The Ponce massacre was an event that took place on
Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday is the Christian moveable feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter. The feast commemorates Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event mentioned in each of the four canonical Gospels. Its name originates from the palm bran ...
, March 21, 1937, in
Ponce, Puerto Rico
Ponce ( , , ) is a city and a Municipalities of Puerto Rico, municipality on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. The most populated city outside the San Juan, Puerto Rico, San Juan metropolitan area, Ponce was founded on August 12, 1692Some publ ...
, when a peaceful civilian
march
March is the third month of the year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Its length is 31 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, the meteorological beginning of spring occurs on the first day of March. The March equinox on the 20 or 2 ...
turned into a police shooting in which 17 civilians and two policemen were killed, and more than 200 civilians wounded. None of the civilians were armed and most of the dead were reportedly shot in their backs. The march had been organized by the
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party to commemorate the abolition of
slavery in Puerto Rico by the governing Spanish National Assembly in 1873, and to protest the U.S. government's imprisonment of the Party's leader,
Pedro Albizu Campos, on
sedition
Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech or organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, establ ...
charges.
An investigation led by the
United States Commission on Civil Rights
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (CCR) is a bipartisan, independent commission of the United States federal government, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 during the Eisenhower administration, that is charged with the responsibility f ...
put the blame for the massacre squarely on the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico,
Blanton Winship.
Further criticism by members of the
U.S. Congress
The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an upper body, the U.S. Senate. They both ...
led President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...
to remove Winship as governor in 1939.
Governor Winship was never prosecuted for the massacre and no one under his
chain of command
A command hierarchy is a group of people who carry out orders based on others' authority within the group.
Military chain of command
In a military context, the chain of command is the line of authority and responsibility along which orders ...
– including the police who took part in the event, and admitted to the mass shooting – was prosecuted or reprimanded.
The Ponce massacre remains the largest massacre in U.S. imperial history in Puerto Rico.
It has been the source of many articles, books, paintings, films, and theatrical works.
Chronology of events
Several days before the scheduled Palm Sunday march, the
Nationalist
Nationalism is an idea or movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, it presupposes the existence and tends to promote the interests of a particular nation,Anthony D. Smith, Smith, A ...
s had received legal permits for a peaceful protest from
José Tormos Diego, the mayor of Ponce. According to a 1926 Puerto Rico Supreme Court ruling, government permits were not necessary for the use of plazas, parks or streets for meetings or parades. As a courtesy to the Ponce municipal government, the Nationalists nevertheless requested the permit.
Upon learning about the march, the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico,
General Blanton Winship, ordered the new Insular Police Chief, Colonel Enrique de Orbeta, to contact Mayor Tormos and have him cancel the parade permit. He ordered the police chief to increase the police force in the southern city, and to stop, "by all means necessary", any demonstration conducted by the nationalists in Ponce.
Without notice to the organizers, or any opportunity to appeal, or any time to arrange an alternate venue, the permits were abruptly withdrawn, just before the protest was scheduled to begin.
Following Governor Winship's orders, Colonel de Orbeta went to Ponce where he concentrated police units from across the island sporting "the latest riot control equipment", among which he included the machine gunners in the island. Winship intended to crush the activities of the Nationalists and their leader,
Pedro Albizu Campos.
The Insular Police, a force somewhat resembling the
National Guard
National guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards.
...
, was under the direct military command of Governor Winship
and ultimate responsibility for the massacre fell on Winship, who controlled the National Guard and Insular Police, "and ordered the massacre."
Police Chief Guillermo Soldevilla of the municipality of Juana Díaz, with 14 policemen, took a position in front of the marchers. Chief Perez Segarra and Sgt. Rafael Molina, commanding nine policemen armed with Thompson submachine gun
The Thompson submachine gun (also known as the "Tommy gun", "Chicago typewriter", or "trench broom") is a blowback-operated, selective-fire submachine gun, invented and developed by Brigadier General John T. Thompson, a United States Arm ...
s and tear gas bombs, stood in the back. Chief of Police Antonio Bernardi, heading 11 policemen armed with machine guns, stood in the east; and another group of 12 police, armed with rifles, was placed in the west. According to some reports, police numbered "over 200 heavily armed" guards.
