IT IS A MOCKERY OF THE FREEDOM OF THOUGHT TO PRETEND IN ITS NAME THAT THE USE OF THE WORD BE TOLERATED BY THOSE WHO WORK AGAINST OUR HAPPINESS” SAYS ALBIZU CAMPOS
To the chords of La Borinqueña, the valiant champion of the Puerto Rican cause, Don Pedro Albizu Campos, advanced to the proscenium, receiving an enthusiastic ovation of greeting. The eminent tribune chastely censured the inconsistent actions of the directors that the country has had, the duplicity and disorientation of the consigned formulas and the profanations to the word “Homeland” committed in its sacred name, which the Partido Nacionalista is not willing to consent to and will no longer consent to. He maintained that while he congratulates the Unionists for the new independentist orientation of their program, it is essential that they make it good with their actions, the primary one being the resignation from public positions not derived from popular election, since they are a source of political prostitution and their acceptance a profanation of the ideal. One cannot be with God and the devil. To define themselves also in their actions, He said that the regime, due to its exploitative purpose, does not adequately address the true needs of the people, such as public health and welfare. That countless Puerto Rican doctors, with selfish aims, live attached to that department whose work is practically null. If the health department were concerned with the health of the people, canned meats that are sold would be confiscated if not sold within the necessary period for good preservation. He emphasized that the main panegyrists of the regime are paid by it, which explains their devotion to the invading government, and that not only do they personally receive checks but they have numerous relatives placed in the Government, their annual incomes being fabulous. That it is foolish and stupid to pretend that the country has tolerance for this spectacle. He denied Santiago Iglesias Pantin authority to intervene in national politics because he is a foreigner and even less with the perverse and selfish ends that he does. Foreigners can only intervene in the national life of a foreign country with noble purposes as did Kosciusko, Palaski, Lafayette, Rochambeau, Lord Byron and others whose names humanity venerates. But they must be energetically rejected when they are enemies of the Homeland and that is why it is a mockery of the freedom of thought to pretend in its name that the use of the word be tolerated by those who work against our happiness. He then addressed the economic problems. It is ridiculous to say that if we were independent we would lose the North American market, because the immense majority of the commerce here is North American and they and not us are the ones who benefit from the market of our country… It is no less ridiculous to ask how we would sustain ourselves independently. Currently, no one sustains us, but ourselves. The Yankee does not put a penny here that he does not take out with exorbitant profits. We pay the budget. With the dominion of our tariffs, we could sustain a budget of no less than $20,000,000, in addition to the benefits that free competition of all nations in our market would bring, which would lower the present high cost of living. He gave the warning to the sugarcane growers of the great crisis that threatens that industry, since the United States is rapidly becoming a sugar producing and exporting nation and its competition would ruin the sugar producers here. Finally, he entered into the field of international law and explained how the Partido Nacionalista, once in possession of the majority of votes, will constitute the Republic and through its diplomatic service will ask the entire world and the United States for its recognition as a sovereign Republic. That if the United States deny it, we will take them to an international court, where, according to the jurisprudence established in the case of Finland against the empire of the Czars of Russia, our right will triumph. Faced with the dilemma of recognizing our Republic or shooting our constituent convention and assassinating this people, said the speaker - the United States will have no other recourse than to fall on the side of democracy, justice and freedom that it so much proclaims or face the terrible and fatal consequences of its abuse if they have the audacity to commit it. We will be free, then, if we determine to be so.
Tremendous ovation greeted the final words of the speaker and eminent personalities from Guayama went up to the stage to ardently congratulate Don Pedro. His brilliant oratory has promoted in Guayama excellent impressions heralding the triumph of the emancipatory cause of Puerto Rico.”
PROCLAMATION OF THE PARTIDO NACIONALISTA ON THE OCCASION OF SEPTEMBER 23RD. PILGRIMAGE TO LARES. PROCLAMATION OF THE PARTIDO NACIONALISTA ON THE OCCASION OF SEPTEMBER 23RD, DAY OF THE HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INDEPENDENCE.
