Napoleón I, failed in España due to the heroic spirit of the inhabitants, men and women of the Spanish cities. If the men and women of Puerto Rico are valiant and worthy and assume the attitude that I point out, there will not be any human power, however extraordinary it may be, that keeps us in servitude. “Latin América has its soul set on Puerto Rico. If we fail in our fight against the invader without assuming gestures of dignity and rebellion, all of América is lost. If we show ourselves worthy of freedom, América and the world will be with us,” concluded Lcdo. Albizu Campos. “Upon finishing his most eloquent oration, which encompassed, as we have reported, globally the economic and political situation of Puerto Rico, the speaker received an extraordinary ovation, being raised on the shoulders by the crowd electrified with enthusiasm. Even after one in the morning, various groups of those in attendance commented on the extraordinary and valiant discourse. “That was the first of the series. Others will follow in the noble mission of propaganda and convincing the Puerto Rican people that the only solution for the political, economic and social ills of our Homeland lies solely in the constitution of the Puerto Rican Nationality.
Arturo O’NEILL
A PROCLAMATION OF THE NATIONAL BOARD OF THE NATIONALIST PARTY ON THE OCCASION OF THE 63RD ANNIVERSARY OF THE REBELLION OF LARES
“The Revolution to establish the Independence of the Homeland has never failed. The Nationality has been defined. The sacrifice of its martyrs consecrated its sovereignty. On that glorious date the will to be free was fixed, and from it begins the chronology of the Independent Republic, no matter how long it takes to free its sovereignty from foreign interventions. “September 23rd is the maximum day of the Patria’s feat. Sixty- three years will have passed since the patriots of Lares proclaimed the Republic of Puerto Rico. “The uprising imposed the series of reforms that culminated in the Autonomic Charter of 1897. A people defined by arms is a respectable and indestructible people. “The baptism of sacrifice is national and encompasses posterity so that, enlightened by the example of its heroes, it may dedicate itself to the decisive effort of absolute liberation. (“If the bonds of blood, religion, culture, and the community of interests’ were not obstacles for the Independence of the Mother Homeland España, when there is no bond that links us to the imperial power of Estados Unidos, which, currently, in violation of all rights, makes it impossible for us by force to exercise our powers as a sovereign nation, if not, on the contrary, everything separates us from these invaders and our vital interests are in grave conflict with theirs, to our detriment, it is forcibly necessary to declare bluntly that the immediate Constitution of the Republic is unpostponable. “The Municipal Assembly of Lares has decreed that September 23rd be celebrated as a holiday. This is a consecration and an example to follow. San Sebastián will respond in the same way because if in Lares the insurrection began, in el Pepino the main combat of the noble day was waged. We urge the other municipal governments of the country, which are the legitimate representation of popular sovereignty, to adhere to the patriotic and just Resolution of the government of Lares and decree the glorious anniversary a festive day in their respective jurisdictions, which is the purest tribute to national decorum. Compatriots,
from now on, September 23rd will be solemnized as the Day of the Martyrs of Independence, in remembrance and homage to all the men and women sacrificed or persecuted for the cause of freedom. “On that day, the entire Puerto Rican Nation shall concur, with the due unction, to Lares, privileged land and consecrated in the Patria’s history, to render the tribute of respect to the martyrs of the cause of National Redemption; before the tombs of the patricians, let us invoke the spirit of the liberating manes; let us forge the solemn oath to be worthy descendants of our ancestors, and that we will fulfill the patriotic duty of immediately organizing the government of the Republic. It is the Augusto Day! The Day of Independence!”. “I certify that the present is a true and exact copy of the Proclamation approved by the National Board of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico in its session held on the afternoon of Sunday, the 14th of the current month. “Given in San Juan de Puerto Rico, on the sixteen days of the month of September, year 1930 and sixty-second of the Proclamation of the Republic”.
