particularly regarding legislative rights. Until the passage of the Voting Rights Act (1965), which enforced the voting rights protected by the 14th and 15th amendments, racial minorities were still subjected to disenfranchisement. Similarly, prior to 1950, Puerto Ricans didn’t possess the authority to produce their own constitution, let alone choose who would fill administrative roles such as governor.
The independence the Nationalist Party so desperately sought and fought for never came. Puerto Rico remains a territory of the United States today, though it has since been afforded a modicum of self-rule. Still, its congressional representation in Washington is limited, as only a single member, known as the resident commissioner, is allowed and does not have voting power. The territorial clause of the US Constitution gives Congress authority to govern the island, leaving it without legislative and economic sovereignty. Puerto Ricans, despite having citizenship, are not able to vote in presidential elections, unless they reside on the mainland.
Canales died on July 25, 1996, in Jayuya. Despite her imprisonment and surveillance by the United States, which continued until her death, Canales' committment to independence never wavered. Even if it took 100 years, she believed, Puerto Ricans had to keep fighting.
Despite her significant contributions to Puerto Rico’s fight for independence, Canales’ name — as with other women in the Nationalist Party — has largely been consigned to the periphery of history. She was memorialized by the town of Jayuya when her family home was turned into Museo Casa Canales, a museum where each room in the house is dedicated to a member of the Canales family and visitors can see some original furniture and objects owned by the family.
In one room, an extraordinary display of artifacts from the revolution can be found, such as the original flag and the items Canales carried in her pocketbook on the day of the Jayuya Uprising, including receipts, a gun, family photos, and her social worker registration card. Canales is also represented in a plaque placed in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, honoring participants of the uprising.
Though Canales and her comrades were not successful in attaining independence for Puerto Rico, their actions remain a symbol of the sacrifices many have made over the last hundred years. Puerto Rico's Nationalist Party is relatively less active today, but Puerto Ricans continue to follow the path of Canales, fighting for a future in which the island is finally freed from its colonialist shackles.
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