Former political prisoner Rafael Cancel Miranda will keynote a symposium at DePaul University Saturday, April 4, when community members, educators and students explore "100 Years of United States Colonialism in Puerto Rico."

Cancel Miranda spent 25 years in prison for the 1954 shooting of five congressmen inside the U.S. House of Representatives and was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

"The symposium will mark the centennial of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Puerto Rico," said Mervin Mendez, assistant director of DePaul’s Center for Latino Research. The center is co-sponsoring the event with El Comite Puerto Rico ’98.

"This is an opportunity to learn about Puerto Rico’s 100-year colonial reality under U.S. rule and offers a look at the Puerto Rican people’s resistance to becoming something other than what they are—Puerto Rican," Mendez said.

The conference will be held in DePaul’s Cortelyou Commons, 2324 N. Fremont St., in Lincoln Park. The schedule of events follows.

The remainder of the symposium will take participants off DePaul’s campus for tours of local Puerto Rican institutions, performances by a variety of Puerto Rican artists and dinner at a Puerto Rican restaurant.