>> host: nelson it's great to be here with you where we get to talk about your work "war against all puerto ricans" appear they want to talk about something a same introduction to the book and i'm going to quote you. you say most of us have a personal connection to the work that we do and that we set out and you set out to discover your family. and not only our families but our -- and i think that is true for those of us on the island as well as as those born her would like to talk about the discovery of your family. can you tell me about that? >> guest: well, mine was a small nuclear family.

i was born here in new york and living in washington heights. my mother they are both gone but my mother was from puerto rico and my father was cuban. i was the only child. it was a small but hard-working unit and my father was very pro-castro and we would have meetings -- he would have 10 or 15 people on saturday nights and they would make black coffee and it was exciting for me because i would hear these exciting conversations about politics, latin america. a lot of people hadn't heard that castro was all the talk at my house. but i had an early lesson in the value of family and the importance of maintaining it because the fbi came shortly after the cuban missile crisis.

the crisis is in october and in november 62 at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning i was eight years old with a time and they took my father away. they deported him to cuba without any process orchestrated protocol that i was aware of. he was just gone and we never saw him again. our family was permanently ruptured so my family i grew up knowing my mother side of the family. that was by definition. my father was gone unfortunately politics at an early impact in my life. actually that factored into my wanting to write this book eventually when i saw hundreds of fbi files. that may -- made me recall how my father had been affected by the fbi. so only child, became a really good student. i didn't feel there was any margin for error. my mother worked in elk

factories and the garment center and i was just a good student and very curious. when i got scholarships and went to harvard being puerto rican i was curious. the first puerto rican to graduate from harvard, harvard law school so i went to wagner library the pantheon of books. they had 57 rows of books. in the card catalog and i went through eight or nine floors. there wasn't one book on him khamenei found that striking. and if anything it incited my curiosity. at a point in college i found for made college as we said that harvard had an abundance of options and opportunities but not much guidance. you have to pretty much find your own way.

it's a great place for a self-starter. i took a year off to find some of that indispensable kubitza visiting family in puerto rico particularly in caguas and i encountered the nationalists in my family who had known him pretty well. he was a bodyguard for period of time when he came back in 1948 so one meeting led to another. i started hearing things that were astounding like a james bond movie things that were going on in puerto rico. it was not fully documented at the time because the fbi was maintaining the secret police files on over 100,000 puerto ricans that they had not yet been disclosed. they hadn't been declassified until the year 2000 but in 1974 i was hearing it firsthand from the people that lived as lived in so the people at gone to

prison, the people knew pedro compos personally and the famous barber to raise the gunfight. tremendous stories and there were a lot of talk that i was connecting but one common denominator was there seem to be a persistent and perhaps unwitting that's the nature vampire, things that are done sometimes almost through by default. a major power simply has to be an imposed itself by sheer gravitational pull they can infiltrate an entire culture. and it could do it a little bit more intentionally. in the press you start to see how specific he a dominant society can impose its version

of cultural identity and self-determination on another country. i became aware how that element of what is the island, what is the sister in what is the culture had been systematically obliterated and sometimes not through any specific sets. they were different people that participated. for instance there was a commissioner of education. i forget his name but he wrote a book that was the textbook on puerto rican history for about 30 years from 1930 1920 1930 to 1952 and really was a hagiography for the united states but it gave a one-sided version of history. when the united states first arrived there they try to eliminate spanish from the schools. that didn't last long so i

became aware that there was an element of natural human resistance to being denied who you are and i saw that in the stories. certainly in the life of pedro albizu compos. >> host: you mentioned the pedro albizu compos as a major player in the story and you say the story of pedro albizu compos is the story of puerto rico and white you tell us about that. >> guest: to start with, puerto rico, the united states occupation santiago one of the most devastating hurricanes. coffee crop 50 million pounds were gone. tens of thousands of people left homeless. the united states didn't really send any meaningful relief. this was in 1899 but instead in

the following year 1900 it declared that the united states dollar was the only currency to be used to in part of rico. the puerto rican peso was no longer valued and there had to be currency exchange but the two currencies that are roughly of equal buying power internationally were not exchanged on an equal basis. each puerto rican dollar would be worth about 60 american sense sense -- scents. that's a 40% devaluation of every person. if you think about the world trade center the 9/11 tragedy it was to very large buildings. the largest buildings but at the end of the day was to buildings and look at the ripple effect that have their our society and our economy the global infrastructure, homeland security, a whole set of repercussions.

