In his youth, he was apprenticed to the office of the typographer in the capital printing press of the liberal and Puerto Rican abolitionist, José Julián Acosta, a former student of maestro Rafael Cordero.

Figueroa began a print shop, after moving to New York in 1889; Imprenta America would serve as the publishing house for revolutionary newspapers such as Jose Martí’s La Patria and El Porvernir.

In the Biographical Essays, there are also passages about race, castes, and slavery in Puerto Rico citing laws that make poor black men inferior.

Arriving in New York City, he joined the Antillean separatist movement and established a close friendship with the exiled Cuban patriot, José Martí.

[5] They believed that castes that existed were put on the public by Spanish colonial control and limited the Puerto Rican population’s growth economically, politically, and physically.