Puerto Rican Women Nationalist Vs. U.S. Colonialism: an Exploration of Their Conditions and Struggles in Jail and Court

Chicago-Kent Law Review Volume 87 Issue 2 Women's Legal History: A Global Article 9 Perspective April 2012 Puerto Rican Women Nationalist vs. U.S. Colonialism: An Exploration of Their Conditions and Struggles in Jail and Court Margaret Pour Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview Part of the Law and Gender Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Margaret Pour, Puerto Rican Women Nationalist vs. U.S. Colonialism: An Exploration of Their Conditions and Struggles in Jail and Court, 87 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 463 (2012). Available at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol87/iss2/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Chicago-Kent Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. PUERTO RICAN WOMEN NATIONALISTS VS. U.S. COLONIALISM: AN EXPLORATION OF THEIR CONDITIONS AND STRUGGLES IN JAIL AND IN COURT MARGARET POWER* INTRODUCTION In this paper I examine several Puerto Rican women who were members of the pro-independence Nationalist Party and the United States legal system during the 1950s. The relationship between them was the result of a direct confrontation between two opposing forces: these women's determination to end what they considered to be the U.S. government's illegal occupation of Puerto Rico and the U.S. government's refusal to relinquish its control of the island. My exploration of the legal relationship necessarily involves a discussion of the political relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. The inevi- table and unequal confrontation between the Nationalist Party and the United States government took place in two successive moments, which I briefly describe below. In both, the U.S. government triumphed, at least militarily, over the Nationalist Party. The U.S. victory led to the arrest and extended imprisonment of thirteen female members of the Nationalist Party, whose story is the subject of this paper. What follows is a preliminary discussion of this topic and these women. I. BACKGROUND In 1898 the United States took possession of Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, and Guam, as a result of its victory over Spain in the Spanish American War. Puerto Rico, unlike the other former Spanish colonies, became (and remains) a direct U.S. colony. In 1917 the U.S. * Margaret Power is a Professor of History at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chica- go, Illinois. She is the author of Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964-1973 and co-editor of Right-Wing Women around the World: From Con- servatives to Extremists and New Perspectives on the Transnational Right. She is currently work- ing on a study of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. She would like to thank Elnaz Moshfeghian for her research on numerous FBI files. She skillfully located information about many of the women discussed in this paper. She would also like to thank the College of Science and Letters at IIT for awarding Elnaz a Summer Undergraduate Research stipend. 463 464 CHICAGO-KENT LAW REVIEW [Vol 87:2 government made Puerto Ricans citizens, although to this day those who reside on the island cannot vote in any federal elections. They were, however, drafted and served in the U.S. armed forces. In 1922, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party (PN) was founded.1 During most of the 1920s the party promoted cultural identity, intel- lectual discussions, and an ambivalent but fundamentally friendly relationship with the United States. The 1930 election of Pedro Albizu Campos as president of the Nationalist Party radically transformed the party's politics, mission, and relationship to the United States. Hence- forth, the PN publicly and vociferously rejected U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico and actively sought to end U.S. domination of the island.2 In 1932 the PN declared that it would no longer cooperate with the United States, and in 1935 "it declared war on the Empire."3 The U.S. government, for its part, viewed the Nationalist Party with hostility and employed various measures to weaken and eliminate the party, ranging from surveillance to imprisonment and even assassination.4 The U.S. government also employed political means to undermine support for independence, both on the island and globally. It spon- sored two significant political changes in Puerto Rico beginning in the late 1940s. International sentiment against colonialism increased fol- lowing the end of World War II and the defeat of fascism. The Cold War erupted simultaneously with the global push for national liberation. The U.S. government sought to position itself as the leader of the "free world," but its colonial possession of Puerto Rico generated skepticism and weakened its ability to do so. The alterations in Puerto Rico's status and the election of a Puerto Rican government would allay, if not dispel, questions about the U.S government's commitment to democra- cy, or so the latter hoped. Thus, the U.S. government worked with forces on the island to change Puerto Rico's status and, at least nominally, granted the island more self-government. In 1948 Puerto Ricans elect- ed their governor, Luis Mufioz Marin, for the first time. Second, the U.S. Congress adopted Law 600, which gave Puerto Rico the right to create 1. MINI SEiJO BRUNO, LA INSURRECCI)N NACIONALISTA ENPUERTO Rico, 1950, at 12 (Rio Piedras: Editorial Edil 1989). 