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Figuras orientadas al futuro: vaticinio y temporalidad del mártir, Antonia Martínez Lagares como símbolo revolucionario
DOI: https://doi.org/10.54114/ingeniosv12i2.79351
Enrique Laboy Vázquez
Departamento de Historia
Facultad de Humanidades, UPR RP
Recibido: 02/02/2026; Revisado: 06/04/2026; Aceptado: 16/04/2026
Abstract
This research paper analyzes anti-colonial struggles in Puerto Rico during the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the killing of student Antonia Martínez Lagares by a police officer during a protest at the University of Puerto Rico on March 4, 1970. The murder re-signified her as a revolutionary symbol within the Puerto Rican Left and the “Nueva lucha por la independencia.” Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s conceptual history, including the horizons of expectations, the space of experience, and temporal strata, the study examines Antonia’s transformation into a prognostic martyr. Using newspaper Claridad (1970–1985), it highlights discursive constructions and symbolic dimensions of state violence.
Keywords: time, temporality, conceptual history, Puerto Rican left, Caribbean history.
Resumen
Este trabajo analiza las luchas anticoloniales en Puerto Rico durante las décadas de 1970 y 1980 a partir del asesinato de la estudiante Antonia Martínez Lagares, perpetrado por un policía durante una protesta en la Universidad de Puerto Rico el 4 de marzo de 1970. Su muerte la resignificó como símbolo revolucionario para sectores de la izquierda puertorriqueña de la “Nueva lucha por la Independencia”. A partir de la historia conceptual de Reinhart Koselleck, que incluye los horizontes de expectativas, el espacio de experiencia y los estratos temporales, la investigación examina la transformación de Antonia en una mártir profética. Partiendo del periódico Claridad (1970–1985), destacamos las construcciones discursivas y las dimensiones simbólicas de la violencia estatal.
Palabras clave: tiempo, temporalidad, historia conceptual, izquierda puertorriqueña, historia del Caribe.
“Antonia murió de un balazo, levanta el puño joven luchador,” was written by singer Roy Brown in his song Antonia murió de un balazo to denounce the murder of the student Antonia Martínez Lagares at the University of Puerto Rico on March 4, 1970.i At the time, students were protesting and struggling to remove the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadets from the university campus.ii They were also fighting against the military draft that was sending Puerto Ricans to the Vietnam War.iii During the March 4th demonstration, Antonia was in a friend’s dormitory on the second floor of a building on Juan Ponce de León Avenue in Río Piedras.iv Left-wing narratives say that she shouted at a police officer to stop clubbing (macanear) a student. In response, the officer drew his weapon and shot her, ending her life.v This research focuses on Puerto Rico’s anti-colonial struggles in the 1970s and 1980s and seeks to understand Antonia’s killing as an event, in the sense that events are reservoirs of meaning and significance that can also carry multiple temporal experiences.vi
Some authors, such as Hiram Sánchez Martinez in his book Antonia: tu nombre es una historia, “deradicalize” this figure by stating that she did not shout at the police.vii As a judge affiliated with the Partido Popular Democrático (a right-center party), not as a historian, he attempts to impose an “objective truth” by stating “facts” but without analyzing the symbolic and discursive dimensions of her killing critically or theoretically. The role of this research is to understand why and how our actors, left-wing militants, interpreted her death. In this research, I argue that during the 1970s and 1980s, left militants associated Antonia’s death with the idea of revolution, viewing her as a revolutionary martyr who accelerated historical time. As a result, she is portrayed as a revolutionary symbol with full control over her actions, meaning we should analyze what the actors intended rather than whether it is true. This research is guided by the following questions: In what temporal registers is Antonia discussed? How is she temporally positioned? And to what extent does she become a prognostic figure capable of accelerating historical time? To answer those queries, I examined the propaganda organ of the Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño, the newspaper Claridad, between 1970 and 1985. This analysis is based on the concept of temporal sediments or strata developed by the conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck, drawing on his metahistorical categories of “horizon of expectations” and “space of experience.” The space of experience refers to the set of memories and experiences accumulated by a society.viii They represent the past that people have assimilated; in this way, the spaces of experience serve as filters or lenses through which a group interprets its present and forms expectations for the future.ix The horizon of expectations refers to the group’s projections about the future. This horizon comprises dreams, aspirations, fears, and utopias shaped by past experiences.x Both concepts are intertwined in the present, which, in turn, shapes a society's discourses, practices, and ideologies. xi
The present is the point where the future becomes the past; the space where the three dimensions of time intersect, where “present” is destined to vanish.xii This time category can be thought of as an imaginary zero point on an imaginary axis; just as the present disappears between the past and the future, Koselleck reverses this idea, arguing that all time is actually present time, since the future does not yet exist and the past no longer exists. There is only the future as future-present, and the past as past-present.xiii For this theorist, all dimensions of time are contained within an ever-unfolding present, which we cannot refer to as a concrete moment because it constantly slips away. xiv Koselleck describes three possible combinations for these concepts: a past-present and a future-present, which relate to a present conceived as something that disappears or as something that encompasses all dimensions; a past-present containing pasts and futures; and a future-present with its past-future and future-future.
