1937 — March 21, Ponce massacre, police fire on marchers, Ponce, Puerto Rico — 19
Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 11-15-2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/
–37 Marino. “Apology Isn’t Enough for Puerto Rico Spy Victims.” WP, 12-28-1999, p. A3.
–21 Gonzalez, Juan. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (rev.). Penguin, 2011
–20 Maldonado, A. W. Luis Munoz Marin: Puerto Rico’s Democratic Revolution. 2006, p. 152.
–19 Black, Timothy. When a Heart Turns Rock Solid. Pantheon Books, 2009, p. 5.
–19 Democracy Now! “Remembering Puerto Rico’s Ponce Massacre.” 3-22-2007.
–19 Navarro, S. A. and A. Mejia (eds.) Latino Americans and Political Participation. 2004, 105
–19 Rosado, Marisa. Puerto Rico Encyclopedia. “The Ponce Massacre (1937).” 9-9-2010.
–17 Marcantonio, Vito. “Five Years of Tyranny in Puerto Rico,” 8-14-1939 speech.
Blanchard note: After reviewing various accounts we choose to follow the four which state that the death toll was 19.
Narrative Information
Democracy Now!: “….Juan Gonzalez: We turn now to Puerto Rico, where the seventieth anniversary of the Ponce massacre has passed. On March 21, 1937, nineteen people were killed and more than 100 wounded when police opened fire on a demonstration calling for independence from the United States. The day is considered a defining event in Puerto Rico’s history of struggle against US domination….
“Juan Gonzalez: Well, Juan-Manuel, for many Americans who don’t know anything about the Ponce massacre, it would be good to sort of give the framework of what happened. And clearly, I think, Albizu Campos, the great Nationalist leader, had just been sentenced to prison on sedition charges for ten years in prison, and this protest was actually a protest to free Albizu, wasn’t it?
“Juan-Manuel Garcia-Passalacqua: Well, the whole demonstration was directed at the commemoration of the abolition of slavery, and one of the examples that slavery had continued after its abolition was precisely that Pedro Albizu Campos was imprisoned by the United States. The important thing about this celebration, commemoration — however you want to call it — is that the governor, Blanton Winship, was the one that ordered the massacre, the American governor who was a military governor with experience in the killing of Sandino in Nicaragua, and that that particular order has been transformed into a brilliant movie here by one of our best authors, called Revolucion en el Infierno….
“Juan Gonzalez… I was born in Ponce, the city where the massacre occurred, and my family was from there, and so actually, as I was doing research on the book, I started interviewing my own family members. It turned out one of my aunts, Graciela Ramos, who just recently passed away, was a Nationalist at the time, was dating one of the Nationalist cadets who was supposed to participate in the protest that day. But he decided instead to go on a picnic with my aunt, who was sixteen at the time, and so both my aunts, a younger one, who was just a little girl at the time, described to me what happened that day. And I have about a paragraph or two in my book on it.
The day was Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937. My aunt Graciela was sixteen and caught up in the Nationalist fervor at the time. Luckily, she decided to skip the march that day and go on a picnic with her sisters, Ana and Pura. They all trekked up to El Vigia, the magnificent hilltop estate of the Seralles family, owners of the Don Q rum distillery. From the rolling castle grounds you can look down on all of Ponce. Pura, who was a child at the time, recalls that shortly after the Nationalists gathered, the church bells began to ring, and when she looked down the mountain toward the plaza she saw people scattering in all directions. A young woman they knew ran up to them, screaming, “There’s a massacre in the town. The Nationalists and the soldiers are fighting. The hospital is full of wounded.” When the smoke had cleared, 21 were dead and 150 were wounded. A human rights commission would later report that all had been gunned down by police. It was the biggest massacre in Puerto Rican history.
After the Palm Sunday Massacre, hysteria and near civil war swept the island. Nationalists were hunted and arrested on sight. Some headed for exile in New York City or Havana….
(Democracy Now! “Remembering Puerto Rico’s Ponce Massacre” (Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodwin interview with Juan-Manuel Garcia-Passalacqua). 3-22-2007.)
Maldonado: “The Ponce Massacre.
