 Tufiño served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946.Later, he moved to Mexico to study painting and engraving at the San Carlos Academy, where he was exposed to the populist ideas of the Popular Graphics Workshop and the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco.Upon returning to Puerto Rico in 1949, he joined the Graphic Arts Workshop of the Community Education Division (DIVEDCO, for its Spanish acronym), which had been created as part of a government campaign to teach the public about health.