“HERE SHALL BE ELUCIDATED WHAT ARE THE PLANS AND ATTITUDE OF THE UNITED STATES TOWARDS THE PEOPLES OF OUR RACE,” SAID ALBIZU CAMPOS AT THE BANQUET IN HIS HONOR On Saturday, at nine o’clock in the evening, the banquet in honor of Lcdo. Pedro Albizu Campos organized by several friends and sympathizers of the nationalist leader, took place in the “Hotel Palace”. Around fifty diners of all affiliations and some from various towns of the island such as Ponce, Fajardo, Naguabo and Manatí, gathered around the table presided over by the honoree, Mr. Albizu Campos, Mr. Lope Bello, Mr. José P. Berríos and the Toast Master, Mr. Luis Antonio Miranda. The back wall was decorated with the Puerto Rican flag. After a lavish menu, the event began. The Toast Master delivered a brief speech talking about Mr. Albizu’s nationalist campaign for Latin America and immediately announced Mr. Lope Bello. Mr. Lope Bello’s speech was one of the happiest we have heard from the distinguished Venezuelan. He referred to the fact that the Puerto Ricans had never been so united in ideals and yet were divided in their public actions. He quoted a phrase of Washington that justified the attitude of Puerto Rico in claiming its political rights. His words were warmly applauded. The Toast Master read several adhesions from Doctor Ramón Lavandero, from Lcdo. Fulgencio Piñeiro, from Lcdo. Samuel R. Quiñones and other telegrams from the island. Then Lcdo. José S. Alegría, Don Epifanio Fernández Vanga, who read a quartet, Lcdo. R. Sancho Bonet, Lcdo. Rafael Díaz Cintrón, Mr. Arturo Gallardo, Manuel Rivera Matos, Fernando Sierra, Ortiz Lecodet, Lcdo. Cruz Horta, Mr. Modesto Gotay, Mr. Alberto Núñez and the young Gilberto Concepción, from the Universidad de Puerto Rico, took the floor. When Mr. Albizu was announced, the audience stood up and paid him a prolonged applause. The honoree delivered an eloquent speech for two and a half hours analyzing in detail the internal situation of the United States, the problems of Puerto Rico and the dangers that threaten Latin America. Mr. Albizu began by saying that this act filled him with satisfaction and that for another man it would be a motive of pride and vanity. “But it is the duty of all those who possess a grain of wisdom to put it at the service of their fellows because that does not belong to us but is a patrimony of Providence. Furthermore, we are facing the Homeland’s tragedy to dwell on personal minutiae.” He then went into a detailed analysis of the situation in South America, saying that this continent was the object of universal greed. The invaders tried to exert hegemony over all cultural values, and then commercial ones. First they try to approach the intellectual element and then the people. For this work of conquest they count on a series of institutions, many of them of perverse charity, with which they pretend to dazzle the invaded peoples. “Puerto Rico is the most integrated nationality of the continent in the ethnic and cultural sense, we have the most homogeneous, noble and intelligent mass of America. But we also have the most rotten directing class of the entire continent. “Our condition as an island is a postulate of independence because Nature per se has already made us free. Islands have always been in history the most indomitable territories and we have the example in ourselves that despite thirty years of Yankee colony we preserve our personality intact despite the fact that our political sovereignty has not been recognized. “Our weakness lies in not capitalizing on that unitary force, product of our ethnic and cultural link. We go from embraces to separations and from fraternal understandings to fratricidal hostility. My wife has had a phrase to judge this situation: (the audience stood up) “We play at divisions when we are indivisible.” He then made an analysis “of the imperialist system that has some institutions with disguised purposes to surprise the good faith of the peoples that fall under its influence.” “The United States today has a complete record of all the oil and mining territories of South America. And behind the Red Cross or the Rockefeller Foundation goes the company requesting some concession from the Government. Why does the Rockefeller Foundation not exercise its charity in Nueva York, where there are four million beings who live in the most deplorable conditions of misery? It goes to Latin America because in the continent there are rich oil zones.” Referring to the situation of Puerto Rico he said: “I have lamented the fall of the Coalicionista President of the Cámara. It was a proper opportunity for him to confront the Power and to be lashed in the face from La Fortaleza. The United States wants to surrender the island’s intelligentsia. Many young people due to the impoverishment of the country have to betray themselves and take shelter in the shadow of the budget in order not