Parade

The virus of violence filtered into the peaceful island of Puerto Rico one October day less than two years ago.

Police stopped a car carrying five young men to an anti-Nationalist mass meeting and were flabbergasted when the youths opened fire. When one policeman and four of the youths, members of the tiny Independence Party, lay dead, the car was found to be loaded with bombs. Then five months later Colonel Francis Riggs, Insular Chief of Police, was assassinated by two young Nationalists as he drove home from Sunday morning mass. The two assassins were seized by police and shot two hours later in the police station when they "tried to seize arms." Last autumn Santiago Iglesias, Puerto Rican Commissioner to the U. S., was wounded in the arm by a Nationalist while he was delivering a campaign speech (TIME, March 2, 1936 et seq.}. Last week Puerto Rico's dread disease of violence had its bloodiest irruption to date.

In the city of Ponce, across the island from San Juan, Nationalists applied for a permit to parade as a protest against the imprisonment of eight of their leaders, including Chief Firebrand Pedro Albizu y Campos, who was sentenced to ten years in Atlanta penitentiary after conviction for sedition.* Mayor Ormes of Ponce issued a permit. Colonel Enrique de Orbeta, insular police chief, promptly canceled it. The Nationalists announced they would parade anyhow. The paraders came in contact with police near Pila Hospital in the heart of Ponce. A shot (fired by a Nationalist, according to police) broke the Sunday afternoon calm. The police opened fire with riot and submachine guns, as well as tear gas. When the short battle ended, several thousand onlookers were scrambling to safety, 50 wounded writhed on the pavement, and ten, including one policeman, lay still in death.

*Last month their conviction was affirmed by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, and appeal to the Supreme Court is in prospect. The evidence against them was the finding of a loaded rifle, several wooden guns for drilling recruits, a bomb and much literature urging revolt against U. S. oppression.

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