our will add its wealth to that of the power that dominates them for the exclusive benefit of the latter. When the empire enjoys prosperity, misery will be the fate of the subjugated nation: and when the empire is in crisis, total ruin is what awaits the intervened nation. Foreign interventions are excuses to hoard the wealth of peoples who are victims of force. The legislation of the North American Congress that, applied to Puerto Rico, exclusively benefits the United States, will be extended to Puerto Rico without consulting us in any way; but the laws that could possibly protect Puerto Rico are, of course, not extended to this country. We must clarify that whatever comes as a mere concession from the power that holds its sovereignty could never benefit Puerto Rico. It is true that, in order to disorient the public opinion of Puerto Rico, some crumbs from the United States budget are distributed in businesses that the dominating nation is interested in maintaining here, but that does not benefit us in any way because it only serves to stimulate the apologists of the regime. The exploitation that the monopoly of our market signifies cannot be compensated in any way. It cannot be otherwise. That is why the North American intervention exists. Proof of what we have just affirmed appears in the Press with the same date as the aforementioned executive order of the President of the United States of North America. The congress of that country has denied the loans requested from the Financial Reconstruction Corporation and the Agricultural Credit Corporation, North American entities created to rehabilitate the North American people. The terms of these loans are liberal: they could benefit the country even if poorly administered by the North American officials who govern their disbursement, and it had to deny their concession to Puerto Rico. It is childish to pretend that North American finance will facilitate us the slightest help to escape from its clutches. As Judge Evans said in light of the concept that the United States has of law, Puerto Rico is a domestic country in the international sphere, and it is foreign in the North American national sphere. Further on, we will see how these concepts are shuffled to harm our country. The executive order of the President of the United States is the preliminary step to accustom the public to the inevitable; the bank moratorium for an indefinite time. Upon the expiration of the term stipulated in said order, small amounts will be allowed to be withdrawn only. The moratorium will be effective as imposed by the collapse of the economic castle of the United States. While banks are exempted from the obligation to return deposits, they are protected in their right as lending creditors. Executions of commercial houses, farms and homes will continue due to non-payment of obligations contracted with the banks.
While these corporations enjoy the privilege of retaining all the cash in their coffers! A more effective system could not be invented to ruin everyone and to definitively concentrate in the power of North American companies what little remains of the national wealth in Puerto Rican hands. To prevent this dispossession, a moratorium is required on the payment of all obligations to a bank, whether the obligation is personal or mortgage. That measure can be initiated by the Insular Legislature to save its responsibility to the extent permitted by the legal means at its disposal. The veto of the head of the intervention is considered certain. It is to be expected, but the country will be able to orient itself and adopt the measures that protect it against strangulation. The procedure that informs the executive order of the President of the United States is not new. It has been the norm of action in the financial crises that the North Americans have suffered, crises that, compared with the present, can be described as benign. Given the seriousness of the situation that is presented to Puerto Rico, patriotic duty obliges the clarification of such a delicate matter. In no country in the world can a bank be opened with the ease that it is done in the United States or in countries subject to its laws. The banking law that governs in Puerto Rico proves it. It seems liberal. In reality, the small bank that opens its doors becomes a forced branch of the most powerful bank in the country, which through that elastic system becomes a rediscount bank. So that the obligations of the small banks can circulate, the rediscount bank must give its prior consent that it will accept them, but for this it will require as collateral the values of the small banks, their shares and deposits. If the small bank fails, the rediscount bank loses nothing. On the contrary, it always wins because it speculates with the collateral value. But if the rediscount bank fails, it ruins the small banks and their depositors. Then, the great interests that dominate finance buy the lands, transportation vehicles, mines, franchises, etc., at derisory prices. The financial panic results in a ruin for that unfortunate North American people, but it is one of the effective methods that the Yankee banking oligarchy has to stay in power for an indefinite time.