As '' La Borinqueña'', Puerto Rico's national song, was being played, the Ponce branch of the Cadets of the Republic under the command of Tomás López de Victoria and the rest of the demonstrators began to march.
The Insular Police started firing on the marchers – killing 17 unarmed civilians, two policemen, and wounding over 200 civilians, including women and children. Police firing went on for over 15 minutes. The dead included 17 men, one woman, and a young girl. Some of the dead were demonstrators/cadets, while others were passersby. As of 2009, only two survivors were known to be alive, siblings Fernando and Beatriz Vélez.
The flag-bearer of the Cadets of the Republic was shot and killed during the massacre. A young girl, Carmen Fernández proceeded to take the flag, but was shot and gravely injured. A young Nationalist cadet named Bolívar Márquez dragged himself to the wall of Santo Asilo de Damas and wrote with his blood the following message before dying:
Many were chased by the police and shot or clubbed at the entrance of their houses as they tried to escape. Others were taken from their hiding places and killed. Leopold Tormes, a member of the Puerto Rico legislature, claimed to reporters that a policeman had murdered a nationalist with his bare hands.[Denis, Nelson Antonio. ''War Against All Puerto Ricans, Revolution and Terror in America's Colony'', p. 263, Nation Books, Perseus Books Group. 2015. ] Dr. José Gandara, a physician who assisted the wounded, testified that wounded people running away were shot, and that many were again wounded by the clubs and bare fists of the police. No arms were found in the hands of the civilians wounded, nor on the dead ones. About 150 of the demonstrators were arrested immediately afterward; they were later released on bail.
Official version of the events
The next day, Winship radioed Washington and reported, officially, that the Nationalists had initiated the shooting. Part of his radiogram report stated that "two shots were fired by the Nationalists ... with Nationalists firing from the street, and from roofs and balconies on both sides of the street ... he policeshowed great patience, consideration and understanding of the situation, as did the officers and men under him he Police Chief"
The following day, as a result of this misinformation, the ''New York Times'' and ''Washington Post'' reported that a Nationalist political revolt had claimed the lives of more than eighteen people in Puerto Rico.
The Puerto Rican senator Luis Muñoz Marín
José Luis Alberto Muñoz Marín (February 18, 1898April 30, 1980) was a Puerto Rican journalist, politician, statesman and was the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, regarded as the "Architect of the Puerto Rico Commonwealth."
In 1948 he ...
traveled to the city of Ponce to investigate the event. After examining the photograph taken by Carlos Torres Morales of '' El Imparcial'', which had not yet been published, he wrote a letter to Ruth Hampton, an official at the Department of the Interior
The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources. It also administers programs relatin ...
. He said that the photograph showed that the policemen were not shooting at the uniformed Nationalists (Cadets), but at a terrified crowd in full flight.
Investigation and the Hays Commission
Initial investigations of the event differed on whether the police or the marchers fired the first shots. Governor Winship applied pressure on the district attorney's office in charge of the investigation. He requested that the public prosecutor from Ponce, Rafael Pérez Marchand, "arrest more Nationalists", and that no charges be filed against the police. The prosecutor resigned as a result of being denied the opportunity to conduct a proper investigation.
A Puerto Rican government investigation into the incident drew few conclusions. A second, independent investigation ordered by the United States Commission on Civil Rights
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (CCR) is a bipartisan, independent commission of the United States federal government, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 during the Eisenhower administration, that is charged with the responsibility f ...
led by the ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million.
...
's Arthur Garfield Hays, together with Puerto Rican citizens Fulgencio Piñero, Emilio Belaval, José Davila Rice, Antonio Ayuyo Valdivieso, Manuel Díaz García, and Francisco M. Zeno took place. This investigation concluded that the events on 21 March constituted a massacre and mob action by the police. The report harshly criticized the repressive tactics and massive civil rights violations by Governor Winship.
