Juan Mari Br�s Died

Health complications took his life

By Sandra Caquia Cruz | end.scaquias@elnuevodia.com

El Nuevo D�a (September 10, 2010)

To view his last interview (in Spanish), click here

The independence fighter Juan Mari Br�s died today due to health complications related to lung cancer and a serious fall.

At the time of his death, the Puerto Rican Socialist Party founder and co-founder of the Puerto Rican Independence Party was 82. He is survived by his wife Marta and their children, Bras Vilella Rosa Mercedes, Mari, Maria Teresa, Mariana and Juan Raul.

The independence leader gave his last breath while the authorities had yet to dsicover the murderer of his son, Santiago Mari Pesquera, in 1979.

Mari Br�s was born in Mayag�ez on December 2, 1927, the only son of Mercedes and Santiago Gra�a Mari Br�s Ramos.

The former professor of the Eugenio Mar�a de Hostos Faculty of Law had open heart surgery in 1994. However, it was not until last year that his health began to weaken after a fall down the stairs of his home.

Mari Bras was the founder of the Claridad independence weekly, lawyer, writer and professor of law. He also worked as a journalist for more than five decades.

He emerged as an independence leader when he was just a teenager. At 15, he founded, along with his fellow high school students, the Cap�tulo de Agregados Pro Independencia (CAPI).. By that time he also founded and directed the program "Gritos de la Patria" ("Cries of the Nation"), a radio magazine on the independence movement.

In 1949 he entered George Washington University to study law, and was expelled in 1950 after the Nationalist attack on Blair House. Hours after the attack he was arrested and questioned but released because he was not linked to the incident.

The many accomplishments of Mari Bras include the founding of the Movimiento Pro Independencia (MPI) (Pro Independence Movement) in 1959. Twelve years later, the MPI became the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP).

Mari Bras was the first Puerto Rican independence to appear before the United Nations to denounce the colonization of Puerto Rico by the United States.

He was also the first recipient of the certificate of Puerto Rican citizenship. As part of the strategy of the struggle for independence, in 1994 Mari Bras renounced his U.S. citizenship in the United States Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela. Subsequently, the United States Department of State in Washington, declared void the agreement he had made to this renunciation.

It was not until September 2007, at the hands of then-Secretary of State of Puerto Rico Fernando Bonilla, that Mari Bras, "Puerto Rican citizenship" was the first certified, which he received in Puerto Rico.

In 2009, it was revealed in documents declassified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the agency was aware that between 1975 and 1976, sectors of Cuban exiles planned to assassinate Mari Br�s.