“In mid-1936 Harold Ickes predicted that ‘there might be a first class blow-out one of these days in Puerto Rico for which {the President} and I would be held responsible.’[1] On March 21, 1937, Palm Sunday, the ‘blow-out’ occurred. The Nationalist Party was denied permission by the Ponce Municipal government to hold one of its ‘parades’ in the town plaza. Governor Winship sent the head of police to Ponce to warn them that if the black-shirt Nationalists were allowed to march, it would provoke another violent confrontation with the police. There were reports that a band of heavily-armed Nationalists had left Mayagüez for Ponce.
“Coalition Party Mayor José Tormos Diego, however, revoked the decision and approved the ‘civic parade.’ Rushing back to Ponce, the police chief convinced the Mayor to change his mind. All morning and into the afternoon, Tormos and the colonel attempted to get the Nationalists to suspend the march. They failed.
“About 80 Nationalist ‘cadets’ and ‘Daughters of the Republic,’ followed by a small contingent of ‘Nationalist Nurses’ dressed in white, lined up for the march. A police captain, backed by about 150 heavily-armed policemen, held up his hand ordering them to stop. But at that moment the Nationalist band began to play the island’s then unofficial anthem, La Borinqueña. The marchers moved forward. A gun was fired. Instantly there was a barrage of gunfire from the police to the Nationalists and the crowd. When the firing stopped, more than one hundred Nationalist followers, spectators and policemen were wounded, and twenty people were dead, two of them policemen.
“The Ponce Massacre was the bloodiest event in Puerto Rican history. The Nationalists marchers themselves were unarmed. The police, backed by the Governor and later Gruening[2] himself, insisted that the initial shot came from the Nationalist Party headquarters behind the marchers.
“The American Civil Liberties Union carried out an extensive investigation headed by Arthur Garfield Hays. The famous New York lawyer expressed little sympathy for the ‘fanaticism and intolerance…the seeds of fascism’ among the Nationalists. He felt even less sympathy for its leader, Albizu Campos. In a private letter to Roosevelt he wrote: ‘Nobody but people with the martyr complex of a lunatic would lead a crowd to face machine guns.’
“But Hays and the ACLU place the blame for the tragedy squarely on Winship, condemning him for his ‘gross violation of civil rights and incredible police brutality.’ This was a ‘police riot’ where the heavily armed officers panicked at the first gun shot and fired indiscriminately, not only at the Nationalists, but at the men, women, and children in the crowd of spectators. Winship refused to budge. Eleven nationalists were accused, tried, and all were acquitted….”
(Maldonado, A. W. Luis Munoz Marin: Puerto Rico’s Democratic Revolution. Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2006, pp. 151-152.)
Marcantonio: “….On Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, in Ponce, the second largest city in Puerto Rico, the police forces fired with machine guns, rifles, and pistols into a crowd of marching Nationalists. Seventeen were killed, more than 200 wounded. The Nationalists were going to hold a meeting and a parade in Ponce on March 21. The mayor, Tormes, issued a permit. One hour before the time set for the parade, and when the demonstrators were ready to march, the mayor canceled the permit on frivolous grounds. As Winship pointed out in a statement issued after the massacre, the parade was called off by the mayor at the request of Governor Blanton Winship and Police Chief Colonel Orbeta.
“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 government had been planning action in Ponce. Chief of Police Guillermo Soldevilla, with 14 policemen, placed himself in front of the paraders; 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 Borinquena, the national song, was being played, began to march. Immediately they were fired upon for 15 minutes by the police from the four flanks. The victims fell down without an opportunity to defend themselves. Even after the street was covered with dead bodies policemen continued firing. More than 200 were wounded; several were killed. Men, women, and children, Nationalists and non-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 the reporters how a Nationalist was murdered in cold blood by a policeman, after the shooting, in his own arms.
“A 7-year-old girl, Georgina Maldonado, while running to a nearby church, was shot through the back. 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 was a member of the Republican Party, and while running away was clubbed twice on her head by a policeman. 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. 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. About 150 of the demonstrators were arrested immediately afterward, several of them being 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 Mayaguez.
“The above is not a description of the Ponce events by a Puerto Rican Nationalist. It is from a speech of Representative John T. Bernard, of Minnesota, in Congress and appeared in the Congressional Record of April 14, 1937….
