The Puerto Rican War: A Graphic History

by Emiliano Aguilar

On October 30^th, 1950, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party organized a series of uprising in cities across the archipelago of Puerto Rico. Directed by the leader of the Nationalist Party, Pedro Albizu Campos, Nationalists mobilized uprisings in San Juan, Utuado, Jayuya, Ponce, and Arecibo, among others. The violence of this uprising was not isolated to Puerto Rico, as two Nationalists attacked the Blair House in Washington, D.C. —traditionally The President’s Guest House, but used as the temporary residence of Truman during extensive renovations on the White House—as a part of a plot to assassinate U.S. President Harry S. Truman.

John Vasquez Mejias’ The Puerto Rican War: A Graphic History is a concise retelling of these intertwined events. Through following a cast of Puerto Rican revolutionaries, such as Nationalist Party leader, Pedro Albizu Campos, Griselio Torresola, Oscar Collazo, and Blanca Canales, the graphic novel traces a contentious period of Puerto Rico’s history. Predominantly a retelling of the uprising, this graphic history depicts public health issues, such as military testing and forced sterilization, as justification for the Nationalist Party’s campaign. Originally composed of ninety-six hand carved wooden blocks, these were then scanned to form a collected edition that is equally parts rustic art and dynamic pages of conflict.

The big bad at the center of the graphic novel is not isolated to an individual, but a phenomenon that has wrought considerable horrors across the globe: colonialism. Vasquez Mejias introduces this antagonist in an excerpted opening poem, “Revolt of the Borinquenos” (1598), which lamented that “While suffering such evils night and day we serve these foreigners in our land of birth and our only freedom is we may work their mines and till for them the Earth …” (unpaginated). The indigenous Taino communities recognized a foreboding plague of abuse from the Spanish Empire as the poem continues “… Our fields our plains our coastlands – And it is they who possess all and leave us to our death here in our land that was always our own where we were born and where we have grown.”

For Puerto Rico, colonialism became an enduring legacy regardless of the imperial power. In 1898, the United States exerted its rule over Puerto Rico through the Treaty of Paris, which ended the U.S. conflict with the Spanish Empire and forced considerable territorial concessions. These concessions included Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and temporary occupation of Cuba. [1] While treated by the United States as a territory—including a military government—the economic exploitation of the region as a colony continued albeit under a different imperial power. In fact, Vasquez Mejias alluded to this connection as the comic juxtaposed the excerpt from “Revolt of the Borinquenos” with the 1950 call by Albizu Campos that the United States “have no moral or legal authority in Puerto Rico.” For Puerto Ricans, the pursuit for independence continued albeit against two different countries.

The Nationalist Party, first organized in 1922, prioritized Puerto Rican independence in the face of an increasingly violent U.S. colonial regime. [2] Both the U.S. and its appointed territorial government passed legislation aimed to curtail calls for independence in Puerto Rico and establish an apparatus for future control of the region. On May 21^st, 1948, the Puerto Rican government passed Ley de la Mordaza, or Law 53. This legislation criminalized speech and organizing against the insular government. Remembered as the Gag Law, the legislation made it a crime to produce, sell, or display any material aimed to destroy the insular government. [3] On July 3, 1950, President Truman signed the Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950 (partial language) into law, which designated Puerto Rico for a form of self-government, later referred to as a “Free Associated State” and provided for popular elections of a governor, a bicameral legislature, and a bill of rights. [4] However, this was an illusion of autonomy as the U.S. retained control over the defense, customs, and finances (as well as any foreign treaties) on Puerto Rico’s behalf. As Nationalists argued, this law simply continued colonial rule.

In its concise retelling of the 1950 Nationalist Party insurgency, The Puerto Rican War peripherally discusses the public health abuses against residents under the backdrop of this brief, yet intense war waged across the archipelago. One of the most prominent invocations of the public health angle occurs during a speech from Albizu Campos. In front of a captivated crowd, Campos declares that “The U.S. has turned Puerto Rico into an atomic base and also a vast camp of experiment for germ warfare.” The rationale, according to Campos, was rooted in a lack of dignity toward the Puerto Rican resident. As he questioned the crowd, “Why bring the viruses, the microbe of this disease to Puerto Rico where it can spread …. And if it spread here, what’s the…. Difference?” For Campos and the Nationalists, armed conflict seemed the most viable avenue to gain attention to the atrocities committed against Puerto Ricans – with the complicity of their own government.

