Mariana Nogales Molinelli (born October 26, 1973) is a Puerto Rican lawyer, politician, and social activist. In 2020, she was elected to the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico for the

Citizens' Victory Movement Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana ( en, Citizens' Victory Movement, generally abbreviated as MVC) is a Puerto Rican political party founded in 2019. It ran in the 2020 general elections on an anti-colonial platform, proposing a constitutional asse ...

(MVC) party. She had previously ran as the

Working People's Party of Puerto Rico The Working People's Party ( es, Partido del Pueblo Trabajador or PPT) was a Puerto Rican political party. It was founded on December 5, 2010, in the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, by a group of activists, students, teachers, professors, union ...

's candidate for resident commissioner in the 2016 election; she received over 19,000 votes, and ended up in 4th place. She studied environmental sciences at the

University of Puerto Rico The University of Puerto Rico ( es, Universidad de Puerto Rico, UPR) is the main public university system in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It is a government-owned corporation with 11 campuses and approximately 58,000 students and 5,3 ...

, where she completed a bachelor's degree in psychology in 2006. In 2010 Mariana Nogales Molinelli earned a juris doctor from the

University of Puerto Rico School of Law The University of Puerto Rico School of Law is a law school in Puerto Rico. It is one of the professional graduate schools of University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus and the only law school in the University of Puerto Rico System. It ...

. She also received the

Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...

Award from the Puerto Rico Civil Rights Commission.

Activism

Since 2011 Nogales has practiced law on the island in the areas of family matters, civil, penal, labor and notary laws. From 2009 to 2010 Nogales was coordinator general for the campaign to abolish the death penalty on the island. Nogales is a recognized figure among the Puerto Rican left. She has secular beliefs, and is the founder of ''Humanistas Seculares de Puerto Rico'' (Secular Humanists of Puerto Rico, in English) an organization that advocates for the

separation of church and state The separation of church and state is a philosophical and jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the state. Conceptually, the term refers to the creation of a secular sta ...

. In 2017 she opposed the declaration of 40 days of prayer and fasting in the House of Representatives. Nogales is a self-declared feminist. She has collaborated with feminist organizations such as the ''Movimiento Amplio de Mujeres'' and ''Proyecto Matria''. In 2021 she supported protest in favour of permanently closing the

Dr. Juan A. Rivero Zoo Dr. Juan A. Rivero Zoo, officially named the Dr. Juan A. Rivero Zoo of Puerto Rico, also known as the Mayagüez Zoo, was a zoo located in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, owned by the Government of Puerto Rico and operated by the Puerto Rico Department o ...

. At the funeral service for

Carlos Romero Barceló Carlos Antonio Romero Barceló (September 4, 1932 – May 2, 2021) was a Puerto Rican politician who served as the governor of Puerto Rico from 1977 to 1985. He was the second governor to be elected from the New Progressive Party (PNP). He als ...

Nogales wore a t-shirt protesting the Cerro Maravilla murders that occurred under the governor's tenure.

PPT

In 2015 Nogales was selected as one of the PPT party leaders subsequently becoming the party president.

House of Representatives

In 2020 Nogales was elected to the House of Representatives at large with 87,000 votes representing the third largest number of votes. Nogales was the author of the House of Representatives resolution 213, created to investigate the cutting of trees around the island in an attempt to reduce deforestation.

References

1973 births Living people People from Humacao, Puerto Rico Puerto Rican women in politics Puerto Rican activists Puerto Rican women environmentalists 21st-century Puerto Rican lawyers Puerto Rican atheists Puerto Rican feminists Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana politicians Puerto Rican women lawyers University of Puerto Rico alumni Members of the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico 21st-century Puerto Rican women politicians {{PuertoRico-politician-stub