Local Power Applied Immediately
The Response to the 1950 Puerto Rico Nationalists Revolt as a Model Counterinsurgency
By: Dr. Barry M. Stentiford
In the autumn of 1950, a group of Nationalists in Puerto Rico directly challenged the territorial government of Governor Luis Muñoz Marín, and the larger issue of United States sovereignty over the island. The uprising is known by several names, such as Puerto Rico’s October Revolution, the Jayuya Uprising, and the Utuado Uprising. Attempting to seize radio stations, key towns, federal facilities, and assassinate the territorial governor, the Nationalists hoped that their initial success would bring the majority of Puerto Ricans to their cause, resulting in a popular uprising that would end in the island’s independence from the United States. A heavy and public response by the United States—such as sending in the Army or Marines—would bolster the claims of the Nationalists that Puerto Rico was a colony of the United States and, more importantly, would bring international attention and perhaps support for the Nationalist cause.
The Nationalists, under the leadership of Pedro Albizu Campos, did not assume they would liberate Puerto Rico in a day or in a single revolt but hoped that their uprising would start a larger insurgency that would draw the attention of the world. With European nations under increased pressure from the United Nations and the United States to dismantle their colonial empires, the United States would be placed in an untenable position if it used federal military forces to crush the revolt. However, the uprising on Puerto Rico was quickly suppressed, not by the United States Army or Marines but by the Puerto Rico National Guard and the territorial police operating under the authority of Governor Muñoz. The uprising became a local law-enforcement issue, not an international incident. The forceful and rapid response from Governor Muñoz prevented the Nationalists from causing a major disruption in the political process then underway in Puerto Rico.
The Nationalist uprising in Puerto Rico was one of the few times in United States history that a state or territorial government activated its entire National Guard in response to unrest since the rise of the National Guard in the late nineteenth century.[1] The swiftness with which the National Guard and insular police gained control of the situation, and the much larger issue of the Korean War, which was then in its early, critical phase, prevented the incident from becoming a major news story in the United States. Most standard works on post-World War II American history, including textbooks, ignore the incident. The response to the uprising is not mentioned in the 2005 edition of the Center for Military History’s study on the use of soldiers in civil unrest since World War II. The uprising rated only a few passing lines in John K. Mahon's History of the Militia and National Guard, where it is referred to as the “most conspicuous case” of the use of the Guard to maintain law and order in the post-World War II era, while Michael Doubler does not mention it at all in his I Am the Guard, the most recent official history of the Army National Guard.[2]
Most histories of Puerto Rico likewise pay scant attention to the revolt, even those unsympathetic to continued United States sovereignty over the island.[3] The most prolific writers on the incident are from the remnants of the Puerto Rican independence movement, who as a group are hostile to the National Guard and all agencies of the United States and Commonwealth governments. The obscurity of the uprising and the response to it is in a large part because of the success of the Puerto Rican National Guard and police in their response. The neglect of the incident in military history is regrettable, however, as the response by the National Guard and police demonstrate the advantage gained by an established government when an overwhelming response using local forces is applied at the start of an insurrection. That the response came from the elected governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz, underscored the legitimacy of the response.
Most Leftist and Nationalist interpretations of the response of Governor Muñoz to the uprising portray the Puerto Rico National Guard as a mostly a federal force, insinuating that it was basically a tool of the US government in Washington.[4] In the current Wikipedia entry on the uprising, written from a pro-Nationalist perspective, National Guard of Puerto Rico is consistently referred to as the “U.S. backed-Puerto Rico National Guard.”[5] This view was financially accurate in that the majority of funds and equipment for the National Guard of all states, DC, and Puerto Rico came from the federal government, but the Puerto Rico National Guard was still basically a local force, deeply embedded into Puerto Rican society. All enlisted men, and almost all of the officers were Puerto Ricans, and the National Guard of the island had an esprit de corps based largely on its unique heritage. The response was directed locally, not from the federal government. Most of the actions taken by the National Guard during the critical early hours of the uprising were directed by the governor and adjutant general of Puerto Rico, with the federal government in Washington only informed of the actions taken after the first critical hours of the uprising.