to perish of hunger. It is necessary at all costs to avoid this forced demoralization of youth.” To the university students he directed the following message: “The young people who currently study at the Universidad should not do active politics, they need their energies for study. Of course, they must have a patriotic feeling, but now, they must not be distracted. Their duty is to prepare, to become competent so that later they can defend their country with the powerful weapons of knowledge. The young man who being able to be a brilliant student is mediocre is not a good patriot.” “There is not in the American Union a state comparable to us in ethnic homogeneity, in culture, and with a history so rich in luminous pages. We abolished slavery without shedding a drop of blood, we gave illustrious soldiers like Valero and Rius Rivera to the cause of the independence of America. We have contributed sentimental values to Hispanic-American culture, in our land was born Morell Campos who was the first musician of America. We gave Doctor Stahl, one of the most notable botanical sages of the continent. Fortunately, the personality created by these men of culture has not disappeared and this is a barrier that defends us against the plans of conquest of the invader. Puerto Rico poses the most beautiful case in America, because here in the waters of the Caribbean it will be elucidated what are the plans and the attitude of the United States towards the peoples of our race. “Puerto Rico could use the Pan-American Union and the League of Nations as forums to claim its right to be a free people. The Resident Commissioner should not accept his post and should remain in Puerto Rico. What do we want a deaf-mute representative for? This would be an effective way to create a difficult situation for the United States and to draw the attention of the world to the case of Puerto Rico. Then we would pose our problem in the field of international relations, which is where we must pose our case. “The problem of our independence depends on our will. The present generation has a grave historical responsibility to fulfill or prolong the colony or adopt a gesture of worthy men. Above all we must defend our personality because we are the most defined nationality of America.” A prolonged ovation was paid at the end of his speech. The honoree received multiple congratulations and embraces after his resounding speech. The event ended at two thirty in the morning. By M. RIVERA MATOS ALBIZU CAMPOS’ CONFERENCE AT THE UNIVERSIDAD “FORMATION OF MEXICAN NATIONALITY BASED ON ITS INDIGENOUS POPULATION” On Wednesday night, Lcdo. Pedro Albizu Campos’ conference took place at the Universidad de Puerto Rico. The auditorium was materially full of a very select audience of students and intellectuals from San Juan. The speaker delivered an extensive and suggestive conference on “Méjico and the Formation of Nationalities based on its Indigenous Population”, exposing the evolution of miscegenation and its influence on the historical destiny of this republic. The speaker made a slight introito stating that the Universidad was not the Universidad de Puerto Rico, since the essential thing in these centers of culture was the environment. Therefore, it was necessary to transmute the internal form of the institution restoring the vernacular language in all teaching without abandoning the learning of other languages, especially if they are representative of a great culture. Of Méjico one usually has the vision of a country where only revolutions exist. But the Aztec country is above all a people of vigorous civic spirit. The Mexican is not preoccupied with death. His courage is not volitive and conscious like that of the Dominican but rather an atavistic tendency in which religious and racial elements have intervened. The ancient Aztecs inaugurated their religious temples with the sacrifice of 20,000 young people who offered their lives with the greatest serenity. This attitude of contempt for death has persisted in the collective consciousness of Méjico; hence any event where hundreds of people perish does not call anyone’s attention. He spoke of the Mexican woman stating that she was a woman without any weakness, neither physical, nor moral, nor intellectual. She is a woman prepared to face all the situations of life. The indigenous problem of Méjico has been to reintegrate all this indigenous element into the political-social body of the nationality. The work has been done with the passage of generations. Méjico today has awareness of its origins and is proud of its indigenous blood as Vasconcelos expressed in Puerto Rico. This signifies a moral revolution in its internal political structure and in its life of international relations. The speaker then entered into historical considerations making himself solidary with the opinion of the Mexican Gamboa, who affirms that “the