Foreign in a Domestic Sense

ROMAN MARS: This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars. On a recent trip to Puerto Rico, producer Jeyca Medina-Gleason was introduced to a piece of family history. It’s an old manila folder with a photo of her grandfather, Tomás Velez Lopez, attached to the front. In the picture, Tomás is a young 20-something with thick, wavy hair and a full Tom Selleck mustache. And across the top of the folder, in big bold letters, it reads. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: “Division of Special Investigations.” And it has his case number. I don’t know if they started from 1, but if they did, he was 7,480. 

ROMAN MARS: The Intelligence Division opened a case on Jeyca’s grandpa in the 1970s. The folder contains over 60 pages of notes and details about Tomás’s life–mundane things that are common in police files: his height, his weight, his license plate number… But there were other, less mundane details too. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: There’s a line here that says. “Peligroso? No.” So it’s: “Is he dangerous?” And no. He apparently was not dangerous. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Flipping through the folder, it was clear that my grandpa was part of a big investigation. But as I kept reading through the documents, I couldn’t find what crime he was being accused of or any allegations at all. Instead what I learned is that his case was about something else entirely. The file sums it up in one line… 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: You know, they’re saying sort of purpose of the investigation–and it’s to determine his activities politically. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: This file the police kept on my grandpa is a type of folder known in Puerto Rico as a “carpeta.”

ROMAN MARS: Carpetas were created to spy on supporters of Puerto Rican independence. And the folders were one part of a decades-long surveillance operation which tracked more than 150,000 Puerto Ricans. The goal of the government’s surveillance project was to intimidate and suppress the political movement–one that Jeyca’s grandfather belonged to. 

GRANDMA NANCY: Your grandpa was a dreamer. And his first dream was having his nation free–free from the power of the United States. That was his first love. When I met him, he loved it more than me. Truly! I mean, truly.

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: This is my Grandma Nancy. If you can’t already tell, Abuela Nancy is Nuyorican, down to her bones. And she told me that she actually met my grandpa because of the independence movement. 

GRANDMA NANCY: We both sold. Periodico Claridad. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: The two of them first ran into each other selling a pro-independence newspaper on the same street corner. 

GRANDMA NANCY: Then one day, he told me, “Hey, you can’t take my corner. You gotta go sell somewhere else.” I was like… I said, “What? Uh-uh.” That’s how it all started. We had a very, very sweet friendship. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: My grandma also told me that, after their little meet-cute, the government opened a carpeta on her, too. 

GRANDMA NANCY: They started surveilling me when we two got together. Mine wasn’t even as big as his!

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: My grandpa Tomás died years ago, so I never got to ask him about any of this. But what I do know is that he, like a lot of Puerto Ricans, served in the U.S. Army. And it was not lost on him that, despite being a U.S. citizen, Puerto Rico is not really a part of the United States. So, he spent his life right up until his later years fighting for Puerto Rican independence. 

GRANDMA NANCY: We were activists. We were always activists. Wherever there was something to do and something to fight for, we were there.

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: For years–decades even–my grandpa’s carpeta wasn’t sitting in some government building or archive but was buried in the back of my abuela’S closet. All over Puerto Rico, thousands of these carpetas are lying around, perhaps in some other abuela’s closet. And each one, in its own way, provides a glimpse into the long and often ugly relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. 

ROMAN MARS: Puerto Rico has been a colony since the Spanish first arrived on the island of Borinquen 500 years ago. And from the very beginning, resistance defined the identity of the island. In fact, the very idea of being Puerto Rican was born out of this tension between the colonized and the colonizer. 

JORELL MELENDEZ-BADILLO: The first time that the term “Puertorriqueño” (“Puerto Rican”) appears in the Spanish colonial record, it is in the early 1700s when a military official is complaining about all these Puerto Ricans: “Bastards of Spanish military generals.” And so it is used to refer to Puerto Ricans, people from the archipelago, as “bastards.”

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: This is Jorell Melendez-Badillo. He’s an assistant professor of Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the book, Puerto Rico: A National History. Jorell says that, despite the Spanish crown’s original intent to demean, people on the island embraced the term “Puerto Rican,” using it to rally around a shared identity. 

JORELL MELENDEZ-BADILLO: I think that Puerto Rican identity has always been constructed in opposition to colonialism. It is an affirmation of being something different from Spain. 