“Arthur Garfield Hays, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, went to Puerto Rico and investigated the Palm Sunday massacre, and his conclusion as reported in the report of the American Civil Liberties Union was as follows:
“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. .. However, the photographs that were brought to Secretary Ickes by a committee consisting, among others, of former Congressman Bernard, of Minnesota, and myself, photographs of children shot in the back and of police wantonly firing on unarmed people from four sides, could not be ignored. What did the tyrant do? Instead of ceasing the terror, he continued it; and immediately had arrested the friends of people who had been killed, on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. Two trials were held. The first trial resulted in a mistrial, and in the second trial the defendants were acquitted….
“An indignant public opinion forced the Government to convene the grand jury, which… bitterly assailed the practices of the police and tried to determine the responsibility, if any, of the Governor….They left the door open for further inquiries. Governor Winship got the law (providing for investigation and indictment of public officers, including the Governor, by a grand jury) repealed soon afterward. So that at the time of the Ponce massacre, denounced in this House by Congressman John T. Bernard on April 14, 1937, in the brilliant and moving speech which appears in the Congressional Record of that date, page 4499, and to which I referred above, the district judges of Ponce denied a petition made by prominent citizens of that community, who represented every sector of public life, when they asked for the convening of a grand jury to investigate the case. As the law now stands, the citizens are helpless when the aggression originates with the top public officials, because the prosecutors are appointed by and are to a great extent responsible to the Governor….
“Ex-Governor Blanton Winship, of Puerto Rico, was summarily removed by the President of the United States on May 12, 1939. I had filed charges against Mr. Winship with the President during two visits that I had with him, and subsequently, on April 27, 1939, I wrote a letter to the President filing additional charges in support of my request for the removal of Mr. Winship. During my visits at the Executive Office of the President of the United States I informed him of many acts of misfeasance as well as nonfeasance, among which were the tyrannical acts of the Governor in depriving the people of Puerto Rico of their civil rights, the corruption and rackets that existed, and were made possible only by the indulgence of the governor, and the extraordinary waste of the people’s money….My written, as well as oral, charges were transmitted by the President to Secretary Ickes, of the Department of the Interior.
“On May 11, 1939, I took the floor in the House of Representatives, objecting to exempting Puerto Rico from the provisions of the wage-and-hour amendment, and in that speech I made an attack on Mr. Winship, and revealed that I had made charges against him, and stated specifically that the charges were being investigated by the Department of the Interior at the request of the President of the United States. The following day the President made the announcement that Admiral William D. Leahy would succeed Mr. Winship as Governor of Puerto Rico. Up to and including the time that this terse announcement was made, Mr. Winship had not resigned. Even a school child knows that the announcement of one’s successor before one has resigned is tantamount to dismissal. Blanton Winship was dismissed by the President of the United States.” (Marcantonio, Vito (NY Congressman). “Five Years of Tyranny in Puerto Rico,” 8-14-1939 speech.[3])
Marino: “San Juan, Puerto Rico – When Gov. Pedro Rossello publicly apologized earlier this month to victims of state spying here, he hoped to close a painful chapter in the history of this U.S. commonwealth…..
“Background….1937: 37 killed in anti-U.S. protest in Ponce….” (Marino, John. “Apology Isn’t Enough for Puerto Rico Spy Victims.” Washington Post, 12-28-1999, p. A3.)
Rosado, Puerto Rico Encyclopedia: “The Ponce Massacre, which took place on March 21, 1937, was one of the most violent episodes in the history of the twentieth century in Puerto Rico. It was called a massacre by the very commission that studied the facts. On that date, the Partido Nacionalista (Nationalist Party) organized a march in the streets of the City of Ponce to protest the jailing of its leaders. The activity was announced in El Mundo newspaper on March 19, indicating that the meeting of the Nationalists in Ponce and adjacent areas would be at 2 pm in front of the Nationalist Party Headquarters in Ponce.