conquest of America was carried out by the Indians and the work of independence was carried out by the Spaniards.” Cortés for example attracted the discontented Indians and with them he was able to overthrow the power of Moctezuma. The same phenomenon occurred in various places of the continent. During and after the conquest the process of miscegenation begins in Méjico. There are two causes that accelerated this process: The difficulty of transportation and Catholicism that ordered respect for the woman and the recognition of the children in whatever form they were born. In that the English conqueror differed from the Spanish one. The Englishman became an Indian hunter without the least respect for the woman or the offspring that he engendered. After the Revolution fomented and led by direct descendants of Spaniards came the republic and with it the establishment of social hierarchies. Pressure of the mestizo element against the mestizo and the pressure of the mestizo against the indigenous prevailed in Méjico. In this formative process of the nationality all the collective leaders Juárez, Porfirio Díaz, Francisco 1. Madero were mestizos or of pure indigenous blood. The revolutions were fomented by foreign countries but also by the internal exploitation that weighed on the indigenous despite the fact that all the directors had blood of the primitive autochthonous race. In 1912, the United States intervened in Méjico. Five nations of Europe including Spain protested this intervention. But the war came and Europe disregarded the case of Méjico. The United States forged a plan to disintegrate the Mexican nationality with a hostile propaganda aimed at putting in conflict all the ethnic elements of the nation. After the war Wilson asked in the Treaty of Versailles that Méjico not be invited to the League of Nations. Since then Méjico has not wanted to enter the Tribunal of The Hague, despite its repeated invitations. From all this ethnic chaos has emerged a moral value: the awareness of its origins and the pride of indigenous blood. The nationality is today morally constituted by the integration of all its racial elements and therefore it is physically constituted. From this fusion of the European invader with the autochthonous race has emerged in Méjico its own art and even a distinct vision of life. Mexican art is of the most original and new that exists in the entire continent. Finally, the speaker announced that in this drama of the two cultures that dispute the hegemony of the western hemisphere, Méjico for the integration of its ethnic elements and its national consciousness is an advanced post, a fortress, that guards the treasure of our culture and our race. “THE PARTISANS OF STATEHOOD DO NOT DARE TO ASK FOR IT BECAUSE THEY KNOW THAT THEY WOULD BE STRUCK WITH THE COLUMNS OF THE CAPITOL IN THE HEAD”, SAID ALBIZU CAMPOS Lcdo. Pedro Albizu Campos’ conference on “The Political Status of Puerto Rico” delivered at the Universidad under the auspices of the “Cultural Society” of the College of Laws culminated in a splendid civic-cultural act. All the seats and aisles of the Auditorium were completely full with a select audience of students, politicians and intellectuals. Among those attending were Don Antonio R. Barceló, Doctor Massó, acting Chancellor of the Universidad; Don Eduardo Giorgetti, Doctor Gili Gaya, visiting professor at our Universidad, Lcdo. José A. Balseiro, Doctor Ramón Lavandero, Doctor Gómez Brioso and other distinguished personalities of our capital. The speaker was warmly applauded upon presenting himself to the audience. When considering the problem of our political “status” three factors must be considered: Our opinion, the opinion of the United States and international opinion. Puerto Rico has the current condition of a territory of the United States. “And I deny that our country is a territory of any power.” Albizu Campos then made a meticulous historical analysis to prove that the term state is inapplicable to the current units that integrate the North American Union since when the Confederation was forged the states lost their full and absolute sovereignty that they had in the primitive alliance of colonies that was formed after independence. Many of the primordial rights were delegated to the federal power. Today the sovereign is the people of the United States and not the people of a particular state. After the North American nationality was formed with the thirteen primitive colonies the need arose to populate the immense territory that extended to the west of the Alleghany mountains. With this new situation the federal government instituted the territorial government. A governor was designated who organized a legislature and a judicial system, until that territory had sufficient population to constitute itself into a State of the Union. The governor had omnimodous powers; it was a personalistic regime