At least 20 people were killed, and more than 80 were hurt. Police expected to find at least 10 more bodies in the mounds of torn steel and concrete that were offices and apartments.
Officials suspected a leak in a pipe carrying cooking gas caused the blast, and said the building's owner had been complaining for weeks of escaping gas.
The explosion sent shards of shattered glass into a Roman Catholic parochial school across the street. Some of the 500 students inside the Colegio La Milagrosa - School of the Miraculous - were knocked to the ground, but no one was injured.
Shoppers hunting for bargains in the stores that line the street fled the billowing black cloud of dust and debris in terror.
The 8:35 a.m. explosion in San Juan's congested Rio Piedras district ripped a 50-foot-wide hole in the concrete building, partially collapsing the first four floors and exposing rooms inside.
In a 4,000-page, $40 million report, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People concluded that "Euro-Canada" had left the country's more than 800,000 Indians largely destitute.
, stripped of traditional lands and resources that should have been protected by treaty, and under immense pressure to assimilate into Western culture. The result: widespread poverty, high rates of alcoholism and teen suicide and a growing potential for violence if Canada does not restructure the relationship with its original residents.
The commission suggested, in essence, that Canada start from scratch, renegotiating virtually every aspect of Indian governance and economics, and even soliciting the queen of England to embody the new beginning in a royal proclamation. One issued in 1763, Indian leaders say, recognized their rights to independent government and came at a time of cooperation with European settlers, but later it was ignored during decades of domination and mistreatment.
"Some leaders fear that violence is in the wind," the commission stated in its summary. "What aboriginal people need is straightforward, if not simple: control over their lives in place of the well-meaning but ruinous paternalism of past Canadian governments."
The panel was established in 1991 by then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney following a violent standoff between Mohawks and Quebec security officials. Mulroney appointed four of the commission's seven members from Indian communities and gave it a broad mandate to examine all aspects of Indian life. Its report came two years beyond its deadline, with tens of thousands of pages of testimony and reports collected, and with the distinction of being Canada's most expensive royal commission.
Indian leaders said the government should accept the commission's findings and begin implementing them immediately. "We call upon the government of Canada to deal with aboriginal peoples on a nation-to-nation basis, recognizing and encouraging the emergence of another order of government," said George Erasmus, a co-chair of the commission.
But the impact of the document is uncertain. Its call for creation of dozens of self-governing nations is bound to echo in a country struggling to keep its European components - English and French speakers - unified. Within dozens of local communities, it will touch nerves as well. One recommendation, for example, would give Indian commercial fishermen priority over non-Indians during "times of scarcity" - an explosive issue in the struggling British Columbia salmon industry.
Likewise, the call for increased funding and a redistribution of land, timber, mineral, animal and other resources is likely to cause resentment throughout some parts of Canada; it was promptly criticized yeterday by the Western-based Reform Party as a waste of money.
Indian Affairs Minister Ron Irwin all but ruled out extensive extra spending and many of the more comprehensive ideas included in the study. He said the current Liberal Party government supports Indian self-determination and wants to equitably settle land, resource and other issues in a way that will allow the communities to be economically independent - and is doing so on a case-by-case basis around the country. But that must be done, he said, within the constraints of a government struggling to balance its budget.
"Ours aims are the same," he said of the government and the commission. "I don't know if it is going to come out" the way the panel recommended, with changes to the Canadian constitution and perhaps a dozen new independent tribunals established to renegotiate different aspects of Indian self-rule and resource claims.
But commission members and Indian leaders said it was time to abandon what they call a "project-by-project" approach that is neither quick nor comprehensive enough to address the problem. They want Canada to confront and correct an unpleasant part of its past - one they describe as including restrictions on Indian voting rights, prohibitions against free association and forced attendance by Indian children at boarding schools that were often the site of mental and physical abuse.
The price tag is steep in Canada's current fiscal climate - about $27 billion over the next 20 years. The commission contended that will be more than offset as Indian communities become economically successful, develop businesses using their land and resources and stop having to rely on social services.
Hardaway blamed race and politics, citing powerful, unidentified whites behind the attack, and civil rights activists rallied around.