I B B T E M E E K 13 Puerto Rico lie regime of Governor Winship, protecting the sugar investments of 'Wall Street, has been responsible for a virtual civil war there By John Buchanan OT all of your sugar comes from Cuba. campaign of terror and intimidation that is American historians is that, when we grabbed Some comes from Hawaii, some from being carried on by Winship and his clique, the island from Spain, Puerto Rico had al­ N the Philippines, a little from Louisiana. the rough and ready business agents of the ready been granted autonomy. The act had A lot of it comes from Puerto Rico. The next sugar trust. Winship is particularly anxious been signed by the Spanish crown but was not time }'ou put a lump of sugar in your coffee to avoid publicity on this case. yet in force, pending the outcome of the war. think of this. From what news about the trial has come Then the American imperialists stepped in. Think of eleven gallant fighters against im­ through, in the Spanish-language press, it is Puerto Rico is still struggling to win some perialism, lawyers, students, university gradu­ known that eleven out of the twelve jurors form of autonomy. ates, leaders of the Nationalist Party of Puerto are self-declared enemies of independence. Under American rule there were rapid Rico. They have been buried alive for half a (Seven are Republicans, four "Socialists," one economic changes. Small land holdings began year in the medieval fortress of La Princesa, a liberal.) to disappear. Spaniards who held larger tracts in the shadow of the ancient battlements of Perez Marchand, former prosecuting attor­ of sugar lands sailed for home, leaving Ameri­ El Moro in San Juan. They have been held ney (resigned) who conducted the first inves­ can banks to buy up the holdings dirt cheap. under bail totaling a quarter of a million dol­ tigation of the "crime" now being tried, is a Absentee ownership became the rule instead of lars. As this goes to press they have been taken defense witness. the exception. Meanwhile there were "im­ from La Princesa. Hardly had the trial opened when it was provements." The American authorities intro­ Under heavy guard they were rushed across announced that ten more Nationalists had duced modern sanitation and hygiene. The the island. The cars they rode in rolled over been arrested in Guanica, sugar capital of the birth rate went up. It is still up. A high birth mountain roads that reveal vistas of breath­ south coast. Nationalists are being arrested rate means cheap labor. taking beauty, between fields that at this time on every conceivable charge. Sympathizers There were also improvements of the mind. of year breathe the heavy-sweet scent of sugar are being arrested for the crime of collecting The great, benevolent power of the North pre­ cane. They were taken to the tovi^n of Ponce. money for the defense. pared a program of enlightenment for its little, Ponce is one of the oldest towns on the One witness stated that he was not testify­ brown children of the South. "Americani­ island. It is one of the most Spanish. Physi­ ing of his own free will, that he had received zation" was begun on a grand scale. It tried cally, the twentieth century has scarcely a bribe from government agents, and that he to extirpate the Spanish language by forcing touched it. In one of its ancient courtrooms had contributed the sum of the bribe to the Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican teachers to the eleven men have faced a jury made up of defense. teach all their classes in English. plantation managers and cipayos, (A cipayo is This has had several results. First, it has a Puerto Rican who licks the boots of his IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND the war that is rag­ provoked bitter resentment on the part of most American oppressors.) They are being tried ing in Puerto Rico—for it is war as surely as Puerto Ricans. Second, it has produced a for murder. Hitler's "revolution" was war—it is necessary small class of pitiyanquis or cipayos, who today They are being tried in connection with the to go back a few years. are the native apologists for American impe­ brutal police massacre that took place in Ponce The United States acquired Puerto Rico in rialism. Third, it has produced a new, hybrid on March 2i, Palm Sunday. Just how eleven 1898. A fact conveniently forgotten by most English-Spanish dialect to puzzle future ety­ Nationalists, most of whom were not even mologists. present, can be responsible for the slaughter of The rapid expropriation of the native land­ eighteen helpless citizens by the police and owners, first the small and then the big, caughf the wounding of nearly two hundred more is a the Puerto Rican worker between the blades mystery that only Governor Blanton Winship of an economic scissors. Deprived first of land and a few of his police tools can answer. Hun­ and then of his source of home-grown food, dreds of police, scores of G-men, and "ex­ not only did he have to work for the absentee perts" of all descriptions have been working landowner at low wages, but he also had tc for months to prove the connection. import all his food from the United States ai The trial, which began September 13, is shockingly high prices. Nothing was grown an event of major importance. Its causes and in Puerto Rico except export crops. its consequences touch the lives of millions of Cheated of autonomy when the American Americans. Yet you will not find the details imperialists brought them "freedom from the in your local newspapers. slavery of Spain," the Puerto Rican leaders That sounds startling, but the reason is sim­ never ceased to struggle for political freedom. ple." The correspondents of the American Finally, in 1917, they won American citizen­ press in Puerto Rico are Governor Winship's ship. The Jones Act provided for an elected publicity men. Take Harwood Hull. He sup­ legislature with limited powers. It gave plies both the Associated Press and the New Puerto Rico a resident commissioner at Wash­ York Times; and both he and his jroung son ington, whom the Puerto Ricans have to pay are on the Winship payroll. Hull is a prose­ for sitting in Congress without having the cution witness in this trial. privilege of a vote. It left the office of gover­ That is why you see so little news about nor to be filled by appointment by the Presi­ the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. dent of the United States, and the governor That is why you see no news at all about the Buth Gttow was to appoint men to fill most of the key- PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED NX! W MASSES positions in the insular government. This was that of the poorest southern sharecroppers. this bankers' paradise. The danger brought something, but not much. Now it was worse, indescribably worse for the out all the latent fascism. What the Liberty In 1919 a delegation of the Unionista masses of Puerto Rico. And the blessed birth League crowd tried to hide at home, they did Party traveled hopefully to Washington. At rate that had come with American "freedom" not bother to conceal in Puerto Rico. And a hearing before the House Committee on In­ was adding thirty-eight thousand new workers they found their Fiihrer in Major General sular Affairs, they asked for a popularly elected to the unemployed count every single, blessed Blanton Winship, LL.B. and LL.D. Experi­ governor. Began a curious game of pass-the- year. enced in the Philippines and in Liberia, he buck between Washington and San Juan, the The Roosevelt administration, through the knew all the ins and outs of imperialism, A island capital. Our peculiar form of bourgeois Puerto Rican Reconstruction Administration, former judge-advocate general, he knew all democracy supplies a perfect machine for the has allotted between sixty and eighty million the tricks and loopholes of the law. He landed breaking of promises. One administration is dollars to be spent on the island for relief. on the boiling island like a pitcher of ice not bound to keep the rash promises of its pre­ It has been found that, far from relieving the water. decessor. And the Harding regime was noted crisis, this paltry sum will care for only about for its promises. half of the normal, annual increase in popula­ WITH WINSHIP at their head, the insular In 1924 the United States Senate passed a tion. Early in the game, it was easy for the police threw away their kid gloves and bought bill giving Puerto Rico the right to elect its Puerto Ricans to see that government relief a flockxof machine guns. Meetings were bro­ own governor, but no action was taken by the was not the answer. ken up. Nationalists were terrorized. In the House of Representatives. It was easy to see that behind all of Puerto fall of 1935 they killed four Nationalists at a In 1926 the House passed a similar measure, Rico's troubles lay one, big thing: the land student demonstration on the campus of the but the Senate adjourned without taking ac­ monopoly. It was easy to forget that other University of Puerto Rico. tion. By now this gesture has become so fa­ causes were involved, causes equally a part of Persecution drew more and more sympathy miliar that not even the most trusting cipayos the complicated structure of the capitalist sys­ to the Nationalists.