that was the two buildings. think about what would happen as it is if everybody woke up one day and 40% of their property real estate anything you had was gone and concomitantly their debts have gone up to 40%. there would be a social shutdown. what is happening in baltimore right now would you microcosm of what would be seeing in every city. the society would cease to exist as we know it. that is what happened in puerto rico so you have a hurricane when year, currency devaluation the following year in and the year after that to the hollander act you had a set of property taxes that hit all the farmers in puerto rico that they had ever faced before. you have this economic trifecta that happens at the outset of the relationship of the united states. there was a great degree of dislocation. farmers lost their farms. farmers try to hold onto their farms. tobacco farmers that you know a great deal about were they were

a bit more are simple because they have smaller holdings. it was doable. it was a struggle and to their credit they did it. you had farmers desperately trying to hang onto their farms and they would take out loans. interesting the second largest bank in 1901 was the american american colonial bank. within 20 years it was the largest one. it held title to all of these. without user love restrictions farmer started defaulting on their loans all over the island. it magnified the mortgage crisis of 2007 100-fold so within 10 or 20 years what you has -- have is an internal diaspora. people are separated from their land and no longer able to sharecroppers because a lot of land is being turned into one crop cash cow economy with notable exceptions but there was a dominant sugar economy.

now you have people that were formerly farmers diversified agriculture looking for work. it migrated to the cities. understandably they try to enact what minimum wage legislation because the united states has primary jurisdiction over any law passed by the puerto rican legislature that was struck down. this happened in the early 20s. in 1917 puerto ricans were declared u.s. citizens in march of 1917 and exactly what one month later on april 2, 1917 woodrow wilson sent his back was towards united states congress. it's not a large leap to say that puerto ricans were declared u.s. citizen time for conscription to world war i. >> host: that's an interesting point and something about scholarships that i've been dealing with for a while and i think the importance of citizenship or the jones act was going to be the drafting of

puerto ricans into the war. has been questioned by a lot of scholars recently and one of the arguments against that is puerto ricans were considered since the act was passed in 1900 they were considered u.s. nationals and u.s. nationals could be drafted into war. in other words if you were u.s. national citizenship in terms of four draft would not have been a major motivation to the jones that. >> guest: but their enforcement provisions that go along with citizenship and i would counter the fact that you tell that to puerto ricans who are down in and the island to understand the meaning of citizenship and part of it is also social condition. once you feel you are a citizen you feel obligated because a lot of it is voluntary compliance. you have to show, we are talking about close to 2 million puerto

ricans. that's something i would explore and it's a case of first impression. i would simply submit that they just added to the weight of the conditioning that you are going to have to show up to the selective service now because you are citizen. that's number one. number two it became immediately qualified five years later when they tried to enact animal rights legislation and vetoed it number one and in 1922 it was ruled that since it was an unincorporated territory in nine states the u.s. constitution did not apply and the quote unquote citizens of puerto rico did not have any of the privileges and immunities of being a citizen. so let's reverse the situation. given the fact that you were

declared a citizen in 1917 but denied any of the essential elements of citizenship which is a protection of the u.s. constitution then you can back yourself into it and say well then why are we declared citizens and make teen 17. if not to provide protections and you don't have first amendment rights because public law 53 withdrew them in 1948 if you have to petition the u.s. congress for any law which can be good at unilaterally by the congress and the presidency you have been given you have been given into shells of citizenship. that's something i can research and spend another two years of my life. >> this stuff is all never-ending. >> guest: harvard law school was -- and world war i but he

