War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony by Denis Nelson

Author:Denis, Nelson [Denis, Nelson]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781568585024
Publisher: Nation Books
Published: 2015-04-06T21:00:00+00:00

Con manago de marfil

(With a marble handle)

Para matar to’ los Yankees

(To kill all the Yankees)

Que vienen por ferrocarril

(Who come by railroad)

The reporters started to laugh, especially when the National Guard lieutenant asked for a translation. His eyes widened considerably upon receiving it.23

When the reporters started cheering for Vidal, the soldiers decided they’d had enough. The lieutenant marched over to a field radio, spoke for a minute, and returned with his orders. It was time.

They lit up the universe with hundreds of rounds; they blasted the building relentlessly. Bullets snapped all around Vidal’s head, and he hit the floor repeatedly, cutting and abrading himself each time, his clothes torn to bits. He took a bullet in the ribs and saw his thumb vanish from his left hand; a chunk of cheekbone flew off in a splatter of red bone. And still he fought back, firing from behind the cement column, spraying .45-caliber ACP bullets all over the sidewalk—until the staircase collapsed and buried him in the rubble.

Vidal heard a bell toll in La Iglesia del Espíritu Santo. He saw his father reading to the tobacco workers again, and his father waved. He saw the room where he was born, spotless with a little sewing machine in the corner. Then he was gone.24

The soldiers didn’t know this. They launched three canisters of tear gas, waited two or three minutes, then edged carefully toward the barbershop. Bibí and the other reporters craned their heads to see what was going on inside. Everyone expected twenty or thirty Nationalists to come staggering out, but none appeared.

The lieutenant ordered his soldiers to gas the upstairs, and three more canisters sailed up to the second floor—two made it through the windows, one landed on the balcony. Still no one came out.

At a signal from the lieutenant, five Guardsmen in gas masks rushed in through the front door; six others covered them from either side of the three windows. The soldiers darted all around, ready to shoot anything that moved, but they found no Nationalists, just four walls spattered with blood and a foot-high pile of rubble covering the entire floor.

They searched for a rear exit or trap door but found nothing. It was as if they’d been fighting a ghost. Then suddenly, from behind a concrete column, a soldier told them to come look.

Vidal was covered in blood and broken glass, not moving, apparently dead, but just to be sure, a soldier cleared the rubble off Vidal’s head and shot him at point-blank range. The bullet exploded through Vidal’s forehead and lodged in his brain. “Que viva Porto Rica,” the soldier said in a southern accent, and then dragged him out by the feet.25

The soldiers completed their reconnaissance and looked at each other in disbelief. It was a highly embarrassing scene: this tiny barber from Salón Boricua had held forty armed men at bay. But then, as they hauled the corpse of Vidal Santiago into the street, things got even worse. The corpse opened its eyes.

The soldiers gave a start and dropped Vidal on the sidewalk.

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