SECOND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
Within a few days, the sixty-third anniversary of the maximum feat of the Homeland annals will be fulfilled, in which the national sentiment of independence was translated into facts and the Puerto Rican people from the heroic mountains of Lares, inscribed among the decorous dates of the world the 23rd of September. The emancipatory movement of Puerto Rico, which today embodies the Partido Nacionalista, is not a romantic movement; philosophical and juridical ideas serve as sublime props, but it has its authentic ascendancy in an epic journey baptized with blood and is cemented in the categorical devotion of the good sons of this land for the cause of the unpostponable restoration of the Republic. History attests that the independence of Puerto Rico, like all the redeeming ideals of humanity, has its heroes and its martyrs and nothing will purify the collective conscience so much as meditation on that immaculate sacrifice, which has been and will always be above all profanations, in the very immortal scenario of its glorious apotheosis. The Partido Nacionalista will therefore sponsor again this year the patriotic national pilgrimage to the sacred land of Lares, which is the august tabernacle of the Homeland. Our Party is the same as last year by reason of the purity and integrity of its ideology, invariable and immutable as the truth, but today it is presented crowned by success, in the summits, not of colonial power that it despises, but of the love and recognition and respect of its own and strangers, which is the only thing that interests it. Even the ambient ideas of the current world favor us. The growth of international consciousness is increasingly elevating the relations between States that were traditionally resolved by force to the plane of law. The absolute freedom of the powers is increasingly restricted when it violates the rights of other States. Peoples already, along with individuals, have attained the right to recognition of their juridical personality. The slavery of countries yields to the concept of the family of nations. Already the mere name of “colony” is reprehensible, and Puerto Rico demands its entry into the society of nations. We must always keep in mind, however, that the victory for the cause of independence depends exclusively on the national will that reaches the sacrifice to impose justice and law. May the entire Puerto Rican nation attend the second national assembly that will be held in Lares on the next 23rd of September to pay a tribute of honor and gratitude and at the same time of solidarity and redress to the leaders of ‘68, who ignited in Puerto Rico, before the Cubans in Yara, the holy fire of the freedom of the Homeland, making the splendor of Bolívar’s sword shine in our sky. Given in the city of San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico on the 15th day of September of 1931, year 63 of the proclamation of the Republic. The National Board, Partido Nacionalista of Puerto Rico.
P. Albizu Campos, President
Manuel Rivera Matos, General Secretary
THE ACTS CELEBRATED BY THE PARTIDO NACIONALISTA IN THE CITY OF LARES ON THE TWENTY-THIRD DAY OF SEPTEMBER IN COURSE.
ALBIZU CAMPOS SPEAKS
When the President of the Partido Nacionalista was announced to speak, the music played La Borinqueña while the public, standing, paid delirious applause that lasted for several minutes. “The human tendency is to be parasitic. Only a spiritual conception of life elevates us to the offering of what we possess for a just cause. Our people in their moral decadence are a parasitic people. But this apotheosis is not a parasitic act. We do not come here to raise a myth, nor to live a past glory. It is very easy to speak of the glories of others, but that does not make the one who speaks glorious. We come here as an act of consecration to the principles that informed the men of ‘68. “We love and adore the Homeland as a goddess. The last particle of our soil is a sacred thing and we will not allow foreign hands to profane it. But higher than that cult is the cult of our progenitors and we will not allow foreign hands to profane it. They represent the symbolism of the life we possess and of our greatness before Eternity. Peoples who do not know their progenitors are buried peoples, they are dead peoples. We, in remembering their memory today, turn out to be unworthy successors of their memory. Peoples are ungrateful because men are ungrateful; thus our people do not know the descendants of those great men. And we have to honor their memory in their very flesh.” The speaker then went on to make an analysis of the transcendence of personality. “The problem of Puerto Rico,” he said, “is the problem of its personality. There is no responsibility where there is no exercise of powers. A people governed by a foreign power is an irresponsible people.” He said that Puerto Rico was in the conditions of a madman who has no personality before the law because he is an irresponsible entity and a guardian is put on him to administer his assets. “The empire says to the colony: “I exercise power because you are incapacitated.” And it disposes of all the lands and assets as guardian. Puerto Rico currently appears before the world as a people of imbeciles who do not have the capacity to resolve their own affairs. To enjoy rights, one must have personality and speak with the other powers as equals.” The speaker analyzed the consequences of the negation of personality in all orders, especially in the educational order. He said that the empire established the educational system that suited its purposes and therefore took care that the truth was not told in the schools. The speaker also addressed the religious problem. He said that no religion in our country could be an enemy of our Independence; that no one in the name of Catholic or Protestant could fight the cause of our freedom. He stated that Puerto Rico before the Holy See was an independent nation that enjoyed ecclesiastical sovereignty. That in its day the Partido Nacionalista would send a commission to the Vatican to raise the case of Puerto Rico, He stated that all religious institutions had to be nationalized. As this year the mass celebrated last year in honor of the heroes of ‘68 was not on the program, Mr. Albizu Campos personally addressed the Rev. Martínez, of that parish. “Last year,” he said, “a Te Deum was sung in the church of this town and the Rev. Martínez gave the most eloquent speech in the assembly that we gave in this same theater. Reverend Martínez revealed himself that afternoon as a true Puerto Rican. Reverend Martínez owes his people an explanation of why that mass has not been celebrated. He must explain what secret coercions have prevented the perfume of a prayer to the martyrs of our Independence from being raised today.” The speaker ended by saying that that pilgrimage was an act of redress to the heroes of ‘68. Mr. Albizu Campos was carried on the shoulders by the multitude, closing the assembly in the midst of a delirious enthusiasm.
