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Radio War Nerd EP #197 — Puerto Rico's Independence Struggle (Patreon)

Published:
2019-09-13 22:16:37
Imported:
2026-06
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Guest: Nelson Denis, writer & filmmaker 

Recorded: September 10, 2019

"Alvaro, are we invisible?"—Puerto Rico's remarkable independence leader Pedro Albizu Campos said this to one of his comrades during the failed 1950 rebellion against US rule.

For some strange reason, Americans know more about historical crimes committed by our foreign adversaries than we do about the the appalling catalogue of crimes committed against America's own territorial colony: Puerto Rico. Thankfully, we have guest Nelson Denis to slap us awake, with his unforgettable book "War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony". It's a grim story of massacres, colonial exploitation, gruesome experiments and subjugation—but it has some of the most amazing characters, and they're real, all too real: from Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos and Vidal Santiago Díaz — the barber who fought off an army from inside his barber salon . . . to sleazy villains like the Mengele-esque Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, and Luis Munoz Marin. We had some sound issues this episode, so bear with us.

* Maps & images

* Puerto Rico

*Secret photo of 1937 Ponce Massacre later released to press

* 1950 Battle at the Barber's: (1) US National Guard vs. Vidal Santiago Díaz; (2) Vidal Santiago Díaz bloodied, shot point-blank in the head, left for dead (he survived)

* Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, who bragged about murdering "dirty" Puerto Rican patients in 1931, celebrated in Time magazine 1949. 

Buy Nelson Denis' book "War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony". 

Total time: 1:56:47

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

Files

Comments

Philip Girvan

Great topic! Very much looking forward to listening.

Ben Hosen

Excellent and enraging.

Gengeros

Oops looks like that peace deal with the Taliban was blown up without bolton. His spirit lives on.

Scorched Earth

The War Nerd in in Italian: il nerd di guerra

zaabittimov

Congrats to Mark and family! Great interview, despite some digital garble. There’s been some interesting news coming out of the region regarding Italian fascism that Annibale and others might find interesting. Earlier this week, a group of Italian fascists unfurled a giant Italian flag in the center of Rijeka in Croatia (formerly Fiume) to commemorate the founding D’Anuncio’s proto-fascist statelet which was founded on 12 September 1919. The crazy part is that these guys planned a full on mini-invasion from land, air and sea. Apparently, the Croatian airforce forced 3 small planes to land that were filled with fascists heading to Rijeka. In the end only a few of them actually made it Rijeka and were subsequently arrested after their performance. Meanwhile, a statue of D’Anuncio was unveiled in Trieste (interesting city, btw), which prompted the Croatian embassy to lodge a formal complaint. The irony was not lost on people, given that Croatia’s current government is quite fascist friendly and engages constantly in ww2 revisionism regarding the Ustasha, so only rival fascisms seem to bother them….Of course, if it wasn’t for the partisans Istria and Dalmatia would probably still be part of Italy and those areas suffered a lot during the war…. (https://balkaninsight.com/2019/09/12/croatia-protests-to-italy-over-dannunzio-monument-in-trieste/) If you guys decide to hop across the Adriatic and need a tour guide for ex-Yugoslavia, let me know!

Peter Z

Congrats indeed! And lol @ Garibaldi bathwater with modern day parallels with the gamer girl. Maybe we're too soft these days but I really struggled with the bad audio - underinvestment in PRI telecoms?

Tit Škerget

It's good to hear John and Catherine are back in Turin. Being Slovene, if you two ever decide to go exploring past Italy's eastern border, feel free to give me a shout. I would be happy to provide a bit of a tour, and the drinks are on me, naturally. I would second the request for a Yugoslav episode or two, as that unfortunate entity's history can provide a wealth of interesting data. There is the Soča/Isonzo front during the Great War, for starters. Arguably an even worse place to fight than the trenches of Western Front (Less mud! But instead you get freezing temperatures and having to hew trenches and tunnels into solid rock. Fun.). Then there were the really screwed-up interwar Yugoslav politics (Shooting in parliament? Yep, that happened.), followed by mass resistance to the occupation in WWII. And that was followed by Tito's system, diplomacy, the non-aligned movement, and a truly impressive scope of assassinations carried out by the security services, even in the West (which even the Soviets were leery of doing). And then we come to the Balkan Wars...

zaabittimov

The Soča front was where the Bosniak austro-hungarian soldiers built a mosque in some little Slovenian town, which ended up being the first mosque in Slovenia…. I’ve found that it’s easy for people understand the context behind ww1 when you take them up to the Belgrade fortress, point across the river to New Belgrade and say: at the beginning of ww1, that was another country, the river was the border and see those big artillery pieces in front of the military museum? they fired the opening salvos of the war from across the river.

Tit Škerget

And we also got a charming little Russian Orthodox chapel on Vršič, which survives to this day and is regularly maintained and visited by high-ranking Russian politicians. For those who don't know the story: POWs from the Russian Empire were used as labour to build a supply road across the Vršič Pass. Over a hundred of them died in an avalanche, and their comrades built a chapel in their memory. After the war, the locals continued to maintain it out of respect for the dead. I've found that the Soča front serves well to drive home the scale of the butchery that took place in the Great War. The total casualties on that narrow front totaled 1.7 million, of which over 500,000 were deaths. That puts contemporary Western casualties in the myriad colonial adventures in perspective.

Stefan

Very interesting and eye opening interview with Nelson Denis (even with the shaky audio). This history has been suppressed, even in NYC where I grew up around many puertoricans... I wish there was more time for him to elaborate on the current and ongoing situation in PR.

Shad Narcher

Thanks for the great interview! The book is on my list. If I could make one contribution to the conversation though, it would be this: The Jones Act issue is complicated. I work in the maritime industry, and all of our unions believe it is essential. I get jumpy when someone tells me it's super progressive or otherwise helpful to an oppressed group to agree with the Heritage Foundation: https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/report/sink-the-jones-act-restoring-americas-competitive-advantage-maritime. I also know that "more jobs" is sometimes as bad for building solidarity with unions and the community as "shareholder value" is for corporate governance. I don't want to be THAT guy, but I also don't want to end up with some sort of lose-lose for workers in both the US and PR because we didn't think it through. I think it's fine to be critical of certain provisions of the Jones Act, especially the ones that are designed to undermine solidarity between workers on the mainland and the "territories", "possessions", or whatever the f the US calls it's colonies these days. Just remember to be careful what you wish for, because some real shitbags have wanted this forever.

online Leftist Archive Project (LARP)

Just read the book! It was fantastic. The battle between Vidal Diaz the barber and the national guard and police was absolutely bonkers, as was the nuclear stuff at the end of the book. Holy shit. Anyway, thanks for bringing this one to my attention!