ROMAN MARS: In the 19th century, hostility between the Spanish Empire and its colonies sparked a number of revolutions throughout the Caribbean. Puerto Ricans saw uprisings taking place all around them in the Dominican Republic and Cuba and wanted in on the action. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Which is when the United States entered the equation. In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the United States presented themselves as liberators to the Puerto Rican people. But by the time the dust settled and the U.S. had beaten the Spanish, they did not give Puerto Rico independence. Instead, they annexed it. 

ROMAN MARS: At the time, when a U.S. territory was annexed, the next step for it was statehood. That’s just how territories had worked since the founding of the country. A swath of land would be taken, a local government would form, and the territory would become a state. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: But when the U.S. acquired the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico, lots of Americans were like, “Eh, I don’t know about all that.”

CHRISTINA PONSA KRAUS: Americans in general did not like the idea of giving statehood to places inhabited by a majority of people who they didn’t perceive as white. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: This is Christina Ponsa Kraus, a professor of constitutional law at Columbia Law School. 

CHRISTINA PONSA KRAUS: They didn’t think that the people of these islands could be properly assimilated into American culture. And yet, instead of just leaving them alone, the United States took them anyway. And so then we’ve got this debate. “What are we gonna do? Should we have them as territories? Why were we annexing them? What’s gonna happen next?”

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: These questions went all the way up to the Supreme Court in a series of cases called the Insular Cases. In these arguments, the Court debated whether or not the Constitution applied to all of these newly annexed territories. 

ROMAN MARS: And the answer to that was a resounding “sort of?”

CHRISTINA PONSA KRAUS: It ended up essentially saying that Puerto Rico was not part of the United States in a more general sense. But it also said that Puerto Rico wasn’t foreign. And so it came up with this language: “Puerto Rico and the other territories by implication,” that is the other new ones, the Philippines and Guam, “are foreign to the United States in a domestic sense.” “And also,” the Court said, “they are domestic in an international sense.”

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: If “foreign in a domestic sense” and “domestic in an international sense” is complete gibberish to you, that’s because it is. Basically, the cases determined that the Constitution only applied to Puerto Rico as the U.S. saw fit because it wasn’t a state and then used this obscure language to explain away why it wouldn’t become one. It’s a two-step process. Annex and incorporate. They were not planning to incorporate Puerto Rico. 

ROMAN MARS: The Foraker Act and the Jones Act gave Puerto Ricans the ability to elect their own legislature and granted citizenship. So, Puerto Ricans were citizens but not totally citizens. And they could hold elections, but they still had no representation in Congress. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: As you could imagine, all this vague, incoherent language pissed a lot of people off. Puerto Rico had been a colony for hundreds of years by this time, and their fate was always being decided for them by outside forces. And within Puerto Rico, no one voiced their frustration with the island’s status more loudly than the leader of the Nationalist Party, Pedro Albizu Campos. 

[PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS SPEECH]

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Starting in the 1930s, Albizu Campos led the Nationalist Party, which was one of the strongest voices in the Puerto Rican independence movement. 

JORELL MELENDEZ-BADILLO: Albizu Campos is a fascinating individual. Pedro Albizu Campos was a Harvard-educated lawyer–Afro-descendant. He had great rhetoric. He would spit fire. He dominated a crowd when he spoke, and he spoke about the ills of Puerto Rico. 

ROMAN MARS: A lot of what Albizu Campos was responding to came from Supreme Court cases that set up the political dynamic between the U.S. and Puerto Rico. He wanted Puerto Ricans to see that this relationship made them second class citizens. And he wanted them to get mad. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: There were peaceful protests that shined a light on Puerto Rico’s colonial status. But in 1935, Puerto Rican police, under the control of the U.S., killed a number of independence protesters. Months later, in response, some in the independence movement killed the police chief. After that, the U.S. determined that the Nationalist Party wasn’t a political party but a bunch of insurrectionists. 

JORELL MELENDEZ-BADILLO: And they were not afraid to use violence. And that is something that authorities feared. 

ROMAN MARS: At first, Albizu Campos and the Nationalist Party tried to seek change through the ballot box. But the scales were always tipped against them. The U.S. held a firm grip over the electoral system on the island and basically every other lever of power, too. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: And so, Albizu Campos determined that they couldn’t gain independence within a system designed to oppress them. He declared that the Nationalist Party would withdraw from electoral politics so long as the U.S. was in power. Freedom wasn’t going to be earned. They needed to take it. 

