HISTORY
Picric Acid & colonialism
About a forgotten mass grave of 176 Puerto Ricans in Arkansas.
March 21st can be a sensitive day in Puerto Rican social media. A day — like September 23rd — in which la mancha de plátano[1] has a particular itch. Puerto Ricans will argue about what happened that dark day in 1937. Regardless of the discourses exchanged, the Puerto Rico Insular Police — ordered by Governor Blanton Winship — killed 21 and wounded hundreds in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico.
It is very easy to come across the usual procession of half-truths & colonized discourse in PR social media, especially when it comes this massacre of Nationalists — forever vilified by large sectors of Puerto Rican society.
Almost a decade ago — 2012, to be exact —
I was consuming social media on that day of an early, hot, and humid Puerto Rican Spring. One comment to this picture caught my attention: someone — a white American male — posted the following link:
