Biography
Manuel Ávila was a Puerto Rican Nationalist prosecuted with Julio Pinto Gandía and other party members in the federal case arising from the attempted shooting of Judge Robert A. Cooper. President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Martín Travieso to hear the case in October 1937 because Cooper was a prosecution witness. Ávila was imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. In a later interview, he described Raimundo Díaz Pacheco’s role in the operation and the Nationalists’ plans against officials involved in suppressing the independence movement.
The Cuban committee’s April 12, 1939 manifesto individually lists him as actually confined at Lewisburg. 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.