Olga Isabel Viscal Garriga (May 5, 1929 – June 1, 1995) was a public orator and political activist. Born in Brooklyn, New York, she moved to Puerto Rico, where she was a student leader and spokesperson of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party's branch in Rio Piedras. As an advocate for Puerto Rican independence, she was sentenced to eight years in a U.S. federal penitentiary, for refusing to recognize the sovereign authority of the United States over Puerto Rico.

Early years

Olga Isabel Viscal Garriga was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1929. Her parents, Francisco Viscal Bravo and Laura Garriga Gonzalez, had moved there from Puerto Rico in the early 1920s. Olga was one of seven children born to the couple. The children were the fourth-great-grandchildren of Field Marshal Don Juan Andres Daban y Busterino, who served as the Spanish-appointed Governor and General Captain of Puerto Rico from 1783 to 1789. Her parents returned with the family to Puerto Rico, settling in Rio Piedras. Viscal was raised and educated there, after having witnessed discrimination against Puerto Ricans in New York. As she grew up, she strongly disagreed with U.S. policies that limited human rights, freedom of speech, and self-determination in Puerto Rico. This bill, which resembled the anti-communist Smith Act passed in the United States in 1940, became known as the Ley de la Mordaza (Gag Law) when the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Jesús T. Piñero, signed it into law on June 10, 1948.

Under this new law it would be a crime to print, publish, sell, or exhibit any material intended to paralyze or destroy the insular government; or to organize any society, group or assembly of people with a similar destructive intent.

There is a plaque, located at the monument to the Jayuya Uprising participants in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, honoring the women of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Viscal Garriga's name is on the fifteenth line of the third plate.

400px|center|thumb|<big>Plaque honoring the women of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party</big>

Further reading

  • "War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony"; Author: Nelson Antonio Denis; Publisher: Nation Books (April 7, 2015); .

See also

  • List of Puerto Ricans
  • History of women in Puerto Rico

19th Century female leaders of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement

  • María de las Mercedes Barbudo
  • Lola Rodríguez de Tió
  • Mariana Bracetti

Female members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party

  • Blanca Canales
  • Rosa Collazo
  • Julia de Burgos
  • Lolita Lebrón
  • Ruth Mary Reynolds
  • Isabel Rosado
  • Isabel Freire de Matos
  • Isolina Rondón

Articles related to the Puerto Rican Independence Movement

  • Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts of the 1950s
  • Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
  • Ponce massacre
  • Río Piedras massacre
  • Puerto Rican Independence Party
  • Grito de Lares
  • Intentona de Yauco

References

  • Viscal Family