While the remaining instances are very brief (only three successive panels), they emphasize the sordid public health legacies of U.S. control over Puerto Rico. Occurring in the final pages of The Puerto Rican War, Vasquez Meijas introduces the potential justification for the uprisings that inspired “…the idea of… waging a violent war against the masters of violent war [the United States].” In the final pages of engravings, Vasquez Mejias depicts across three panels a woman in front of a banner “Sterilization Experiments,” a man with a skin affliction, and the explosions of military testing in the community of Vieques. Each of the three panels rely on images, with minimal textual accompaniment—inviting the reader to explore the issues further on their own. Each of these images present the public health injustices committed under U.S. colonialism against Puerto Ricans as rationale for the uprising. Although, without the accompanying texts, it is possible for a general reader to be unable to infer the rationales. Below I offer some contextualization that the “Further Reading” section elaborates on for those wishing to incorporate the text into their courses.

First, Law 116 (1937), which while not named in the text is alluded to by the woman in front of a banner labeled “Sterilization Experiments,” legalized sterilization, which led to the creation of family planning clinics that popularized ‘la operación,” an irreversible procedure that served as an early test for birth control. The U.S. helped subsidize the cost with an aim to control Puerto Rico’s population growth. By 1965, 34% of Puerto Rican women had been sterilized through this procedure. This eugenics-based procedure deprived countless Puerto Ricans the autonomy of establishing roots and families for themselves. [5]

Second, during World War II, the military conducted mustard gas experiments on enlisted soldiers—in places such as San Jose Island in Panama. Puerto Rican soldiers, alongside African American and Japanese-Americans, were deliberately bombed with mustard gas to document the effect it had on them. Again, while not deliberately stated alongside the image, Vasquez Mejias’ visual entices the reader to either view past the individual, or dive into further reading. Victims of these experiments suffered with scars on their skin for the rest of their lives, which broke out in rashes and flaked during flare-ups. [6] Vasquez Mejias uses the image of a curled-up man with the rash to serve as a visible symbol of participation in these experiments for a generation of men on the archipelago.

Lastly, the panel of a mushroom cloud bomb labeled Vieques denotes the decades of naval military testing on Vieques Island, just eight miles northeast of mainland Puerto Rico. During World War II, the Navy evicted residents as they expanded the training space on the island. After the war, Vieques Island served as a site of military training exercises for 180 days a year – serving as a central contestation over environmental consequences of the constant military testing. Subsequent studies documented that in Vieques toxic metals were found in significantly higher traces, which included uranium, arsenic, lead, and aluminum. [7]

Ultimately, The Puerto Rican War is a captivating portrayal of the conflict itself. The graphic novel would offer a reader a beginner-friendly account of the conflict alongside an opportunity to pair with some of the enduring legacies of colonial rule. The ample availability of journal articles surrounding each of these three health crises offer a variety of complementary pairings with the graphic novel serving as an abridged piece of historical context.

References

1. Margaret M. Power, Solidarity Across the Americas: The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and Anti-imperialism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2023), 29-33.
2. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, Puerto Rico: A National History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024), 95-99.
3. Power, Solidarity Across the Americas, 159 and Meléndez-Badillo, Puerto Rico, 114-116.
4. “Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950,” 81^st Congress, 2^nd June 30^th – July 3^rd, 1950. 319-320.
5. Cynthia N. Lebron, José Pérez-Ramos, Nancy Cardona-Cordero, Vanessa Morales, Samantha Rivera-Joseph, “Social Justice is Overdue for Puerto Rican Mothers,” American Journal of Public Health 114 (July 2024).
6. Susan L. Smith, “Mustard Gas and American Race-Based Human Experimentation in World War II,” The Journal of Law Medicine & Ethics 36 no. 3 (February 2008): 517-521.
7. George Withers, “Vieques, a Target in the Sun,” May 2013 (Washington Office on Latin America), 1-16.

Further Reading

1. Lorrin Thomas, Puerto Rican Citizen: History and Political Identity in Twentieth Century New York City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
2. Nelson A. Denis, War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony. New York, NY: PublicAffairs, 2015. (Also recommended by Vasquez Mejias on his “Further Reading” page for the graphic history).
3. Margaret Power, Solidarity across the Americas: The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and Anti-Imperialism. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2023.
4. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, Puerto Rico: A National History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024.

Further Reading (Recommended by John Vasquez Mejias in his book)

1. Stephen Hunter and John Bainbridge, Jr., American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill President Truman – and the Shoot-out That Stopped It, (New York City: Simon & Schuster, 2007).
2. Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, (New York City, Monthly Review Press, 1971).
3. Mini Seijo Bruno, La Insurreccion Nacionalista en Puerto Rico (San Juan, Puerto Rico: Editorial Edil, 1989)
4. Naomi Klein, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2018).

Emiliano Aguilar is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He teaches courses about the Latino experience in the United States, including “Latino History through Comics.”