Vidal Santiago Díaz
Though not involved in the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts of the 1950s, Santiago Díaz's barbershop was attacked by forty armed police officers and U.S. National Guardsmen.
[3] After reflecting on this police slaughter, and its moral implications, Santiago Díaz joined the Nationalist Party and became a follower of its president, Pedro Albizu Campos.
They were under the command of General Blanton Winship, the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, who gave the order to attack the Ponce march on Palm Sunday.
In his book War Against All Puerto Ricans,[8] Denis states that Santiago Díaz purchased the barbershop in 1932 from José Maldonado Román, who was ailing from throat cancer, thus becoming the sole owner of the business.
[16] Under this new law it became a crime to print, publish, sell, or exhibit any material intended to paralyze or destroy the insular government; or to organize any society, group or assembly of people with a similar destructive intent.
According to Dr. Leopoldo Figueroa, a member of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, the law was repressive and was in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech.
[17] On June 21, 1948, Albizu Campos gave a speech in the town of Manatí, where Nationalists from all over the island had gathered in case the police attempted to arrest him.
Later that month Albizu Campos visited Blanca Canales and her cousins Elio and Griselio Torresola, the nationalist leaders of the town of Jayuya.
On October 26, 1950, Albizu Campos was holding a meeting in Fajardo when he received word that his house in San Juan was surrounded by police waiting to arrest him.
Instead, unbeknown to Santiago Díaz, fifteen police officers and twenty-five National Guardsmen were sent that very afternoon to lay siege to his barbershop.
[1] As they surrounded Salón Boricua, these forty armed men believed that a large group of Nationalists were inside and sent a police officer to investigate.
This gun battle between forty heavily armed policemen and National Guardsmen and one barber made Puerto Rican radio history.
Upon release from the hospital he was arrested and taken before a federal judge to face charges of "intent to commit murder" and other events related to the Nationalist uprisings of October 1950.
Although he did not participate in the uprisings, he was convicted and sentenced to serve seventeen years and six months in prison at the Insular Penitentiary in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico.
On October 14, 1952, Santiago Díaz was granted a pardon of all charges related to the cases concluded or pending against him by Puerto Rican Governor Luis Muñoz Marín.
The governor specified that Santiago Díaz's activities on behalf of Puerto Rican independence were not to be curtailed, unless they advocated the use of anti-democratic methods, force, or violence.
