Juliet Takes a Breath

by Gabby Rivera

It was 1954 and the US government was treating Puerto Rico like its own private island: gouging it for sugar, using its shores for military purposes, and passing laws that made it illegal to display Puerto Rican flags or to fight for Puerto Rico’s independence from the United States. Apparently, the US didn’t ask the people of Puerto Rico if they wanted to be a protectorate or not; they didn’t ask the people anything. They just swooped in and took control after the Spanish American War. Lolita wasn’t having any of it. She was a nacionalista on the island and when she moved to the US in the late 1930s, she saw how her people were being discriminated against and how they were pushed into obscene poverty. Lolita Lebrón took an order from Pedro Albizu Campos, leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, and made sure it succeeded. She led the coup d’état into the House of Representatives. She fired the first shots. She shouted, ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre! My United States did this to Puerto Rico? The country I pledged allegiance to all through school, this country where allegedly anyone could just pull themselves up out of poverty and make something of themselves; this country decimated an entire island? And I thought banana republics were the worst of it. How could I not know this history? How could I walk around my block with a boricua bandanna wrapped around my head or march down Fifth Avenue next to the Goya float in the Puerto Rican Day Parade but not have even one clue tha...