Historians who have worked with violence and repression in Puerto Rico have reduced this historical experience to a numerical manner, focusing only on how many people died and were persecuted.xv This study aims to analyze the discourses and ideological aspects of State violence to understand how leftist militants in Puerto Rico interpret it. Examining the State violence alongside how those persecuted perceived it provides an additional perspective on how this violence operated. The study of Antonia and her construction as a martyr of the “nueva lucha” can reveal how individuals who lost their lives in political struggles function not only as victims but also as symbols of resistance. This research paper examines the context of the Nueva Lucha por la Independencia and the construction of Antonia as a prophetic figure.
The Nueva Lucha por la Independencia and the Movimiento Pro-Independencia-Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño
This “Nueva lucha por la independencia” emerged from a historical rupture, the 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution, which redefined the Puerto Rican independence movement’s imaginaries.xvi The Cuban Revolution altered the horizons of expectation for the remnants of the independence movement, which had been left scattered after the perceived “failure” of the 1950 “Revuelta nacionalista.” The quotation marks here are intentional, as the significance of that event remains highly disputed. The way it is named plays a vital role in its interpretation. During that period, the colonial reality of the archipelago was further entrenched with the establishment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in 1952 and the intensification of repressive measures initiated with Law 53 of 1948, better known as the “Gag Law,” which criminalized political meetings, public rallies, raising the Puerto Rican flag, advocating for independence, or calling for the overthrow of the local government.xvii In this climate of political persecution, failure, and disillusionment, the independence movement sought a new horizon of expectations, and with the victory of the “barbudos” in the Sierra Maestra, Puerto Rican independentistas found a new utopia to pursue, intertwining the struggle for independence with that of socialism.xviii For this reason, in January 1959, a group of independentistas who had either resigned from or been expelled from the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (PIP) in 1956 set out to build the foundations of a new struggle for independence, forming the Movimiento Pro Independencia (MPI).xix Communist theorist Cesar Andreu Iglesias stated that the main discourse or ideology of the independence movement began “from idealism, above debate, beyond discussion and reason.”xx He thus understood that the purpose of that new struggle was to shift from an idealist philosophy to a materialist one.xxi By 1968, at its VII National Assembly, the movement declared its right to armed struggle and to form a National Liberation Front. In November 1971, the MPI transformed into the Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño (PSP) and adopted a Marxist-Leninist discourse.
