PRLS 1001: Introduction to Puerto Rican and LatinX Studies (Ortíz-Minaya): Week 11: Freedom Struggles under the U.S.A.

Blanca Canales (February 17, 1906 – July 25, 1996)

Attribution: [Miquel Garcia -- esranxer@gmail.com] "Blanca Canales"  (CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 ES)

Blanca Canales (February 17, 1906 – July 25, 1996) was a Puerto Rican nationalist who helped organize the 'Daughters of Liberty' - wing of the women of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico. She was one of the few women in history to lead a revolt against the United States, in what became known as the Jayuya Survey.

Outbreak of Ponce Massacre 1937

Attribution: [Carlos Torres Morales]  "Ponce Massacre" [Public Domain] This work is free of known copyright restrictions.

On March 21, 1937, in his hometown of Ponce, a peaceful march was organized on behalf of Albizu Campos.

It was Palm Sunday. Men, women and children arrived from all over the island, dressed in their Sunday finest, waving palm fronds at each other. A five-piece band started playing La Borinqueña (the Puerto Rican national anthem) as the peaceful march began. And then a shot rang out. -- excerpt from War Against All Puerto Ricans

Pedro Albizu Campos raising his hat to a crowd, 1936.

Pedro Albizu Campos raising his hat to a crowd, 1936.

Attribution: By Associated Press [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The 1937 Parsley Massacre (known in Spanish as el corte (the cutting) and in Kreyòl as the kout kouto-a (the stabbing)

Attribution: [Unknown]  "1937 Parsely Massacre" [Public Domain] This work is free of known copyright restrictions.

The year 2017 marks the eightieth anniversary of the 1937 massacre of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent at the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Orchestrated by the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, the “Parsley Massacre” was a covert military operation designed to ethnically cleanse the border of Haitians and exert the Dominican state’s control over the region. To cover up the systematic slaughter of an estimated fifteen thousand people (p. xv), Dominican soldiers were instructed to use machetes instead of firearms—which is why the massacre is known in Spanish as el corte (the cutting) and in Kreyòl as the kout kouto-a (the stabbing)—and Dominican civilians were forced to participate in the killings. In the aftermath, the Dominican state refused responsibility for the massacre and simultaneously effused anti-Haitian rhetoric and instituted policies to dominicanize the border. -- excerpt from Christina Davidson. Review of Paulino, Edward, Dividing Hispaniola: The Dominican Republic’s Border Campaign against Haiti, 1930-1961. H-Haiti, H-Net Reviews. May, 2017.