After viewing the photograph taken by Carlos Torres Morales, Hays in his report to the American Civil Liberties Union questioned why the governor's investigation had not used the photography, which was among two that were widely published. According to Hays, the photograph clearly showed 18 armed policeman at the corner of Aurora and Marina streets, ready to fire upon a group of innocent bystanders. The image showed the white smoke in the barrel of a policeman's revolver as he fired upon the unarmed people. The Hays Commission questioned why the policemen fired directly ''at the crowd'', and not at the Nationalist Cadets.
Casualties
The following are the names of those killed:
Aftermath
Lack of convictions
In the aftermath of the massacre, no police officer was convicted or sentenced to jail. No police were demoted or suspended and Governor Winship never issued a public apology.
Reaction in the U.S. Congress
The Ponce massacre reverberated through the U.S. Congress. On the House floor, Congressman John T. Bernard expressed his shock and outrage. He said: "The police in Ponce, probably with the encouragement of the North American police chief and even the governor, opened fire on a Palm Sunday Nationalist march, killing seventeen and wounding more than two hundred."
Congressman Vito Marcantonio
Vito Anthony Marcantonio (December 10, 1902 – August 9, 1954) was an American lawyer and politician who served East Harlem for seven terms in the United States House of Representatives.
For most of his political career, he was a member of ...
joined in the criticism, filing charges against Governor Winship with President Roosevelt. In his speech before Congress titled "Five Years of Tyranny", Congressman Vito Marcantonio reported that ''"Ex-Governor Blanton Winship, of Puerto Rico, was summarily removed by the President of the United States on May 12, 1939"'' after charges were filed against Mr. Winship with the President. In his speech, the Congressman detailed the number of killings by the police and added, ''"the facts show that the affair of March 21 in Ponce was a massacre ... Governor Winship tried to cover up this massacre by filing a mendacious report"'' and the congressman called Governor Winship a "tyrant".
Attempt on Governor Winship's life
The year following the Ponce massacre, on 25 July 1938, Governor Winship wanted to mark the anniversary of the U.S. 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico with a military parade. He chose the city of Ponce to demonstrate that his "Law and Order" policy had been successful against the Nationalists. During the parade, shots were fired at the grandstand where Winship and his officials were sitting in an attempt to assassinate him. It was the first time that an attempt was made on the life of a Governor of Puerto Rico. Winship escaped unharmed but two men, the assailant and a police officer, were killed, and 36 people were wounded.
The dead were the Nationalist Ángel Esteban Antongiorgi and National Guard Colonel Luis Irizarry. The Nationalist Party denied participation in the attack, but the government arrested several Nationalists and accused nine of "murder and conspiracy to incite violence." Among the nine Nationalists charged and convicted were Tomás López de Victoria, captain of the Ponce branch of the Cadets of the Republic, and fellow cadets Elifaz Escobar, Santiago González Castro, Juan Pietri and Prudencio Segarra. They served eight years in the Puerto Rico State Penitentiary. The four were pardoned by the next full-term U.S.-appointed governor, Rexford Guy Tugwell.
Winship tried to repress the Nationalists. Jaime Benítez Rexach, a student at the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
at the time and later long-time chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico
The University of Puerto Rico (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Universidad de Puerto Rico;'' often shortened to UPR) is the main List of state and territorial universities in the United States, public university system in the Commonwealth (U.S. i ...
, wrote to President Roosevelt stating, "Governor inshiphimself through his military approach to things has helped keep Puerto Rico in an unnecessary state of turmoil. He seems to think that the political problem of Puerto Rico limits itself to a fight between himself and the Nationalists, that no holds are barred in that fight and that everybody else should keep out." Winship was replaced in 1939.