The timing of the uprising was not arbitrary. Under the leadership of Puerto Rico’s first elected governor, Muñoz, who took office on 2 January 1949, Puerto Rico was changing from direct rule by the US Congress—basically a colonial relationship, although residents of the island had been US citizens since 1917—to a new status that would give Puerto Rico a status similar although not identical to a state of the Union. The new status was termed a Commonwealth, and while not wholly satisfactory either the statehood or the independence advocates, it did give the island a much greater degree of internal self-rule than it previously had. The new status for Puerto Rico had been largely crafted by Governor Muñoz. Under the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950 (Public Law 600), signed by President Harry S. Truman on 3 July 1950, residents of Puerto Rico would draft and approve their own territorial constitution, although ultimate sovereignty over the island would remain with the United States. [6] A referendum for Public Law 600 was held on 4 June 1950, with the election for members of the territorial constitutional convention to be held on 27 August 1951. The island-wide election for acceptance or rejection of the new constitution the convention would draft was to be held on 21 January 1952.
Governor Muñoz began campaigning on the island for the implementation of Public Law 600 in early October 1950. At the same time, authorities in Washington and in Puerto Rico suspected that Nationalists and communists would attempt something radical to discredit the upcoming election. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was tracking the Nationalists through most of 1950, completing a twenty-five page report on their activities on 12 October 1950.[7] Nationalists and communists charged that the whole process was a sham to cover for continued colonial rule over the island, but also feared that widespread participation in the constitutional process would give the new status legitimacy in the eyes of the people of Puerto Rico and much of the world at large. Governor Muñoz, who loathed the Nationalists and who was in turn loathed by them, estimated the entire Nationalist movement contained no more than five hundred members, and was confident his police and National Guard would be equal to any challenge they posed.
The Nationalist movement in Puerto Rico had a long history, arguably tracing back to before the Spanish-American War, but the modern party began in 1922. By 1930, Albizu Campos was in charge of the movement. Its goal consistently was gaining independence, through violence if necessary. In 1936, the Chief of the Insular Police was murdered by two Nationalists, who were in turn killed by police. Police suspected the Nationalists were behind the murder of two other policemen. The killing of the chief led to a general repression of Nationalists, including the trial and conviction of several leaders for sedition. In March 1937, a parade by the Cadets, a paramilitary arm of the Nationalists, in the city of Ponce turned into a massacre. Police opened fire on the unarmed marchers, who were told to disperse because their permit to hold the parade had been rescinded. Nineteen people, not all of whom were Nationalists, died, and another 150 were wounded.
The process of transforming Puerto Rico from its territorial status to commonwealth came against the backdrop of post-World War II de-colonialism, the early stages of the Cold War, and the start of the Korean War. US forces were engaged in what was assumed would be a short war in Korea. During peacetime, the main military force on the island was the US Army’s 65th Infantry Regiment. The 65th Infantry was part of the Regular Army, but was filled with residents of Puerto Rico, especially those without fluency in English. The regiment had its origins in the battalion of local troops formed by the Army in 1899, shortly after the United States had taken possession of the island, in a large part to relieve American soldiers of the burden of garrison duty. In 1900, a second battalion was formed. Initially the officers and NCOs were Americans, but the NCO ranks were soon filled with Puerto Ricans. By 1904, the Army placed enough faith in what was then termed the Puerto Rican Regiment of Infantry that the last Regular Army units, some coast artillery companies, were withdrawn and the Puerto Rican Regiment became the only US Army unit on the island. The replacement of American officers by Puerto Rican officers took longer, but this too occurred by the First World War. The regiment became part of the Regular Army in 1908.[8] It was designated as the 65th Infantry Regiment of the US Army during the drawdown following the First World War.
During most of World War II, Selective Service registrants from Puerto Rico were tested in English. As a result, about eighty percent were found unfit for service. In 1944, testing in the Spanish language was introduced. After entering the Army, soldiers from Puerto Rico were given twelve weeks of intensive instruction in English before attending courses for advanced military training. Whatever their proficiency in English, most men from Puerto Rico in the Army during World War II served within the Caribbean, either protecting the island or the Panama Canal, with some serving in Ecuador.[9] After an attack on the Americas became increasingly remote, the 65th Infantry deployed to North Africa and then to Italy.
