Irvin Flores; Puerto Rican Nationalist Leader Attacked Congress

Irvin Flores, 69, one of the Puerto Rican nationalist leaders who attacked the U.S. Congress in 1954. Flores spent 25 years in federal prisons for the March 1, 1954, attack in which five congressmen were injured. In 1950, he was briefly incarcerated for his alleged role in the island’s nationalist rebellion. After his release, he moved to New York to join independence leader Rafael Cancel Miranda, who introduced him to Lolita Lebron and Andres Figueroa Cordero. Together they carried out the attack, shooting at U.S. representatives from a second-floor balcony in the Capitol. All four were imprisoned until they were pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. “Of the four, Irvin was the only member of the working class, a defender of workers’ movements, not an intellectual,” historian Mini Seijo Bruno said. “He is the one that best represents the people of Puerto Rico.” In San Juan on Saturday of cancer.