← 99% Invisible
99% Invisible
Foreign in a Domestic Sense
00:38:10
A dusty surveillance file uncovers the story of love, betrayal, and the fight for Puerto Rico’s freedom.
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- [00:00]
Roman Mars
Imagine relying on a dozen different software programs to run your business, none of which are connected, and each one more.
- [00:06]
Jacob Medina Gleason
Expensive and more complicated than the last.
- [00:09]
Roman Mars
It can be pretty stressful. Now imagine Odoo. Odoo has all the programs you'll ever need and are all connected on one platform. Doesn't Odoo sound amazing? Let Odoo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the price. Sign up today@odoo.com that's O-O-O.com now more than ever, Lowes knows you don't just want a low price, you want the lowest price. And with our lowest price guarantee, you can count on us for competitive prices on all your home improvement projects. If you find a qualifying lower price somewhere else on the same item, we'll match it Lowe's we help you save price Match applies to same item current price at qualifying retailers. Exclusions and terms apply. Learn how we'll match price@lowe's.com lowest price guarantee this message is brought to you by Apple Pay. No matter where you're going this summer, odds are you'll need to pay for a few things like a ride, share a souvenir or dinner at that spot on your bucket list. Instead of digging for your wallet every time, just use Apple Pay. It's accepted anywhere you see the contactless symbol and all it takes is a tap with iPhone or Apple Watch. The best part is, you'll still earn the card rewards, points and cash back you love. Easy setup now, easier travel later With Apple Pay. Terms apply. This is 99% invisible I'm Roman Mars. On a recent trip to Puerto Rico, producer Jacob Medina Gleason was introduced to a piece of family history. It's an old manila folder with a photo of her grandfather, Tomas Velez Lopez, attached to the front. In the picture, Tomas is a young 20 something with thick, wavy hair and a full Tom Selleck mustache. And across the top of the folder.
- [02:05]
Jacob Medina Gleason
In big bold letters, it reads Division of Special Investigations. And it has his case number. I don't know if they started from one, but if they did, he was 7480.
- [02:18]
Roman Mars
The Intelligence Division opened a case on Jaco's grandpa in the 1970s. The folder contains over 60 pages of notes and details about Tomas 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.
- [02:38]
Jacob Medina Gleason
There's a line here that says Pele Grosso. No. So it's Is he dangerous? And no, he apparently Was not dangerous. 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. You know, they're saying sort of purpose of the investigation and it's to determine his activities politically. This file the police kept on my grandpa is a type of folder known in Puerto Rico as a capeta.
- [03:26]
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 surveillance project was to intimidate and suppress the political movement. One that Jayka's grandfather belonged to.
- [03:47]
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.
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Jacob 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.
- [04:22]
Nancy
We both sold periodico caladal.
- [04:27]
Jacob Medina Gleason
The two of them first ran into each other selling a pro independence newspaper on the same street corner.
- [04:33]
Nancy
Then one day he told me, hey, you can't take my corner. You gotta go sell somewhere else. That was like I said, well, that's how it all started. We had a very, very sweet friendship.
- [04:53]
Jacob Medina Gleason
My grandma also told me that after their little meet cute, the government opened a carpeta on her too.
- [05:00]
Nancy
They started surveilling me. When we two got together, Mine wasn't even as big as she is.
- [05:10]
Jacob Medina Gleason
My grandpa Tomas 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 was not really a part of the United States. So he spent his life right up until his later years fighting for Puerto Rican independence.
- [05:30]
Nancy
We were activists. We were always activists wherever there was something to do and something.
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Jacob Medina Gleason
The fact that we were there 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.
- [06:11]
Roman Mars
Puerto Rico has been a colony since the Spanish first arrived on the island of Barincan 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.
- [06:29]
Jorrel Melendez Badillo
The first time that the term Puerto Rican.
- [06:33]
Roman Mars
Puerto Rican appears in the Spanish colonial.
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Jorrel Melendez Badillo
Record, it is in the early 1700s.
- [06:38]
Roman Mars
When a military official is complaining about all these Puerto Ricans bastards of Spanish military generals.
- [06:47]
Jorrel Melendez Badillo
And so it is used to refer.
- [06:49]
Roman Mars
To Puerto Ricans, people from the archipelago, as bastards.
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Jacob Medina Gleason
This is Jorrel 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. Jurez 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.
