Antonia Martínez

In 2010 the mural that commemorated the 40th anniversary of the killing of Antonia Martínez Lagares was surreptitiously vandalized. Its restoration was led by former political prisoner Rafael Cancel Miranda and aided by activists from various organizations and supported by a group of urban artists. Another mural memorializing Martínez Lagares was created at the Humanities Hall of the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras.

On March 4, 1970, during these protests, the Fuerza de Choque (Riot Police) was sent to the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras to intervene against students protesting the presence of the Reserve Officers Training Corps on the campus. As the event unfolded, it is alleged that Antonia observed from her second floor balcony student residence on Ponce de León Avenue. She watched as police officers began beating fellow students and she shouted at them "asesinos" (murderers). At that point, allegedly, one of the police officers looked up to the balcony and spotting Martínez Lagares retrieved his service revolver and shot her. The bullet pierced her head and also injured another student that stood with her, striking the second student in his neck. Antonia died shortly at the Auxilio Mutuo hospital, located nearby.

Martínez is one of two University of Puerto Rico students who died during rioting in the early 1970s. A year after her death, University of Puerto Rico Reserve Officers' Training Corps cadet Jacinto Gutierrez was killed while defending the Reserve Officers' Training Corps building at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras.

In Puerto Rico, as in much of the rest of the world, the late 1960s and early 1970s were characterized by profound social, economic, and political changes. A large portion of the student body at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras, as well as much of its faculty, supported higher education reform that would produce changes to the administrative and educational formats in place. Of particular focus was the concept of "Casa de Estudios" (literally, "House of Studies") recently implemented by Chancellor Jaime Benitez, and which was founded on a Western and universalist educational and administrative vision of the University as opposed to one of regional and national character.

Antonia Martínez Lagares (April 22, 1949 – March 4, 1970) was a 20-year-old student at the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras who was shot and killed by a policeman as she criticized the police violence while watching the 1970 anti-Vietnam War and Education Reform student protests at the University of Puerto Rico. She became a symbol against oppression, intolerance and US imperialism in post-Ponce massacre Puerto Rico. Martínez was from Arecibo, Puerto Rico.