goes back the height of his concentration of wealth and power in puerto rico. he assumes the leadership of the nationalist party voted as president very quick weight pcs there is an invidious one-sided relationship to united states and puerto rico. as a highly trained lawyer he knows the meaning. he understands the meaning of an quote unquote a citizen and not having the privileges and immunities of the advocates, organizes editorial isis for years about the independence of puerto rico. if united states, doesn't matter they know him in his own house. it becomes a focal point when he leads and islandwide agricultural strike the net

result of which was doubling the sugarcane wages from 75 cents a day to $1.50 an hour. that was massive. it was in the depth of the great depression. this was 1934. that is where the story albizu compos the story of her rico. precisely when wall street and washington recognized there was something happening in puerto rico finally it became a stone in the shoe of the power that the. there was an immediate reaction. they sent a new governor blanton winship a u.s. army general and new polices chief. he had been a military adjutant

sort of a double is seventh at going to different countries and wherever he would go there would be a destabilized regime. francis riggs father was a present of the riggs national bank. the riggs bank was at the core of financing a lot of the d. stabilizing of these regimes. in fact there were -- the word filibuster originally meant to go down to south central american countries and start a fake revolution that was a disguise right-wing takeover that would install a tin pipe dictator that was friendly to the united states and france and that was called filibuster. so riggs came over basically not just to be of the police chief in puerto rico but to oversee the riggs investments and he had investments south and central america and he was basically coming in as a colonial overseer

for that financing wall street conglomerate of which the riggs bank was a part. riggs in a very famous meeting with albizu compos during the height of the agricultural strike he invited albizu compos to a meeting to a very elegant restaurant in san juan of which there were multiple witnesses and it was written about my various biographers. he made an offer. it was a bride. $150,000 offer to albizu compos if he would basically back off of the agricultural strike. they kind of soft peddled his nationalist demands. essentially to stop being what he was which is an advocate for the independence of puerto rico. you've politely said his army wasn't for sale and they left the luncheon. it was right then that the reprisal set in. first plan aim at and when the

bride didn't work you want to plan b. they also gave them a the path to becoming majority leader of the senate. so it was a nice attractive package. it was the equivalent of where the devil takes you to the top cop of the mountain and he says all this will be yours if he does come with me. so albizu compos turned that down but the deal was offered if you look at the history of it and he took the deal. he went that way and he developed that american embrace for the following 29 years of his life to the point where he was a sponsor of law 53 and all sorts of repressive legislation in puerto rico to make sure that nobody complained about the united states. so albizu compos walks away from that meeting. the violence begins almost immediately. harassment all over the island. assassination threats and

assassination attempts. three nationalist and the guy buying a lottery ticket in innocent by standard were shot in october 1935 in what became known as the dash massacre and immediately after the police chief riggs held a press conference convened a press and brought them in because he wants specific way to get to enunciate these words. when asked what's going on can you contextualize them explain these open air in the middle of the day assassinations and he said very simple if albizu compos in the nationalist continue to agitate the sugarcane workers and university students there's going to be war to the death against all puerto ricans. >> host: albizu a few days later made this bench that was was -- speech that was reprinted that said riggs has made the call for war and i will answer

that call with a war and uses the same language. >> guest: when someone is coming after you to basically kill you -- >> i'm not criticizing. i was just mentioning it. >> it was done at the funeral for the three deceased and if you see the pictures there were 20,000 people surrounding the funeral caravan and the nationalist party had one old world war i by playing and that events were sub -- albizu spoke they flew over the cemetery and dropped white lilies over the people and that was a very memorable moment. that is what i chose as the title for my book because it he spoke not just the utterance of the words but the fact that you will say that to an entire people, just nakedly is a