The martyr and the prognostic capacity of Antonia Martínez Lagares
In the book Cómo sucedieron esas cosas: representar masacres y genocidios by José Emilio Burucúa and Nicolás Kwiatkowski, the authors explore the different ways of representing, signifying, and encoding violence. Part of their study is dedicated to the issue of martyrdom and the martyrological. The martyrological tradition has its birth in Christianity, since the Greek word martus designated a person who testified to a fact based on their own experience.xxii However, the martus was not an ordinary witness but one who had to face certain risks when giving their testimony and faced the possibility of punishment that could lead to death.xxiii The term “martyr” was increasingly applied exclusively to those who died for their faith, which involved a process of “universalization,” since these individuals offered their lives for the savior of “all humanity” and not just for the “Messiah of a nation.” The act of martyrdom challenged and defied persecutors, reinforced the community of believers, and, in turn, encouraged the conversion of those who still do not believe.xxiv From the 18th century onward, the term gradually came to mean what we now understand as a martyr, because by that time, a “martyr” was someone who faced death for their beliefs, inflicted by a third party, and who consciously accepted their fate rather than renouncing them. It was not the act of death itself, but the beliefs and the attitude of the martyr that transformed them into such and guaranteed their “immortality.”xxv This last factor is of vital importance, as this research later shows how it changes the role Antonia Martínez played at the time of her death.
The concept is pushed to the limit by the contrast between the extreme suffering of the innocent victim, in this case Antonia Martínez, and the indifference of those around her, which, for Puerto Rican independence supporters, would be anyone who did not believe in the independence ideal, but also the repressive entities that caused her death. For Burucúa and Kwiatkowski, the martyrs’ representations share with the wars of religion not only the use of religious or mythic formulas to depict a contemporary and real event but also an emphasis on innocence, perseverance, the prominent role of violence by the perpetrators, or the elevating emotion of the victims, and the imperative of remembering them.xxvi One of the cases that best illustrates conceptually what it means to be a martyr for these authors is the assassination of Father Óscar Romero in El Salvador. They argue that, after his murder, he became a martyr for the theology of liberation because “the church was being persecuted” and because it defended the poor, denounced the unjust destruction of life, and promoted the practice of justice.xxvii In this case, Romero’s martyrdom positioned him within a contemporary narrative about the past, the present, and the future, situating these events within a “sacred time”; as will be shown later, similar discourses or meanings are articulated regarding the student Antonia Martínez, even though she was not a religious figure.
The narration of martyrdom anticipates the deaths of those who fight against an unjust power in such a way that death transcends the sense of loss; the martyr remains, his figure surpassing his unjust death and embodying the hopes of a people who fight for him or in his name.xxviii In other words, martyrdom involves a permanent present past where the living move forward in the company of the martyred dead, whose memory drives ongoing activism and the survival or ideological and emotional justifications of those still alive. Similarly, the power that murdered the martyrs is specific and identifiable with structures. In the religious case, with sin, but for the independence movement, with the colonial order. The martyrs and their allies are then linked to “divine” causes and intentions, making their struggles and sacrifices meaningful. Consequently, the theme of martyrdom gains greater political and moral significance when an unjust power born of suffering and oppression is identified.xxix
Argentine scholar Daniela Slipak, in her book Discutir Montoneros desde adentro, describes how, within that Peronist leftist group, the idea developed that militants who died in “combat” inherently became martyrs who sacrificed themselves for the cause. Antonia, despite not being a militant herself, demonstrates how her transformation into a quasi-religious figure embodies the temporality of the martyr and her importance in the narratives adopted by militants from the 1970s through the 1980s. On March 21, 1971, the first anniversary of her death, Claridad published a poem titled Un Salmo necesario by René Rivera Aponte, which endowed Antonia’s death with redemptive qualities. The poem ends with: “Antonia aquí con nosotros al unísono derribando las torres represivas y ajusticiando mercaderes con fuego justiciero… Anunciando, levantando y enviando lluvias demoledoras a las cavernas del imperialismo.”xxx The poem predicts Antonia’s vengeance; bullets will fall on the doorstep of imperialism. This capacity to “foresee” the future, to see her death as an event that would incite Puerto Ricans to rise, becomes a recurring theme in the independence discourse.
