Our dear Corretjer has been acquitted presenting all the minutes of the Municipal Boards, after the mournful date of February 23, 1936, when the Insular Police carried out the sacking of our central offices of the National Board. Whether said minutes may be incriminating within the process that is being followed against us for conspiracy is a matter of the accused’s judgment and that fear is all the more founded when we see the tyranny weighing on the nation. That tyranny has established two principles that revolutionize the law: first, a person could be arrested on the street under any pretext and killed in the middle of the street under any pretext. Jurisprudence established in Río Piedras on the 24th of October of 1935 and in San Juan and Utuado on February 23rd of
- Second: The accused is obliged to present the evidence that the prosecutor needs to convict him, which constitutes the last word in legal matters. That theory that the accused is presumed inno- cent and that the courts exist to protect him in the legitimate presumption of his innocence is over. Now the accused is not only presumed guilty, but is obliged to bring before the same court, on his own account, for the convenience of the officials, all the evidence they need to put him in prison or sit him in the electric chair. Liberty, fraternity, democracy, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the emancipation of Lincoln, the New Deal, and the Good Neighbor policy, are reduced to those great principles that we have just stated. Foreign tyranny condemns to barbarism. Tyranny relies only on force and has no possible apology. As the brute force that it is, it seeks to destroy all rights in its path.
Let not the Puerto Rican nation be horrified to contemplate the passage of the hordes from the north.
We understand the national sensibility because we are a nation descended from the Hispanic trunk, which served as the foundation for all law that informs modern civilization. The Romans built the most grandiose intellectual monument from which all the legal principles radiated and is comparable only to that magna opera, the other improved monument of the wise Spanish friars of the 16th century, the Marianas, the Suárez, the Ayalas and the Victoria. For a nation with that eternal heritage to have to contem- plate the paws of barbarism, requires the patience that God alone with his infinite power can confer. Puerto Rico has its sacred treasure of patriotic faith in documents that are relics for our posterity. That host cannot be touched by the bloody hands of enemies, murdering henchmen. Neither the threat of prison, nor terror, nor murder are capable of producing the surrender of the national will. The so-called “duces tecum” motions seem trivial, which means: “Appear with such and such documents under penalty of contempt”. By virtue of a “Duces Tecum” order an arrest is made. In a slave-like environment, it has been attempted not to give opor- tunity to the deprivation of personal liberty by virtue of an arrest. It does not matter the duration of the arrest, a second, a day, or a year: the damage will always be irreparable. It constitutes an attack against dignity and personal freedom. And the conse- quences can be fatal even if its duration is one second. The Yankee regime has gone from arrest without any pretext to imprisonment with any pretext. Prepare the nation to reject tyranny.
Commemoration of the birth of José de Diego
Yesterday, the day of the birth of the illustrious José de Diego, were car- ried out in this capital the acts announced by the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico. At seven in the morning began the congregation of nationalists on the street on the east side of the Capitol. Automobiles from different towns brought people who were gathering at the site already designated in advance. The nationalist cadets, numbering more than two hundred, carrying the flags of their battalions and the ban- ner Puerto Rican, formed ranks in the same place. Around half past eight in the morning the president of the Nationalist Party, Mr. Pedro Albizu Campos, arrived there, and he was given a warm applause. Shortly after, the parade began, at the front of which marched Mr. Albizu Campos and Lcdo. J.M. Toro Nazario, Undersecretary General of the Party. Behind the troop of nationalist cadets, with their black shirts and white trousers, also appearing in the parade a compa- ny of nationalist ladies uniformed in white, some of which carried bouquets of flowers to be deposited later before the tomb of the illustrious José de Diego.
The parade departed from the Capitol along Ponce de León Avenue and upon reaching Plaza de Colón ascended San Francisco Street, later turning onto José C. Barbosa Street to the Cathedral, where a mass “In Memo- riam” was held in which Father Jiménez officiated.
El Mundo, April 17, 1936, p. 5.
