railroad. By 1930, over 40 percent of all the arable land in Puerto Rico had been converted into sugar plantations, which were entirely owned by former governor Charles Allen and U.S. banking interests. These bank syndicates also owned the entire coastal railroad, and the San Juan international seaport. Puerto Rican Nationalist Party There had been a push to seeking independence from the United States from the earliest days of US rule. From the many groups and parties that existed in the first two decades after the Treaty of Paris, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party emerged as the main affiliation. First organized on September 17, 1922, the Nationalist Party's main objective was Puerto Rican Independence. By 1930, disagreements between Jose Coll y Cuchi and Pedro Albizu Campos as to how the party should be run, led the former and his followers to abandon the party. On May 11, 1930, Albizu Campos was elected president of the Nationalist Party. Social unrest increased during the Great Depression, and the party became the largest independence movement in Puerto Rico. In the mid-1930s, the Nationalist movement gained support after the Río Piedras and the Ponce massacres; they said the US-supported government resorted to violence to maintain its colonial regime in Puerto Rico. After disappointing electoral results, the two massacres and continued strong repression by the territorial police authorities, by the mid-1930s Albizu opted against electoral participation, and advocated violent revolution. Lead up to October 1950 From mid-1948 to mid-1950, the efforts of the US government to control the political future of Puerto Rico, denying a voice for independence, were escalated through a law signed by the US-appointed territorial governor in June 1948 and a law signed by the US President in July 1950. Puerto Rico's Gag Law (Ley de la Mordaza) On May 21, 1948, a bill had been introduced before the Puerto Rican Senate which, in the opinion of Leopoldo Figueroa, then a member of the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, violated the civil rights of Puerto Ricans to the protection of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees Freedom of Speech. The Senate, which at the time was controlled by the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) and presided by Luis Muñoz Marín, approved the bill. This bill became known as the Ley de la Mordaza (Gag Law, technically "Law 53 of 1948") when the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, Jesús T. Piñero,