Juan Antonio Corretjer
Biography
Juan Antonio Corretjer was a Puerto Rican poet, journalist and independence activist born in Ciales. He became secretary-general of the Nationalist Party in 1935. On April 2, 1936, he was committed to La Princesa prison for refusing to surrender the party's records to a federal grand jury. While imprisoned, he was prosecuted and convicted of seditious conspiracy with Pedro Albizu Campos and other Nationalist leaders. Transferred to Atlanta on June 7, 1937, he was released on June 4, 1942 and remained in New York before returning to Puerto Rico in 1946. He was imprisoned again following the 1950 Nationalist revolt and later organized the Liga Socialista Puertorriqueña with Consuelo Lee Tapia. He died in 1985.
Gerald Meyer’s 2010 Centro Journal study places this defendant among the eight Nationalists sentenced in the 1936 federal conspiracy prosecution. It reports the first jury deadlock on July 14, 1936, October denial of appeal bail and appellate affirmance on February 12, 1937, followed by transfer from San Juan municipal jail to Atlanta. It describes English-only correspondence and restricted family visits in the exile imprisonment. These collective procedural and conditions details do not establish a new arrest, individual gate-release date or completed sentence duration. Source: https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/377/37722223004.pdf#page=9
Other custody reported in the memorial biography
The memorial biography, PDF page 5, describes arrest for inciting a riot following the Nationalist revolt and a subsequent six-month imprisonment, without giving exact admission or discharge days. It also reports imprisonment in June 1971 with Consuelo Lee Tapia and other Socialist League members on charges dating from 1969. The June 1971 admission month is already recorded here. Neither this account nor a six-month term establishes an exact release date. The earlier Atlanta interval, June 7, 1937–June 4, 1942, and March 3, 1908 birth date are already recorded; the Atlanta transfer is not substituted for his earlier La Princesa admission. Arrests described in New York in the late 1920s, Cuba in 1935 and Mexico in 1962 have no exact custody endpoints in this source.
The chronology credited to Benjamín Torres and Rosa Meneses Albizu names this defendant among the eight Nationalists tried in 1936. It identifies Robert Cooper as presiding judge and A. Cecil Snyder, Marcelino Romaní, Jorge Ortiz Toro, James E. Ruffin and Amos W. W. Woodcock as prosecutors. It distinguishes a first jury that could not agree from a second trial that returned a guilty verdict. The chronology also records the eight prisoners’ transfer to the Atlanta penitentiary on June 7, 1937; that is a transfer within the already recorded imprisonment, not a new first-admission date.
The ACLU also requested Corretjer’s release, reporting a one-year contempt sentence for refusing to produce Nationalist Party records before the grand jury. The year is the nominal sentence, not verified actual service, and the appeal for release is not a completed release.
The Cuban committee’s April 12, 1939 manifesto individually lists him as actually confined at Atlanta. This is contemporary prison-location evidence, not an admission date, a completed sentence or a new arrest. The pamphlet was published in December 1939 and reprints documents of several different dates. The August30 appeal names the three as editors of La Nación Puertorriqueña, La Palabra and Armas respectively. The February27 DOJ reply (PDF48) only promises consideration if an executive-clemency application is made; it grants no pardon or release.
