*I apologize for any translation mistakes
The Ponce massacre was an event that took place on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, when a peaceful civilian march turned into a police shooting in which 19 civilians and two policemen were killed, and more than 200 civilians wounded. None of the civilians were armed and most of the dead were reportedly shot in their backs. The march had been organized by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party to commemorate the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico by the governing Spanish National Assembly in 1873, and to protest the U.S. government's imprisonment of the Party's leader, Pedro Albizu Campos, on sedition charges.
An investigation led by the United States Commission on Civil Rights put the blame for the massacre squarely on the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Blanton Winship. Further criticism by members of the U.S. Congress led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to remove Winship in 1939 as governor.
Governor Winship was never prosecuted for the massacre and no one under his chain of command – including the police who took part in the event, and admitted to the mass shooting – was prosecuted or reprimanded
Lyrics:
Cuanta muerte,
Cuanta sangre,
Cuanto llanto
El dolor de inocente
Trajes blancos sin defensa,
¡Con valor!
Todo Ponce los lloraba,
Todo el pueblo se enlutó
Y el maestro con pudor se arrodillaba
Para vender compasión
al señor que parece se olvidaba
De sus siervos que morían alrededor
Sangre con sangre se paga
Pague el dolor al dolor
Cuando una vela se apaga
En las sombras del terror
Vengan la masacre de Ponce
Es una deuda de honor.