ROMAN MARS: In the 1930s, hoping to restore order to the island, the United States appointed a new governor to oversee Puerto Rico. He militarized the police and jailed political opponents, including Albizu Campos. The Governor also authorized a new surveillance operation–one that would keep tabs on people they suspected to be part of the independence movement. This was the beginning of the Carpetas. 

CHRISTOPHER GREGORY-RIVERA: Basically, the way it would work was it was sort of, like, a three strike system. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: That’s Christopher Gregory-Rivera. He’s a photographer and artist who has done extensive research on carpetas. He says that the government had a whole process for determining who was deemed suspicious enough to have one opened on them. 

CHRISTOPHER GREGORY-RIVERA: If I was a heavily surveilled person and we had a coffee, they would open an index card on you. And if you never got any more cards, then–you know–you’d probably kind of fall off the radar. But if they saw you with somebody else or they saw you at a rally, you’d get another card. And sort of through that process, they kept track of connections. And when you got three of these index cards, then they would actually formally open a carpeta on you. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: At the time, it was generally known within the independence movement that the government was watching–but how close and in what ways remained a mystery. The police, of course, didn’t have the manpower to surveil each and every person who sympathized with the cause. And so they paid friends, neighbors, and colleagues to do a lot of the dirty work. 

ROMAN MARS: This, of course, created an obvious incentive. If you had something to say, you get paid. Or if you were in trouble with the law for whatever reason, you could get out of trouble by helping the police. And at a time when work was hard to come by on the island, lots of people suddenly had lots to say. 

CHRISTOPHER GREGORY-RIVERA: From my perspective, having read a lot of them and talking to people who were surveilled and scholars and other researchers, a lot of the information is, like, made up. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Christopher says that, despite the bad information, the carpetas still served a purpose for the Puerto Rican government. It had the effect of making people in the independence movement feel watched, which made organizing harder. The Carpetas were an off-the-book means of suppression, while the state created on-the-book ways to criminalize their activity. 

ROMAN MARS: And the size of the carpeta indicated how aggressively a person was being surveilled. A person with a small carpeta might never see a cop, while a person with a three foot tall carpeta might have police stationed outside their home and business day after day. The heavier the carpeta, the heavier it weighed on a person’s life. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: In 1948, the Puerto Rican government passed a law that made it a crime to write, meet, or speak about independence. The U.S. had entered the McCarthy era, and this fear of communism trickled down into its relationship with Puerto Rico as well. There was a fear of any kind of radical person, including Puerto Rican nationalists. Soon anyone sympathetic to the cause or even questioning the government would find themselves blacklisted. 

CHRISTOPHER GREGORY-RIVERA: The police officer would show up to where you worked. And they would talk to your boss and be like, “Oh, you know, we’re investigating this person because they’re a little subversive,” or “We’re investigating them criminally.” And more often than not, most people would actually get fired from their jobs. 

ROMAN MARS: Frustration in the independence movement was growing, especially when the island was granted a new status–one that provided the illusion of independence. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: In 1952, the U.S. decided it was time for things to change with Puerto Rico. Countries around the world were decolonizing their territories. And suddenly, having a colony was not a good look anymore. So the U.S. allowed Puerto Ricans to elect their own governor and ratify their very own constitution and bill of rights. And with all these big changes, Puerto Rico suddenly had the look–even the smell–of a sovereign country. 

ROMAN MARS: And with these changes came a new name: The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. 

CHRISTINA PONSA KRAUS: So what happens? Puerto Rico becomes a commonwealth, and this debate begins. “What just happened? We now have a constitution. We have self-government. Are we done? Did we decolonize?

ROMAN MARS: For some Puerto Ricans, the answer to whether or not the island had decolonized was an emphatic “yes.” In their eyes, the island had achieved what people had been clamoring for all along: more autonomy and an ability to elect their own leaders, all while still maintaining a relationship with the U.S.–in other words, all the benefits of being an American, while still being able to call yourself Puerto Rican. 

CHRISTINA PONSA KRAUS: Commonwealth supporters described their status as the best of both worlds because we had guaranteed citizenship and guaranteed union with the United States but also a lot of autonomy–kind of like an independent country, but also kind of like a state. But in my opinion and the opinion of its opponents, it was really the worst of both worlds because you are subject to the power of Congress and you’re pretending you’re decolonized. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: To Christina and many others, the term “commonwealth” wasn’t a real change in political status. Sure, Puerto Ricans had more autonomy, but they didn’t have total autonomy. 