THE PARTIDO NACIONALISTA PROCLAIMS NINE DAYS OF MOURNING ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF DON PEDRO ANGLERO, SURVIVOR OF THE GRITO DE LARES Every time a free man disappears, the Homeland trembles and the future is clouded: the one, feeling in its most intimate essences the painful onslaught of Destiny and the other, suffering the orphanhood of the constitutive virtues of hope. Hence, when manhood descends from its august pedestal obeying iron and eternal laws, it is necessary to staunch the wound with a vision of eternity, because otherwise the sense of spiritual harmony will succumb to the weight of misfortune. The heroes of the great odyssey of Lares made the heart of their Homeland palpitate for the same reason that those venerable trunks had taken root in the depths of the Puerto Rican Spirit. From then to this part, the Homeland, vilified in hours of jubilation by the detractors of the Ideal, kept the ashes of its glorious dead very deep in its entrails, sure that the enemies of Liberty, for lacking the vision of the eternal, are not in the disposition to respect the sacred ashes of the dead. But today, the very essence of the Homeland shaken by the death of the survivor of the odyssey of Lares, Don Pedro Angleró, at the age of one hundred and ten years, it occurs to us that the procerous figures of the Revolution of ‘68 make their appearance in the proscenium of their people and impose silence, with the moral authority that led them to defend, on a not distant day, the reason of the ideals and the transcendence of libertarian thought. Today, in the Barrio Obrero, of this city of San Juan Bautista, Don Pedro Angleró has died for physical life, at the moment in which the Homeland, grieving and bleeding, mourns the absence of its true children and sinks into the despair of historical fatalism. A centennial leader has died, in whose veins beat the redemption of a people subjugated by the power of force and by the negation of some of its children. The sublime banner of the Borincan epic has fallen, and, upon falling, with the sadness of the great and the happiness of the beautiful of the soul, it has risen with the elegance of the martyrs who always rise above the tabernacle, being in communion with the perfume of sacrifice. Above the tabernacle of disillusions has jumped this noble defender of morality and this priest of justice; above the tabernacle that indifference hoists in hours of negative potentiality, to impose the beheading of faith and decree that the vital force of Law resides in the imposition of an inequality and not in the conscience of men. Don Pedro Angleró has died for physical life; but as in every action of freedom two vital currents converge, the physical and the moral, Don Pedro Angleró, upon losing the vibration of matter, has seized the sources of morality, the plant of faith that he sowed in the living furrow of the Homeland, will be cultivated with zeal and affection by the noble hand of the present generation. And it will never die because the dream crystallized in the heat of Eternity cannot die. Faced with the pain that seizes the consciences of the free Puerto Rican men - faced with the disappearance of this knight of the Ideal, the Nationalism of Puerto Rico, is moved in its depth of purity and patriotic love and pays to the noble paladin of the feeling, the tears that perhaps all of Puerto Rico will have to shed before the venerable ashes of its dead. The nationalism of Puerto Rico, through the present message of mourning and in accordance with the illustrious lineage of Don Pedro Angleró, AESTHETIC MAN of the Borincan dream, proclaims nine days of national mourning and orders the National Boards and sub-Boards of Puerto Rico that during these nine days dedicated to paying religious homage to the memory of the noble man, the flag of the Homeland be placed at half-mast and be imposed with the Pain that the fall of a Man who had the merit of being a true Man produces in us. Given in San Juan de Puerto Rico, today, on the sixteen days of October of 1931, and year 64 of the Proclamation of the Republic.