tribute to bull connor in the african-american civil rights era. and in a certain perverse way people started to appreciate bull connor because he was so open and declared it. you could appreciate bull connor to be bull connor. bull connor would ring out the fire hydrant to the dogs and give the best photo op available so people could see what was going on in the south. and inadvertently help the civil rights movement. so with the prism in the hindsight of history it is beneficial that we know now that this is the way they were rolling puerto rico. this is how it is. we want to pay these wages and if you don't like it we are going to shoot you. if you don't like that we are going to shoot you some more and it's called a war against all puerto ricans. the fact that the police chief of puerto rico would say that is

one of the clearest expressions of empire. that was where the story of albizu compos became highly joined with the story of purdah rico. his life in fact was defined by his leadership or the leadership over the plate in the agricultural strikes because it was done the violence began out it was then that the charges of seditious conspiracy began. he had to spend 25 years in jail. from 1936 to 65 is 29 years. so shortly after the agricultural strike, he is in jail. so you do the math. 25 years in jail these are four years outside of those four years he was surrounded and followed by a platoon of fbi agents. you had four or five around-the-clock and to maintain that troop strength you have to have 20 at the i agents assigned around-the-clock. 20 at the i agents assigned to

one man and on top of that when he got out in jail after spending the first 10 years in jail in december 47, by june of 48 that passed a law law 53, the law of the muscle which made it illegal to utter a word sing a song, with solo tune that had anything to do with it or fly the flag or even more owned the flag. meaning if you have a flag in your closet in your home the police and come in and knock on your door and break down your door find a flag and maybe even plant the flag and then you are subject to 10 years in prison for that. >> host: i tell this to my students and i can't believe it. >> guest: to create an additional layer of surreal is some george orwell wrote in 1948 and it was published in 1949 and became a bestseller in the

united states and great written. right around that time was when law 53 was promulgated and the island of puerto rico was locked down. they have abrogated the first amendment rights of 2 million people to shut up one man. george orwell was alive and well in puerto rico the same time he was a bestseller here in new york. >> host: let me bring you back to puerto rico for a minute and i think that you throughout the book described an attitude of indifference and disrespect of the u.s. -- towards puerto ricans and you have just talked about it quite a bit. but i think there are many instances in your book not to say that wasn't the case case but there are other instances in your book when you demonstrate that washington was responding to puerto ricans that puerto

ricans were lobbing on their own behalf and this is where i want the conversation to go a little bit because i'm very interested in the way puerto ricans negotiated this empire. you are familiar with my work so you know what i'm going to ask you. for example on page 60 when writing about governor riley you talk about the secession of puerto rican regions gradually bringing formal charges against riley, resistance and then of course that leads to riley's removal and editorials in the press senators public way criticizing so these men were sent by presence to govern the island but it was the actions of puerto ricans in all sectors of society that force the removal of those men. i'm wondering if it is not a unilateral expression of power.

it is not a unilateral manifestation of empire in puerto rico because puerto ricans were not accepting a unilateral expression of american power. so i'm wondering it even with those examples in your own book to not consider those expressions of resistance in any way? >> i also consider them expressions of futility for this reason. let me explain why. there can be a situation in the corner of this room that i will acknowledge when it becomes either too loud or inconvenient. it is fair but i don't have to deal with it until it becomes an issue. these people that would be traveling to puerto rico one of them came up and saw president taft to talk about the independence of puerto rico or at least a the path of independence and he's fell

asleep and started snoring just as an example of by the way was president taft to which the chief justice of the supreme court in 1922 when he presided over balzac in puerto rico to claim that the constitution didn't apply in puerto rico so the fact that people can come up and plead their case and yet the united states has unilateral disposition isn't persuasive to me as a statement that therefore qualifies or modifies the existence of a colonial relationship. >> host: i'm not saying that at all. i'm not saying that it doesn't discount the fact and in fact i think it's very clear even today. what i'm asking is this idea of a unilateral manifestation empire. it's unclear in the evidence you have presented because riley is