“That morning, Colonel Orbeta, the chief of police, traveled to Ponce with the intention of prohibiting the Nationalist activity. He interviewed attorneys Parra Capó and Parra Toro, the military assistant to Governor Blanton Winship, and Captain Felipe Blanco, the head of the Police Force in Ponce, to whom he gave orders to stop the march. These arrangements made, on his return to San Juan Colonel Orbeta met with the governor and Mr. José Ramón Quiñones, an assistant to the governor, at Fortaleza (the Governor’s mansion), where they decided that the parade was military in character and therefore illegal. It was then that Colonel Orbeta decided to order reinforcements to Ponce from different towns around the island.
“A week before, the Nationalists had requested authorization for the march from Mayor José Tormos Diego, who was away from Puerto Rico on vacation and had left Dr. William Gelpí as acting mayor. Gelpí authorized Casimiro Berenguer, the military instructor of the Cadetes de la República to disseminate information to the effect that permission had to be granted by Mayor Tormos Diego. The Nationalists had filed the request despite the fact that the laws of Puerto Rico allowed parades or public acts to be held without the need to ask permission. When Tormos Diego returned to Ponce on March 20, Nationalists Plinio Graciany and Lorenzo Piñeiro visited him at his home, and the mayor promised them that he would issue permission on Sunday morning. Early Sunday morning, as police reinforcements armed with rifles and machine guns were arriving in Ponce, two Nationalists went to the office of the mayor for the permit that they were promised.
“About noon, Orbeta met with the mayor and Colonel Blanco, the head of the police force in Ponce, and he questioned the permit that was given to the Nationalists, alleging that the parade was military in character. The mayor made it clear to him that the Nationalist leaders were responsible people and that nothing would happen. Orbeta told him that the Nationalists from Mayagüez would be coming armed, and he said he would hold the mayor responsible for any blood spilled. Tormos Diego then promised to speak to the Nationalists so that they would cancel the activity – revoking the permit that he had just given – because it was Holy Week, thus pleasing the priests who had asked him to do so. The document revoking the permit warned that the police would not allow the activity. The Nationalists, after talking with Mayor Tormos Diego and Colonel Orbeta himself, decided to go forward with the activity.
“The police under the command of Guillermo Soldevila, the head of the force in Juana Díaz, and Felipe Blanco cordoned off the demonstrators, using expert marksmen mobilized from all the police stations in Puerto Rico. The police covered the corner where the Nationalist Council was located on Marina Street, between Aurora and Jobos Streets. Meanwhile, the Cadets of the Republic and the Nurses Corps organized in three columns. The cadets wore a uniform of white trousers, black shirts, black caps, and on the left sleeve, a Calatravian cross. Leading the column was cadet captain Tomás López de Victoria. The young women formed up as the nurses corps, wearing white uniforms and marching behind the young men. Bringing up the rear was the band, made up of five or six musicians.
“Nearby, on Aurora and Marina Streets, almost in front of where the Council was located, the families of the cadets came together with other Nationalists who had come to see the parade. The band played “La Borinqueña,” and the captain of the Cadet Corps, Tomás López de Victoria, immediately gave the order to step off. At the precise moment when they were about to do so, Soldevila raised a whip, put it to the chest of López de Victoria, and told him that they could not march. Police officer Armando Martínez ran from the corner in front of the Nationalist Council toward Marina Street, firing once into the air, which unleashed volleys of shots from arms of different calibers. Eight people died instantly and later others died, for a total of nineteen. Police officers Ceferino Loyola and Eusebio Sánchez died victims of the crossfire of their fellows. Georgina Maldonado, a 13 year old girl, an employee of a nearby gas station, José Antonio Delgado, a member of the National Guard who was passing by, and fourteen Nationalists also died.
“Shortly before the shooting, Colonel Orbeta and Captain Blanco inspected the area where the demonstration was to be held, then left in a police vehicle to drive around Ponce, returning to the area after the shooting had ceased and ordering the arrest of everyone in the vicinity. They went into the building where the Council was located, where several wounded persons were also arrested. In addition to the dead, there were some 140 to 200 wounded. The number is not certain, as many of the wounded ordinary citizens and Nationalists were not taken to hospitals but sought assistance from private physicians. The Nationalist prisoners in the La Princesa Prison in San Juan learned of what had happened in Ponce from the radio of a neighbor who lived near the prison, who turned up the volume so that they could hear.
