A Puerto Rican mother writes to the US Secretary of State

The first news story about American prisoners in the Spanish Civil War was published in Puerto Rico in January 1938. It reported that there were 277 American citizens imprisoned in Francoist concentration camps, but it did not give their names. General Franco established more than 300 concentration camps for prisoners throughout Spain. Captured international volunteers were held in the San Pedro de Cardeña monastery in Burgos. By September 1938, there were 653 international prisoners in the monastery, including four Puerto Ricans.

In July 1938, The New York Times published a lengthy article describing the miserable conditions at the San Pedro de Cardeña camp, listing the names of 70 U.S. citizens, including the Puerto Ricans Jules Herman López Cintrón and Ferdinand Rivera Vázquez. The report triggered a flood of petitions from family members and organizations to President Roosevelt and the State Department demanding the immediate release and repatriation of the prisoners. One such petition came from Baltasara Vázquez de Rivera, mother of Ferdinand Rivera, and included a sworn affidavit and documents confirming her son's U.S. citizenship.

Negotiations for the release of U.S. citizens between the State Department, consuls in Spain, and representatives of General Franco lasted for a year. The complicated process of verifying a prisoner’s identity required requesting documents from government agencies and family members to confirm their status as U.S. citizens, since many international volunteers had lost their documents during the war or had traveled to Spain without papers, often as stowaways. The cases of the Puerto Ricans took longer, as many used Anglicized versions of their names in the U.S., and others adopted pseudonyms upon arriving in Spain. Family members or associations sympathetic to the Spanish Republic had to cover the costs of repatriation.

The first 71 American prisoners were released from the San Pedro de Cardeña camp in April 1939. Among them were the Puerto Ricans Jules Herman (Julio Hernán) López Cintrón, Gonzalo Colón González (alias César Urbina), and Ferdinand Rivera Vázquez. Two other Puerto Ricans remained in Francoist prisons because they had received sentences, and their release required a petition for clemency to Generalísimo Franco. Dr. Antonio Fernández Valdés, imprisoned in the Andújar prison in Jaén, was released in August 1940 and returned to Puerto Rico. The anarchist soldier Natividad Falú Doval, who was imprisoned in the Modelo prison in Barcelona was removed from the list of American prisoners in 1940, and his fate remains unknown.

TTR