This is not allowed in any other country that we know of. Everywhere the savings of the people are considered sacred. The organization of banks is made difficult, their number is limited. All governments demand guarantees that cannot be evaded in a moment of crisis. In the absence of a Puerto Rican National Bank, because it is impossible to organize it under the present regime, the bank called National City of New York is functioning as a rediscount bank. Its importance in North American finance is known to all. Undoubtedly, the executive order of the North American President has automatically been extended to Puerto Rico due to the links of said bank with the chain of North American banks. Let us see how this bank works. Its name gives the idea that it is a national institution of the United States. It is a private corporation with a franchise from the North American Congress. Hence its name “National.” It has a franchise to do business exclusively in the city of New York. We must repeat that it cannot do business in any other North American city. However, based on permission to do business abroad, it does business in Puerto Rico. We are also a foreign country in financial terms! But when it is wanted to be inspected or made to pay taxes in Puerto Rico as a foreign bank, it alleges with success that it is a domestic federal institution. In that way, it occupies an enviable position. It is the depositary of the funds of the People of Puerto Rico when no insular official can inspect it and specify the state of its cash. The banking situation of Puerto Rico cannot be regulated without determining the conditions under which a bank with a franchise from the North American Congress can carry out operations in our country. We believe that Puerto Rican depositors will have better guarantees when the banks that are depositaries of the funds of the People of Puerto Rico have in their directives an official intervener designated by the Economic Commission of the Insular Legislature. Given the seriousness of the situation, we trust that the Legislature will exercise its initiative to immediately declare the suspension of the public debt service, which amounts to about six million dollars annually. Another matter of capital importance is the absence of gold in the coffers of the banks that operate here. Before the North American invasion, almost exclusively gold and silver circulated in the country. Now the monetary medium is all North American paper. The good hard currency in metal that we had was forced to be exchanged for North American paper with a loss of forty percent. Our gold and our silver are in the North American coffers. The situation of gold reserves in the United States is described by the President of that country himself. The export of gold and any transaction in that metal has been prohibited! It is the crisis in the value of paper money. We all remember the spectacular descent of the mark first and the franc later and the ruin of the holders of values in those currencies. We trust that the Insular Legislature will negotiate on equal terms with the United States, that the part that is deemed necessary of the North American values in circulation be exchanged for gold immediately and deposited in Puerto Rico. Lest those who are now hoarding bills find themselves with depreciated paper in their possession
when they have the need to dispose of it. Nationalism fulfills a duty of Homeland by delivering these considerations to all the members of the legislature through the President of the Insular Senate. With the most distinguished consideration.
P. ALBIZU CAMPOS President
AN ARTICLE BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONALIST PARTY WITH RESPECT TO THE NEOMALTHUSIAN LEGISLATION THAT HAS BEEN PRESENTED80
The memorial addressed to the Insular Legislature by the Bishops, Their Illustrious Monsignor Byrne and Monsignor Willinger, invites the most serious consideration. This document covers all aspects of the social problem raised by the neomalthusians. The reflections it contains are irrefutable. However, the legislators who promote that legislation believe they have the power to regulate the population of Puerto Rico, and, victims of that illusion, they are tenacious in their excesses and defy the public opinion that repudiates them. The Insular Legislature does not have powers to regulate even its own existence. Its life depends on the North American Congress, which has been shortening it for the benefit of Yankee interests. It will be suppressed the day it suits the United States. The power that exercises its sovereignty regulates the population of a nation. Thus, under the North American intervention, no Puerto Rican can leave for abroad without a Yankee passport. All foreigners who are pleasing to the United States can enter Puerto Rico. The Insular Legislature is powerless to intervene in the entry or exit of population. The Congress of the United States imposes its emigration and immigration laws on us, and entrusts its strict compliance to officials appointed directly by the president of the empire. It is noteworthy that Puerto Ricans, as good islanders that they are, do not emigrate. Their home is their Homeland and they consider any residence abroad to be transitory. There is talk of overpopulation, but the truth is that Puerto Rico is a country of immigration. The population of the Virgin Islands is emptying into Puerto Rico at an average rate of one thousand souls per year. By nineteen thirty, about eight thousand inhabitants of that archipelago had already entered through our ports.