without responsibility to the governed. This is the principle that informs all the territorial legislation of the United States. Many of these states were incorporated into the Union with a population inferior to that of San Juan or Río Piedras today. With Puerto Rico this constitutional tradition could not govern because we were a duly organized people with a population density and a culture superior to thirty states of the North American Union at least. After the Spanish-American War the terms of territories incorporated and not incorporated were coined in order to close the path to Statehood to the possessions ceded by Spain in the Treaty of París, since we had a perfect political, ethnic and cultural organization. “There is no right,” said the speaker, “for the Congress of the United States to maintain the territorial condition in Puerto Rico without the will of the governed people. Incorporated or not incorporated the current legal “status” is the same that governs an unorganized territory. Over us gravitates a colonial system incompatible with the juridical-constitutional tradition of the United States and with the cultural “standard” of Puerto Rico. The President and the governor systematically maintain the “statu quo” in open violation of the spirit of the Constitution.” After the change of sovereignty the United States tried to implant a policy of supplantation but we have been saved by the population and the culture. They will not achieve that now nor from here to a thousand years, assuming that our colonial “status” lasts until that date. Here the opposite phenomenon operates; the Yankee who settles in our country soon is absorbed by us and even loses the accent of his language. The jíbaro is the most effective refuge of our personality who could give linguistic lessons to the pseudo-intellectuals who graduate in the universities of there and here. The jíbaro has had a great virtue: his illiteracy. Thanks to that the language of the invader has not mutilated his mentality. The invaders through the mouth of a Columbia Commission have rectified that error of bilingual education; now we need with a little courage to put into practice that rectification.” Albizu stated that the hackneyed phrase: “the Constitution does not follow the flag” is a fallacy. In Puerto Rico the Constitution governs and therefore the Puerto Ricans at any moment can claim their entry into the North American Union. “But it does not suit them that the island senators and representatives who go to Congress find out about the expansionist secrets that the United States harbors towards Latin America.” The speaker posed the following dilemma to the partisans of Statehood: if the constitution affirms that a community of North American citizens cannot live on a plane of political inequality with the rest of the states of the Union, why do the statehooders not immediately draft a resolution asking for the entry of Puerto Rico into the Federation if the Constitution and citizenship protect them? The partisans of Statehood do not dare to ask for it before Congress because they know that they would be struck with the columns of the Capitol in the head.” “In none of the territories that preceded the formation of many states was the state of affairs that exists in Puerto Rico tolerated. We have been reduced to a proletarian country, gravitating on the consumer an indirect contributory system. Since we could not be displaced ethnically or culturally, an onerous economic oppression has been established that keeps us in a colonial condition conducive to the exploitation of the invader. They do not have time to receive the commissions that go from Puerto Rico but they do have months and years to think about how to dominate the riches of the country. Within the North American Constitution an autonomous form of government does not fit; either we are outside or we are inside.” He then explained that the Autonomy in force in Puerto Rico at the time of the Spanish-American war represented a condition of privilege within the Spanish flag, a condition that the peninsular provinces did not enjoy. “We had tariff freedom, we could celebrate commercial treaties and we had a post office and our own currency. These liberal measures signified an incipient sovereignty, a personality recognized in the life of international relations. Spain could not make any treaty that obliged us if such treaty was not sanctioned by our will. So the Treaty of París does not govern for us because our will was not consulted for that transfer. The American occupation in Puerto Rico in other words is a question of fact but not of right.” This is the basic thesis of his conference. Referring to the hope that is placed in women he stated that he did not see that they were acting on a civic plane superior to man. He says that he has been reading the interviews of Doña Angela Negrón Muñoz, in EL