Juan Antonio Corretjer, Administrative Secretary, Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico
LETTER TO MR. LUIS VENEGAS CORTES San Juan, P.R., September 19, 1930 Mr. Luis Venegas Cortés, President of the University Committee Pro-Victims of Santo Domingo, Río Piedras, P.R. Friend of all my esteem:
I acknowledge receipt of your moving communication accompanied by check number 7402, drawn by the University, charged to the “Banco Territorial y Agrícola” of Río Piedras and endorsed to me, for the sum of four hundred ninety-eight dollars and fifty cents, amount of the funds raised to date among university students to help the victims of Santo Domingo. You inform me that the University Committee Pro-Dominican Victims agreed to make the remittance through the mediation of the Partido Nacionalista. In the name of our Partido I accept the noble commission and will immediately send to His Excellency Mr. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, President of the Dominican Republic, the funds placed at the disposal of his government for the charitable purpose that you have arranged. No Puerto Rican act in the face of the catastrophe that has overwhelmed us with sorrow has the transcendence of yours. It signals, first, the clear orientation of university students on national and international issues. In that heroic nation, noble and hospitable, to the point of exaggeration, if one can exaggerate in that order, no memory of their immense sorrow will produce the emotion that yours will. Here is an absolute disinterest and a love of brothers to brothers. The ideal of the Antillean Confederation will be realized by the present Antillean youth because they are willing to create a power that will be imposed on every invader. This corozonada of yours is the message of solidarity that announces the era that is already glimpsed. Our Partido, which in reality is not a Partido, but the Homeland organized to rescue its sovereignty, so that even those who today combat the Independence can enjoy the dignity of being free, enjoys, because of the purpose it pursues, the respect and sympathy of all Dominicans. And they will be pleased that this demonstration of your sensitivity arrives through our mediation. With my cordial congratulations for the work of nobles,
I am yours most affectionately, P. ALBIZU CAMPOS
THE CIVIC ACT OF THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY IN LARES? REPRESENTATIONS FROM VARIOUS POINTS OF THE COUNTRY ATTENDED
ALBIZU CAMPOS SPEAKS
Since the crowd did not fit in the theater, the public asked that Mr. Albizu Campos speak on the platform of the square since the threats of rain had passed. When the President of the Nationalist Party climbed the platform he was received with a prolonged round of applause. “Today fulfills a supreme longing of my life to find myself in this city of Lares. I would have entered Lares on my knees: holy land is entered on one’s knees. The men and women of the current generation do not even know how to walk and get tired of walking two kilometers even if it is to pay homage to the heroes of our freedom. Our grandparents did not know the automobile, nor the electric train and yet, they performed wonders. They did not know the paved roads, nor the modern means of communication, but they had a physical and moral strength superior to us, and they climbed those peaks with ease and risked their lives for an ideal. What was the superiority of those heroes? That they were men of high principles in their conscience. Devotion to an idea is not enough, it is necessary to be consecrated to the idea and this implies sacrifice. “You are not like the hero Ramírez because you do not have the consciousness of consecration to an ideal, nor the consciousness of your own strength. The day that happens, the independence of Puerto Rico will have been achieved as a fatality in history. “The force that weighs on our people is the sense of impotence. It is necessary to evoke, then, the contrary forces, the forces of wisdom and beauty immanent in the nature of man. “Science itself puts powerful weapons in our hands. With a microphone installed on this platform I can inform the world of what is happening in Puerto Rico. “The strength of nationalities and empires depends on the esteem that is held for them. If the concept that an empire deserves from us is poor, the stronger it seems, its duty will be more perishable. All empires maintain propaganda in their colonies to maintain the myth of their superiority. Estados Unidos resorts to all means of propaganda to maintain a
moral ascendancy over our people and thus keep them subject to its power. “We do not have weapons to sink their naval forces, but we have the weapon of sinking their prestige in the world.” The speaker then related how our parents had been wrong in the concept they had of Estados Unidos and gave as an example his father who received the invading army with a speech in English only to realize his mistake later. “We are today in a new stage of nationalism, we are acquiring the internal consciousness of nationalism which is the very life of the nationality. This nationalism has no ties, nor does it want them, with any political party whose ambiguous, contradictory and anti-scientific programs are lures to deceive the people and achieve the power of the colony. Those are their only aspirations. Nationalism is a transcendental movement, it is the secular and millennial force of our redemption. To belong to this nationalism it is necessary to be consecrated to the ideal and therefore sacrifice. “I am not coming to tell you that you are beautiful and precious women and to you that you are patriots. I am coming to tell you that you are not fulfilling your duty. “I want to repeat here the question I asked in La Habana before the monument to José Martí. Do Lares and Puerto Rico deserve that monolith to the heroes of ‘68? To deserve it, one must be at least at the moral height of the base of that monument. And neither Lares nor Puerto Rico are currently at that moral height. It is necessary to cover that monolith with a shroud of mourning until the men and women of Puerto Rico know how to wield weapons for independence as our grandparents did. “I want this day to be like a dagger stuck over your hearts that tells you in moments of weakness what your duty is. Our homeland lived under the weight of a tragedy. Its redemption is unpostponable if we want to save ourselves from perishing as a people and be worthy of the sacrifice of those martyrs. Let each one fulfill his duty. His final words were followed by a prolonged ovation while the band cleaved the air with the chords of La Borinqueña.