gone. >> guest: yeah at bradley was a disaster. he didn't have the faintest idea what he was doing and he was caught with his hand in the cookie jar. he was appointing people that were manifestly incompetent. it became too much and even the secretary of war whoever was at the time said this is highly embarrassing to us. that guy would have been fired. his other public sector experience was he was an assistant post back -- postmaster in kansas city. the fact that he was appointed to the governorship is an indication in the first place of a lack of understanding of what

is happening in puerto rico. he didn't know that puerto rico was on the map geographically. so the fact that occasionally when things got to a point of intolerable embarrassment to the united states government the fact that they had to remove a fool that if not for him he was almost single-handedly creating a revolution himself. >> it was intolerable and cursing because puerto ricans were making that way. that is my point. i want puerto ricans at this time not just albizu because albizu was an incredible voice and they were an important and incredible voice but i want to know what border regions were doing. they were not the only voice in this time period. people were agitating and people were organizing. people were marching. people were visiting presidents and secretaries of war and

secretaries of agriculture and everybody in washington on a regular basis. it wasn't just the legislature that was doing it. just regular puerto ricans who had affiliated themselves so i'm wondering, i want to know more about who else have a voice there. what were puerto ricans doing? reading your book it's a story of victimization, clearly what happened to albizu was abuse. the use of it -- was abuse. all of these things are abusive and i wouldn't dispute all of that. it's convincing and we know it's part of the record and you have done a phenomenal job putting it all out there. i'm wondering about puerto ricans, i want to try to get away from this idea puerto ricans as victims because it takes away power, don't you think? guess who i agree with that however however if summers victimized it has to be called for what it is because the only way to treat a disease is to

identify it, see the source and apply the proper medicine. there's an external agent that has been affecting and manipulating and extracting wealth from what should be a sovereign self sufficient people. we have two knowledge that. at no point my book is a testament to the resilience in the independence and the willingness to sacrifice on the part of many people on the island of rhetoric overextended period of time but it's also a story of what is done to them and express that. albizu compos being a perfect example. the fact that he was in jail for 25 years for basically reminding that a state of its own founding principles that government exists with the consent of the government and all men are created equal. to be jailed for seditious conspiracy against united states to then be subject to what is a

mounting body of evidence, a mounting body of evidence that he was tortured in jail and subjected to something called total body radiation is beyond belief and yet it's a matter of record. look at the fbi files. i have been looking at the medical reports. we know from the dash who wrote the pulitzer prize they were the only went ones that there were 16,000 individuals who are unwittingly subjected to radiation experiments. many of them were prisoners precisely during that time the albizu was in jail so the fact that people are not inherently victims i am absolutely all for that. the fact that we puerto rico had maintained our culture and our language despite a century's worth of attempts to modify or

even eliminated in the schools is a testament to that inner core, that sense of self so for me that's a given. i'm sorry but it's so obvious that on my part it didn't require argument that puerto ricans are not victims but puerto ricans have been victimized. there has to be a recognition of the historical underpinnings of that relationship have been ordered to arrive at some meaningful discussion regarding the future. >> guest: absolutely. >> host: absolutely and i agree with you. one of the interesting about this is your right to say that they u.s. project included americanization and was part of this colonial -- and required to lich from those who did know better as they say and included

instruction of political democracy as we are going to be the guiding light. all of these things are part of the american colonial project but when that project got to puerto rico it had to change constantly because puerto ricans were always demanding that it be changed in some way or another. my point is that it wasn't only the pro-independence fighters that were arguing for a change to that policy. they were arguing for policy but puerto ricans and all such or such society were really arguing for well we know this is what you think that it's not going to work that way. your evidence about how the english failed even though they tried with laws in the way different ways to make it happen part of reagan's stills peak spanish in puerto rico. this is a -- that plan has to do

with puerto ricans who are politically savvy and they have to deal with farmers who are organizing and lobbying congress and the workers all of these sectors of people which changes that idea about what the project is going to look like in puerto rico. i'm curious as to how much say and i think it was quite a bit how much of the day-to-day running of things was really at the hands of puerto ricans? i think we find evidence during this time period, this chaotic time period a lot it was the man to puerto ricans. not to discuss his abuse or any of the incident to talk about come the terrible incident to talk about but i think we have to recognize that there is more activity.

