Biography
Casimiro Berenguer was one of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party members charged with the murder of two policemen killed during the police massacre of Nationalist marchers at Ponce on 21 March 1937 (Palm Sunday), in which police killed some nineteen unarmed civilians and wounded about two hundred. He was imprisoned roughly six months in the La Princesa fortress in San Juan under the Ponce Massacre murder indictment, though most defendants were not even present at the shooting; the mass prosecution under Gov. Blanton Winship's colonial administration was widely condemned as political repression of the independence movement.
The September 21, 1937 New Masses editorial individually lists this defendant among ten Nationalists then facing the Ponce murder trial and reports that the group had been imprisoned for six months in La Princesa under collective bail totaling $250,000. This is a contemporary approximate custody-to-date report, not a completed six-month sentence, exact admission date, individual bail amount or final conviction. Its description of a hand-picked jury and government campaign is the editorial’s allegation. The existing prosecution is retained without a duplicate case. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1937/v24n13-sep-21-1937-NM.pdf#page=18
Dávila Marichal describes a separate imprisonment following the 1938 attempt against Governor Winship: Berenguer was among the six defendants sentenced to life for first-degree murder. The thesis states he had already been pardoned before the other group members in January 1946, without establishing his exact pardon or discharge day. This episode is distinguished from the 1937 Ponce prosecution.
José Manuel Dávila Marichal, Organizando la revolución: El Ejército Libertador del Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico y la insurrección nacionalista de 1950 (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid doctoral thesis, 2020), physical/printed page 207, 241, 318; SHA256 be07767792e7789d4683e0c5787caac280ca95b7f4c93adf2fbfbab5e7a48eb4.
The April 12, 1939 manifesto individually names him among Nationalists imprisoned in Puerto Rico following the July25,1938 events and reports a nominal ninety-nine-year term. This is an attributed contemporary sentence report, distinct from actual service and from the separate 1937 Ponce-massacre prosecutions. Other sources describe life imprisonment; that terminology difference is retained without replacing established later pardon/release details.