This portrayal of Antonia as a key figure in the development of the nation or socialism serves as a foreshadowing element. She was cast as a “rider” or a “locomotive” of the revolution, one that would carry that telos of the “nueva lucha,” the arrival of independence and socialism.xxxi For Koselleck, the idea of prognosis refers to the prognostic structure of historical time: any forecast anticipates events that have not yet occurred from the present. The historical prognosis is closely linked to the space of experience and the horizon of expectation; without a grasp of the past, there can be no vision of the future. Without the horizon of Puerto Rican independence that envisioned socialism at any moment, it would not have been possible to consider Antonia as one of the pillars of revolution.xxxii
Within that horizon of expectation which crystallized during the 1970s and 1980s, the Comandos Armados de Liberación (CAL) declared the Condado area of San Juan a “War Zone” after Antonia’s assassination, pledging to combat “Yankee imperialism.” That manifesto followed the “execution” of two U.S. sailors in Old San Juan as retaliation for the student’s murder on March 4, 1970.xxxiii The CAL was the armed wing of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party; their leader, “Alfonso Beal,” was the nom de guerre of the PSP’s general secretary, Juan Mari Brás, combining the names of two “founding fathers” or “Padres de la patria” of the independence movement: Ramón Emeterio Betances [“Be”] and Pedro Albizu Campos [“al”].xxxiv These elements contributed to cementing a revolutionary feeling and temporality, one intertwined with the political changes and social struggles unfolding across the Caribbean and Latin America, evoking the efforts of guerrilla warfare and national liberation movements in the Global South.
In 1972, two years after Antonia’s assassination, Héctor Ramos narrated the event as an act of unjustified state violence, calling the police “blue helmet killers” or “asesinos de cascos azules.” In his article, Ramos made clear that Antonia had not joined “the struggle” or “la lucha” until that March 4 protest. The article concluded by praising the CAL’s “execution” of the two sailors in Old San Juan.xxxv The quotation marks are intentional: the way this act was named and received within the Left generated multiple ruptures. That “execution,” which some militants called an “act of war against the empire,” was also understood by others as an unjustified murder, causing some militants to resign from the PSP’s political commission. It’s important to remember that the CAL was the party’s “armed” arm. This allows us to interpret Antonia’s figure and the CAL’s “execution” as entangled, sharing and contesting the same semantic field that linked her to armed revolutionary struggle.
On March 11, 1971, the student movement at the University of Puerto Rico held a massive demonstration to commemorate Antonia’s death and continue the fight against the ROTC. This time, however, the students did not flee from the police because they were armed. In a note published four years after Antonia’s death, Héctor Meléndez reported that students “executed” Chief of the Riot Police Juan Birino Mercado, Sergeant Miguel Rosario Rondón, and cadet Jacinto utiérrez, wounding a dozen other officers.xxxvi Meléndez named Antonia a “revolutionary symbol” and the students’ action a “patriotic victory,” thereby semantically charging the event with a teleological or prognostic meaning. Antonia, as a revolutionary figure, accelerated historical time like a locomotive toward the independentista-socialista revolution.xxxvii The note concluded by predicting that both March 4, 1970, and March 11, 1971, “foretell many more and much harder battles to come,” now beyond the university and in the broader frame of our “liberation struggle.”xxxviii This is another example of how the new horizon of expectation, intrinsically linked to militants’ deaths and revolutionary struggle, was articulated and positioned over time.
Yet this notion of Antonia as a “revolutionary” symbol was not universally accepted within the PSP. As will be shown, there were frictions and ruptures in how militants related to historical time and narrated the violent event. During commemorations of September 23rd (the Grito de Lares), a foundational myth of the independence movement, Juan Mari Brás listened to the song “Antonia” by Antonio Cabán Vale, known as ‘El Topo’.xxxix He told a comrade that the song showed great sensitivity, but the comrade replied that El Topo was exaggerating, since the verse: “Tu muerte la juventud la canta, es bandera en sus labios y es bala de fusil” did not reflect Puerto Rico’s reality.xl Mari Brás later commented in the press that when the boricua guerrilla group (CAL) avenged her death, they recognized it as an act of war, reinforcing the inseparable link between the violent event of her death and its reframing as a revolutionary act.xli That text concludes by asserting that Antonia’s death would preserve her memory as a “martyr” of the proletariat, one who had helped propel “the precursor forces of the socialist revolution.”xlii It went on to claim that at the moment of the “la definición suprema” (definitive historical judgment), independence militants would be ready to emulate Antonia’s generation, ensuring that no abuse, murder, or persecution would go unpunished.xliii Here, it is shown to serve multiple temporal functions: first, reinforcing the notion of the independence movement’s telos; second, situating Antonia within the category of a national-foundational figure. Although it is not clear what the “definitive historical judgment” refers to, I may assume it alludes to some future moment when Puerto Rico’s political status will be finally decided.
