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 president, Albuiz Campos, and others were sentenced to ten years in prison.
Read more about this topic: Blanton Winship
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