The Yankee Government has been able to prevent this immigration, but it has not done so. Rather, it encourages it. It stimulates, of course, Yankee immigration. They appear in their phalanxes, from the “experts,” known to all, to the blond tobacco workers who occupy benches in the factories of Puerta de Tierra. The labor force in the United States, due to the economic ruin of that country, is worthless. The North American worker invasion is already underway and will be stimulated by the North American Government in accordance with its policy of displacement of our population. But the head of the intervention, Colonel Beverley, who speaks on behalf of his government, says nothing about the immigration from the Virgin Islands and the United States and which is a serious cause in the increase of the population. What population do Colonel Beverly and his Government want to decrease in Puerto Rico then? Simply, the Puerto Rican population! It is the Puerto Ricans who are bothering in Puerto Rico.
Our ports have been closed to the mother race of our culture, the Spanish. The entry of Spaniards or Hispanic Americans is made impossible because they reinforce the Hispanic structure of our nationality and that is not convenient for the North American political plans. Let Yankees and Santomeños enter in unlimited quantities, but not Hispanic Americans or Spaniards! And let all the Puerto Ricans who emigrate leave, or let all the Puerto Ricans die! The density of population is the power of defined nationality. If there were ten million Yankees in Puerto Rico, the head of the intervention would consider that a blessing for his Homeland, which would then have enormous power in these waters. But, thinking that the Puerto Rican population will rise to ten million souls is falling into a terrible nightmare. The fact would be definitive. It would make the Yankee intervention impossible here and in neighboring countries. All the North American provinces (“states” sic), strive to have the population density that Massachusetts and Rhode Island boast of, the richest provinces in proportion to their territory and the most civilized, and that enjoy the highest per capita wealth in the United States. Those provinces, despite having a population density greater than that which Puerto Rico has, fight to increase the number of inhabitants and punish neomalthusian propaganda with prison. The North American Federal Government protects all its provinces with identical legislation so that they reach the development of Massachusetts. North American statesmen see clearly that the only defense against foreign invasion is human reserves. But here we find another paradox. The Government of the United States describes neomalthusianism and its propaganda as a crime, but its representative in Puerto Rico, Colonel Beverly, tolerates it, stimulates it, and gives it prior sanction.
The paradox is easy to solve. The Yankee intervention requires one more means to determine the composition of the population of Puerto Rico. The current inhabitants are neither pleasing nor convenient and their number must be reduced. The methods used for that purpose have failed. Our country has been subjected to the most barbaric economic exploitation that human ingenuity has been able to conceive, but death by hunger has not been able to impose itself on our entire nation. The Yankee regime is characterized by the increase in epidemics, but these have also been ineffective. We are so strong that not even these have been able to reduce our population. God is the creator and protector of nationalities and men are powerless to destroy his divine work. The Congress of the United States could implant neomalthusianism here in the way it has imposed the bank moratorium on us to save its banks and ruin our country. That has been the first blessing that the other smiling Roosevelt has imparted to us.
But that measure would seem unusual when in the United States neomalthusian practices and their dissemination constitute a public crime. How to do it? By not respecting here the laws of the invading power itself and sanctioning the practices that are condemned there. When the Insular Legislature wanted to take measures to defend our people against the Yankee banking collapse, the head of the intervention, Colonel Beverly, called the project a legislative intrusion and annulled it with his absolute veto. The Yankee interests demanded it. The governor is here to protect them, and he fulfills his duty to protect his own. It is up to the fools to offer weapons to their enemies. Now it turns out that the Insular Legislature is not intrusive. Neomalthusianism is a Yankee convenience in Puerto Rico, and the head of the intervention has imparted his prior imperial placet. Now the legislators can cast their vote to satisfy the aspirations of Yankee politics, but they will not even be able to boast that the law is theirs.
