Aftermath

I love you, lady of Puerto Rico, Like the noble blood that has sanctified The Fatherland of Betances and of Diego*

And of the wise master, Albizu

Campos . . .

Manhattan police, poking through the tenement apartment of Lolita Lebron, last week uncovered several such impassioned verses among her drab effects. They were written by Lolita, the fiery divorcee who organized and led the armed assault on Congress (TIME, March 8), and they serve as a sort of battle hymn for the fanatic Puerto Rican Nationalist Party that also staged the 1950 assault on Blair House. Lolita, police discovered, is a convicted thief and forger who has spent much of her adult life in prison. Last week, as she and her friends were indicted on ten counts of assault (maximum sentence: 125 years), she seemed likely to spend some of her future there, too.

"This Lunacy." As the five victims of the shooting spree convalesced in hospitals, authorities in Puerto Rico and on the mainland moved swiftly to prevent further bloodshed and to squelch the Nationalist Party. Soon after the shooting, Commonwealth Governor Luis Munoz Marin was in Washington to express to President Eisenhower the shocked "indignation" of his people for "this savage and unbelievable lunacy." On his return to San Juan, he ordered police to round up leaders of the Nationalists, Communists and other parties of violence.

Lolita's "wise master," crackpot Nationalist Chief Albizu Campos, called the attack on Congress "an act of sublime heroism." The Harvard-educated Albizu, who inspired the 1950 plots against Harry Truman and Munoz, had been released from prison last September because of his increasing mental deterioration. (His followers do not seem to notice that he is mad.) When police set out to arrest him at his apartment in downtown San Juan last week, they were greeted by a blast of bullets and homemade Molotov cocktails that splattered on the cobblestone street. The police drew back, began a two-hour gun battle. Their second approach was spearheaded by several well-aimed teargas bombs.

In a second-floor apartment, the police found Albizu, clad in blue pajamas, his legs wrapped in wet towels (he is under the impression that the U.S. is bombarding them with death rays), cowering on the floor with two women friends.*

"This Virulent Germ." In Washington, guards were increased at the White House; at the Capitol, admission to the galleries was rigidly restricted. Congressmen, with a prickly sensation in their napes, pondered how to protect themselves against assassins. Speaker Martin called in all old guest cards to the galleries.

Secret Service Chief U. E. Baughman, who revealed that he had uncovered and squelched another Nationalist plot on President Eisenhower's life last November, was frankly worried about future Puerto Rican violence. So was Governor Munoz, who hoped, by jailing the Nationalist leaders, to "definitely end this virulent germ of infection."

The problem was not Puerto Rico itself, which has one of the fastest-rising living standards in the world. Governor Munoz' "Operation Bootstrap" has brought 316 industries to the island and given it the second or third highest living standard in Latin America. Puerto Ricans are 90% self-governing, and all but a fanatic handful know that they can have the other 10% whenever they ask for it.

Albizu & Co., products of a bitter and seemingly hopeless past, are being isolated from their countrymen by progress. But partly because of their complete political failure they are, for the present, a serious terrorist menace, a "clear and present danger" against which the Puerto Rican authorities took the obvious action.

* Dr. Ramon Betances and Jose de Diego were 19th century Puerto Rican patriots who demanded that Spain free their country. *One, Doris Torresola, is the sister of Terrorist Griselio Torresola, who was shot and killed behind a hedge near Blair House during the attempt to assassinate President Truman.

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