Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, March 21st, 1937, the date of what came to be known as the Ponce Massacre.

On Palm Sunday, March 21st, 1937, a peaceful march in Ponce, Puerto Rico was attacked by police who shot

and killed 19 Puerto Ricans, including a seven-year-old girl, and wounded over 200 others.

So here to discuss this incident, this protest, this massacre in its legacy is, as always,

Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello, Nicki, hello Kelly.

Hello J Kelly.

Hello Jody. Hey there. And our special guest for this episode is WNYC's Alana-Kassinova Burgess, host of the new series La Brega, which is a seven-part look at Puerto Rican identity

released in Spanish and in English just look at identity on the island and off.

So Alana thank you for joining us and congratulations on this series. I really, I really love it.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

And you are joining us from Puerto Rico, we should say that. you down there for a particular reason doing

some reporting or? Some reporting yeah some promoting some LaBrega love. Good great.

So you know I a lot of we'll get to this event, but I'm wondering if you can actually

start a little bigger picture and talk about how much the Bunce Massacre has a place in Puerto Rican

historical imagination in Puerto Rican identity.

How much, you know, what is its place as you see it?

Well, the Masaka de Ponsei is basically, I mean, there's everything that leads up to it and there's everything that comes after it.

But from my understanding, and I should disclose here that I did not grow up in Puerto Rico, I grew up in New York, but my friends, my family, my mother tells me, they tell me that actually you don't really learn about it in the public schools here. And if do it's very briefly so a lot of people

tell me that they learned about it in college which is somewhat shocking or after college

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