CHRISTINA PONSA KRAUS: Puerto Rico is subject to the control of Congress. And Congress can run the show. And it can only have a constitution if Congress lets it. And if Congress wants to take power away, it can. 

ROMAN MARS: In other words, the term “commonwealth” was merely a cover–a word that helped Americans shed their belief that they had a colony, while at the same time introducing even more uncertainty into the day-to-day lives of Puerto Ricans. 

CHRISTINA PONSA KRAUS: This is really how the United States has divided and conquered us. It basically gaslit us into not knowing what Puerto Rico’s status is. We ourselves can’t define commonwealth, or at least we can’t agree on a definition. And so we just argue ourselves to death. And the United States doesn’t have to do anything. They can just keep having a colony. 

ROMAN MARS: For some in the independence movement, this persistent frustration boiled over into awful acts of violence. In March of 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists entered Congress and opened fire. No one was killed, but five people were injured. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: The shooting ended up intensifying government surveillance on the independence movement. It also deepened ideological divisions over Puerto Rico’s status. 

ROMAN MARS: After the 1950s, the political alliances on the island generally fell into one of three camps. People who supported the commonwealth, the people who wanted to see Puerto Rico on the path to statehood into the United States…

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: And then there were people like my grandparents–those who fought for full independence and saw statehood as just another form of colonialism. 

GRANDMA NANCY: We belong too. But we’re not part of. And that is so degrading for me–the disgrace of being a colony. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: When I spoke with my Grandma Nancy, she was a little nervous to be at the other end of my mic. And given this long history of surveillance–and having just spent the better part of a day flipping through my grandpa’s carpeta–I totally get that. Still, she was able to tell me about what landed both of them on the government’s watch list and everything that came after. 

GRANDMA NANCY: So, Tomás used to belong to the FUPI. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: That’s the Federacion Universitaria Pro Independencia. 

GRANDMA NANCY: And with that group and the university, he traveled to Cuba two times. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: The University of Puerto Rico was and has always been a place where independentistas could find one another. And when my grandpa returned from his years in the army, the FUPI really spoke to him. My grandma told me that between his affiliation with this group… 

ROMAN MARS: That’s strike one… 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: And traveling to Cuba–twice…

ROMAN MARS: That’s strike two and strike three… 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: All that was enough to not only put him on the government’s radar but get him a full-blown carpeta. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Do you feel like grandpa knew and you knew that you guys were being surveilled? 

GRANDMA NANCY: He knew. Yeah, yeah. He knew it. The only thing–nobody could prove that at that time. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: My grandparents, like many other people in the independence movement, could at that point only speculate that they were being watched or to what extent. Maybe it was a car parked in front of the house or a stranger in the corner of a restaurant where they were having dinner. But it was always a strong hunch–never proof. 

ROMAN MARS: But soon, a scandal would reveal just how deep surveillance on the island ran and supply all of the proof they needed. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: The story of how the carpetas ended up being revealed to the public starts with the murder of two young activists. The case is known as the Cerro Maravilla murders. 

ROMAN MARS: There are a lot of twists and turns in this case, but we’ll keep it to only what you need to know. As part of this massive surveillance operation, the Puerto Rican police had lots of informants. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: One informant was a young man named Alejandro González Malavé. He was recruited by the intelligence division when he was still in high school. The job? To embed with young, up-and-coming people in the independence movement. 

CHRISTOPHER GREGORY-RIVERA: And so, Malavé has this deep cover. I mean, nobody is gonna suspect that somebody who has been involved in the movement since high school is a police officer. So, in a way, this is this James Bond, like, ultra agent–you know–that is recruited and goes through the ranks. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: In college, Malavé infiltrated a subgroup within the independence movement as an undercover agent. And while undercover, Malavé convinced two young independentistas to sabotage a radio tower. As part of the operation. The group needed to carjack a taxi and drive up to the tower. However, when Malavé and the rest of the group arrived at the location, a bunch of police officers were waiting for them. It was a trap. 

CHRISTOPHER GREGORY-RIVERA: They’re literally knelt on the ground and executed point-blank by a group of about ten police officers, which were coordinating between the intelligence division, the police officers, and also the FBI. So, there is federal buy-in on this whole thing. And they’re executed point-blank with no trial. 

ROMAN MARS: A few days later, the governor released a statement in support of the officers, calling them heroes. The police had said they were acting in self-defense when the young man shot at them and that they had told the men to surrender. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: But there was another person there that night who witnessed the whole thing. 