After the war, the Army expanded its intensive English instruction program for soldiers from Puerto Rico. However the Army was still mostly linguistically segregated, and most Puerto Rican soldiers were assigned to the 65thInfantry Regiment. Shortly after the start of the Korean War in 1950, in part from the lack of an outside threat to Puerto Rico or the Panama Canal, the 65th Infantry Regiment was sent to Korea. Governor Muñoz had wanted the federal government to call up the two regiments in the Puerto Rico National Guard—the 295th Infantry and the 296th Infantry—and combine them with the 65th Infantry to make an all-Puerto Rican division for the war, but this did not happen. Instead the 65th Infantry was assigned to the Third Infantry Division to bring that division up to full strength for assignment to Korea.[10] To replace the 65th Infantry in protecting Puerto Rico, the 296th Infantry Regiment was called to active service, to remain on the island, while the 295th Infantry remained unmobilized.[11] The commander of the 296th, COL Juan César Cordero Davila, took control of Camp Tortuguero, near the town of Vega Baja on the main east-west road in the middle of the north coast of the island, on 10 September 1950. The battalions of the regiments were scattered at other locations and underwent training for what most thought would be eventual deployment to the war in Korea.[12]
The Puerto Rico National Guard of the period was almost identical to the National Guard of each state, although the Spanish language was commonly used rather than English in most non-official communications. Both the 295th and 296th Infantry Regiments traced their lineage to 1763, when the Milicias Disciplinadas de Puerto Rico was formed by the Spanish. It was recreated in 1919, when the Puerto Rico National Guard was organized by Luis R. Esteves, the first Puerto Rican to graduate from West Point. Esteves became the adjutant general of Puerto Rico with the rank of major general in 1938 and held that position until 1957.[13] Both regiments were mobilized with the rest of the National Guard in the fall of 1940 and served on active duty throughout World War II.[14] National Guardsmen of all states and territories of the period did not attend basic training with the Army at federal camps unless during prior Army service, but instead were trained in the basics of soldiering at the company level during weekly evening drill, and at annual summer training with their units. New Guardsmen undertook training at their armory under the direction of their own NCOs and officers. Thus the Puerto Rico National Guard, like its mainland equivalents, trained its own personal, using US Army manuals and standards, which tended to instill a fierce unit identity and loyalty.
Puerto Rico in 1950 also had units in its Air National Guard, the main unit of which was the 198th Fighter Squadron. The 198th included a hodge-podge of aircraft, with twenty-five F-47 Thunderbolt Fighters, two B-26 Invader bombers, two T-6 Texan trainers, and one C-47 Gooney Bird transport. The Air National Guard also had a few other units, including a utility flight of the 198th, an Air Service Group, and a weather station.[15]
With the 65th Infantry involved in the war in Korea, and only one National Guard regiment on active duty on the island, the Nationalists saw an opportunity for the uprising for which they had been planning and stockpiling weapons for at least two years. The 65th Infantry, with its Regular Army discipline, presented a challenge to the insurgents—its removal presented an opportunity. Ideally, the insurrection would begin with coordinated attacks on police stations, the governor’s mansion, and the Federal Building in San Juan. The United States would respond with federal troops, and the Nationalists would gain the attention and support of people around the world. The uprising was initially scheduled to occur in 1951, before the election for the constitutional convention. But events on the island led the insurgents to move the date up. On 27 October 1950, the insular police discovered a cache of arms and dynamite in San Juan. The next day, on 28 October, a riot at Rio Piedras prison in San Juan resulted in the death of two guards and the escape of 111 prisoners. The link, if any, between the prison violence and the uprising two days later has never been clearly established, but it made the already tense situation on the island even more tense. Police knew the Nationalists were planning something, but exactly when and where they would strike remained unknown. However, the fear that their plans had been compromised and that arrests were imminent forced the Nationalists to strike sooner than expected, launching their uprising in the early morning of 30 October. Although the uprising had been planned for two years, the actual execution of the plan came off in fits and starts, probably as a result of changing of the date.
Fighting began at 4:00 AM on 30 October 1950, with a pre-dawn raid by the police on a house in Barrio Macaná, in the town of Peñuelas, on the south coast, just west of Ponce. The house belonged to the mother of the president of the local Nationalist party organization and was used for the storage and distribution of weapons for the uprising. In the ensuing gunfight, three Nationalists were killed, and six arrested, while six police were wounded. Five hours later, in the town of Ponce, another policeman was shot dead when he approached a car carrying Nationalists. Other attacks occurred in Mayagüez and Naranjito. Five Nationalists attacked the governor’s residential palace in San Juan, the Fortaleza, with guns and bombs, in an attempt to assassinate Governor Muñoz. Four of the five would-be assassins were killed by police. The Federal Courthouse was also a target. By 10:30 in the morning, the police station in Arecibo, on the north coast, directly north of Ponce, was under fire. The local leader of the Cadets ordered the attack on the police station, where four policemen and one Nationalist were killed. The police, augmented by the National Guardsmen from the 296th Infantry, began to fight back.
