Tomás López de Victoria

19th Century male leaders of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement

19th Century female leaders of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement

Through the mandates of the Freedom of Information Act, it is currently known that the FBI and CIA filed millions of pages of surveillance reports on the leaders of the Puerto Rican independence movement. However, little is known of what became of Tomás López de Victoria, the Sub-Commander of the Cadets of the Republic - except that, in 1954, he was still incarcerated in a United States Federal penitentiary.

On October 30, 1950, a series of revolts occurred in scattered locations in Puerto Rico in opposition to U.S. colonial rule. These were known as the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party revolts. On that day of October 30, López de Victoria led the Nationalist revolt in the town of Arecibo.

By the 1950s, López de Victoria held the rank of "Colonel-Sub-Commander" of the cadets, second only in the organization to Díaz Pacheco. Membership in the cadets began to dwindle as a result of the persecution which the cadets were subject to by local and federal agencies of United States. In the 1950s the official hierarchy of the Cadets of the Republic was the following:

The revolts, known as the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party revolts of the 1950s, began on October 30, 1950, upon the orders of Nationalist leader Albizu Campos, with uprisings in various towns, among them Arecibo, Mayagüez, Naranjito, Peñuelas and Ponce. The most notable uprisings occurred in Utuado, Jayuya, and San Juan.

The revolt of October 1950 failed because of the overwhelming force used by the U.S. military, the U.S. National Guard, the FBI, the CIA, and the Puerto Rican Insular Police - all of whom were aligned against the Nationalists. This force included the machine-gunning of Nationalists and cadets alike, and the aerial bombing of the towns of Jayuya and Utuado.

Hundreds of cadets and Nationalists, which included López de Victoria, were arrested by mid-November 1950, and the party was never the same. The Cadets of the Republic ceased to function as an officially organized military organ of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.

The year after the Ponce massacre, on July 25, 1938, Governor Winship decided to celebrate the invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States with a military parade. For a venue, he specifically chose the city of Ponce, in order to demonstrate that his "Law and Order" policy had been a successful one against the Nationalists. Since 19 Puerto Ricans had been slaughtered in Ponce just one year earlier, this decision proved to be disastrous.

On March 21, 1937, López de Victoria, as Captain of the Ponce branch of cadets, led his group in a peaceful march in the city of Ponce. The march turned into a bloody police slaughter known as the Ponce massacre, when the police fired their weapons against the Nationalists and innocent bystanders, killing 18 Puerto Ricans and wounding over 200 others.

The Nationalist Party and the cadets wanted to celebrate a peaceful parade in Ponce on March 21, 1937, in commemoration of the abolition of slavery and to protest the jailing of its leaders, including Pedro Albizu Campos.

On April 3, 1936, a Federal Grand Jury submitted accusations against Pedro Albizu Campos, Juan Antonio Corretjer, Luis F. Velázquez, Clemente Soto Vélez, Erasmo Velázquez, Julio H. Velázquez, Rafael Ortiz Pacheco, Juan Gallardo Santiago, and Pablo Rosado Ortiz. They were charged with sedition and other violations of Title 18 of the United States Code. Title 18 of the United States Code is the criminal and penal code of the federal government of the United States. It deals with federal crimes and criminal procedure.

López de Victoria's political ideals were influenced by his sister and by the local Nationalist leader José Enamorado Cuesta, who introduced him to the teachings of Don Pedro Albizu Campos, the party president. In 1932, López de Victoria swore allegiance to the Nationalist Party before Eufemio Rodríguez Pérez, the president of Ponce's Municipal Board of officers.

The Cadets of the Republic, known in Spanish as Cadetes de la República, was a quasi-military youth organization of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Also known as the "Liberation Army of Puerto Rico" (Ejército Libertador de Puerto Rico), they were organized in the 1930s by Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos.

The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, founded on September 17, 1922, is a political party whose main objective is to work for Puerto Rican independence. López de Victoria's sister Pura, was a member of the Ponce Municipal Board of officers of the party.

Tomás López de Victoria (1911–????) was a political activist and the Sub-Commander of the Cadets of the Republic. These cadets were the official youth organization within the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. They were also known as the Ejército Libertador de Puerto Rico (The Liberation Army of Puerto Rico).