CHRISTOPHER GREGORY-RIVERA: The taxi driver that was kidnapped actually didn’t leave. And so he heard the whole thing and he heard the young men crying for help. And he became a key witness to uncover the fact that there was no resistance, that these weren’t “terrorists,” and that there was something more at play. That opened an investigation into these two young men and into the murder.

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: What came next was many years of trials that were broadcast all over the island. My grandma remembers listening to the trial on the radio with my grandpa. 

GRANDMA NANCY: And that’s what I found out one of the persons that was killed in Cerro Maravilla was his friend. They had studied all high school together. And that’s when we really knew that–hey–this is serious. 

ROMAN MARS: The trial dominated the airwaves. And it was on the radio that the truth about the carpetas finally came to light. 

CHRISTOPHER GREGORY-RIVERA: One of the police officers from the intelligence division from the police, in a heated on a radio program, basically blurted it out. He was like, “Everybody knows that the police has files on  the independentistas.” I mean, and that alone basically created this huge wave of investigations into the carpetas and eventually court cases to release them. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Initially, the government wanted to destroy the files. But in 1988, after enough public outcry and legal pressure, the Puerto Rican Supreme Court ruled that the carpetas had to be released. 

ROMAN MARS: As more and more files became public, a clear picture emerged. What had begun as surveillance of political enemies had later expanded into broader targets. People in feminist and even environmental organizations had been targeted by the police, too. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: What has always struck me as an incredibly odd thing about my grandpa’s carpeta–and all Carpetas for that matter–is that, after decades of surveillance and all the violence and everything else that had suppressed the independence movement, thousands and thousands of these files were just sitting in an office in San Juan. And when they finally made the surveillance public, they released the files to the people who had been surveilled. If the government had opened a file on you, you could just drop by the office and pick it up on your lunch break if you wanted. And people did. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Do you remember going to get it? And do you remember reading your carpeta for the first time and reading Abuelo’s? 

GRANDMA NANCY: Yeah, we were surprised! We were surprised at the pictures they had! 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: The thing to remember here is that my grandparents didn’t commit any crimes. They were never violent. They weren’t dangerous people. Their only crime was believing in independence. Still, people around them fed information to the police–people my grandma and grandpa trusted and loved. 

GRANDMA NANCY: And when he started reading it… “Oh my god, this son of a bitch squealed on me!” Because it was people you knew! It was your neighbor. Who was following you? Who the hell was the spy? That’s what most people wanted to find out especially. “Who’s the spy?” But it was everyone! 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: When I spoke to my grandma, she told me that she and my grandpa looked through their carpetas. And after reading them, they just kind of went into storage. And to me that’s one of the craziest parts of this whole story. These files were proof that the government had been spying on them–proof that their neighbors and friends had betrayed them. And they were simply handed back, read, and put in the back of a closet. Life was supposed to just go on. 

JORELL MELENDEZ-BADILLO: There was never a national moment of reckoning from the state in which there was a process in which people could think publicly and together about what this has meant for them. And so I think that it’s still this open wound in Puerto Rico. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Today the carpetas still loom in the Puerto Rican psyche. The word “carpetas” is still used as a verb. If you’re going out to a protest, your grandma might say, “Cuidada o te van a carpetear,” basically telling you that you better watch your step or the government might start spying on you. 

ROMAN MARS: Ultimately, the carpetas did have a chilling effect on the independence movement, and the Nationalist Party never participated in electoral politics again. But for people in the movement, the revelation of the files only strengthened the belief in their cause because It was a tangible symbol of a broken political system. 

GRANDMA NANCY: That didn’t stop us because the moment we found out–the moment we got those carpetas and we knew what was going on–that only made us stronger because what are you going to do now? It’s out in public. You can’t come arrest me now just because I believe in the independence for my country. “Hey, you think I’m involved? Well, let’s get involved.”

ROMAN MARS: Eventually, more people did get involved. Although the Nationalist Party did not run, a candidate from the Puerto Rican Independence Party received nearly one-third of the vote in the most recent gubernatorial election. It was a milestone for the independence movement. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: So many things have happened in Puerto Rico in recent years that my grandma thinks it’s getting harder and harder to ignore the role the United States still plays in the island’s troubles. 