In 1975, an editorial note in Claridad commemorating five years since Antonia’s death exemplifies how prognostic thinking around her figure existed within a teleological framework. The forces that killed “this student martyr” were branded “retardatarias” (reactionary) or “slower of time,”xliv in the sense that the student struggle and the independence struggle accelerated historical time, while the colonial government slowed it down.xlv That ultimate, “inevitable” end was independence; the colonial government’s opposition only postponed the inevitable. From 1976 to 1980, the PSP’s use of Antonia’s figure to drive its struggle waned, she appeared only occasionally in the press when the Federación Universitaria Pro Independencia (FUPI), a component of the MPI-PSP, invoked her name to rally the student movement. It was not until 1981 that she reemerged prominently, likely because the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras was engulfed in one of its most intense strikes (1981–1982) over tuition rise. This strike became known as one of the most violent, with students kidnapped, the Riot Police and SWAT occupying the campus, mass expulsions, and reports of police using images of student leaders for target practice.xlvi During the strike, an organization known as the Comando Estudiantil Antonia Martínez emerged. No official documents or manifestos survived; it is known only through press accounts, as reported by historian Fernando Picó, who participated in the strike.xlvii A series of campus bombings was attributed to that group. However, the very fact that a group adopted Antonia’s name as its symbol and revolutionary figure demonstrates that her “martyrdom” powerfully shaped both the students’ praxis and political discourse, again linking her to armed struggle.
In 1985, fifteen years after her death, FUPI leader (and later PSP leader) Julio Muriente wrote a note in Claridad that placed Antonia among the “Padres de la patria.” The article opens with a conversation in which Antonia’s mother asks her to promise her she will be far away from student activism. It goes on to say that, upon her death, Antonia wanted to be covered with the Puerto Rican flag and was willing to give her life for the “liberación de la patria”.xlviii Muriente notes that history assigned Antonia her “rifle” for the act of denouncing police abuse during the March 4, 1970 demonstration.xlix Before concluding with Topo’s song lyrics, Muriente granted Antonia entrance into the pantheon of martyrs, saying she “never had the opportunity to know that her cry… would open for her the doors of immortality and the eternal love of her people.”l This marks a slight shift: Antonia is no longer primarily seen as a revolutionary figure but rather as a victim who “offered” her life for the “liberación de la patria”.li This reflects debates within the PSP in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when, according to historiography, the party turned away from socialism toward nationalism. lii However, from our conceptual-historical perspective, political concepts are not transhistorical or homogeneous categories but variable semantic fields that are differently charged in each enunciative context.liii
What can be observed is that the semantic field around “socialism” after the PSP debates of 1977 and 1982, a more “orthodox” or slightly Marxist-Leninist faction, left the party when it began to “ally” with the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) in the 1980s.liv Historians, such as Carlos Pabón, refer to a shift toward “melonism,” in which the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (PIP) was green, and the PPD was red. They were accused of being green on the outside (independentistas) and red on the inside, meaning that even though they claimed to be pro-independence or socialist, they voted for the PPD.lv This is closely tied to the so-called “annexationist conspiracy,” whereby sectors prioritizing independence over socialism charged that the U.S. government and the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) were plotting to annex Puerto Rico without popular consent.lvi In response, an “anti-annexationist front” was formed, and PSP discourse shifted toward defending the flag and anthem and re-centering on independence rather than on Marxism-Leninism. Thus, the party continued to speak of socialism, but the meanings attributed to that political concept shifted as its linguistic and enunciative context changed.