During the first hour of the uprising, one battalion of the 295th Infantry Regiment was ordered onto territorial active duty in response to the crisis. As news of the size of the uprising reached San Juan, a second battalion was also mobilized. By the evening of 30 October, Governor Muñoz ordered the entire Puerto Rico National Guard—Army and Air elements—to territorial active duty, some 4,300 soldiers and airmen. At 11:30 AM, police and National Guardsmen were exchanging fire with Nationalists in Utuado, between Ponce and Arecibo. One corporal, José Rodríguez Alicea from the company based in Arecibo, was killed. By noon, parts of the town of Jayuya, some ten miles over trails east of Utuado, were burning and the police station was under attack. The Post Office, Selective Service Office, and Farm Security Administration Office were all burned.[16] Eventually twenty-one houses in Jayuya were burned during the fighting. Other bloody clashes erupted in Mayagüez, on the west coast, and in the capital of San Juan.[17] Except for San Juan, which sits on the north-east part of the island, and Naranjito, most of the uprisings occurred in towns in the western part of the island.
As the first scattered reports of events on the island filtered back to Washington, the federal government worried about using federal military forces to restore order on the insular possession. A large federal response would play into the plans of the insurgents. To bring too much force to bear would give an air of imperialism and bring uncomfortable comparisons to the French in Indochina or the British in Malaya and India. Having local forces under Governor Muñoz deal with the uprising as a law-and-order issue would avoid many of these potential problems and deny the Nationalists the publicity they needed if they were to succeed. But in those uncertain hours, when details were sparce, a fear ran through federal authorities; what if the Guardsmen, particularly the younger enlistedmen and even officers, sympathized with the insurgents? Had either individuals or whole units in the Puerto Rico National Guard joined the Nationalists, the result would have been catastrophic for the island itself and the future of US rule there. A mutiny of even part of the Guard would have resulted in a civil war on the island, which would have put the United States in a dilemma regarding the court of world opinion. The possibility was not without precedent.
Some militia units in the United States in 1877 had given their weapons to strikers during the railroad strike. The fear of a similar breakdown in discipline in the Puerto Rico National Guard existed during the first, uncertain hours of the rebellion. However, such fears turned out to be groundless. The Nationalists had dismissed the National Guard and police as lackies of Washington, and saw them as the enemy, making no efforts to entice them to their cause. Whatever the thoughts of the men in the Puerto Rico National Guard, no incidents of Guardsmen refusing to carry out assigned duties arose. Indeed, the greater problem was if anything an overzealousness on the part of the National Guard. The antipathy the Nationalists held for the National Guard was reciprocated by the Guardsmen. After the Nationalists had drawn blood from the Guardsmen, some apparently preferred to kill insurrections rather than capture them alive.
Fighting between insurgents and Guardsmen erupted in ten towns in all, with Utuado and Jayuya the scenes of the most intense fighting.[18] The Air National Guard flew police reinforcements to trouble spots, performed reconnaissance missions, and provided "diversionary flights," noticeably over Jayuya and Utuado. Army National Guard units raced to quell hot spots. The Guardsmen received fire from houses, cars, and hills. Several police were killed. However, the police and National Guard quickly ended all organized resistance.[19] By the second day of the uprising, most of the insurgents had been killed or captured, except for a group in their stronghold in Jayuya. The National Guard used their full array of weapons to dislodge them and bring the fighting to an end.
