The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Poet, lawyer, and educator Nemesio Canales was born in 1878 in Jayuya, Puerto Rico and died in 1923 in New York, New York. In 1903, he obtained a law degree from the University of Baltimore and returned to Puerto Rico to practice law, first in Ponce and later in San Juan, where he worked alongside Luis Lloréns Torres. Canales, Lloréns Torres, and Miguel Guerra Mondragón organized literary gatherings in San Juan. In 1908, Canales was elected as a delegate to the House of Representatives for the Unionist Party. From this platform, he advocated for women’s suffrage and civil rights, introducing a bill to grant Puerto Rican women the right to vote. Canales also co-founded the literary magazine Juan Bobo in 1915 with Lloréns Torres. He published in the newspapers El Eco de Puerto Rico, El Día, La Democracia, and Revista de las Antillas.

Works Cited

“Nemesio R. Canales.” EnciclopediaPR, Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades, 15 September 2014, enciclopediapr.org/content/nemesio-r-canales/.

Rivera de Alvarez, Josefina. Literatura puertorriqueña, su proceso en el tiempo. Ediciones Panteón, Madrid, 1983.
Vélez, Rigoberto. Puertorriqueños Ilustres de todos los tiempos. Editorial Centro Pedagógico, Ponce, 1986.