Juan Mari Brás (December 2, 1927 – September 10, 2010) was an advocate for Puerto Rican independence from the United States who founded the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP). On October 25, 2006, he became the first person to receive a Puerto Rican citizenship certificate from the Puerto Rico State Department. His son, Santiago Mari Pesquera, was assassinated by a suspected far-right activist in 1976. In 2009, documents revealed the FBI had known of a plot to assassinate Mari Brás but did not share the information with him. Early years Juan Mari Brás was born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico on December 2, 1927. His father, Santiago Mari Ramos, was an active participant in the independence movement who often took his son to political meetings and rallies. In 1943, when he was 18 years old, he founded a pro-independence movement called "Capítulo de Agregados Pro Independencia", in his high school along with some of his friends, in Mayagüez. He was also the founder and director of the first pro-independence political radio program "Gritos de la Patria". Student activist In 1944, he enrolled in the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus and in 1946 became a founding member of Gilberto Concepción de Gracia's Puerto Rican Independence Party. He also was a founding member of the Beta chapter of the Phi Delta Gamma fraternity. Mari Brás became the president of the party's "Puerto Rican Independentista Youth". In 1948, the university's pro-independence student body invited nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos to the Río Piedras campus as a guest speaker. The chancellor of the university, Jaime Benítez, did not permit Albizu access to the campus. As a consequence, the students protested and went on strike. Mari Brás was one of the student leaders who chanted anti-American slogans and who marched with a Puerto Rican flag in his hand. Both of these acts were considered as acts against the Government of the United States, which at that time had complete control of the government of the island. Mari Brás and others who protested were expelled from the university; he was arrested, jailed, and let go three times in response to his revolutionary activities. Mari Brás was forced to move to Lakeland, Florida, where he earned his bachelor's degree at Florida Southern College between 1949 and 1950. From 1951 until 1954 he lived in Washington, DC where he studied at Georgetown University, during this period he