It is certain that without this prior official sanction the neomalthusian projects would not have deserved serious attention. Even women have been mobilized to defend them. A woman signs it as a co-author. The authoritative word of the patriotic mother who is The Daughter of the Caribbean must have moved them. Doña Trina’s words against neomalthusianism are definitive. The protest of the Federation of Students against those projects must have caused deep emotion. It is rare that there are women who conspire against their health and their lives. The most eminent doctors condemn the neomalthusian procedures, now so vulgarized, because they endanger the health of the spouses and especially the health of the woman. We believe it is neither fair nor courageous for men to unload on women the disastrous results of their whims. The woman is the
source of life and the Homeland cannot render a single potential mother useless. The lessons of war tell us that the nation can lose many men and therefore can sacrifice them for it, but it cannot lose a single woman without great risk to its own security and therefore prohibits female participation in any action dangerous to life. Medical eminences also maintain that the sterilization of the male can be innocuous. It would be effective for neomalthusian purposes. Here is an expeditious way for men who consider the advent of a child as a misfortune. Once the law of the Legislature is signed, it will lose all intervention to regulate the population. That enormous power is handed over to the Yankee authorities under the direction of the Governor. They will prevent offspring and if the Legislature later wants to change its mind, it could not do it. Its delegations to the executive are never revocable against the will of the head of the intervention. The legislative initiative will be law when it favors North American politics and will be null when it intends to confront that politics. How do nations regulate their population? Always promoting its growth. There is the example of the United States itself. It is an insolence to say that there is a single Puerto Rican too many in the world. That statement constitutes a crime of lèse-Homeland. Economists adjust the economy of their country to a population that is always in crescendo. That to reach that supreme national good it is required to be masters of our sovereignty is indisputable. Then, gentlemen, face the truth. Independent Puerto Rico would promote its economy to develop its population always growing. Free from the suicidal tendency of political slavery, the parliament of the republic, like all the parliaments of civilized sovereign nations, would never think of preventing the birth of the Puerto Rican posterity. Proud for having constituted a Homeland, all Puerto Ricans would be jealous guardians of the future glory of Puerto Rico.
P. Albizu Campos
THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONALIST PARTY COMMENTS THE VETO TO THE PROJECT RELATED TO ELECTORAL REPRESENTATION⁸.¹
There is no legislative power. The legislative initiative will be law when it suits North American politics, and it will be null when it protects Puerto Rican interests. The nation has been deluded by a brand-new legislature that has only served to provide concessions to the invaders. Faced with that reality of the Governor’s veto, no time is wasted in discussing what he will not approve. In reality, the head of the intervention is the one who really legislates. The members of the Legislature are entertained by playing with all seriousness as representatives and senators. By vetoing the electoral law project, the head of the intervention has lifted the veil for the naive. The Legislature has ratified its approval by a vote of two-thirds of the members that constitute it. But that does not turn the project into law either! The President of the United States retains the absolute veto. Even if the Legislature approves a project unanimously, it will not be law if the head of the empire does not feel like it. If that were not enough, the Yankee Congress retains the power to annul each and every one of the laws of Puerto Rico. We are witnessing the most ridiculous and costly legislative farce in history. It is not known why the head of the intervention has vetoed a bill that contains the provisions of his previous recommendations to the Insular Legislature. That retraction is not easy to explain. It may be that he has acted for personal reasons, by instructions from his government, or that his personal reasons have coincided with the instructions he receives daily from Washington. The President of the United States, against his will, is going to do us a favor by clarifying that mystery when he