The last point Muriente mentions exemplifies what Burucúa and Kwiatkowski proposed that martyrdom positioned the martyr within a contemporary narrative about the past, present, and future, inserting these events into a sacred time, in the case of the spaces of experience and horizons of expectations of left-wing militants, in a “tiempo de la patria” or the “nation temporality.” Antonia Martínez is then a past-present who also becomes a future-future, since her death, as an event and a reservoir of meaning, can change the future. In other words, she can advocate for other present-futures that, according to independence ideals, would accelerate or provoke that “inevitable” end, both historicist and teleological, that is “the arrival of independence.” Antonia Martínez, as a martyr, transcends the meaning of her death or loss and endures; she becomes a past-present. Her figure surpasses her unjust death and embodies the hopes of “those who fight for the ideal of independence.” In other words, Antonia Martínez, as a constant past-present, from the past, intervenes in the memory of the living, those who fight for this ideal, and her memory fuels a continuous activism among those still alive.
Conclusion
As articulated throughout this text, the figure and death of Antonia Martínez Lagares generated a multiplicity of meanings within the student movement and the broader Movimiento Pro Independencia-Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño. Ranging from discourses that positioned her as part of the historical telos of the “Nueva lucha por la independencia,” understanding her as a figure who would propel the socialist independence revolution, to her becoming a key symbol in student imaginaries during the 1980s with the formation of the Comando Estudiantil Antonia Martínez. It can be observed how, over time, the discourse narrating her death changed and adapted to different enunciative contexts, articulating various horizons of expectation as the Left’s discourse radicalized and de-radicalized throughout the 1970s and 1980s. This allows us to see how the meanings generated by her state assassination continued to be articulated, reimagined, and narrated by different sectors of the Puerto Rican Left. Finally, I would say that people do not forget: Antonia has become an indisputable historical reference for students and anti-state repression struggles, re-emerging in strikes at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, in 2005, 2010, 2011, 2017, 2021, and 2025. Antonia remains alive in the memory of every student who’s willing to defend public education.
Endnotes
i Roy Brown, “Antonia murió de un balazo,” en Basta Ya… Revolución (1971), YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA-fv6M3MqY
ii On May 18, 1917, alongside the Jones Act, military service was imposed on Puerto Ricans, and all young men aged 21 to 30 were required to enlist in the army. Anyone who violates this law would be prosecuted in a civil court, subject to a sentence of no more than one year in prison, and required to register upon release. This also included individuals who did not appear for the physical exam or the draft call-up. Additionally, anyone who incited disobedience or non- compliancewith the law was prosecuted in court. In José Paralitici, No quiero mi cuerpo pa’ tambor: el servicio militar obligatorio en Puerto Rico (Ediciones Puerto, 1998), 21.
iii The Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) is an organization through which the military trains students at universities to join the U.S. Armed Forces as officers. In the case of the University of Puerto Rico, the ROTC was located inside the university campus, and for that reason, violent confrontations would break out between the cadets and students who opposed the mandatory military service. Paralitici, No quiero mi cuerpo pa’ tambor, 89.
iv Luis Nieves Falcón, Un siglo de represión política en Puerto Rico: 1898-1998 (Ediciones Puerto, 2009),156.
v José Paralitici, La represión contra el independentismo puertorriqueño: 1960-2010 (Publicaciones Gaviota, 2011), 247.
vi Michel Rolph Troullot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Beacon Press, 1995), 70.
vii Hiram, Sánchez Martínez, Antonia: tu nombre es una historia (Publicaciones Gaviota, 2019), 97.
viii Reinhart Koselleck, Futuro Pasado: Para una semántica de los tiempos históricos (Barcelona, 1993), 338.
ix Koselleck, Futuro Pasado, 338.
x Koselleck, Futuro Pasado, 339.
xi Reinhart Koselleckk, Los estratos del tiempo: Estudios sobre historia, (Ediciones Paidós, 2001) 116-117
xii Koselleck, Estratos del tiempo, 116.
xiii Koselleck, Estratos del tiempo, 116.
xiv Koselleck, Estratos del tiempo, 117.
xv Works like Un siglo de represión política en Puerto Rico: 1898-1998 by Luis Nieves Falcón, and La represión contra el independentismo puertorriqueño: 1960-2010 by José Paralitici.
