This small museum is a memorial to one of the bloodiest chapters of political violence in Puerto Rican history -- the Ponce Massacre. Police killed 19 people and wounded 100 during a Nationalist Party march in the city on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, after shots rang out. Party members had planned a march to protest the imprisonment of their leader Pedro Albizu Campos, but authorities cancelled their permit under pressure from American colonial governor Blanton Winship. The shooting occurred when protesters met up with a police blockade. Both protesters and bystanders were among the dead, which included a woman and a 7-year-old girl. The remnants of the Nationalist Party still mark the occasion with a ceremony here each year, and it is an important date for independence supporters. The museum is located at the site of the tragedy in a restored shoemaker's shop that used to be a meeting place for Nationalist Party members. The museum also documents other episodes of the political persecution of island independentistas, including the infamous carpetas, the secret dossiers that a police intelligence unit, with the backing of U.S. government officials, kept on independence supporters over the course of decades. The museum is a concise review of the political repression of independence supporters and will prove illuminating for many visitors.
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