Sublime

Trinidad Oliva era un hombre que picaba alto. Se sentía injustamente postergado por el gobierno. Había estado preso en tiempos de Jacobo Árbenz por conspirar contra el régimen y no tenía la menor simpatía por Castillo Armas, de modo que podía ser una pieza clave para el proyecto.

Muñoz Marín invited Albizu to join him. The two had much in common. They were young, charismatic leaders who spoke English fluently and had attended prestigious mainland universities (Georgetown for Muñoz Marín, Harvard for Albizu). As they talked, they found that their political visions matched. Still, Muñoz Marín noticed a difference in their mot

In December of 1982, the Cuban-born Luis Alvarez, a Miami police officer, shot and killed Neville Johnson Jr., a young Black Caribbean American man, in an Overtown arcade as Johnson was playing a video game. The following conflagration left eighteen dead and shut down more than two hundred businesses. There was no conviction.

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

For Muñoz Marín, Albizu’s long absence from Puerto Rico was a relief. Negotiating with Washington was a lot easier when the Liberation Army wasn’t drilling in the street. Yet Albizu returned to the island in December 1947, and several thousand people greeted him at the dock. Forty cadets from the Liberation Army formed an honor guard around him. Pr

Albizu and Muñoz Marín had gone their separate ways after that dinner. Muñoz Marín joined the government; Albizu, after the violence of the thirties and his conviction for conspiracy, spent more than a decade on the mainland in federal custody.

In 1938 he launched the Partido Popular Democrático, the party he would lead until the end of his career. It campaigned on a slogan of “Bread, Land, and Liberty,” though that last term, liberty, was kept ambiguous. It resonated with the widespread resentment of colonial rule in Puerto Rico, yet it was vague enough to encompass many possibilities. M

Oscar Collazo received a death sentence (later commuted to life in prison). Back on the island, Luis Muñoz Marín assured the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover that he’d do everything in his power to eradicate the “lawless lunatics.” His police rounded up more than a thousand purported nationalists and tried them on various charges for violating the Gag Law. Th