>> guest: i'm not sure what universe are saying that puerto ricans were in charge of. puerto ricans are in charge of their maritime foreign relations relations, their close supporters there are laws in their currency and banking system and the legal system and there are laws are -- in nine states. their economic within the sugarcane economy agricultural engine for 40 years and that great degree of control of that. >> host: clearly it was a world arcade. >> guest: it wasn't just abstract market conditions. it was banking syndicates south puerto rico sugar. puerto rico on behalf of the

arable land of the sugarcane plantations and the acreage under cultivation was 200,000 roughly which i know the tobacco was 30 40 and it can go up or down but it was the dominant economic reality of puerto rico was the sugar and sugarcane centralis. i don't think it's a history of sufficient part or we can control. that's part of the problem. puerto rico is an island that had its legs taken away from it and a series of crutches to substitute one decade after another operation bootstrap which was a booby-trapped. 936, all sorts of corporate incentives. there has been a bread carpet stretching from wall street to san juan and the net result of which has not in the building of an indigenous manufacturing base in puerto rico. it's been a series of short-term

capital-intensive tax abatement deals for foreign investment. the most recent iteration of which is asked 22 in which john paulson and other hedge fund traders come to puerto rico and receive a 20 year tax abatement on interest dividend and capital gains income. at the same time the puerto ricans are facing to gasoline hikes tax hikes in one year, water and electrical rates going up. that leads to more business taxes and they discussed a tax in puerto rico. it is come to the point where the puerto ricans cannot sustain and are leaving the island. the same time "new yorker" magazine "bloomberg news" "the wall street journal" and the narc times are like the markers of real estate interests. there is this hoard of people coming under at 22. the best known of which is john

john -- who made $15 billion in the year 2007 for his hedge fund betting against the american economy through rmbs real estate real property backed mortgage back securities and credit default swaps. these fancy financial instruments were actually based upon people losing their mortgages. this was happening in puerto rico. it started at 5 hundred billion dollar resort complex in dorado beach and bringing over other syndicates of investors in puerto rico under the offices of act 22. that same sort of predatory capitalism from 2007 where you make $50 billion during the mortgage crisis is now being imported into puerto rico under the auspices of a 20 year tax abatement. this is no different in a sense from the banking syndicates the cayman and appropriated puerto rican land and sat back on wall

street as did charles herbert allen. he stayed here 17 months and then he were signed quickly went to wall street and installed himself as a treasure or a president and a member of the board of directors of the american sugar refining company which we now know as domino sugar. he was like an economic hitman. he cased the island and turned into a crime scene. he goes back and becomes a present of guaranteed trust and sets up these bank certificates in the people you pointed into the puerto rican government drop procedure in the 17 months gave them favorable water easement tax abatement deals preferential treatment in land disposition. because he had these relationships and people he could call in puerto rico he was given a red carpet as i said before to basically be one of

the people that led the charge is in over the puerto rican economy. the same way that john paulson is now so i'm going on at length here. >> host: i asked you. >> guest: there has been a history of disorder bring it back to wrap it up the benefit of bull connor is that you can see the fire hydrant of the dogs and you can take a photograph. the perverse benefit of lee's lease chief rigs is that he would other words as fantastic and surreal. there was a war against all puerto ricans. when his chief of police shot four people when they massacre killed 17 unarmed men women and children that were simply marching on palm sunday in support of albizu compos and in recognition of the nationalist

