five Americans voted 7-to-5 not guilty. However, Judge Robert A. Cooper called for a new jury, this time composed of ten Americans and two Puerto Ricans, and a guilty verdict was achieved. The Ponce massacre March 21, 1937, a Palm Sunday, the cadets were scheduled to participate in a peaceful march in the city of Ponce. The march had been organized by the Nationalist Party to commemorate the ending of slavery in Puerto Rico by the governing Spanish National Assembly in 1873. The march was also protesting the imprisonment, by the U.S. government, of Nationalist leader Albizu Campos on the alleged sedition charges. Raimundo Díaz Pacheco, who by then was the Comandante (Commander) of the Cadets of the Republic, and his brother Faustino were present when the peaceful march turned into a bloody police slaughter, which became known as the Ponce massacre. Several days before the scheduled Palm Sunday march, Casimiro Berenguer, a military instructor of the cadets, and other organizers received legal permits for the peaceful protest from José Tormos Diego, the mayor of Ponce. However, upon learning of the planned protest, the colonial governor of Puerto Rico at the time, General Blanton Winship (who had been appointed by US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt) demanded the immediate withdrawal of the permits. Without notice to the organizers, or any opportunity to appeal or any time to arrange an alternate venue, the permits were abruptly withdrawn just before the protest was scheduled to begin. Tomas López de Victoria, who at the time was the Captain of the Ponce branch of the cadets, ordered the band to play La Borinqueña, Puerto Rico's national anthem. As the anthem was being played, the demonstrators—which included the Cadets and the women's branch of the Nationalist Party known as the Hijas de la Libertad (Daughters of Freedom)—began to march. Empowered by the American police chief, and encouraged by the governor, the police fired for over fifteen minutes from four different positions. They fired with impunity on cadets and bystanders alike—killing men, women and children. The flag-bearer of the cadets was shot and killed during the massacre. A young girl by the name of Carmen Fernández proceeded to take the flag but was shot and gravely injured. A young cadet by the name of Bolívar Márquez Telechea, despite being mortally wounded, dragged himself to a wall and wrote with his blood the following message before he succumbed