War Against
All Puerto Ricans by Nelson Denis, 2015, Excerpts
On January 12, 1934, President
Roosevelt appointed General Blanton Winship, a retired army general, as
governor of Puerto Rico. General Winship was not sent to Puerto Rico to
negotiate. He was sent to crush labor strikes, subdue Nationalists, and kill
them if necessary. It didn’t take long before he did just that.
From the moment he arrived,
General Winship proceeded to militarize the entire island. He urged the
building of a naval air base and created new, vigorous police-training camps.
He added hundreds of men to the insular police force, equipping every unit with
machine guns, tear gas, and riot gear, and painted their cars a suggestive new
color: blood red. The new police uniforms resembled those of WWII military
officers. The FBI initiated round-the-clock surveillance of the Nationalist
leadership. An additional 115 Insular Police were armed with carbines,
submachine guns, and grenades. Nationalists were imprisoned for “incitement to
riot” against the United States.
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