A hoax! That’s what it was! But how could this be?! It had to be true, but it wasn’t. Sitting stunned in class, I quickly searched for loopholes in the story. There had to be some there, and I wanted to find them. I was upset at myself because I allowed myself like everyone else in the class to be riled up and swept away by this fabulous story of Seva. Seva was a town that was supposedly wiped off the face of the earth when the Americans successfully took over Puerto Rico from the Spaniards. Any mention of it in the record books was also wiped out. The reason for this genocide was because the town of Seva had successfully repelled the first invasion of the U.S. forces a couple of weeks before they landed in Guanica. The U.S. military could not look weak and could not stand to have this blemish on their record. How could a bunch of peasant Puerto Ricans defeat the almighty U.S.? That was impossible and they needed to be erased from history. To add insult to injury, the U.S. built a naval station right on the site of the old town, and named it Ceiba. How did this come about? Who was responsible? To make a long story short, a young researcher did studies and learned of this cover-up. He begins to be followed and he suspects that something will happen to him soon, and he must let the public know of this massacre. He gave a friend all the papers and tells him to print the story if he is not heard from in a couple of weeks. The story is published behind the editor’s back, because the editor wants more proof. Needless to say, the story breaks and everyone is in an uproar. I felt the same anger that Puerto Ricans in 1980 did when this story broke. They wrote letters in protest to the U.S. government, flowers were put at the naval station’s fences in remembrance of the massacre victims, and Puerto Ricans finally had proof that they had what it takes to stand up to the United States. It turns out that the whole...