By end of the uprising, around four hundred Nationalists had been taken into custody, and 244 were actually arrested. They were the lucky ones, as another thirty-one of the Nationalists were dead, and a dozen were wounded. One Guardsman was dead and another twelve wounded.[20] Seven police officers were killed, and twenty-three wounded. The uprising on the island, over so quickly, received little press coverage on the mainland. A small violent coda to the uprising came on 2 November, after the failure of the uprising on the island was obvious to all, when two Puerto Rican men from New York City attempted to assassinate President Truman. The president was then staying at the Blair House while the White House was undergoing a restoration. One White House guard was killed and two wounded in the attempt. One of the would-be assassins died, while the other was wounded but survived. He later testified that he bore no grudge against Truman but hoped that an assassination would start a revolution in the United States during which Puerto Rico might gain independence.[21]
Governor Muñoz, as well as President Truman, did not want to give credence to the Nationalists by overreacting. The governor broadcast by radio to the residents of the island, explaining that the uprising came from a “lunatic movement,” and not a serious challenge. As a result, martial law was not necessary.[22] On 2 November, Muñoz sent Truman a cable expressing the shock and outrage the people of the island felt about the attempt on the President’s life and assured him of the continued strong bonds of “friendship, association, and mutual trust” between the peoples of the United States and Puerto Rico. Truman responded with message expressing his sympathies for the police and Guardsmen who were killed or wounded in the uprising. He likened those “who died or suffered wounds in defense of law and order and of democratic government” to those who died in battle, and expressed his gratitude that the government of Muñoz had the situation in hand.[23] The same day, at a press conference, Truman defended his record on Puerto Rico, telling reporters that he had believed since he entered Congress that Puerto Ricans should decide the future of the island, and reminded all that he had appointed the first territorial governor who was a Puerto Rican, and that during his administration Congress authorized Puerto Ricans to elect their own governor. He ignored a reporter’s query about independence, but stressed that he would support whatever Puerto Ricans wanted for the island.[24]
The Secretary of the Interior, Oscar L. Chapman, announced that he saw no “serious disturbances,” and believed that island authorities had the situation well in hand. Two days later, Chapman gave estimates of the number of Nationalists at 700, and the Communists at 400 members. If these estimates are accurate, then the insurgents were outnumbered by the Guardsmen by a factor of four, without even counting the police. The official United States stance was that the uprising was a local law-enforcement issue resulting from a handful of fanatics, and that Puerto Rican authorities had the situation under control. That interpretation was correct, and Truman’s downplaying of what was actually a rather serious incident robbed the insurgents of what they sought most—publicity. The arrival of troops from the US Army on the island would have given the Nationalists a great propaganda tool, yet in the end, it was mainly the local authorities that dealt with the uprising.
In the days following the revolt, Muñoz ordered the arrest of Albizu Campos, leader of the Nationalist Party. Over the next several days, the National Guard helped the police arrest some six-hundred Nationalists suspects.[25] The National Guard provided security at the insular penitentiary, and at territorial and US government buildings. "The revolt completely was in hand by 3 November and most of the 295th Infantry was demobilized on 6 November." In summing up the performance of the National Guardsmen, the acting Chief of the National Guard Bureau, Major General Raymond H. Flemming said that "[t]he National Guard of Puerto Rico proved completely loyal and zealous in support of constituted authority. Its speed, strength, and efficiency contributed much to the failure of the revolt."[26] He was correct, and the early fears about the loyalty of the National Guard proved quite wrong. In the end, order was restored using the forces at hand on the island and under the control of the governor and his adjutant general. By handling the crisis with his own forces, Governor Muñoz denied the Nationalists the goal they wanted and needed most for their movement to achieve its ends—a heavy federal response.
The modern Nationalist movement in Puerto Rico claims that the lack of publicity for the uprising was a result of a news blackout by the federal government designed to keep knowledge of the insurrection from the American public. However, the lack of publicity could also be due to apathy from much of the American public regarding events in Puerto Rico rather than an intentional act of the government. The Nationalists also charge that racism was responsible for some of the apathy of the American public, which tended to ignore stories of “Latins shooting each other.” True enough, but the hoped for stories of Anglo US Army soldiers shooting Latins did not happen. The more persuasive argument is that the short duration and local response to the uprising led to its obscurity. The Nationalists failed to derail the elections and the constitutional process went ahead as planned, with some eighty-two percent of Puerto Rican voters voting to approve the new constitution in 1952. The government of Puerto Rico responded to the insurrection using territorial agencies and had no need to call for federal assistance. The uprisings thus garnered little of what the Nationalists wanted more than anything—publicity, especially international publicity. Without media coverage, the incident became an isolated and generally forgotten law-enforcement episode, little different from Alabama's use of the National Guard to enforce martial law in Phenix City in 1953. A reader looks in vain for the Puerto Rico Nationalist uprising American history books. The episode was quickly forgotten mainly because the response of the Puerto Rico National Guard and insular police was successful.
