Biography
Rafael Cancel Miranda was 23 years old at the time of the March 1, 1954 attack on the U.S. House of Representatives, the youngest of the four. He had previously served two years in federal prison for refusing the draft in protest against U.S. colonial rule of Puerto Rico. After the Capitol attack he was sentenced to 84 years in federal prison; he served 25 years and was held at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth and at Marion before President Carter commuted his sentence in 1979. He spent the rest of his life as one of the most articulate spokespersons for Puerto Rican independence and prisoner solidarity worldwide.
On March 1, 1954, four members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party — Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, and Irvin Flores Rodríguez — entered the U.S. Capitol, took seats in the visitors' gallery overlooking the House chamber, unfurled a Puerto Rican flag, and opened fire on the Representatives below. Thirty rounds were fired in roughly thirty seconds; five Representatives were wounded but all survived. The attack was timed to draw international attention to the Inter-American Conference of the Organization of American States then opening in Caracas, and to challenge the U.S. claim that Puerto Rico had become a self-governing 'commonwealth.' All four were arrested at the scene, tried in federal court in Washington, D.C. and again in New York for related conspiracy charges, and sentenced to consecutive terms amounting effectively to life in federal prison. President Jimmy Carter commuted Andrés Figueroa Cordero's sentence in October 1977 (he was terminally ill with cancer and died in 1979); Carter commuted the remaining three sentences on September 6, 1979. They returned to Puerto Rico to a crowd estimated at 5,000 at San Juan International Airport.
