José Angel Gutiérrez ● STILL BASHING BORICUAS—Part I ● Our Voices/Nuestras Voces

STILL BASHING BORICUAS—Part I

José Angel Gutiérrez

joseangelgutierrezbooks.com

voiceofthemainland.blogspot.com/voces-index

This Friday, May 15th, Boston will be the site of a new Puerto Rican Cultural Center named La Casa. It will be a tribute to the resilience of our cultural cousins los Boricuas. They persevered and endured non-stop harassment and repression form the US government for centuries. Many fled to the US to avoid hunger and poverty but that did stop their persecution. The ones that have stayed on the island colony continue to be abused in so many ways by the US government.

The book wrote on this history of Puerto Ricans or Boricuas, is Bashing Boricuas:The FBI’s War Against Independistas. Briefly, it is about how the US militarily took possession of Puerto Rico. First, the US waged war on Spain beginning on April 21 until August back in 1898. The US took also possession of many Caribbean islands, Cuba, Republica Dominicana, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Two months, later on October 18, 1989, the US formally imposed its rule over Puerto Rico. Second, the problem was Puerto Ricans had other ideas none of which was to be ruled over by racist Gringos from the US. A principal leader of a major revolt during the last century was Pedro Albizu Campos. He proclaimed the US occupation under the Treaty of Paris of 1899 was null and void. He and others rejected the Monroe Doctrine issued by the US since 1820 that the Americas were the domain of the US.

In 1912, Albizu Campos came to the US to study Chemical Engineering at the University of Vermont. He then joined the US Army at the outbreak of World War I and rose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant with the 375th Regiment, an all-Black unit. He was classified as being Black. Honorably discharged in 1919, he returned to the US to study law at Harvard Law School. He graduated with honors and the highest grade point average in 1921. Within a few months of his return to Puerto Rico, he and others began a political party, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico in 1924. When repeated attempts at electoral strategies and peaceful resolution failed, Albizu Campos and his political group turned to revolution in 1930.

Among the first skirmishes with US military and Puerto Rican affiliates of the US was what became known as the Rio Piedras Massacre; the attack on the city of Jayuya by the noted female revolutionary, Blanca Canales; the Utuado Massacre, and the attack on the governor’s mansion, La Fortaleza in San Juan. Blanca Canales was sentenced to life in prison and confined in Alderson, West Virginia alongwith Lolita Lebrón and Rosa Collazo. Albizu Campos, despite not being present at any of these confrontations, was indicted by a US Grand Jury on April 3, 1936 for these violent attacks. At trial, the first jury acquitted him and others. A second jury was impaneled comprised of 10 Gringos and 2 Puerto Ricans. They convicted Albizu Campos quickly. He began serving his sentence in Atlanta, Georgia. All totaled, he spent 26 years of this life in prison for his activities aiming for Puerto Rican independence. A year later on Plam Sunday, the police killed unarmed protestors demanding release of Albizu Campos. The next year more protestors were killed by police. They were protesting the US invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898. During those horrible years during his confinement in 1937, 1950, and finally in 1954, he was subjected to torture and finally murder by radiation. He died on April 21, 1965 shortly after his pardon.

FBI in Puerto Rico

In November 1939, J. Edgar Hoover sent Julio “Jay” Lopez, born and raised in Biloxi, Mississippi, to head up the first FBI office in Puerto Rico. Under Hoover’s orders, Lopez began a systematic and sustained program of surveillance on all Independistas and other dissidents. The Independistas continued their revolutionary actions against the US government attacking the Blair House in 1950; the attack on Congress in 1954; and as late as 1984 the hijacking robbery of a Wells Fargo armored truck by Los Macheteros. Since then, the FBI and US military have maintained a counterintelligence program on the island and US Puerto Rican activists. What they have been seeking all these years is their independence from the US which they once enjoyed briefly.