Barry M. Stentiford, a professor of History at SAMS, holds a PhD in Military History from the University of Alabama, a BS in History from the College of Great Falls, an MA in American History from the University of Montana, and a Masters of Strategic Studies from the US Army War College. He wrote Army Expansions: Expanding the Regular Army during War (Combat Studies Institute, 2021); Success in the Shadows: Operation Enduring Freedom—Philippines (Combat Studies Institute Press, 2018); The Richardson Light Guard of Wakefield Massachusetts (McFarland, 2012); Tuskegee Airmen (Greenwood, 2011); and The American Home Guard (Texas A&M Press, 2002). He co-edited The Jim Crow Encyclopedia (Greenwood, 2008), and Jim Crow: A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic (Greenwood, 2014). Dr. Stentiford served in the United States Air Force, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve, retiring with the rank of colonel.
[1] See Robert W. Coakley, Paul J. Scheips, and Vincent Demma, “Use of Troops in Civil Disturbances Since World War II” Office of the Chief of Military History Study no. 83, 1971.
[2] Paul J. Scheips, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders 1945-1992 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2005); John K. Mahon, History of the Militia and National Guard (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1983), p. 212; Michael D. Doubler, I Am the Guard: A History of the Army National Guard, 1636-2000 (Washington: Department of the Army, 2001).
[3] See for example Bhana, Surendra The United States and the Development of the Puerto Rican Status Question, 1936-1968(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1975), which devotes less than two pages to it (pp. 136-37); Burnett Christina Duffy, and, Marshall, Burke Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001); Fernandez, Ronald The Disenchanted Island: Puerto Rico and the United States in the Twentieth Century (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1996), which devotes less than a single page to it (p. 182); Morales Carrio N., Arturo, Caro Costas, Aida R. Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983).
[4] For an example of this, see http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Caribbean/Puerto_Rico-Uprising_1950.html, accessed 5 September 2023.
[5] “Puerto Rican Nationalist Party revolts of the 1950s” - Wikipedia, accessed 5 September 2023.
[6] “An Act to Provide for the organization of a constitutional government by the people of Puerto Rico,” US Public Law 81-600, 3 July 1950. 64 Stat 319, US Statutes at Large.
[7] Charles B. Peck, “Nationalists Party of Puerto Rico,” 12 October 1950, OT/WNRC, RG 126, 62-A-401.
[8] Edward M. Coffman, The Regulars: The American Army, 1898-1941 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 28-29.
[9] John A. Klein, "Utilization of Manpower: A Report by the Adjutant General," at the Army War College Library, p. 1.
[10] Robert J Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S Truman, 1949-1953 (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1982), p. 256.
[11] Angel Jose Norat, Historia Y Traditiones: Cinco Centurias En Guardia (San Juan: Guardua Nacional de Puerto Rico y Puerto Rico National Guard Fund, Inc., 1987), p. 110. Presidential Order 37842, 11 August 1950.
[12] Ibid., p.110.
[13] “Luis R. Esteves,” West Point Association of Graduates,
https://www.westpointaog.org
. Accessed 6 September 2023.
[14] James A. Sawicki, Infantry Regiments of the US Army (Dumfries, VA: Wyvern Publications, 1981), pp. 428-30.
[15] Chief Master Sergeant Ramon Alonso “Commemorative History of the Puerto Rico Air National Guard (1947-1992),” Published by the Puerto Rico Air National Guard, 1992.
[16] Fernandez, The Disenchanted Island, p. 182.
[17] New York Times, October 31, 1950, p.1; La Prensa, Oct 31, 1950, p.1.
[18] Annual Report of the Chief National Guard Bureau for the Fiscal Year ending 30 June 1951 (Washington: GPO, 1952), p. 41.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Coakley, et al, "Use of Troops in Civil Disturbances Since World War II, 1945-1965," p. 27.
[22] New York Times, Nov 1, 1950, p. 26.
[23] Public Papers of Presidents of the United States, Harry S. Truman: Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, January 1 to December 31, 1950. (Washington: GPO, 1965), p. 694.
[24] Ibid., p. 695.
[25] Annual Report of the Chief National Guard Bureau for the Fiscal Year ending 30 June 1951, p. 41.
[26] Ibid.