THE NATIONAL BOARD
P. ALBIZU CAMPOS President
M. RIVERA MATOS General Secretary
THE UNITED STATES HAS A DUTY TO FULFILL WITH US AND THAT IS TO WITHDRAW FROM OUR COUNTRY - IT IS THE ONLY WAY TO DEMONSTRATE RESPECT FOR THE LAW OF NATIONS - ALBIZU CAMPOS On Monday morning we visited in his office at the central offices of the Partido Nacionalista, the supreme leader Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, who at those moments was extremely busy, answering the numerous correspondence from the interior and from abroad coming from innumerable organizations, co-religionists and friends inside and outside the nation. Upon noticing our presence in his office he immediately extended his firm right hand and with his proverbial smile inquired: “What news is there?” “None, Don Pedro,” we answered, “outside of those that you can supply us. Do not forget that the readers of LA NACION anxiously await your announced declarations.” -Ask, then - he replied. -What do you tell us about the current political moment? -“I already had the opportunity to officially expose from the nationalist tribune in Guayama our attitude in relation to the present political panorama of the country. -“Since we are publishing the review of the act of Guayama in another part of this edition, we immediately formulate another question. -How will the Congress of the United States consider the project of the elective governor of Mr. La Guardia, Democratic Representative for New York in said legislative body? -The nationalist movement is not interested in the consideration that the Congress of the United States gives to any project that is submitted to said legislative body. We maintain that the Puerto Rican nation is the absolute arbiter of its destiny, that the Treaty of Paris imposed by the United States on Spain is null, in what refers to Puerto Rico, because our country was not a contracting party in said treaty; nor did Spain have powers to cede Puerto Rico nor the United States to accept it in cession. By virtue of the Autonomic Charter, which constituted a treaty between the Mother Homeland and the island of Puerto Rico, our sovereignty was internationally recognized and it was the duty of every nation to respect it, beginning with the United States. When Nationalism rises energetic for the vindication of its sovereignty, the invading power pretends to disorient public opinion, to protect its usurpation and its dispossession imposing concessions to the oppressed country that perpetuate the foreign oppressive regime. Liberalism has its insolences. Let us not forget, the pretenders of all empires; they have always been imperialists who have suggested the most subtle means to complete foreign absorption. It is preferable for a nationality, victim of a military occupation, a frank and decided despotism that serves as an incentive and that awakens indigenous resistance, to a veiled and liberal despotism that anesthetizes the national conscience. The United States has a duty to fulfill with us. And that is to withdraw immediately from our country. It is the only way to demonstrate respect for the law of nations. Immense damage has been caused by that invading nation to our nationality, by depriving it of the exercise of its sovereignty and subjecting it to the most barbaric and inhuman economic exploitation known to history. If any North American legislator wants to do some good to his Homeland, he should propose respect for the rights of others. If the representative La Guardia wants us to take care of his projects, let him propose to his country the immediate withdrawal of the North American armed forces from our land, and the payment of reparations that they owe us for the immense damages caused in our country during 33 years of North American military occupation. “The apparently liberal manifestations of Mr. La Guardia are directed especially to the Puerto Rican colony of New York to obtain from it the votes that Mr. La Guardia needs to remain in power. “The National Board has given instructions to the Board of New York to illustrate to our compatriots in that modern Babel that they refrain from the internal struggles in that country so that they do not let their feelings be exploited by any North American politician; that their only duty is to organize to restore the Republic of their Homeland. -What significance do you attribute to the revolutionary movement in the Philippines? Fearing the Philippine revolution, the North American government by Law of the year 1917 committed itself to recognizing the Independence of the Philippine Islands (as soon as there was a stable government) and in the opinion of the government of the United States, there has not yet been “a stable government” in the Philippines nor will there ever be despite the fact that the Philippine government is of North American making. “The Filipinos have been waiting for this promise for fourteen years.” “In that period, North American interests have been consolidating. The conservative sentiment has been stimulated in important nationalist sectors of that archipelago to such a point that the eminent statesman Roxas, more or less ten months ago, has raised the flag of non-cooperation adopting tactics very similar to those of Puerto Rican nationalism. “The Filipinos see clearly that the moment is very opportune for the immediate suppression of the North American military occupation. The United States does not count today with a friendly nation in the entire Universe, because its policy of absorption has been unmasked. The North American power is going through an internal crisis of revolutionary characters produced by the economic crisis, consequence of the loss of markets. “I firmly believe that the Filipinos will act to impose their independence. “The opportunity that the Puerto Rican nation has is identical to the one that the Philippine nation has. Our duty is to act immediately.