Ponce Massacre
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The Ponce Massacre is regarded as one of the darkest and bloodiest chapters in the history of Puerto Rico and its political relation to the United States. On March 21, 1937 (Palm Sunday) a march was organized in the southern city of Ponce, Puerto Rico by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. The march was organized to protest the incarceration of nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos and to demand Puerto Rico's independence from the United States.
Chronology of events
Days before, the march organizers applied for and received permits for a peaceful protest with the municipality of Ponce. Upon learning of the protests, however, the colonial governor of Puerto Rico at the time, General Blanton Winship demanded the immediate withdrawal of the permits. They were withdrawn moments before the protest was scheduled to begin.
Governor Winship went out of San Juan. Colonel Orbeta went to Ponce and concentrated there a heavy police force, among which he included all the machine gunners. For many days the US Government had been planning action in Ponce due to the concentration of Nationalist activity, and residency of their leader, Dr. Pedro Albízu Campos.
Chief of Police Guillermo Soldevilla, with 14 policemen, placed himself in front of the marchers; Chief Perez Segarra and Sgt. Rafael Molina, commanding 9 men, armed with Thompson machine guns 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 police group of 12 men, armed with rifles, placed itself in the west.
The demonstrators, at the order of their leader, and while La Borinqueña, the national song, was being played, began to march. Immediately they were fired upon for more than 15 minutes by the police from the four flanks. The victims fell down without an opportunity to defend themselves (the marcher and bystanders were all unarmed). Even after the street was covered with dead bodies policemen continued firing. More than 200 were wounded; nineteen were killed. Men, women, and children, Nationalists, demonstrators, and people passing by, as well as the people who ran away, were shot. They were chased by the police and shot or clubbed at the entrance of the houses. Others were taken from their hiding places and killed. Leopold Tormes, a member of the legislature, told reporters how a policeman murdered a Nationalist in cold blood after the shooting, with his bare hands.
A 7-year-old girl, Georgina Maldonado, while running to a nearby church, was shot through the back. She later died in the street floor. A woman, Maria Hernandez, was also killed. Carmen Fernandez, aged 33, was severely wounded. After she fell down a policeman struck her with his rifle, saying, "Take this; be a Nationalist." Marie Hernandez, a member of the Republican Party, was clubbed on her head by a policeman while running away. Dr. Jose N. Gandara, one of the physicians who assisted the wounded, testified that wounded people running away were shot, and that many were again wounded through the back with clubs and bare fist by the police.
Don Luis Sanchez Frasquieri, former president of the Rotary Club in Ponce, said that he had witnessed the most horrible slaughter made by police on defenseless youth. No arms were found in the hands of the civilians wounded, nor on the dead ones.
One of the dying protesters scribbled in a wall with his own blood "Viva la República. Abajo los asesinos."
About 150 of the demonstrators were arrested immediately afterward, many of them women. All the Nationalist leaders were also arrested. They were a released on bail.
More than 15,000, as was reported by El Mundo, a Puerto Rican newspaper, attended the funerals at Ponce, and more than 5,000 at Mayagüéz.
The men, women and children who were killed in the Ponce Massacre:
Cotal Nieves, Juan Delgado
Hernandez del Rosario, Maria
Jimenez Morales, Luis
Loyola Perez, Ceferino
Maldonado, Georgina (7-year-old)
Marquez Telechea, Bolivar
Ortiz Toro, Ramon
Perea, Ulpiano
Pietrantoni, Juan Antonio
Reyes Rivera, Juan
Rivera Lopez, Conrado
Rodriguez Figueras, Ivan G.
Rodriguez Mendez, Jenaro
Rodriguez Rivera, Pedro Juan
Rosario, Obdulio
Sanchez Perez, Eusebio
Santos Ortiz, Juan
Torres Gregory, Juan
Velez Torres, Teodoro
See also
External links
- Information on the Ponce Massacre Museum (http://www.icp.gobierno.pr/myp/m3.htm)