party singing the puerto rican national anthem, that was their crime. then it's more and you can see the teeth of that empire. now it's a little more subtle. now it's obviously from a briefcase. it's from wall street that ends up expropriating huge amounts of puerto rican property. >> host: i think that one of the interesting things to point out that has also been studied by other scholars is the criminalization of independence which is something you document really well in this book. how to be affiliated with the independence. i had been reading quite a bit about this lately to prepare for this interview but i also wonder

if my classes my students always ask me why is there not more agitation in puerto rico for independence? clearly it's a colonial system. it is not based secret that it's a colonial system. you and with participation we know to go on the system why is there not more agitation text clearly not part of that is the criminalization of being in pendant activist. i was wondering if you'd could comment perhaps on that. has the party in all of your studies, what happened other than the criminalization of it that really at the end of the day we don't have an organized numerous healthy independence on the atlantic? >> guest: the more visible

events were the massacre and people being gunned down in the street without much apology. some other visible moments were when the nationalists had which one are the major events in the subject matter of my book the revolution of 1950 was spread through eight towns and included an attempt on the governor's mansion. the fact that the way the united states reacted immediately they deployed 5000 national guardsmen. they arrested 3000 puerto ricans within the space of a week in the own two pounds the bombs to towns and 10 p-47 fighter planes and bomb the town of eduardo. it's the only time in american history where the united states intentionally or willingly knowingly bombards its own

citizens. those are the high points that people are aware of. you can get to that point that if you take it, if you escalate if the united states response would be immediate effective and coordinated and puerto rico especially at the time was separated the mainland by a couple thousand miles of ocean from new york and washington to puerto rico separated by an ocean language culture and technology. the technology is important because there were certainly no internet. television we are talking about 50's, 40s, 30s. some radio but the only thing that got off the island was controlled by half a dozen wire service reporters. ap and upi reporters that were basically american reporters reporting and they would feed their stories to the major mainstream newspapers in "the

wall street journal" in new york times. it was sort of regurgitate a prepackaged story. as an example in the massacre it was reported up here as a nationalist riot and that was the puerto ricans riot and in the text it would say there was a gunfight. the word gunfight is definitional. a fight involves two sides. they can be a gunfight if you don't have any guns or unarmed puerto ricans. so it was a knowledge that if this violence could be sudden swift and severe and no matter what you did it was going to be misreported and you were living in a complete vacuum that was one. there were these peaks of violence but has an everyday reality you have the two dynamics that perfectly

exemplify what people were living through. public law 53 which i mentioned before was passed by -- very quickly after albizu compos came back from prison with the supposed attempt was that it was an anti-communist measure and it closely correlated to the language of the smith act in the united states. but there weren't soviet -- in puerto rico. it was clear that it was intended to stifle and to corral albizu compos. the fact that you have a lot but criminalizes as you said free speech. anything that you say, literally sing a song, whistle a tune that gets into your character. it worms its way into your psyche. and you look at the other elements. the secret police dossiers that were maintained on over 100,000

puerto ricans over his six decade period from the early to mid-30s right after the agricultural strike rate this is one of happened. this is when j. edgar hoover was given the instructions. go ahead. you need to contain this problem in puerto rico after that strike rate those six decades when you create 100,000 files on people it's not just the files. think of the file as an organism. how does that get created? via the eye and the police couldn't create it. it had to be reported to them so now you have a situation where the the eyes actively turning brother against brother in puerto rico. you have 100,000 files and tens of thousands of informants in the way you get that informants is not because puerto ricans are inherently treacherous. you would worm your your way and in. would call someone into the

precinct on some pretext and say we heard such and such and i think we are going to open a file on you and the guy will panic but then they will put their arm around them. you know what we don't believe you. we think you are actually a good guy. but we are going to believe that that you are not seditious because you are going to come back and tell us about those other bad guys. you are a good guy. you are with us but now that we have you and whatever initial pretext we are going to turn you and it's a very easy process. and it's cancerous. it's viral. when you have that going on for 60 years you are looking at two to three complete generations of forgery in history. people are born and raised with this as a living wake reality with one generation after the next. that sense of looking over your shoulder of factionalism of

