Francisco Matos Paoli (March 9, 1915 – July 10, 2000), was a Puerto Rican poet, critic, and essayist who in 1977 was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

[3] Matos Paoli enrolled at the Polytechnical School of the University of Puerto Rico and earned his bachelor's degree in education with a major in Spanish.

Lebrón, who became a nationalist herself and led the 1954 attack against the United States House of Representatives, moved to San Juan, where she studied sewing and continued her romantic relationship with Matos Paoli.

The Senate, which at the time was controlled by the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) and presided by Luis Muñoz Marín, approved the bill.

[7] Under this new law it became a crime to print, publish, sell, or exhibit any material intended to paralyze or destroy the insular government; or to organize any society, group or assembly of people with a similar destructive intent.

According to Dr. Leopoldo Figueroa, a non-PPD member of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, the law was repressive and was in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution which guarantees Freedom of Speech.

The only thing they found was a Puerto Rican flag but, due to the Gag Law, this enabled them to arrest and accuse Paoli of treason against the United States.

[2] On the basis of this "evidence" Paoli was fired from his professorship at the University of Puerto Rico, and sentenced to a twenty-year prison term, which was later reduced to ten years.

[2] In 1951, he published a collection of poems in a book which he titled Luz de los Héroes (The Light of Heroes), which spoke about the Puerto Rican independence movement.

[2] Paoli's poetry also covered other aspects of human existence such as religion, mystic and spiritual experiences, love, death, solitude, social justice, suffering, freedom, the landscape, and his fellow Puerto Ricans.

On March 1, 1954 Lolita Lebrón, together with three other members of the Nationalist Party, entered the visitor's gallery above the chamber in the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. Lebron stood up and shouted "¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!"

On May 26, 1955, after ten months in jail and in poor health, Paoli was finally pardoned by Puerto Rican Governor Luis Muñoz Marín.

In 1989, the Manati Foundation of Art and Culture of the town of Manatí, dedicated their annual Juegos Florales (Poetry Pageants) to Paoli.