The Museo de la Masacre de Ponce (the Ponce Massacre Museum) is a human rights museum and historic building in Ponce, Puerto Rico. It depicts the history and events surrounding the Ponce massacre, which occurred in broad daylight on Palm Sunday in 1937. The museum is housed inside the building where the event itself occurred, with one of its sections devoted to the Nationalist leader, Pedro Albizu Campos. It also documents the blacklisting of Puerto Rican Nationalists performed by the United States, as well as hosting a considerable number of photos from the Nationalist era.
The museum is listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in as Casa de la Masacre (the Massacre House).
Background
After the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898, the island's political status within the U.S. became a subject of ardent conversation within Puerto Rican political circles. A number of political parties sprung up as a result, with platforms based on their desired relationship to the U.S.
The three basic party options were independence, statehood, and commonwealth. The independence movement came to be symbolized by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.
Winship's persecution
In the early 1930s, concurrent with the growing sentiment for Nationalism and independence in Puerto Rico, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt assigned a new governor for the island: a former U.S. Army General named Blanton Winship.
General Winship recruited a U.S. military intelligence officer (and scion of the Riggs National Bank) named E. Francis Riggs as his Chief of Police and governed for five years (1934–1939). During this time he engaged in "an open struggle against the Nationalist Party and a direct persecution of its leadership." Consistent with this open and intense political hostility, "in October 1935 the State Police in the town of Rio Piedras murdered four [Nationalist] party members" at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras, a neighboring town next to San Juan. This was known as the Río Piedras massacre.
According to Jose E. Ayoroa Santaliz in his work Museo Casa de la Masacre de Ponce: En conmemoracion del Primer Cincuentenario de la Masacre de Ponce (Ponce Massacre Museum: March 2011), page 2, the Insular Ponce "assassinated" the four men in a pre-meditated fashion and under the direction of the U.S.-appointed Puerto Rico police chief the American colonel Francis Riggs. "The Nationalists responded by killing the State Chief of Police, Colonel Francis Riggs, on February 23, 1936." The two young Nationalists responsible were captured and executed at the police barracks in San Juan without a trial, with no law enforcement officer ever being brought to trial for their executions.
Riggs' death provoked General Winship's outrage. He ordered police raids on every Nationalist Party office in the entire island, with the express purpose of finding evidence that would incriminate the party members in the assassination of Police Chief Riggs - however, no evidence was ever found.
Despite the absence of any evidence, Winship's government brought charges of "sedition" against Albizu Campos and the other party leaders. Albizu Campos and the others were found not guilty by a jury consisting mostly of native Puerto Ricans. However, General Winship arranged for a retrial to take place, this time with a 10-2 majority of North Americans on the jury. Conviction was handily achieved, sentencing Albizu to ten years and the others to six years in the Atlanta federal penitentiary. The elimination of the party's leadership, however, stopped neither the Nationalist militancy nor Winship's repression, a situation that resulted in the violent event that took place in Ponce in 1937.
The parade
The Ponce Committee of the Nationalist Party had its headquarters at 32 Marina Street. This was a corner property that bordered Aurora Street, and had been used as the committee's meeting hall for over 10 years. In 1937, the local committee made plans for the annual celebration of the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico, which had taken place on March 22, 1873. The date chosen for the 64th anniversary commemoration of the abolition of slavery was March 21, 1937.
The Nationalists had received a permit for the parade, which was to take place on Palm Sunday, from Ponce Mayor José Tormos Diego's office. But at the eleventh hour, Governor Winship instructed the new Insular Police Chief, Colonel Enrique de Orbeta, to contact Mayor Tormos and have him cancel the parade permit. He also ordered Orbeta to increase the police force in the southern city, and to stop, "by any means necessary," any demonstration conducted by the Nationalists in Ponce.