Legacy
ACLU Chapter
One of the by-products of the Ponce Massacre
The Ponce massacre was an event that took place on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, when a peaceful civilian Marching, march turned into a police shooting in which 17 civilians and two policemen were killed, and more than 200 ...
and the Hays Commission was the creation in Puerto Rico of a chapter of the ACLU
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million.
...
on May 21, 1937. It was named "Asociación Puertorriqueña de Libertades Civiles" (Puerto Rican Association of Civil Liberties). Its first president was Tomás Blanco, Felipe Colón Díaz and Antonio Fernós Isern were its vice-presidents, the treasurer was Inés María Mendoza, the Secretary was attorney Vicente Géigel Polanco, and the association's legal counsel was attorney Ernesto Ramos Antonini. Luis Muñoz Marin and many leaders from Ponce, including attorney Pérez Marchand and some of the members of the Hays Commission were also among the founders.
Today, the Ponce massacre is commemorated annually.
Ponce Massacre Museum
The Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, an agency of the Government of Puerto Rico
The government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, organized under the Constitution of Puerto Rico since 1952, is a republican democracy modeled after the Federal Government of the United States. Under a system of separation of powers, the ...
, operates the Ponce Massacre Museum. It is located at the intersection where the events took place (corner of Marina and Aurora streets). The museum houses photographs and various artifacts from the Ponce massacre. A section of the museum is dedicated to Pedro Albizu Campos.
In popular culture
The book ''Revolucion en el Infierno'' (Revolution in Hell) was published in 2002, and the television film
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie, telefilm, telemovie or TV film/movie, is a film with a running time similar to a feature film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a Terrestr ...
by the same name was released in 2004. It illustrates the events of the Ponce massacre through the life of one of the victims, Ulpiano Perea. The film is an adapted from the playwright by Roberto Ramos Perea, Ulpiano's nephew.
See also
*Casimiro Berenguer
Casimiro Berenguer Padilla was a Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, nationalist. He was the military instructor of the Cadets of the Republic (''Cadetes de la República'') who received permission from Ponce Mayor José T ...
* Grito de Lares
* Intentona de Yauco
*List of revolutions and rebellions
This is a list of Revolution, revolutions, rebellions, insurrections, and uprisings.
BC
:
:
:
:
1–999 AD
1000–1499
1500–1699
1700–1799
1800–1849
, style="background:#F88" , Siamese victory
,
,
, -
, ...
* Truman assassination attempt
* Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts of the 1950s
*Puerto Rican Independence Party
The Puerto Rican Independence Party (, PIP) is a social-democratic political party in Puerto Rico that campaigns for the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States.
Those who follow the PIP ideology are usually called ''independentist ...
* Río Piedras massacre
*
References
Further reading
*
This book, sometimes called a pamphlet, by Corretjer was written in English as it was intended for the U.S. American public audience. Its purpose was to raise conscience among the American people about the event of the Ponce Massacre as most Americans had never heard of the involvement of the U.S. government and the U.S. media in that massacre. The pamphlet, currently (January 2014) out of print, was reprinted in its entirely as Chapter 19 in Francisco Hernandez Vazquez's book ''Latino/a Thought'' (pp 377–404), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (2009).
*
External links
*
''Ponce Massacre Museum''
icp.gobierno.pr; accessed 8 July 2015.
* U.S. Congressman Vito Marcantonio. August 14, 1939.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ponce massacre
1937 protests
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Political history of Puerto Rico
Protests in Puerto Rico
Massacres of protesters in the United States
Human rights in Puerto Rico
Events in Ponce, Puerto Rico
1937 in Puerto Rico
People murdered in Puerto Rico
Crimes in Puerto Rico
March 1937 in North America
1937 crimes in Puerto Rico
1937 murders in North America
20th-century murders in Puerto Rico
Police misconduct in Puerto Rico
Massacres in Puerto Rico
Mass murder in the United States in the 1930s
Massacres committed by the United States
Murders by law enforcement officers in the United States
People shot dead by law enforcement officers in Puerto Rico
Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico
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