Blanton Winship

Blanton C. Winship (November 23, 1869&mdash;October 9, 1947) was an American military lawyer and veteran of both the Spanish-American war and World War I. During his long career, he served both as Judge Advocate General of the United States Army and as the Governor of Puerto Rico.

Early life and education
Blanton Winship was born in Macon, Georgia and graduated from Mercer University in 1889. He received a law degree from the University of Georgia in 1893, where he also played football for one year.

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. For his service during that war, Winship was awarded both a Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star.

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


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

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 sugar 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. 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 a 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 ten years in prison by a United States federal court.

The Ponce massacre
On Palm Sunday (March 21), 1937, Governor Winship cancelled a Nationalist parade, which was to have taken place in Ponce to commemorate the end of slavery in 1873, only an hour before it was to have begun. When the march continued anyway, the Insular police fired upon the marchers and bystanders. They killed nineteen people and wounded more than 200. One hundred-fifty protesters were arrested. This event, called the Ponce Massacre, sparked outrage across the island and in the US 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. Congressman Vito Marcantonio of New York also criticized Winship, and in 1939, President Roosevelt eventually replaced him as governor of Puerto Rico.

A Grand Jury was convened to investigate the Ponce events, but it was closed without indicting anyone. The prosecutor resigned under protest that Governor Winship was interfering with his investigation. Almost simultaneously with this investigation, the federal law which allowed public officials to be indicted was repealed, effectively granting Governor Winship immunity from further prosecution.

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. Since the prosecutors were appointed by Governor Winship, Congressmen Vito Marcantonio and John T. Bernard have suggested that this may have contributed to a bias in Winship's favor.

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.

The following year, Governor Winship moved the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the United States invasion of Puerto Rico to Ponce, instead of the traditional location of San Juan. During this celebration, on July 25, 1938, Ángel Esteban Antongiorgi attempted to assassinate the governor and managed to fire several shots before being killed by the police. (One police officer was also killed in the attempted assassination.)

President Roosevelt removed Winship from office on May 12, 1939, after charges were filed against him by the New York Congressman Vito Marcantonio. The president appointed William D. Leahy as the successor, although he did not take office for several months. (During this time, José E. Colón served as Acting Governor.)

Winship's term had united many of the political factions of the island against him. The newly formed Popular Democratic Party (PPD) had strong wins in 1940, taking a majority of seats in the Senate of Puerto Rico. It won many more seats than did the Nationalist Party, and continued to gain strength in the 1940s. By 1950 it held all but one seat in the Senate.