2. Luis ANGEL FERRAO, PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS Y EL NACIONALISMO PUERTORRIQUEFIO 39, 48-49 (San Juan: Editorial Cultural 1990). 3. SEiljO BRUNO, supra note 1, at 13. 4. See generally PUERTO Rico UNDER COLONIAL RULE: POLITICAL PERSECUTION AND THE QUEST FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (Ramon Bosque-P6rez & Jos6 Javier Col6n Morera eds., Univ. of N.Y. Press 2006) [hereinafter PUERTO Rico UNDER COLONIAL RULE] (especially chapters one and four). 20121 PUERTO RICAN WOMEN NATIONALISTS 465 its own constitution, and opened the door to making Puerto Rico a "Free Associated State."s The Nationalist Party considered this law a direct threat to the right of Puerto Rico to obtain its independence and strongly urged all patriotic Puerto Ricans to oppose it. As Pedro Albizu Campos said on October 27, 1950, [t]hey [the U.S. government] are attempting to establish a legal basis in the eyes of the world to dismiss the accusation made by the Na- tionalist Party that after fifty-two years [of U.S. colonial rule] we are no longer Puerto Ricans, rather we are Yankee citizens. They call on us to give up our right to be Puerto Rican.6 Three days later, on October 30, 1950, units of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party attacked institutions representing the U.S. colonial government across Puerto Rico. Fighting broke out in eleven towns across Puerto Rico and in San Juan. According to Mifti Seijo Bruno, 140 Nationalists actively participated in the fighting. Of the 140, 137 were men and three were women: Blanca Canales, Carmen P6rez, and Doris Torresola.7 Blanca Canales led the attack in Jayuya after the designated commander, Carlos Irizarry Rivera, was killed. In Jayuya, the National- ist Party took over the town and held it for three days. After the Na- tionalists captured Jayuya, Canales climbed to the balcony of the Palace Hotel, whereupon she hoisted the Puerto Rican flag, shouted "Viva Puerto Rico Libre!" and declared the Republic of Puerto Rico.8 Carmen P6rez and Doris Torresola served as Pedro Albizu Campos's body- guards and were arrested in San Juan in the general roundup that fol- lowed the insurrection. Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola (Doris Torresola's brother), two members of the Nationalist Party in the United States, traveled from New York City to Washington, D.C. to attempt to kill President Harry Truman on November 1, 1950. Torresola was killed in the attempt and Collazo survived. The police arrested him and the FBI questioned the two men's wives, Rosa Collazo and Carmen Torresola, along with other family members and several dozen members or supporters of the Nationalist Party in New York City. Lydia Collazo, Oscar Collazo's 5. Ivonne Acosta-Lespier, The Smith Act Goes to San Juan: La Mordaza, 1948-1957, in PUERTO Rico UNDER COLONIAL RULE, supra note 4, at 60-61. 6. MARISA ROSADA, LAS LLAMAS DE LA AURORA: ACERCAMIENTO A UNA BIOGRAFA DE PEDRO ALBIzU CAMPOS 335(San Juan: Ediciones Puerto 2006). 7. SEijo BRUNO,supra note 1, at 225-26, 262-63. 8. BLANCA CANALES, LA CONSTITUci6N ES LA REVOLUCI6N 25-29, 39-40 (San Juan: Comith de Estudios, Congreso Nacional Hostosiano, 1997); HERIBERTO MARIN TORRES, ERAN ELLoS 122 (Rio Piedras: Ediciones Ciba 2000). 466 CHICAGO-KENTLAW REVIEW [Vol 87:2 stepdaughter, remembers that as the police were taking her mother, her two sisters, and herself off to be questioned, her mother, Rosa Collazo, the treasurer of the party's New York City chapter, said to them, "Don't cry and don't sign anything."9 By November 3rd, the National Guard had defeated the uprising in Puerto Rico. Twenty-one Nationalists and one National Guard were killed, five Nationalists and eleven National Guard wounded; 1,106 Puerto Ricans were arrested in the initial roundup and held for several weeks afterwards.io The majority of those arrested were released soon thereafter. However, as of July 1951, 173 Nationalists were still im- prisoned, seven of whom were women.11 Lolita Lebr6n, easily the most famous Nationalist woman prisoner, was not arrested in Puerto Rico in 1950 but in Washington, D.C.

Load more