dictates his resolution when considering the project. The reasoned veto of Colonel Beverley offers wonderful similarity with the dissenting opinion of the legislative minority headed by the president of the Liberal Party, Mr. Barceló. We will deal exclusively with the statements in which the Nationalist party is alluded to. The history of militant nationalism is diaphanous and is of public domain. It is a movement that demands the immediate constitution of the Republic. It rejects each and every one of the political panaceas offered to the nation to lull its civic conscience, demoralize its resistance to systematically exploit it. It repudiates the executive public offices because it knows that these are used to corrupt the political directors. In front of nationalism there exists, as is natural, a governmental political party, that sustains the legitimacy of the regime and swears to defend its politics. Currently the party of the regime is bitterly divided into three factions, the Union-Republican, the Liberals and the Socialists, but grouped in two sides, Liberals versus Coalitionists (Union-Republicans and Socialists). These groupings come from the deceased governmental factions Unionists and Republican Annexationists. Constitutive of the government party, they have had to face nationalism constantly, when it is not one faction it is the other. The Yankee interventionist policy demands the disappearance of its enemy, nationalism, and wants to keep the electorate divided into two sides equally subjected to the regime. However, Unionism and its derived Alliancisms, and currently Liberalism, have revealed themselves as the most bitter and gratuitous enemies against nationalism. And that attitude will seem paradoxical when one hears the protests of its followers of being as nationalist as the most fervent militant in our ranks. The reason is obvious, nationalism has come to overthrow the ambidextrous politics forever, and each one has to define himself, either with the Yankees or with us. Unionism today Liberalism rose based on that policy of duplicity and today it succumbs under the terrible weight of its own sin. To flatter the Yankee, they attack nationalism; and to attract the unwary multitudes, they extol their redeeming doctrines. The great master of that politics is Mr. Barceló, currently in the twilight of his public prestige, for the only reason of his inability to bravely embrace the truth and sustain it as an invariable norm of political action. He is a man who has been able to do something for his Homeland, but his disorientation has led him to inevitable decay. For the Liberal leadership, nationalists, individually, are excellent people, but the Nationalist Party is very bad. It is a formula of the interventionist power. The Yankee government shielded itself against the independence preached by De Diego with the reactionary Unionists and with the Republican Annexationist faction. Today, in its defense against the overwhelming advance of nationalism, it uses the Liberal faction as a parapet that simulates an independence for the last stage. (See the latest report that Colonel Beverley has addressed to his government, where he refers to the political parties). The Yankee power cannot use the Coalition against Nationalism, because that grouping is nuanced, despite its current regionalist reaction
regionalist, of a historical annexationism. The Nationalist Party is feared by the Liberal leadership because it is strong where the Liberal faction has the bulk of its hosts that love independence, and they fear that one day the scales will fall from the eyes of so many good people miserably deceived until now. Thus, when the Nationalist Party registered, it could only do so in the districts of greatest Liberal force, Humacao, Guayama, San Juan and Arecibo. The Nationalist registration failed in the districts where the Coalition is preponderant, Ponce, Mayagüez and Aguadilla. The Liberal leadership really wants the Coalitionists to approach nationalism, but, of course, it does not want to allow Liberal voters to join the Nationalist Party. Therein lies the key to his opposition. If this were frankly exposed, it would be respectable. The Liberal leadership in its blind attack against nationalism repeats almost word for word the statements of Colonel Beverley. It is the peregrine Yankee theory that minorities must be defenseless before the majorities; that representation with voice and vote in the Insular Board of Elections must be reserved for the two strongest parties, and the others that place themselves at the mercy of their will. That a certain president of a so-called Liberal party commits such a blunder is not strange if we know the ends that are pursued.