GRANDMA NANCY: Why? Because people are learning more. People are beginning to become so conscious of what they’ve been doing to us for so many years. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: For my grandma and so many others, the fight around Puerto Rico’s status has never been about the difference between being a commonwealth or a state or anything like that. To her, Puerto Rico is Puerto Rico. It is its own nation, no matter what people say. That’s the way my grandma sees it. And it’s a fight she’s gonna continue until her last days. 

GRANDMA NANCY: I will die for my country. I will believe in its independence because I believe in its people. We’ve been down! And you can bring me down, but I will not lick your boots. I will never be at your feet. And every time you bring me down, I’m gonna get back up. This is me. This is where I come from. And nothing can take that away from me. 

ROMAN MARS: When we come back, the evolution of the Puerto Rican flag… 

[AD BREAK] 

ROMAN MARS: So, we are back with Jeyca Medina-Gleason, who brought us that story. And the story turned out great, but I do have a bone to pick with you because when you first pitched this story, it was about flags. And this is not a story about flags. So, tell me what happened. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Yeah, I did. I did originally pitch this to you as a flag story. But sadly, as is often the case, sometimes while reporting a story, different angles come out and things have to get cut. And I’m sorry because I know you’re the flag guy. But to make amends, I am here to talk flags with you, Roman. 

ROMAN MARS: That’s perfectly okay. I mean, I was present for the editorial process. I understand why the flags had to go. But I’m very, very glad that we’re gonna talk about flags now. So, please let’s talk about the Puerto Rican flag. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Okay, so we’ve actually got a few flags. So, we’ll start with this first one. So, this is a flag from 1868. And it’s from the first time that Puerto Rico united under a flag while they were under Spain’s rule. And so, Roman, I’m going to show you this flag. And you let me know what it looks like and if it reminds you of any other flags. 

ROMAN MARS: Okay, so this flag–it has four quadrants. There’s two blue rectangles at the top and two red rectangles at the bottom. They’re all separated by a white cross that’s centered in the middle. And at the top left, blue canton is a big white star. And I would say this looks a lot like the flag of the Dominican Republic. Yeah, it’s a great flag.

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: It totally does remind me of the Dominican Republic. I see that instantly. And the shades of red and blue are also really similar to what you would find on the Cuban flag. A group of underground revolutionaries planned a revolt called El Grito de Lares, and part of the preparation was having a flag designed. At the time of El Grito de Lares, there were a few different nations that were all sort of fighting for their independence in the Caribbean. So, it was really common at the time for people from one country to go to the other country–help them fight for their independence–with the idea that these people would return the favor. So, that’s why the flags are so similar; it’s because there was a lot of solidarity between these countries. 

ROMAN MARS: That’s so interesting and makes so much sense with what little I know of sort of revolutionary history of the area, especially when you bring up Cuba because one of the things I’ve noticed is that the current Cuban flag and the current Puerto Rican flag look pretty similar. Like, when I’m in New York and they’re both everywhere, I often get them mixed up. Can you tell me about the Puerto Rican flag–the version that we have today? 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Yeah, so the official flag of Puerto Rico is called the Monoestrellada, which means “one star.” It’s got five horizontal stripes in red and white and a blue equilateral triangle with a white star on its left side. And the Cuban flag is very similar, but the colors are inversed, so blue stripes and red triangle. And that’s because La Monoestrellada was created by Puerto Ricans in New York, who were working alongside Cuban revolutionaries. This was late 1800s, early 1900s. And Cuba was about to gain their independence from Spain. And Puerto Rico was hoping to do the same thing. And because of that solidarity between the two nations, they took the Cuban flag and just inverted the colors. And that single star was meant to represent these single independent nations that they hope to become. 

ROMAN MARS: Wow. So, they’re similar because they wanted to represent the solidarity between these countries. And so therefore they designed that into their flags. I had never known that. That’s awesome. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Yeah, and so this flag–the Monoestrellada–that started out as the flag of the Independence Party. But it was actually co-opted by the Puerto Rican government. 

ROMAN MARS: Oh, okay, so tell me more about that. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Yeah, so as we talk about in the episode, in 1952, the status of Puerto Rico changed from unincorporated territory to commonwealth. And with that, Puerto Rico got to adopt a constitution and do all these state-like things. And one of those things was to choose a flag. And what better way to try and take away the power from something than to have the government sort of co-opt it?

ROMAN MARS: [CHUCKLES] Right. This is a classic movie. Yeah.

