Poet, mathematician, painter, Marxist, activist, and professor José María Lima (1936–2009) is considered one of the most important voices in twentieth-century Puerto Rican poetry. With Clemente Soto Vélez and Francisco Matos Paoli, he is among the most influential inheritors of the Latin American and European avant-garde in Puerto Rico. He published only three books in his lifetime, Homenaje al ombligo with Angelamaria Davila in 1966; La sílaba en la piel (1982); and Rendijas (2001). He worked as a journalist for El Mundo, studied at Harvard and UC Berkeley, traveled to Cuba to protest the US embargo, and returned to Puerto Rico where, despite political harassment for his views, he taught mathematics at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras until he retired.