- [07:14]
Roman Mars
I think that Puerto Rican identity has always been constructed in opposition to colonialism. It is an affirmation of being something different from Spain. 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.
- [07:44]
Jacob 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 US had beaten the Spanish, they did not give Puerto Rico independence. Instead they annexed it.
- [08:01]
Roman Mars
At the time when a US 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.
- [08:16]
Jacob Medina Gleason
But when the US Acquired the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, lots of Americans were like, I don't know about all that.
- [08:24]
Jorrel Melendez Badillo
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.
- [08:34]
Jacob Medina Gleason
This is Christina Ponsa Kraus, a professor of constitutional law at Columbia Law School.
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Jorrel Melendez Badillo
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 going to do? Should we have them as territories? Why were we annexing them, what's going to happen next?
- [08:57]
Jacob 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.
- [09:09]
Roman Mars
And the answer to that was a resounding sort of.
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Jorrel Melendez Badillo
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.
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Jacob 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 case is determined that the Constitution only applied to Puerto Rico as the US 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. And they were not planning to incorporate Puerto Rico.
- [10:08]
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.
- [10:24]
Jacob 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. Starting in the 1930s, Albizu Campos led the Nationalist Party Party, which was one of the strongest voices in the Puerto Rican independence movement.
- [11:07]
Roman Mars
Albizo Campos is a fascinating individual.
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Jorrel Melendez Badillo
Pedro Ibizu Campo was a Harvard educated lawyer, Afro descendant. He had great rhetoric.
- [11:17]
Roman Mars
He would spit fire.
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Jorrel Melendez Badillo
He dominated a crowd when he spoke and he spoke about the ills of Puerto Rico.
- [11:39]
Roman Mars
A lot of what Albizo Campos was responding to came from Supreme Court cases that set up the political dynamic between the US and Puerto Rico. He wanted Puerto Ricans to see that this relationship made them second class citizens and he wanted them to get mad.
- [11:55]
Jacob 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 US killed a number of independence protesters. Months later, in response, some in the Independence Movement killed the police chief. After that, the US Determined that the Nationalist party wasn't a political party, but a bunch of insurrectionists.
- [12:17]
Roman Mars
And they were not afraid to use violence. And that is something that authorities feared. At first, Albizo Campos and the Nationalist Party tried to seek change through the ballot box, but the scales were always tipped against them. The US Held a firm grip over the electoral system on the island, and basically every other lever of power, too.
- [12:39]
Jacob Medina Gleason
And so Alviso 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 US Was in power, Freedom wasn't going to be earned. They needed to take it.
- [12:55]
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.
- [13:22]
Christopher Gregory Rivera
Basically, the way it would work was it was sort of like a three strike system.
- [13:27]
Jacob 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.
- [13:39]
Christopher Gregory Rivera
If I was a heavily surveilled person and we had a coffee, they would open an index card on you. And then if you never got any more cards, then, you know, you'd probably kind of fall off their 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.
- [14:09]
Jacob 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.
- [14:26]
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.
- [14:44]
Christopher Gregory Rivera
From my perspective, having read a lot of them and talking to people who Were surveilled. And scholars and other researchers, you know, a lot of the information is like, made up.
- [14:55]
Jacob Medina Gleason
Christopher says that despite the bad information, the carpeta 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.
- [15:12]
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.
- [15:33]
Jacob Medina Gleason
In 1948, the Puerto Rican government passed a law that made it a crime to write, meet, or speak about independence. The US had entered the mccarthy era, and this fear of communism trickled down into its relationship with Puerto Rico as well. As 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.
- [15:58]
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, you know, a little subversive, or we're investigating them criminally. And more often than not, most people would actually get fired from their jobs.
- [16:16]
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.
- [16:26]
Jacob Medina Gleason
In 1952, the US 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 US 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.
- [16:49]
Roman Mars
And with these changes came a new name, the commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
- [16:53]
Jorrel Melendez Badillo
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?
- [17:04]
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.
- [17:28]
Jorrel Melendez Badillo
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. You know, 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.
- [17:50]
Jacob 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.
- [18:00]
Jorrel Melendez Badillo
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.
- [18:13]
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.
- [18:26]
Jorrel Melendez Badillo
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.
- [18:45]
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.
- [19:01]
Jacob Medina Gleason
The shooting ended up intensifying government surveillance on the independence movement. It also deepened ideological divisions over Puerto Rico's status.
- [19:10]
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.
