text: On July 25, 1938, the municipality of Ponce organized celebrations to commemorate the American landing in 1898. This included a military parade and speeches by Governor Blanton Winship, Senate president Rafael Martínez Nadal, and others. When Winship rose to speak, shots were fired at him, slaying police Colonel Luis Irizarry, who was seated next to the governor. The Nationalist Interim President M. Medina Ramírez repudiated the shooting and denied any involvement in it, but numerous Nationalists were arrested and convicted of participating in the shooting. Winship worked to repress the Nationalists. Jaime Benitez, a student at the University of Chicago at the time, wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt which in part read as follows:
  Soon afterward, two Nationalist partisans, among them Raimundo Díaz Pacheco, attempted to assassinate Robert Cooper, judge of the Federal Court in Puerto Rico. On May 12, 1939, Winship was summarily removed from his post as Governor by President Roosevelt.
  On May 21, 1948, a bill was introduced before the Puerto Rican Senate which would restrain the rights of the independence and Nationalist movements on the archipelago. The Senate, which at the time was controlled by the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) and presided by Luis Muñoz Marín, approved the bill that day. This bill, which resembled the anti-communist Smith Act passed in the United States in 1940, became known as the Ley de la Mordaza (Gag Law) when the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Jesús T. Piñero, signed it into law on June 10, 1948.