Carmen Cabranes, 96, Puerto Rico Activist
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Carmen Cabranes, an editor and a pillar of New York’s Puerto Rican community, died Sunday in San Juan. She was 96 and remained active in civic and political affairs in Puerto Rico until her death.
The spouse and colleague of one of the leaders of the first generation of Puerto Rican migrants to America, Carmen Lopez Cabranes was unusually well-educated and independent for her generation of Puerto Rican women. The only one of 11 siblings to attend college, she was among the first generation of Puerto Ricans educated at the University of Puerto Rico under the American flag.
After graduation, Mrs. Cabranes worked as a grammar school teacher and, for a period during the Second World War, as director of the San Juan school lunch program. In 1946, she moved to the South Bronx, where her husband had been recruited by the National Council of Jewish Women to become the executive director of Melrose House, a settlement house that had historically served Jewish immigrants, but was then principally serving its neighborhood’s largely just-arrived Puerto Rican population.
Cabranes became an editor of Span ish-language publications for of Mc-Graw-Hill, and was the production editor of the journals of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
In 1948, Mr. Cabranes was appointed as the first head of the Government of Puerto Rico Office in New York. Mrs. Cabranes was also involved in politics, participating in John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign and Robert F. Kennedy’s 1964 senatorial campaign. She worked closely at her husband’s side in the cultural, civic and religious leadership of the Puerto Rican community in New York.
The couple retired to Santurce, Puerto Rico, in 1965, where Mrs. Cabranes was briefly the editor of the industrial guide of Puerto Rico’s Economic Development Administration. She was active in pro-statehood politics, participating exuberantly in mass rallies well into her 90s.
Mrs. Cabranes was widowed in 1984. She is survived by her sons, Manuel, a businessman and former Deputy Administrator of Puerto Rico’s Economic Development Administration, and Jose, a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, nine grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.