- [19:21]
Jacob Medina Gleason
And then there were people like my grandparents, those who fought for full independence and saw statehood as just another form.
- [19:28]
Nancy
Of colonialism we belong to, but we're not part of. And that is so degrading for me, the disgrace of being a colony.
- [19:41]
Jacob 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.
- [20:01]
Nancy
So the man used to belong to the fupi.
- [20:06]
Jacob Medina Gleason
That's the Federacion Universitaria pro Independencia.
- [20:11]
Nancy
And with that group in the university, he traveled to Cuba two times.
- [20:19]
Jacob 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, that's strike one, and traveling to Cuba twice, that's strike.
- [20:36]
Roman Mars
Two and strike three.
- [20:37]
Jacob Medina Gleason
All that was enough to not only put him on the government's radar, but get him a full blown carpeta. Do you feel like grandpa knew and you knew that you guys were being surveilled?
- [20:50]
Nancy
He knew, yeah. Yeah, he knew it. The only thing, nobody could prove it at that time.
- [20:56]
Jacob 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.
- [21:15]
Roman Mars
But soon a scandal would reveal just how deep surveillance on the island ran and supply all of the proof they needed.
- [21:24]
Jacob 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.
- [21:33]
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.
- [21:44]
Jacob Medina Gleason
One informant was a young man named Alejandro Gonzalez Malave. 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.
- [21:56]
Christopher Gregory Rivera
And so Malaw has this deep cover. I mean, nobody is going to suspect that somebody who has been involved in the movement since high school is a police officer. So in a way, this is like this James Bond, like ultra agent, you know, that is recruited and goes through the ranks.
- [22:18]
Jacob Medina Gleason
In college, Malave infiltrated a subgroup within the independence movement as an undercover agent. And while undercover, Malave 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 Malave and the rest of the group arrived at the location, a bunch of police officers were waiting for them. It was a trap.
- [22:43]
Christopher Gregory Rivera
They're literally knelt on the ground and executed point blank by a group of about 10 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.
- [23:03]
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.
- [23:15]
Jacob Medina Gleason
But there was another person there that night who witnessed the whole thing.
- [23:19]
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 man crying for help. And he became a key witness to uncover the fact that there was no resistance. These weren't, quote, unquote, terrorists. That there was something more at play that opened an investigation into these two young men and to the murder.
- [23:43]
Jacob 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.
- [23:52]
Nancy
And that's where I found out one of the persons that was killed in Sergio Maravilla was his friend. They had studied all high school together. And that's when we really knew that, hey, this is serious.
- [24:13]
Roman Mars
The trial dominated the airwaves. And it was on the radio that the truth about the carpetas finally came to light.
- [24:20]
Christopher Gregory Rivera
One of the police officers from the intelligence division from the police, basically, in a heated argument 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.
- [24:49]
Jacob 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.
- [25:00]
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.
- [25:16]
Jacob 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 to. And people did. Do you remember going to get it? And do you remember reading your carpeta for the first time? And reading abuelos.
- [25:55]
Nancy
Yeah, we were surprised. We were surprised at the pictures they had.
- [26:03]
Jacob 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.
- [26:21]
Nancy
And when he started reading it, like, oh, my God, this son of a bitch, you know, squealed on me because it was people you knew, it was your neighbors who was following you. Who the hell was the spine? That's what most people wanted to find out, especially, who's the. Who's the spine? But it was everyone.
- [26:55]
Jacob 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.
- [27:18]
Jorrel Melendez Badillo
There was never a national moment of.
- [27:21]
Roman Mars
Reckoning from the state in which there.
- [27:24]
Jorrel Melendez Badillo
Was a process in which people could think publicly and together about what this has meant for them.
- [27:32]
Roman Mars
Right? And so I think that it's still this open wound in Puerto Rico today.
- [27:37]
Jacob Medina Gleason
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, cuidado, o te vana carpetiar. Basically telling you that you better watch your step or the government might start spying on you.
- [27:54]
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.
- [28:13]
Nancy
That didn't stop us because the moment we found out, the moment we got those calpetas 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, you know?
- [28:42]
Roman Mars
Hey, you.
- [28:43]
Nancy
I'm involved. Well, let's get involved.
- [28:46]
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.
- [29:01]
Jacob 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.
- [29:11]
Nancy
Why? Because people are learning more people. People are beginning to become so conscious of what they've been doing to us for so many years.