Manuel Rivera Matos Secretary of the Nationalist Party
THE NATIONALIST ACT OF SUNDAY IN PONCE THE DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED BY LCDO. P. ALBIZU CAMPOS When Albizu Campos ascended the platform, the Ponce public received him with a prolonged ovation. The President of the Nationalist Party delivered an eloquent and substantial discourse that extended for two and a half hours. “Beloved people of mine: I want to greet you after three years of absence from our América. A deep emotion overwhelms my spirit as I present myself before the people of Ponce who saw me born. To love the soil that gave us life is the first duty of man. I want to send a collective greeting from this platform to my school classmates, to my physical and moral protectors, to my friends and townsmen. “Tonight we celebrate the magna epopee of the race that discovered and civilized this continent. To the Mother España we owe the immense gratitude of this work without parallels in human history. With the feat of Colón it was definitively proven the spherical shape of the planet. With this discovery man realized that he did not live on an isolated land but that he belonged to a celestial system of which he was its collaborator and interpreter. Man was then aware of the infinity of the universe and that within himself were enclosed the possibilities of infinite progress. His concept of the universe and of his creator was amplified, and he understood that his mission was to interpret the laws that governed it and live the superior life of the spirit.” After a philosophical digression around the meaning of the discovery and its transcendence in the life of Western culture, he went on to analyze the transcendental orientation of nationalism. “Nationalism is the force that stands against any power that denies us personality. It is a movement that aspires to awaken the forces of wisdom in the people, to save the nationality for culture and history. It wants this people that is the first spiritual unit that crystallizes in the continent, that is the nationality most integrated culturally and racially of América, that is an improvable and sensitive mass, not to be annulled and to be reintegrated into the life of culture through the full affirmation of its personality. El nationalism is not merely the reintegration of the lands into Puerto Rican hands, nor the salvation of its commerce and its finances: it is the nationality standing to rescue its sovereignty and save this people for the higher values of life. Colonialism is the annulment and the absorption of our moral forces; independence is spiritual fullness, it is the enjoyment of all the physical and moral gifts that God deposited in our land. If the law denies personality to a madman, it also denies him his capacity to verify any legal transaction. If a people is denied its collective personality, it is denied the capacity to govern its own destiny and we are put on the level of an irresponsible madman. Nationalism is not a partido in the limiting sense of the word but a movement that tends to save all the constitutive values of the nationality. That is why we will not rest until the flag of Estados Unidos has been lowered from Puerto Rico.” The speaker then analyzed the historical, sociological and cultural panorama of the ibero-American nations and underlined the need to maintain intense links with the brother peoples “because the case of Puerto Rico is the evident example of the intentions that Estados Unidos has for Latin América.” “América is the richest continent in the world because of its territorial extension, its population and its immense natural resources. That is why it is the object of the world’s greed. It is becoming aware of this phenomenon and remains on guard against exotic aggressions. It knows the greedy intentions of Estados Unidos and that is why all the governments that the people suspect are subjected to the yankees are falling.” He then commented on the policy of Estados Unidos in the Caribbean. “The Caribe Sea is the heart of the world. From here originate and converge the maritime currents of the tropics that carry heat and life to all the continents of the earth. This will be the theater of the great war that is eight or ten years away to overthrow the imperialist power of Estados Unidos. We must prepare for that hour which will be that of our political salvation.” He then made an analysis of the problems of Estados Unidos, of the North American social life, of its attitude towards the black race, etc. He announced that one of the most bloody social revolutions in history awaited him, since there “the exploitation exerted against the people had made the communist seed prosper in a dangerous way for the stability of its plutocratic institutions.” He commented on the recent speeches of President Hoover in which he recognizes the importance that these movements have taken when he takes the trouble to comment on them. He also censured the society of Ponce for the welcome he gave to the North American sailors. “The slave can never pay homage to the master,” he said. At the end of his speech Albizu Campos, the public burst into a delirious applause carrying him on his shoulders throughout the square while the band played the melodious chords of La Borinqueña.