When the Liberal faction, by virtue of its registration by petition, obtained representation with voice and vote in the Insular Board of Elections, the presence of the Nationalist Party in that body was not counted on. There was a deliberate plan in place to eliminate general candidacies filed in the Executive Secretariat. When the Liberal leadership obtained its representation, the unexpected opinion of the Attorney General appeared revoking another opinion of the same official. By virtue of that revocation, the registration of the Nationalist Party was annulled. Beverley and Barceló smiled. We appealed to the Legislature, Barceló, Liberal leader, and Iglesias, Socialist leader, joined their hosts to prevent nationalism from being granted an observer without a vote in the electoral bodies, Beverley, Barceló and Iglesias smiled. It was the time before the Coalition. Barceló and Iglesias were allies in politics against nationalism. The Republican Union made a gesture to recognize our right but failed before the Liberal-Socialist combination. The governmental combination believed impossible the registration by petition of the Nationalist Party, but these gentlemen had forgotten that in Puerto Rico there is still shame, and, even the Liberal electorate repudiated the acts of its directors. Before the Nationalist representation entered the Insular Board of Elections, the Governor was going to be the arbitrator in case of a tie. It was foreseen that this would be chronic. Colonel Beverley would dictate his own scrutiny in the fortress. Nationalism freed the nation from this shame by becoming the arbiter of the electoral result.
The performance of the Nationalist representation in said body was always juridical before political, and to our worst enemies, the Liberals, we recognized whatever right they justly alleged. Two senators, a representative, and a mayor of the Liberal faction, owe their positions to the Nationalist vote. Currently, Mr. Barceló has a greater need to submit to the regime so that they give him something. The pass card is an attack on nationalism. For that reason, he is unable to recognize the greatness of our actions. God willing, he will get something from the budget so that he can calm down a bit. His blunders against the Nationalist Party coincide with the exposition that the man of government, the necessary man of the faction, Liberal, Mr. Martín Travieso, has just made in the United States. The exposition of the practical doctrines and resources of the Liberal leadership has been formulated by Travieso in the Yankee Press with great mastery. Let us hear the solemn words of the honorary president of the Liberal Party: “I am pro-American, anti-independence, conservative, and I belong to a party that is called Liberal and that consigns independence in its program.”
Wonderful synthesis worthy of Barceló as well. The Liberals maintain that it is necessary to sustain Travieso because it is necessary to slip him into some important executive position. What a school, gentlemen!
This statement has been necessary to refute once again the juggling masters of the rotten colonial politics.
Now then, nationalism is not concerned with any electoral law. Its ascending march is imposed by the sovereign will of the Puerto Rican Nation.
P. ALBIZU CAMPOS
THE DAY OF THE CONSECRATION OF THE FLAG OF PUERTO RICO 82 SPEECH OF ALBIZU CAMPOS
THE NATIONALITY
“The most difficult task that a people that has lost its freedom has, is the task that the notion of nationality imposes on it. To know what a nation is, is to know what a citizen is, to know what a family is and to know what a society is. When a people is wanted to be enslaved, the notion of citizenship is broken, so that it confuses the slave with the free man; the family is broken and the notion of society is broken so that it confuses a society with a herd of slaves subject to exploitation. “The task of national reconquest is the task of the reconquest of citizen conscience, of the conscience of the family and of the conscience of a society. The first analysis that every director makes committed to reconquering independence for his Homeland is the notion of Homeland. And so much has been spoken in Puerto Rico about Homeland, that no one knows what it means anymore. The Homeland is the citizenship; the Homeland is the family and the Homeland is the great fraternal society of all Puerto Ricans. But to infiltrate that notion in us, nationalism has fought hard. We have had to repatriate the Puerto Ricans. Many of you will tell me: “we have never been Puerto Rican emigrants; many of us have never left Puerto Rico”. True. That is in the physical order. Many of you have not seen the entrance of El Morro, neither to leave nor to enter. That is very true, but morally, spiritually, many of you have been foreigners in Puerto Rico and unfortunately many Puerto Ricans do not feel Puerto Rican. He is in the Homeland, he is repatriated and he is in the soul of the Homeland only he who feels like a good Puerto Rican.”
THE FREEDOM
“The price of freedom is cheap. It is only the contempt for slavery. When you despise slavery, when each of you knows what it is to be a citizen of Puerto Rico, that day slavery will end in Puerto Rico.”