Nationalist rebels rise up in Puerto Rico seeking independence from the USA. Martial law was declared and the uprising crushed with widespread arrests. In response an assassination attempt was made on President Truman.
On October 27, 1950, after being alerted to pre-emptive police raids being carried out against his followers, nationalist leader Albizu Campos summoned his followers to arms. His small band of nationalists retrieved secretly cached weapons and rose up to seize towns and attack police stations and other targets. In Jayuya, a small town at the mountainous center of the island, the nacionalistas seized the police station after a shootout—one policeman died—and also burned down the town’s U.S. post office.
The local rebel leader, a woman named Blanca Canales, raised Puerto Rico’s flag in the town square and declared a “free republic of Puerto Rico.” In nearby Utuado—one of the townships most heavily damaged by Hurricane Maria—at least nine nationalists were killed, five of them summarily executed after surrendering to authorities. Muñoz Marín secured both towns after ordering them to be pounded by field artillery and strafed from the air. In Old San Juan, four more rebels were killed in an abortive attack on the governor’s residence, La Fortaleza.
On the island, the rebellion was over by the night of October 31st. But the plot wasn’t finished. On the morning of November 1st, in Washington D.C., two Puerto Rican nationalists approached Blair House, where President Harry Truman was staying temporarily during renovations to the White House across the street, and opened fire on the security men guarding the building. Their plan was to enter Blair House and kill Truman, if they could. They never got inside the building. Instead, in the shootout, one of the Puerto Ricans died, and so did a Secret Service agent. Truman himself was unhurt. Albizu Campos, who was arrested along with several dozen of his followers, was sentenced to eighty years in prison.
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