“On March 22, Governor Winship, in statements to the press, said that the Nationalists were responsible for the tragedy. Attorney Rafael V. Pérez Marchand, the district attorney, managed to carry out an extensive investigation of the facts and ordered the arrest of four police officers for the crime of murder and 23 Nationalists for participation in the riot. Winship’s government exerted pressure on the district attorney to amend the report and Pérez Marchand resigned his post after concluding the report of his investigation.
“A number of citizens of Ponce requested that the American Civil Liberties Union investigate what happened on March 21. An Investigating Commission on the causes of the Ponce Massacre was established, presided over by Atty. Arthur Garfield Hays, a US citizen delegated by the ACLU, with Emilio S. Belaval, the president of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño (Puerto Rico Atheneum), Mariano Acosta Velarde, the president of the Puerto Rico Bar Association, Fulgencio Piñero, the president of the Teachers Association, Francisco M. Zeno, the editor of La Correspondencia newspaper, Antonio Ayuso Valdivieso, the director of El Imparcial newspaper, José Dávila Ricci, of El Mundo newspaper, and Manuel Díaz García, a former president of the Medical Association. The commission carried out an exhaustive investigation of the facts and in its report placed the blame on Governor Winship. It referred to the happenings as the Ponce Massacre.
“The commission found that the cadets were not carrying arms, that the police surrounded the cadets, enclosing them on all four sides, and that they did not leave room for the crowd to seek protection. However, the government accused Nationalists Luis Castro Quesada, Julio Pinto Gandía, Lorenzo Piñeiro, the acting president and general secretary of the Nationalist Party, Plinio Graciani, Tomás López de Victoria, Casimiro Berenguer, Martín González Ruíz, Elifaz Escobar, Luis Angel Correa, Santiago González, and Orlando Colón Leyro of murder. In the trial set for February 1938, the Nationalists were defended by Attys. Ernesto Ramos Antonini, Felipe Colón Díaz, Víctor Gutiérrez Franqui, and Miguel Bahamonde. Attys. Francisco García Quiñones and Pedro Rodríguez Serra were the district attorneys, and Judge Roberto H. Todd, Jr., the presiding judge. The jury could not come to an agreement and all the Nationalists were absolved.” (Rosado, Marisa. Puerto Rico Encyclopedia. “The Ponce Massacre (1937).” 9-9-2010.)
Sources
Black, Timothy. When a Heart Turns Rock Solid: The Lives of Three Puerto Rican Brothers on and off the Streets. Pantheon Books, 2009, p. 5. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=XpIRXGp7OaQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Democracy Now! “Remembering Puerto Rico’s Ponce Massacre.” 3-22-2007. Accessed 4-14-2013 at: http://www.democracynow.org/2007/3/22/remembering_puerto_ricos_ponce_massacre
Gonzalez, Juan. Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (rev.). Penguin, 2011.
Maldonado, A. W. Luis Munoz Marin: Puerto Rico’s Democratic Revolution. Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2006. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=aP2rD2wtmVMC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Marcantonio, Vito (NY Congressman). “Five Years of Tyranny in Puerto Rico,” 8-14-1939 speech. Accessed 4-14-2013 at: http://www.cheverote.com/reviews/marcantonio.html
Marino, John. “Apology Isn’t Enough for Puerto Rico Spy Victims.” Washington Post, 12-28-1999, p. A3. Accessed 4-14-2013: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/puertorico/carpetas.htm
Navarro, Sharon A. and Armando Xaviar Mejia (eds.) Latino Americans and Political Participation. ABC-CLIO, 2004. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=CKf8_WF7ppEC&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Rosado, Marisa. Puerto Rico Encyclopedia. “The Ponce Massacre (1937).” 9-9-2010. Accessed 4-14-2013 at: http://www.enciclopediapr.org/ing/article.cfm?ref=06102005
[1] Cites: Mathews, Thomas G. Puerto Rican Politics and the New Deal. University of Florida Press, 1960, p. 314.
[2] Ernest Gruening, Administrator of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, 1935-1937.
[3] The entire speech is in the Congressional Record, 8-14-1939.