Elegia a los Inocentes Caidos

“Elegía a los Inocentes Caídos”, which translates to “Elegy for the fallen innocent” is a work for Chorus and Orchestra in memorial of the massacre that took place on Palm Sunday, 1937 in Ponce, Puerto Rico. A peaceful civilian march turned into a police shooting in which 19 civilians and two policemen were killed, and more than 200 civilians were wounded. Most of the dead were reportedly shot in their backs. The march had been organized by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party to commemorate the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico, and to protest the U.S. government’s imprisonment of the party’s leader Pedro Albizu Campos. A free twelve-tone matrix is the musical language and style utilized that reflects the brutal violence of this historic occurrence. The biblical text, from Ecclesiastes, also conveys and addresses the helplessness, the anguish, the outrage, and the injustices that, unfortunately, still keep occurring during our times.