"PUERTO Rico needs women like Lolita, Viva Lolita!," chanted dozens of people in front of the Athenium building in San Juan’s historic quarter, where they awaited the arrival of the hearse bearing the body of the veteran fighter.

The on-line edition of El nuevo día, described the scene: "At 9:42 p.m., when the line waiting stretched up to the nearby Casa Olímpica, a group of women joined hands to meet the cortege bringing the body of the former political prisoner. It arrived, without anyone expecting it, against the traffic, as a final act of disobedience against the established order."

Dolores "Lolita" Lebrón Sotomayor whose will they could not break during the 25 years that she was incarcerated in the United States, was however, defeated by illness.

Puerto Rico lost one of her most legendary and charismatic fighters, whose ideas, actions and unbreakable will guarantee her an outstanding place in the history of that nation.

Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua, described Lolita as "a symbol of the resistance of the peoples and of the constant battle for our sovereignties." And that symbol has not been extinguished.

Even The Washington Post, in a long article published on her death, admitted the kind of woman that she was, by placing her at the heights of most outstanding international fighters.

Her March 1, 1954 assault on the U.S. Congress to denounce the colonial status of the island, together with Cancel Miranda, Irving Flores and Andrés Figueroa Cordero, was the action which made her most known within and outside of her country. Yellowed photos and film rushes deteriorated by the passage of time, show a determined woman, then aged 34, at the moment of being arrested. "I did not come to kill anyone, I came to die for Puerto Rico," she shouted.

In 1979, when Lolita and her comrades had completed 25 years of the life terms to which they were sentenced, President James Carter granted them an amnesty due to international pressure.

On her return to her native land, she continued the struggle that she had begun as a young woman from the moment that she joined the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, led at that time by Pedro Albizu Campos, whose influence she received directly.

The burden of her age, plus the hard 25 years behind bars were no obstacle to keep Lolita from going out onto the streets of her island to protest against the U.S. Navy in Vieques.

In November 2000, during an address to the International Court on Human Rights Violations in Puerto Rico and Vieques, she said, "I had the honor of leading the action against the United States Congress on March 1, 1954, when we demanded freedom for Puerto Rico and showed the world that we are a disabled nation, occupied and abused by the United States of North America. I feel very proud to have acted on that day, to have answered the call of my homeland."

Seven months later she was among a group of people arrested for trespassing on the restricted zone of the U.S. base on Vieques during another protest, and sentenced to 60 days’ imprisonment.

Her niece, Linda Alonso Lebrón, recalled that recently, when she became seriously ill, Lolita was worried because "nothing was being done for independence." She told Linda, "I want you to tell all the youth to get up every day at 6:00 a.m. with the nationalist flag in their hands to fight for independence…"

To symbols, to human beings of such elevated human values, who can never be separated from the struggles for the total independence of the countries of this continent, we do not bid them farewell.