Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, Imagen de Pedro Albizu Campos, 16.

In early 1942 he opened an after-hours dive bar called Club Nosotros off the corner of Avenida Eduardo Conde and Calle Martino. It was right across the street from the Villa Palmeras Cemetery and, more importantly, just half a mile away from Camp Las Casas.

For Juan it proved what he already knew: that film was the most powerful, and the most dangerous, art form in the world. As

1917, the US Congress passed the Jones-Shafroth Act, which authorized a Puerto Rican bill of rights and bicameral legislature, an elected resident commissioner to the US Congress, and immediate US citizenship for Puerto Ricans.6 Critics of the bill—including the Puerto Rican House

Then on June 27, 1917, Wilson ordered the registration and recruitment of the male inhabitants of Puerto Rico between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one.8

The concept of the film was spectacular: Pancho Villa would star in the movie. Walsh would follow Villa, film his battles as they actually happened, and incorporate them into the film. In exchange, Villa received a $25,000 advance that he used to buy cannons, rifles, horses, coal, dynamite, and ammunition. In this way, to get footage for their epic

Juan served as the (uncredited) assistant director of The Life of General Villa, Raoul Walsh’s first film, the first biopic ever made, and the first feature-length film in American history. The producer was D. W. Griffith, who would direct Birth of a Nation the following year.

And then there was Roosevelt Roads—the largest naval station in the world. Spread out over Vieques Island and the Puerto Rican mainland, it encompassed 32,000 acres, 3 harbors, 9 piers, 1,340 buildings, 110 miles of road, 42 miles of oceanfront, and an 11,000-foot runway.

War Is a Racket confirmed everything