Sublime

Manuel Quezon, the president of the Philippine Senate and the indispensable power broker in the colony. Quezon was a master politician, adept at playing all sides at once. He had served on Aguinaldo’s staff (at age twenty) during the war, but after Aguinaldo’s surrender, he’d spied for the colonial government and helped bring the holdouts to heel.

José Carlos Mariátegui

Waving the Rhoads letter, Albizu led the Nationalist Party in the 1932 elections. He fared poorly, although the pro-independence Liberals did very well. It was Albizu’s first and only attempt at electoral politics. Later that year, he drafted a constitution for the Republic of Puerto Rico and created a Liberation Army. The “army” didn’t appear to h

Under the appointed mainland officials served elected Puerto Rican ones, less powerful but much cannier about local affairs. Chief among these was Luis Muñoz Marín, the leader of the island’s dominant party, who towered over the political scene from the 1940s through the 1960s. John Gunther deemed him “the most important living Puerto Rican.”