Manuel Rojas (independence Leader) - Aftermath

Aftermath

He was arrested that October and sentenced to death by a court-martial. Eugenio María de Hostos led a group of Puerto Ricans who defended those who were involved in the revolt. They met with Spanish President Francisco Serrano (Serrano had just led a revolution against the monarchy in Spain) in Madrid and requested that Rojas and the others be pardoned and that the government not carry out the death penalties imposed upon them. Serrano told de Hostos that if an amnesty was granted it would be for the natives of Puerto Rico and not for the foreigners who participated in the revolt, referring to Rojas. However, de Hostos argued that Rojas was an adoptive son of Puerto Rico, since he arrived in the island at a young age and made it his home and as such should have the same rights that the others had. The incoming governor of Puerto Rico, Jose Sanz, received orders from the new Republican Spanish Government to grant a general amnesty to all those imprisoned, effective on September 20, 1869. Manuel Rojas along with some of the other men involved in the revolution were sent into exile.

Rojas was exiled to Venezuela and went to live in Boconó a city in the Venezuelan Andean state of Trujillo. Little is known about what he did after he went into exile except that he died in October 14, 1903, in he died in Boconó. On December 25, 2002, the Government of Puerto Rico approved Public Law #291, which instructed the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture to study the possibility of transferring the remains of Manuel Rojas, considered by many to be among Puerto Rico's greatest independence leaders, to Puerto Rico.