Researcher: Arjun Rai, Stuyvesant '20

Angel Ocasio was born in Manati, Puerto Rico on June 16, 1912. Prior to the war, he served a year in the National Guard, and had some high school education. Pre-war, he worked as a machinist and not in a relationship. He sailed to Spain on July 9, 1937 on the Berengaria. He served as an interpreter for the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion, which was for Canadian volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Interestingly, Ocasio shows up in the book Cartas desde Elora (Letters from Elora) by Susan Komah. In it, he is shown interpreting between the new Spanish speaking recruits and the English speaking sergeant as this tiny group made their way to headquarters in Albacete. Ocasio said that after getting their info taken down and uniforms, they would be moved to Taraziba de la Mancha for training. He left on December 30, 1938 on the Ausonia. During the 1950s, Ocasio’s name appeared on a list of people deemed to still have ties to the Soviet Union, and who would have to show up for a hearing in front of the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws. His name appeared twice because they switched his middle and last name (Garcia and Ocasio), with both names having the same address (43 East 112th Street, NYC). He died in August 1975 in Suffolk NY.

Sources

Cervelló, Josep Sánchez. Las Brigadas Internacionales: Nuevas Perspectivas En La Historia De La Guerra Civil y Del Exilio. Publicacions Universitat Rovira i Virgili, 2015.

Ink, Social. “Garcia Ocasio, Angel.” The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, 27 Apr. 2020, alba-valb.org/volunteers/angel-garcia-ocasio/.

Komoah, Susan. Cartas Desde Elora. Punto Rojo Libros S.L., 2019.

Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States: Hearing Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Eighty-fourth Congress, Second Session[-Eighty-fifth Congress, First Session] .... United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1956.