Río Piedras massacre

Police shooting of supporters of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party

The Río Piedras massacre occurred on October 24, 1935, at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. Puerto Rico Police officers confronted and opened fire on supporters of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Four Nationalist Party members were killed, and one police officer was wounded during the shooting.

In 1931, the U. S. appointed Governor of Puerto Rico, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., named Dr. Carlos E. Chardón as Chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico. He was the first Puerto Rican to have this position. In 1935, Chardón initiated a project based on the ideas of Luis Muñoz Marín, who at the time was a Senator in the Puerto Rican legislature and a member of the Liberal Party of Puerto Rico. It was known as the Reconstruction of Puerto Rico Project. The plan, which was within the New Deal criteria established by U. S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, was well received and became known as Plan Chardón. Pedro Albizu Campos, president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, knew that Roosevelt had been implicated as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in helping Secretary Albert Fall of the Department of Interior to arrange for private leasing of Navy oil fields, in what became known as the Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s. On October 23, 1935, a group of students at the university who supported Chardón began to collect signatures for a petition to declare Albizu Campos "Student Enemy Number One." In turn, a protest against the group by the pro Nationalist faction of students denounced Chardón and the Liberal Party as agents of the United States. An eyewitness, Isolina Rondón, testified that she saw the police officers shooting at the victims and heard one police officer screaming, "not to let them escape alive." Her testimony was ignored, and no charges were filed against the police officers. The Río Piedras massacre left four men dead.

At the time of the massacre, the top ranking U. S. appointed police chief on the island was a former U. S. Army Colonel named Elisha Francis Riggs. Colonel Elisha Francis Riggs was born in Georgetown in northwest Washington, D. C., and was appointed Chief of Police of Puerto Rico in 1933, by Blanton Winship, the U. S. appointed governor of Puerto Rico. He was an unpopular police chief, stemming from his decisions to repress the growing organized labor movement among sugar cane workers and the Nationalist Pro Independence Movement. Since the entire Puerto Rico Police took their orders from Colonel Riggs, the Nationalist Party considered him responsible for the massacre. On February 23, 1936, Colonel Riggs was assassinated by the Nationalists Hiram Rosado and Elías Beauchamp, both members of the Cadets of the Republic, the paramilitary wing of the Nationalist Party. They attacked and fatally shot the police chief as he was returning home after attending Mass at San Juan's Cathedral. Rosado and Beauchamp were arrested and were either subjected to summary execution or shot while attempting to escape at Puerto Rico Police headquarters in San Juan. Before his death, Beauchamp posed, giving a military salute for a news photographer. News of the assassination spread throughout the United States. The Puerto Rican Senator, Luis Muñoz Marín, who was in Washington, D. C., at the time, was asked by Ernest Gruening, the administrator of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (1935–1937), to publicly condemn Col. Riggs's assassination. Senator Muñoz Marín declined unless he was also allowed to condemn the Puerto Rico Police for allegedly executing the two assassins without trial. After Col. Riggs's assassination, many Nationalist Party leaders were imprisoned. Members of the Puerto Rican independence movement came under greater scrutiny and prosecution. Among the leaders arrested were Pedro Albizu Campos, Juan Antonio Corretjer, Luis F. Velazquez, Clemente Soto Vélez, Erasmo Velazquez, Julio H. Velazquez, Juan Gallardo Santiago, Juan Juarbe Juarbe, and Pablo Rosado Ortiz. They were later released on $10,000 bail.