Palm Sunday, 1937

On Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, the Nationalist Party organized a peaceful civil march in Ponce, Puerto Rico. The occasion was a commemoration: the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico by the Spanish National Assembly in 1873, a moment the party chose deliberately for its symbolism. The march also carried a present-day purpose, protesting the imprisonment of Pedro Albizu Campos on sedition charges.

Acting under orders from U.S.-appointed governor Blanton Winship, police opened fire on the unarmed marchers, in a crowd that included civilians, cadets, and bystanders alike.

The exact death toll depends on which account you read, and the honest thing is to present both rather than choose one and call it settled. Wikipedia's dedicated entry on the Ponce massacre puts the toll at 17 civilians, one policeman, and one National Guard member dead, with more than 200 wounded. The broader History of Puerto Rico article gives a somewhat different figure: 20 unarmed people dead, including two police officers, with 100 to 200 wounded. Both accounts agree on the essential facts: the toll was grave, and most of the dead, it is reported, were shot in the back as they fled.

According to the History of Puerto Rico article, the shooting began when Guillermo Soldevila, the police chief of nearby Juana Díaz, raised a whip and struck the cadet corps captain Tomás López de Victoria. Officer Armando Martínez then fired a shot in the air, and other officers began firing straight into the crowd, turning a tense scuffle into a massacre within moments.

None of the marchers was armed, a detail confirmed after the events and central to how the event has been remembered since.

The massacre's aftershocks reached beyond that single day. The following year, on the fortieth anniversary of the 1898 invasion, an attack targeted Governor Winship himself at a parade in Ponce, a sign of how deeply the massacre had radicalized parts of the independence movement in its wake.

Sources: Masacre de Ponce; Historia de Puerto Rico. Freeze 2026-08-22.