obstacles to creating our solidarity of a sense of fatalism that on top of that you will go to jail. now there is law 53. if you other a word and on top of that if you want to get even more testy about it we will shoot you because we declare war against all puerto ricans all puerto ricans and if you go even further we will bomb you. you add all that together and what you have is people that are naturally have a sense of constraint. it is inculcated in its bread and it becomes part of the dna of people do not create that one solid unified overwhelming prepossessing up domino bull -- abominable voice it has to be hurt. the revolution 1950 was not only

a military act. they had just burned nagasaki and are ashamed of the most powerful -- any history of the world. they were trying to make a dramatic statement that it was a very real palpable issue that needed to be addressed before the 1952 vote into for the 1950 vote which is creating the path to that commonwealth status. so there's a history of trying to get this message off the island. that was albizu compos' message to the world that there is something and this relationship isn't working people need to hear it. >> host: i agree with you and i wonder also if you run into him and the evidence and we don't have a lot of time left but as a quick aside i have been reading about we are coming to an election near and parties are

going to put out their platforms almost like a sporting event in puerto rico. i wonder if the independence activists have been unable for the past several elections to get enough votes to even be in the ballot officially without having to have signatures? i wonder if there is something at work here and i suspect there may be that the party perhaps is not put forth a mission that people can buy into. perhaps this is a call. this book is a call to understand the past ticket is ready to move towards the future may be an awakening perhaps of sorts to everybody in puerto rico to look at our history and to really understand where we

have been. you mentioned and some of the interviews i have heard that you argued the future of the island needs to be negotiated with all of this information at hand and that is part of our history. i agree and i think that needs to happen from a position of power and your book is part of a scathing into that position of power. i would like to hear some last words about what you think about this about being in a position of power. >> guest: i thank you for this moment that i want to give recognition to luis gonzalez who came forward from the island to translate this into spanish. gonzalez of his own volition with a tremendous to korea passion has been translating this book and he is on chapter 17 at this point and i also want to recognize carlos

gonzalez. carlos reyes alonzo is a leader of the puerto rican independence party and he has reached out to me and he has been coordinating a multi-city tour engagement for the book which is to me and this happened really quickly. carlos reyes alonzo contacted me and other members. he has read the book and the fact that very quickly they integrated the facts and the worldview that is shown in this book and they are ready to deal from a point of information is probably the most important

galvanizing element at this point especially the economic turmoil that has happened in puerto rico. by the way i heard a great interview by a woman named maria noone does santiago. she is a senator in puerto rico and a member that the ip. she is so eloquent and so specific, so detailed. it's not a commercial but it was on a commercial called dossier and the interview was a man named willie martinez so he simply googled the word maria santiago negron .ca interview you will see it. it's an hour-long interview and she was so one point with the tying and of not only the historical but the political undercurrents that are running through puerto rico now and the historicity of her party and innocence the inevitability of

some of the dynamics happening in puerto rico. you are right that electorally it's an odd thing and derives partly from a history. it derives from the two majority parties, they have a lot of hold on the electoral system very much like the democrats and republicans here but they have lost the narrative of the island. the truth of the matter but can't read fact is reality is adrift right now. right now it's equivalent to if you remember the movie where rocky is seeing triple and his manager mickey says that the guy in the middle. that's what's happening. i don't know which direction they're going. they should be looking at the merchant marine act of 1920. some specific things they could aggressively agree upon but

instead you have one party submitting impeachment petitions against the other and the message that goes out is that both parties are divided and dripping with self-interest. that doesn't work and they are fighting over what may be a currently untenable proposition of favors for puerto rico. although there are some benefits there are so many constitutional and economic obstacles to that that it shouldn't be the center of the debate. the center of the debate right now is how to resolve the public debt in puerto rico and how to work with allies. >> host: nelsons been a pleasure. thank you for joining us and i have enjoyed your book. >> guest: thank you. grassley is.

..