Biography
Lourdes Santana Melecio was imprisoned for confronting the U.S. Navy in Vieques. Luis Rogelio Torres Maldonado’s 2022 doctoral thesis reports three months of imprisonment and cites a March 26, 2022 interview with Santana. The January–February 1980 New Movement bulletin names Lourdes Santana among the imprisoned Vieques resisters, and Wilfredo Vélez Hernández’s memoir recalls Lourdes Melecio among women held at Vega Alta. A historical chronology identifies the full name in the May 19, 1979 arrest cohort.
The reported three-month duration is attributed to the thesis’s interview-based account. Precise sentencing, admission and release dates remain unestablished.
The early-1980s movement history reprinted in Que Ondee Sola, March 2010, identifies Lourdes Santana with the Liga Socialista Puertorriqueña, says she refused to participate in the federal trial on jurisdictional grounds, and reports four months actually imprisoned and that she was the last Vieques 21 prisoner released. The four-month account differs from the three-month interview-based account already recorded; neither is converted to an exact discharge day or silently substituted for the other. The six-month imposed term remains distinct. PDF page 13. Source: https://queondeesola.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/QOS-March-10.pdf#page=13
