Hiram Rosado

Hiram Rosado (1911-February 23, 1936) was a member of the Cadets of the Republic, the paramilitary wing of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party who, together with fellow Cadet Elías Beauchamp, carried out the 1936 assassination of Col. Elisha Francis Riggs, the United States appointed chief of the Puerto Rico Police. Both men were arrested and shot, officially while attempting to escape, ar the police headquarters in San Juan. News of the assassinations spread throughout the United States and lead to legislative proposal by U.S. Senator Millard Tydings, to grant independence to Puerto Rico.

On Sunday, February 23, 1936, Elisha F. Riggs had attended mass in the Church of Santa Ana in San Juan. When the mass was over, Riggs stepped out of the church and got into his car, a Packard, driven by Angel Alvarez, a police officer. Rosado knew the route which Riggs would normally take and waited. When Riggs' car reached the corner of Allen and Gambaro Streets, Rosado came out of his hideout and began shooting towards Riggs. Rosado then made a run for it, but was soon captured by Alvarez. All the while, Riggs got out of his car and began asking for the declarations of those who witnessed the attempt on his life. He was suddenly approached by Beauchamps who said:

On October 20, 1935, in a political meeting which the Nationalist Party held in the town of Maunabo and which was transmitted by radio, Albizu Campos denounced Chardón, the university deans and the Liberal Party as traitors, saying they wanted to convert the university into an "American" propaganda institution.

On October 23, 1935, a group of students at the university who supported Chardón began to collect signatures for a petition to declare Albizu Campos "Student Enemy Number One." In turn, a protest against the group by the pro-Nationalist faction of students denounced Chardón and the Liberal Party as agents of the United States.

On October 24, 1935, a student assembly held at the university declared Albizu Campos as "persona non grata." Chardón requested that the governor provide armed police officers on the university grounds, in case the situation turned violent. Two police officers spotted a "suspicious-looking vehicle" and asked the driver, Ramón S. Pagán, and his friend Pedro Quiñones, for identification. A struggle ensued, and the police killed Pagán and Quiñones. According to the local newspaper "El Mundo" of Oct. 25th, an explosion, followed by gunfire, was heard resulting in the additional deaths of Eduardo Rodríguez Vega and José Santiago Barea. Elisha Francis Riggs, a former Colonel in the United States Army, was the United States appointed police chief of Puerto Rico.>

The news of the assassination of Elisha F. Riggs spread throughout the United States. At that time Puerto Rican Senator, Luis Muñoz Marín, was in Washington, D.C. and Ernest Gruening, the administrator of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (1935–1937), asked him to condemn Riggs' assassination. Muñoz Marín told Gruening that he would do so only if he was also allowed to condemn the police for murdering the Nationalists in the city police station without a trial.

Colonel Elisha Francis Riggs was born in Georgetown, a historic neighborhood located in northwest Washington, D.C. Riggs was a former officer in the United States Army who was appointed Chief of the Puerto Rico Police in 1933, by Blanton Winship, the U.S. appointed governor of Puerto Rico. He was an unpopular police chief, stemming from his decisions to repress the growing sugar cane worker's organized labor movement and the Nationalist Pro-Independence Movement.

In 1931, the U.S.-appointed Governor of Puerto Rico, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. named Dr. Carlos E. Chardón as Chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico. In 1935, Chardón initiated a project based on the ideas of Luis Muñoz Marín, who at the time was a Senator in the Puerto Rican legislature and member of the Liberal Party of Puerto Rico. It was known as the Reconstruction of Puerto Rico Project. The plan, which was within the New Deal criteria established by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression, was well received and became known as Plan Chardón.

The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party was founded by José Coll y Cuchí as a direct response to the American colonial government in 1919, By the 1920s, there were two other pro-independence organizations in the Island, they were the "Nationalist Youth" and the "Independence Association of Puerto Rico". On September 17, 1922, the two political organizations merged into the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. In 1924, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos joined the party and on May 11, 1930, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos was elected president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.