- [29:25]
Jacob Medina Gleason
For my grandma and so many others, the fight around Puerto Rico status has never been about the difference between being a commonwealth or 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 going to continue until her last days.
- [29:45]
Nancy
I will die for my country. I will believe in it. Independence because I believe in its people. We've been down and you could 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 going to get back up. This is me. This is where I come from and nothing could take that away from for me.
- [30:26]
Roman Mars
When we come back, the evolution of the Puerto Rican flag. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over4.1 billion professionals. And that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue, all the professionals you need to reach in one place. Stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. So you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com invisible. That's LinkedIn.com invisible. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Hello, hello. Malcolm Gladwell here on this season of revisionist history. We're going where no podcast has ever gone before. In combination with my 3 year old, we defend the show that everyone else hates. I'm talking, of course, about Paw Patrol.
- [31:45]
Jacob Medina Gleason
There's some things that really piss me off when it comes to Paw Patrol. It's pretty simple. It sucks.
- [31:51]
Christopher Gregory Rivera
My son watches Paw Patrol.
- [31:52]
Jacob Medina Gleason
I hate it.
- [31:54]
Roman Mars
Everyone hates it except for me. Plus, we investigate everything from why American sirens are so unbearably loud, to the impact of face blindness on social connection, to the secret behind Thomas's English muffins. Perfect nooks and crannies. And also, we go after Joe Rogan. Are you ready, Joe? I'm coming for you. You won't want to miss it listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we are back with Jacob 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.
- [32:46]
Jacob Medina Gleason
Yeah, 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.
- [33:03]
Roman Mars
Roman, 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 going to talk about flags now. So please, let's talk about the Puerto Rican flag.
- [33:15]
Jacob 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.
- [33:33]
Roman Mars
Okay, so this flag, it has four quadrants that there's two blue rectangles at the top, 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, it's. It's a great flag.
- [33:56]
Jacob Medina Gleason
Yeah, 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, is because there was a lot of solidarity between these countries.
- [34:36]
Roman Mars
That's so interesting. It makes so much sense with what little I know of the 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?
- [35:01]
Jacob Medina Gleason
Yeah. So the official flag of Puerto Rico is called the Mono Estrellada, 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, red triangle. And that's because La Monostrellada 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 hoped to become.
- [35:45]
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. That's awesome.
- [35:55]
Jacob Medina Gleason
Yeah, yeah. And so this flag, the monasterrellada, it started out as the flag of the Independence party, but it was actually co opted by the Puerto Rican government.
- [36:05]
Roman Mars
Oh, okay. So tell me more about that.
- [36:07]
Jacob 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?
- [36:26]
Roman Mars
Right? This is a classic move.
- [36:27]
Jacob Medina Gleason
Yeah, 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.
- [36:50]
Roman Mars
Right, that makes sense. Yeah. The light blue is really nice looking though. It kind of reminds me the light blue of the Chicago flag.
- [36:57]
Jacob Medina Gleason
Yeah, it's beautiful. I like 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, he said, 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.
- [37:15]
Roman Mars
Of course. That's a bold question to ask right there in the store.
- [37:19]
Jacob Medina Gleason
Yeah, I was maybe setting him up a little bit.
- [37:22]
Roman Mars
That's awesome.
- [37:23]
Jacob Medina Gleason
Okay, Roman, I've got one last flag for you. Are you ready?
- [37:25]
Roman Mars
Yes, totally ready.
- [37:27]
Jacob 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.
- [37:57]
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.
- [38:06]
Jacob 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 US could take it away at any moment. And people were really upset about this. So on July 4, 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.
- [38:46]
Roman Mars
In what way did it take off?
- [38:48]
Jacob 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.
- [39:11]
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.
- [39:22]
Jacob 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.
- [39:48]
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 USA ified version of the independence flag?
- [40:00]
Jacob 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.
- [40:18]
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, Jake. I appreciate it.
- [40:33]
Jacob Medina Gleason
You're welcome, Roman. I'm glad you got your flag fix.
- [40:43]
Roman Mars
99% invisible was reported and produced this week by Jacob Medina Gleason and edited by Jason De Leon and Vivian Lai. Mixed by Martinga Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real Fact checking By Graham Haa Kathy 2 is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlsted is the digital director. Delaney hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Berube, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Lashma Dawn, 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 a building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on many social media sites like Blue sky as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to that as well as every past episode of 99pi@99pi.org.