MUNDO on Sundays and he has not found a renovating ideology with the exception of the last one published by Doña María Cadilla de Martinez “We men believe ourselves so incompetent and so cowardly that we have put our hope in women at the last hour.” There is a remedy to the situation of misgovernment reigning in Puerto Rico. If there is; but civism, courage and spirit of sacrifice are needed. We have to pose the question of our sovereignty in the international forum. The United States fears international opinion. Barceló’s cablegram to the Sixth Pan-American Conference made the President speak for the first time and the press of the world took up our case. Why does the legislature not assign an amount of $30,000 so that three individuals with the official representation of this organism ventilate the problem of Puerto Rico before the League of Nations, before the Pan-American Union and other international forums?” He referred to the recent naval visits of Germany, England and the United States. “These are international waters and here the enormous economic imbalance in force in the world due to the fabulous financial expansion of the United States will be ventilated. The North American nation has four continents of the planet mortgaged. Europe alone owes it 18 billion dollars. That amount is not going to be paid with kisses and handshakes but with shots. The United States currently has 65 percent of the gold in the world. That constitutes an imbalance in the economic life of the world and it will have to be resolved in some way. The Caribbean will be the theater of the war of the future.” At the end of the speaker not a single question was formulated to him despite the fact that it was open for the questioning of the public. Then he stood up again and stated to the public that “independence was a topic that should not be discussed in Puerto Rico.” A warm ovation was paid at the end of his conference and afterwards numerous people went up to congratulate him for his brilliant dissertation that lasted for more than two and a half hours. In the corridors of the galleries the act was favorably commented on, a sign that the conference had left a lasting and welcoming mark on the spirit of the audience. PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS 1930 THE NATIONALIST GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF YESTERDAY Albizu Campos Speaks “This afternoon should be memorable in the minds of each one of us. Here the representatives of the diverse political groupings of our public life have spoken. I lament that in this assembly the voice of a feminine opinion has not been heard, now that the Puerto Rican woman has in her hands the powers to carry out a great civic labor. I treat this question so that women do not fall into the sin in which men have incurred: that is, to divide themselves on the question of the independence of their Homeland when we are all united by indissoluble ties of nationalist sentiment. The woman is the creative matrix of all physical and moral energies, she is the matrix of transcendental life and therefore the authentic mother of the nationality. That is why the Puerto Rican woman cannot give an unconditional example, orphaned of civism and dignity, repeating in this form the servile action of the directing men. I desire her to be seen defined, frankly and openly for the independence of her Homeland, or if on the contrary she desires that her country continue to be a colony subjected to the economic despotism of the United States.” “It is necessary to take this moral responsibility to our women in order to determine if they want to continue the policy of surrender to the invader that the different island parties have been deploying.” Mr. Albizu Campos then related an anecdote that happened to him in Santo Domingo during his propaganda journey through Latin America. In Puerto Plata a commission of ladies in representation of a cultural club of the city went to greet him at the hotel to offer him their greetings and ask him what they could do for the independence of Puerto Rico. “I bring this incident up,” he said, “to highlight the civic and heroic spirit of the Dominican woman and compare it with the civic weakness of our woman,” “Ah!, if we could forge,” he added, “men like women can, the situation of the Homeland would be different.” “I want to take to the heart of the Puerto Rican woman that ideal of responsibility towards her Homeland. Women cannot enter into the ridiculous and suicidal game of our petty politics. Not only is she the depository of the
“…not only physical life, but must also be the depository of moral life.” “I wish to address myself now to the parties whose representatives we have had the pleasure of hearing here this afternoon. It is observed by their manifestations that we are united on fundamental questions and divided by tactical questions of a character…”