xvi Ángel Pérez Soler, Del Movimiento Pro Independencia al Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño: La transición de la lucha nacionalista de los trabajadores: 1959-1971 (Publicaciones Gaviota, 2018), 124.
xvii Ivonne Acosta Lespier, La mordaza: Puerto Rico 1948-1957 (Publicaciones Gaviota, 1987), 109.
xviii Norman Pietri, “La Revolución Cubana,” Claridad, 17 de agosto de 1959 and; Carlos Pabón Ortega, Ilusión y ruinas: Imaginarios de izquierda en Puerto Rico desde los sesenta (Ediciones Laberinto, 2025).
xix Ángel Pérez Soler, Del Movimiento Pro Independencia al Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño: La transición de la lucha nacionalista de los trabajadores: 1959-1971, 124.
xx Juan Mari Brás, Memorias de un ciudadano (Barco de papel, 2006), 125-126.
xxi César Andreu Iglesias, “Lecciones de una vida,” Claridad, 1, February 1970.
xxii José Emilio Burucúa y Nicolás Kwiatkowski, Cómo sucedieron estas cosas: Representar masacres y genocidios (Katz Editores, 2014), 95
xxiii Burucúa and Kwiatkowski, Cómo sucedieron estas cosas, 95.
xxiv Burucúa and Kwiatkowski, Cómo sucedieron estas cosas, 95.
xxv Burucúa and Kwiatkowski, Cómo sucedieron estas cosas, 97.
xxvi Burucúa and Kwiatkowski, Cómo sucedieron estas cosas, 129.
xxvii Burucúa and Kwiatkowski, Cómo sucedieron estas cosas, 130.
xxviii Burucúa and Kwiatkowski, Cómo sucedieron estas cosas, 130.
xxix Burucúa and Kwiatkowski, Cómo sucedieron estas cosas, 130.
xxx René Rivera Aponte, “Salmo necesario,” Claridad, 21 de marzo de 1971, 23.
xxxi “Las locomotoras de la historia”, en Enzo Traverso, Revolución una historia intelectual (Ediciones Akal, 2021), 43-95.
xxxii Reinhart Koselleck, Futuro pasado: para una semántica de los tiempos históricos (Ediciones Paidós, 1993) 129.
xxxiii El Mundo, May 14, 1970, 73.
xxxiv See in: Félix Ojeda Reyes, Protesta armada (Zoom Ideal, 2024).
xxxv Héctor E. Ramos, “Dos años después: Antonia Presente,” Claridad, 5 de marzo de 1972, 17.
xxxvi Héctor Meléndez, “Las jornadas del 4 y del 11 de marzo,” Claridad, 11 de marzo de 1974, 4.
xxxvii Meléndez, “Las jornadas del 4 y del 11 de marzo,” 4.
xxxviii Meléndez, “Las jornadas del 4 y del 11 de marzo,” 4.
xxxix Claridad, 29 de octubre, 1974, 8
xl Antonio Cabán Vale, “Antonia,” ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!, Paredon Records, 1978; You Tube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5AMUKCOaLs.
xli Juan Mari Brás, “Los pueblos no perdonan,” Claridad, 6 de marzo de 1973, 10.
xlii Mari Brás, “Los pueblos no perdonan,” 10.
xliii Mari Brás, “Los pueblos no perdonan,” 10.
xliv “La antorcha de Antonia,” Claridad, 6 de marzo de 1975, 13.
xlv “La antorcha de Antonia,” 13.
xlvi Noticias Huelga Universidad de Puerto Rico (1981),” YouTube video, publicado por “Archivo de Medios Visuales UPR-RP,” 10 de octubre de 2019, https://youtu.be/er-jJ8zHDs8?si=6P6m-Hz27PBiqthH. Consultado el 21 de julio de 2025; “Prohibido Olvidar Huelga 1981,” YouTube video, published by“Gabriela Cruz,” December 7 of 2010, https://youtu.be/OnAewo-XZeM?si=IS3vp3KLeDf9jYBZ. Accesed on July 21 of 2025.
