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).
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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
Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group. The most common forms are religious persecution, racism, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these term ...
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
ationalistparty 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