By Manuel Rivera Matos
A NATIONALIST ASSEMBLY WAS HELD IN SALINAS AMONG OTHER SPEAKERS SPOKE THE PRESIDENT OF THE PARTIDO, MR. ALBIZU CAMPOS Mr. Albizu Campos was announced. A long ovation kept the speaker silent. Afterwards, the speaker excused himself before the public for not being able to make a speech, since having spoken for two and a half hours the night before in Ponce, he was completely hoarse. Nevertheless, he began by making a brilliant exposition of the economic problems of colonial Puerto Rico. He evoked days of his near and so distant! youth, when his adolescence ran through the fertile plains of Salinas. Remember “the traditional joy, the daily merriment, the festivity that was made, daily, a jingle in the spirit.” And today, señores, all faces are sad. The elders of then, also had vigor for the youthful feat, strong, vigorous, they had physical and spiritual energies. Today men of middle age look with sad, tragic, desolate eyes. (The speaker looks towards the gallery. The gallery is full of children. The children are still, silent). I am alarmed when childhood is in stillness. I am alarmed when the children of my homeland attend an act like this, and they are still, judicious; when they have not demolished all the chairs in the gallery and the straps of the fathers have not had to come out. Because I know that that stillness is symptomatic. I know that when the child does not play, when the child is not a match that ignites mischief, it is that he has on his head the cold hand of the advanced epidemic of death.” “And why are the men sad, why are the women sad, why are the children of Salinas sad? Ah, señores, can one be happy, can the men of Salinas, the men of Puerto Rico, be happy when misery pursues them like an implacable greyhound? Can the women of Puerto Rico, those who are aware of the true situation, be happy when they see their husband, their brother, their father, within the fatal circle of reigning despair? And can our children be happy, when they do not have the illusion of the toy, and not even the security of breakfast? To that state, señores, has the system of exploitation to which the yanqui has subjected us brought us, and, to remedy that evil, what is done? Well, the occupant of Fortaleza advises new loans. Why, on the other hand, does the Governor not oblige the Fajardo Sugar Co., the Guánica Central, to Aguirre to pay the millions that they owe to the treasury? Ah, no señores! They, the corporations, are sacred, untouchable. The ghost of the Constitution of Estados Unidos is invoked, which enters Puerto Rico whenever it is to protect yanqui interests, but which always escapes in time so as not to protect the interests of the natives.” “Where does this system of exploitation lead? To ruin, only to ruin. Every minute that passes a new Puerto Rican landowner falls and a yanqui exploiter rises. And the few boricuas that remain are fatally condemned to disappear.” By this time the speaker was already in full command of his voice. It seems that for him combat is a remedy, and that his natural environment is the fight. Already in tribunicial tone he shook the public with his broad, immoderate, vehement verb. The theater shook with applause, ovations.
HOMAGE TO MESSRS. ALBIZU CAMPOS AND SELLES SOLA
ALBIZU CAMPOS’ SPEECH When Mr. Albizu Campos was to make use of the word, the audience standing paid him a thunderous ovation that lasted for several minutes. “In answering the letter-invitation addressed to me by the President of the Cultural Society, I put in my words what I understood was the meaning of this act. I interpret this act and repeat here those words as an oath that the patriots demand of each other. It seems a lie that patriots ever have to demand of each other the fulfillment of an oath, but there are moments in the Patria’s history in which the constructive elements are postponed because high treason to the most vital interests of the country dominates. Such is, my friends, the historical moment through which our homeland passes. High treason predominates among us, I repeat; they are the men and women who alongside the dominator are demolishing the most sacred things of the homeland, from its material interests to its most dear spiritual interests. It is they who dominate unfortunately in our country. And we are the patriots who are in frank adversity at this moment of collective work. That is why I interpret the invitation of the Cultural Society as the peremptory demand, as the imperative mandate that we all demand of each other here the fulfillment of patriotic duty. “Everyone is surprised that it is the youth who come to consecrate adult men. It is true that we are not as old as we seem, but we are already adults. Men who have suffered much in our few years. I understand that my companion was born in ‘86. I was born in ‘93. Since I was a child I fixed in my spirit an idea that every man and woman who was born in a slave country should have: to sacrifice his life to free it from any exotic power that seeks to subjugate it. And faithful to that norm, faithful to that promise before my own conscience, I have always been humble, and as a humble man anxious to acquire all possible knowledge to prepare myself physically and mentally with the purpose of carrying out a work of patriotism and dignity. To be a patriot it is not enough to carry the words on the lips and the feeling in the heart. It is required to have physical strength, it is required to have a strength