xlvii Fernando Picó, “La huelga seguiría hasta terminar el referéndum,” El Mundo, 1 de mayo de 1982, 8.
xlviii Julio Muriente, “Antonia Martínez,” Claridad, March 1, 1985, 12.
xlix Muriente, “Antonia Martínez,” 13.
l Muriente, “Antonia Martínez,” 13.
li Muriente, “Antonia Martínez,” 13.
lii Wilfredo Mattos Cintrón, El libro la calle y el fusil (Ediciones La Sierra, 2018), 278.
liii Koselleck, Los estratos del tiempo, 15.
liv See in: Wilfredo Mattos Cintrón, Puerta sin casa: crisis del PSP encrucijada de la Izquierda (Ediciones la Sierra: 1984) and Héctor Meléndez, El fracaso del proyecto PSP de la pequeña burguesía (Editorial Edil: Río Piedras, 1984).
lv “De conspiraciones y fantasmas: el problema del anexionismo,” en Carlos Pabón Ortega, Ilusión y ruinas: Imaginarios de izquierda en Puerto Rico desde los sesenta (San Juan: Ediciones Laberinto, 2025), 442 and “¿Qué queda de la izquierda: apuntes para una historia reciente” in Carlos Pabón Ortega, Polémicas: política, intelectuales y violencia (Ediciones Callejón, 2014), 21-38.
lvi Pabón Ortega, Ilusión y ruinas, 442.
Bibliography
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Mattos Cintrón, Wilfredo. Puerta sin casa: crisis del PSP, encrucijada de la izquierda. Ediciones La Sierra, 1984.
Mattos Cintrón, Wilfredo. El libro, la calle y el fusil. San Juan: Ediciones La Sierra, 2018.
Meléndez, Héctor. El fracaso del proyecto PSP de la pequeña burguesía. Río Piedras: Editorial Edil, 1984.
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Book chapters
Pabón Ortega, Carlos. “¿Qué queda de la izquierda: apuntes para una historia reciente?” In Polémicas: política, intelectuales y violencia, 21–38. San Juan: Ediciones Callejón, 2014.
Newspapers
Claridad, October 29, 1974, 8.
“La antorcha de Antonia.” Claridad, March 6, 1975, 13.
Meléndez, Héctor. “Las jornadas del 4 y del 11 de marzo.” Claridad, March 11, 1974, 4.
Mari Brás, Juan. “Los pueblos no perdonan.” Claridad, March 6, 1973, 10.
Muriente, Julio. “Antonia Martínez.” Claridad, March 1, 1985, 12.
Pietri, Norman. “La Revolución Cubana.” Claridad, August 17, 1959.
Ramos, Héctor E. “Dos años después: Antonia presente.” Claridad, March 5, 1972, 17.
Rivera Aponte, René. “Salmo necesario.” Claridad, 21 March 1971, 23.
“Se reúne comisión sobre la mujer.” Claridad, from March 2 to 8, 1979, 10.
“Comisión Mujer PSP toma acuerdos.” Claridad, from March 9 to 15, 1979.
El Mundo. “La huelga seguiría hasta que terminara el referéndum.” May 1, 1982.
El Mundo. 14 de mayo de 1970, 73.
Recordings / Multimedia
Brown, Roy. “Antonia murió de un balazo.” En Basta Ya… Revolución. 1971. Recording. Available on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA-fv6M3MqY.
Cabán Vale, Antonio. “Antonia.”¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre! Paredon Records, 1978. Recording. Available at YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5AMUKCOaLs.
“Noticias Huelga Universidad de Puerto Rico (1981).” YouTube video. Published by “Archivo de Medios Visuales UPR-RP”. October 10, 2019. https://youtu.be/er-jJ8zHDs8?si=6P6m-Hz27PBiqthH. Consulted July 21, 2025.
“Prohibido Olvidar Huelga 1981.” YouTube video. Published by “Gabriela Cruz”.” 7 de diciembre de 2010. https://youtu.be/OnAewo-XZeM?si=IS3vp3KLeDf9jYBZ. Consulted on July 21, 2025.
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