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: It really is. Yeah. But they did change one thing. Most of the Puerto Rican flags you saw before then had a really light, almost sky blue. It was meant to represent the Caribbean waters. But when the Puerto Rican government adopted the flag to use as the official flag of Puerto Rico, they changed it to a deeper blue that would more closely align with the colors of the United States. 

ROMAN MARS: Right. That makes sense. Yeah. The light blue is really nice looking, though. It kind of reminds me of the light blue of the Chicago flag. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Yeah, it’s beautiful. I liked that version. I was actually just in Puerto Rico with my husband. And we went into a souvenir shop, and there were the two versions of the flag. And my husband Billy asked me, “Which version are we gonna buy?” I told him–I said, “It depends on if you believe in independence for Puerto Rico or not.” So, we bought the lighter blue, of course. 

ROMAN MARS: [LAUGHS] That’s a bold question to ask right there in the store. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Yeah. Yeah, he… I was maybe setting him up a little bit. 

ROMAN MARS: That’s awesome. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Okay, Roman, I’ve got one last flag for you. Are you ready? 

ROMAN MARS: Yes, totally ready. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: So in 2016, the financial crisis in Puerto Rico hit a point where the governor had admitted that the debt was unpayable. And the federal government proposed a solution. It was a fiscal oversight board called PROMESA. They basically would take charge of Puerto Rico’s finances. And the members of PROMESA were not selected by the Puerto Rican people, yet they had the ultimate say on how Puerto Rico could spend its money to help pay down this debt. So overnight, basically, Puerto Ricans lost their autonomy and financial decisions were made by outsiders. 

ROMAN MARS: Yeah, I remember when that happened. And I remember that it really received bipartisan support here in the United States. They just treated this as a normal thing to do. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Yeah, totally. And to a non-Puerto Rican, it might seem like a completely logical fix. But when this happened, people on the island started to talk a lot about this idea of, like, the myth of the commonwealth–basically this idea that this so-called independence that we had as a commonwealth was always a myth because the U.S. could take it away at any moment. And people were really upset about this. So on July 4th, 2016, an anonymous art group called La Puerta went into Old San Juan. And they painted over a door that previously had the Puerto Rican flag. But they painted it black and white. And the idea was to show their dissatisfaction with what was going on on the island. And that symbol really took off. 

ROMAN MARS: In what way did it take off? 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Well, people started to see the black and white flag as that symbol of dissatisfaction and also as a symbol of mourning over what was happening on the island. And a little over a year after the black flag appeared in Old San Juan, Hurricane Maria hit. And as you well know, the government response for Hurricane Maria was pretty pitiful. And as a result, thousands of people died in the storm and its aftermath. 

ROMAN MARS: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is one of those moments that your Grandma Nancy talked about as being kind of eye-opening for people of the island to see, like, where they stood and vis-a-vis the United States. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Yeah, 100%. People on the island and really around the world got to witness just how little the federal government seemingly cared about saving Puerto Ricans. Puerto Rico’s own governor had texts leak of him making light of people who had died in the hurricane. It was really awful. And so in these protests, you could feel that people really wanted change. And what symbol was everywhere throughout all those protests? It was that black and white Puerto Rican flag. 

ROMAN MARS: So, does this flag have the same sort of political ideas attached to it as, like, the light blue version–the sort of pre-U.S.A.-ifide version of the independence flag? 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: Yeah, interestingly, no. This flag–the black and white one–is not really as political. You sort of see it across people who are pro-statehood, pro-independence. It’s really more an acknowledgement of the idea that something needs to change–that the way that things are going right now just isn’t working. 

ROMAN MARS: Wow. I’m so fascinated by the use of a flag to express that. It’s one of the reasons why I’m so interested in flags and why I was so happy that you have come correct for this coda to give me the flag content that I crave. Thank you so much, Jeyca. I appreciate it. 

JEYCA MEDINA-GLEASON: You’re welcome, Roman. I’m glad you got your flag fix. 

ROMAN MARS: 99% Invisible was reported and produced this week by Jeyca Medina-Gleason, and edited by Jayson De Leon and Vivian Le. Mix by Martín Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real. Fact-checking by Graham Hacia. 

Kathy Tu is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is THEdigital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Lasha Madan, Joe Rosenberg, Kelly Prime, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% Invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence.

We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast Family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building… in beautiful… uptown… Oakland, California.

You can find us on many social media sites, like BlueSky, as well as our own Discord server. There’s a link to that, as well every past episode of 99PI, at 99pi.org.