Blanca Canales - Jayuya Uprising

Jayuya Uprising

On October 30, 1950, the Nationalist leaders in Jayuya, which included Canales, her cousin Elio Torresola (Griselio Torresola's brother) and Carlos Irizarry, entered the town of Jayuya with their group using a bus and a car. Armed, with the weapons which were stored in Canale's house, the men attacked the police station. Canales approached the telephone station, and cut the phone lines. She then led the group to the town plaza, raised the Puerto Rican Flag (which was outlawed at the time), and declared Puerto Rico a Free Republic.

Canales then rushed to the town's hospital, after being notified that Carlos Irizarry was wounded. However, the police had shut down the hospital, and she found Irizarry leaning against a lamp post. He had been wounded in a gunfight at the police station. Canales took him a hospital in Utuado, the neighboring town.

Jayuya was under Nationalist control for three days until it was attacked by U.S military planes, artillery, mortar fire, grenades, U.S. infantry troops, and the United States National Guard. The Nationalists surrendered on November 1, 1950.

Canales was arrested and accused of killing a police officer, wounding three others, and burning down the post office. Following a brief trial, she was sentenced to life imprisonment plus sixty years. In June 1951, she was sent to the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia, the same prison to which Lolita Lebrón would be sent in 1954.