the pre-dawn hours of October 29, in the barrio Macaná in the town of Peñuelas. The police surrounded the house of the mother of Melitón Muñiz the president of the Peñuelas Nationalist Party, under the pretext that he was storing weapons for the Nationalist Revolt. Without warning, the police fired upon the nationalists and a firefight between both factions ensued, which resulted with the death of two nationalists and six police officers wounded. Jayuya uprising On October 30, 1950, the Nationalist leaders in Jayuya – including Canales, her cousin Elio Torresola (Griselio Torresola's brother) and Carlos Irizarry – entered the town of Jayuya with a group of nationalists in a bus and a car. Canales led the group to her house in Barrio Coabey, a neighborhood of Jayuya, where she had been stockpiling arms and ammunition. Armed with the weapons she had stored, Canales and the men attacked and occupied the police station. The Nationalists then occupied the post office, approached the telephone station, and cut the phone lines. Canales led the group to the town plaza, raised the Puerto Rican Flag (which was outlawed at the time), and declared Puerto Rico a Free Republic. After being notified that Carlos Irizarry was wounded, Canales hurried to the town hospital but the police had shut down the hospital, and she found Irizarry leaning against a lamp post. He had been wounded in a gunfight at the police station. Canales rushed him to a hospital in Utuado, the neighboring town. Jayuya was under Nationalist control for three days until it was attacked by U.S military planes, artillery, mortar fire, grenades, U.S. infantry troops, and the Puerto Rican National Guard commanded by the Puerto Rico Adjutant General Major General Luis R. Estéves, which occupied the town. The Nationalists surrendered on November 1, 1950. Canales was arrested and accused of killing a police officer, wounding three others, and burning down the post office. Following a brief federal trial, she was sentenced to life imprisonment plus sixty years. In June 1951, she was sent to the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia. In prison she developed a close friendship with fellow nationalist Lolita Lebrón, who led the 1954 Nationalist attack on the US House of Representatives, and Rosa Collazo, the wife of Oscar Collazo and treasurer of the New York City branch of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Later years In 1956, Canales