Puerto Rican Nationalist Terrorism

Momentum Lost and Regained

The cycle of nationalist uprisings, government repression, and nationalist retaliation continued through the 1930s. Campos was arrested in March 1936; Puerto Rico witnessed massive demonstrations after his conviction, culminating in what is known as the Ponce Massacre in February 1937, where police killed 30 civilians and wounded more than 150 others. That June, nationalists tried to kill both the judge who presided over Campos's trial and Puerto Rico's resident commissioner. However, without Campos's leadership, internal strife caused the movement to lose much of its momentum.

The 1940s were marked by less militant political actions. By 1945, a good portion of the nationalist party had drifted toward the moderate “common-wealth” status, helping elect Luis Munoz Marin, leader of the Popular Democratic Party, as the first governor of Puerto Rico in 1948. Marin went to Washington, having formulated a “temporary” commonwealth status for Puerto Rico in exchange for a ratified constitution for Puerto Rico. By the end of the decade, Campos was released from jail, and extreme nationalism began to resurface.

On October 30, 1950, U.S. forces put down uprisings of more than 2,000 nationalists all over Puerto Rico. Two days later, nationalists struck, for the first time, on continental U.S. soil. Oscar Collazo and Grisilio Torresola, two NPPR members, tried to assassinate U.S. president Harry S. Truman. As the two men approached the Blair House, Truman's temporary residence, a gunfight erupted between them and Truman's guards, leaving Torresola and one police officer dead. Investigators found a letter from Campos on Torresola's body, and though the letter did not refer explicitly to the assassination, it was enough to convict Campos a second time. On March 4, 1954, militant nationalists struck again, carrying Puerto Rican flags they stormed the U.S. House of Representatives armed with guns, wounding five members of Congress before running out of ammunition. By the end of the 1950s, as in the 1930s, the Nationalist movement had again lost momentum, splitting into student organizations and “grouplets” such as Accion Patriotica Revolucionaria (APR) and Movimiento 27 de Marzo.

The Faln and More

The antiwar and anti-imperialist movements that marked the late 1960s, coupled with the demise of consensus on Puerto Rico's commonwealth status, led to a revival of militant Puerto Rican nationalism in the 1970s. In October 1974, Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN) announced its presence in the United States with a communiqué claiming responsibility for bombings in New York City and Newark, New Jersey. In January 1975, the FALN perpetrated one of its bloodiest attacks, the bombing of Fraunces Tavern, in which four died and more than 50 were injured. As the FALN continued to bomb, in August 1978, another militant nationalist group, the Macheteros (“machete wielders” in Spanish), sent its first communiqué, claiming responsibility for the death of a police officer in Puerto Rico. The two groups joined forces in September 1979, in solidarity for Puerto Rican independence by any means necessary. That October, the FALN and the Macheteros detonated bombs in Puerto Rico, New York, and Chicago.

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