Blanton Winship

Military service

During the Spanish–American War, Winship joined the 1st Georgia Infantry, a volunteer force. After the war, he elected to join the United States Army as a judge advocate. He remained in the military through 1914, when he began to teach law at the Army Service School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

When World War I broke out, he fought in France and led several campaigns. Winship commanded the 110th and 118th Infantry Regiments in the 28th Division while also serving as the Staff Judge Advocate of First Army. Winship was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for "extraordinary heroism in action near Lachaussee, France, November 9, 1918." He also received the Silver Star for gallantry in action near Villers sur Fere, France.^[2]

Following the war, Winship returned to military law. He was appointed to serve as a military aide to President Calvin Coolidge. Eventually he became the Judge Advocate General of the Army, a position he held from 1931 to his retirement from service in 1933.

World War II

During World War II, Winship returned to active duty. During this time, he set precedents for military tribunals in the United States during participation in the military commission (created in July 1942) to try Nazi saboteurs arrested in this country. Winship retired for good in 1944. At 75, he was at that time the oldest Army officer on active duty.

Governor of Puerto Rico

Governor Winship (left) meeting with Virgin Islands governor Lawrence W. Cramer (standing) and Senator Millard Tydings, before the Senate's Territories and Insular Affairs Committee met to consider legislation for U.S. Territories in April, 1938

In 1934, Winship was appointed by Franklin D. Roosevelt as governor of Puerto Rico, succeeding Robert Hayes Gore. This was in part due to major strikes that had taken place that year, causing the administration to fear social unrest. Colonel Francis Riggs accompanied Winship as chief of police. Riggs formerly had assisted Nicaragua's dictator Anastasio Somoza.

As governor, Winship's primary mission was to crush the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, by imprisoning its leadership and intimidating the rank-and-file membership.^[3] Upon arrival he immediately set out to "militarize" the Insular Police force, arming it with machine guns and riot control equipment. Winship also recruited a new police chief, E. Francis Riggs, whose background was in military intelligence, and whose immediate prior occupation had been to "advise" Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua. Together, Winship and Riggs spent their weekends inspecting the new vigorous police training camps (modeled after military boot camps) which they created throughout the island.^[4]

During his time in office, Winship fought to exclude the recently passed minimum wage laws from applying to Puerto Rico, as it would have doubled the hourly wage of 12.5 cents which was standard for sugarcane plantation workers. Although this decision was unpopular, when the new minimum-wage law was applied to Puerto Rico, nearly two-thirds of the island's textile factories closed because they could not afford the increase in wages and remain profitable.

Winship criticized many of Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes's policies toward the island (Interior had responsibility for territories and insular affairs). Relief spending during the Great Depression for Puerto Rico was (per capita) far below either that of the mainland or Hawaii. This lack of spending contributed to the poverty of the island, and in turn to social unrest.

In October 1935, the Insular Police killed four Puerto Rican Nationalist Party members at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras, a neighboring town next to San Juan. The event became known as the Rio Piedras Massacre.^[5] Ramón S. Pagan, Pedro Quiñones, Eduardo Rodríguez Vera, José Santiago Barea and a bystander were killed. On February 23, 1936, the nationalists Hiram Rosado and Elias Beauchamp retaliated by killing Col. Riggs in San Juan. Captured, both Rosado and Beauchamp were executed at the police headquarters without trial. No law enforcement officer ever stood trial for the executions.

Following these events, the government rounded up numerous Nationalist Party members and charged them with sedition. The party's president, Pedro Albizu Campos, and others were sentenced to 10 years in prison by a United States federal court.

The Ponce massacre

Main article: Ponce massacre

Relatives of victims killed in the Ponce massacre. Machine gun bullet holes are visible in the wall. (Ponce, Puerto Rico)

On Palm Sunday (March 21), 1937, Governor Winship cancelled a Nationalist parade, which was to have taken place in Ponce to commemorate the 1873 abolition of slavery, only an hour before it was to have begun. When the march continued anyway, Winship ordered police to fire upon the marchers and bystanders. They killed 19 people and wounded more than 200, all of whom were unarmed. 150 protesters were arrested. This event, called the Ponce massacre, sparked outrage across the island and in the U.S. Congress.

The Minnesota Representative John Bernard gave a speech on April 14 denouncing the action. The full speech can be seen in the Congressional Record of April 14, 1937, page 4499. ongressman Vito Marcantonio of New York also criticized Winship, and in 1939, President Roosevelt eventually replaced him as governor of Puerto Rico.^[6]

Following these events, many of the leaders of the Nationalist party were tried for insurrection, and after a hung jury and retrial, six were sentenced to life in prison.^[5] Because the prosecutors were appointed by Governor Winship, Congressmen Vito Marcantonio and John T. Bernard suggested that this may have contributed to a bias in Winship's favor.^[6]

A second panel, an independent investigation led by Arthur Garfield Hays, general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, with Fulgencio Pinero, Emilio Belaval, Jose Davila Rice, Antonio Ayuyo Valdivieso, Manuel Diaz Garcia, and Franscisco M. Zeno, as members, concluded that the police acted as a mob, and that the events on March 21 constituted a massacre. Their report harshly criticized the repressive tactics and massive civil rights violations by the administration of Governor Winship.^[7]