As he passed through the streets of San Juan, Mr. Albizu Campos was greeted with applause by groups of people stationed on some sidewalks and balconies. Once the mass was over, the parade resumed on the way to the cemetery of San Juan. There the tomb where the ashes rest of the illustrious Puerto Rican public man, don José de Diego, was surrounded by the nationalist crowd that came to pay tribute to his memory. Several young women and ladies nationalists deposited wreaths and bouquets of flowers on the simple tomb where the remains of the illustrious man rest. Among the people who deposited flowers we distinguished Mrs. Amparo Díaz de Suárez, mother of the young nationalist who met a tragic death on the steps of the Insular Capitol. A minute of silence was observed during which all the flags carried by the nationalist cadets bowed over the tomb of the illustrious, covering it with its shadow. After this ceremony, the demonstration proceeded from the cemetery to Plaza Baldorioty, where a tribune had been erected from which Mr. Albizu Campos spoke. The crowd gathered around the platform to listen to the speakers. Mr. Toro Nazario was the first to take the floor, only to introduce Mr. Albizu Campos. “Puerto Ricans, brothers in the struggle for freedom,” began the speaker, “you have begun the life of a glorious morning. The nation is facing its enemies and ready to defend its ideals in the rescue of our sovereignty on every occasion and at all times, be these favora- bles or unfavorable”. Then he made a paragraph of presentation for don Pedro Albizu Campos, and as he stepped forward towards the public the multi- tude erupted in applause, shouting cheers to the republic, to nationalism and to the president of the Party, and cries of “down with Yankee tyranny”.
Albizu Campos addresses the crowd at a rally held in the Plaza de Armas of San Juan on April 16, 1936 in commemoration of the Birth of José De Diego.
Once silence was made, Mr. Albizu Campos began his speech saying that “we cultivate the memory of the illustrious. Our cult is not the cult to the memory of the dead, it is the cult to the memory of the immortals. Today is the birth of the great De Diego, the precursor of this great movement. “Men will be remembered for their words, for their thought, because the word is the symbol of the eternal. De Diego represents in Puerto Rico the preaching apostle. We represent the fulfillment of that duty that he imposed upon us. “I feel that this breeze is so strong and that it seems to want to strangle my throat. (There is a cold breeze and the speaker is a little hoarse). “I must tell you that to be faithful to a memory one must consecrate it with deeds and that the generality of the Puerto Ricans queños are willing to seal with their life the memory of the immortals like De Diego”. (Applause). Then he said: “We are not afraid. Those who represent the independence of their Homeland cannot harbor fears.” (Applause). “The women and men who wielded the standards of the emancipation of nations have always deserved the respect and admiration even of their own despots”. He also said that “by a moral paradox the only thing that saves a tyrannical empire is the rebellion with which it faces it”; that “he who gets used to tyrannizing and killing the masses outside his country does not lose the habit and when he returns to his Homeland he does the same, that despotism cannot be exercised with impunity”. “Fortunate”, he said, “the empires against which a nation like Puerto Rico rises and says stop to your tyranny”. (Applause). He added that “the United States in one hundred and fifty years has not had anyone to remind it of its history of freedoms, of valor, of heroism and self-denial. De Diego was able to crystallize that sovereign thought of ancient philosophy that says: “Men will be remembered for their words and not for their deeds”. When De Diego said that he had a tough rope of the skin of the lamb with which to hang the traitor, he said the exact phrase. That is sealed with blood. They are not words anymore. The monuments to eternity must have in their foundations the blood of martyrs.
“Here we commemorate the memory of De Diego, and it is the day of the national flag which they wanted to turn into a colonial flag. And there was a martyr named Manuel Suárez Díaz, and there was a woman who told us that she did not want revenge on the memory of her son”.
“Nationalism”, he added elsewhere in his speech, “goes to the direct claim of the independence of the Homeland”.
Mr. Albizu Campos then spoke about the imprison- ment of don Juan Antonio Corretjer, secretary general of the party and said that “a legal murder has been committed against him.”
“We”, he added, “are serene and alert. But he is a symbol. And it is that a nationalist cannot be obliged, neither by murder nor by prison, to be a traitor to the Homeland”.
He said that “it does not matter that the empire has forces; it does not matter that it stains the sky of the Homeland with the hawks of modern piracy; the forms of persecution do not matter, freedom makes us omnipotent”. (Applause).
Then he said that he evoked in the North Americans the noble of their history; what made them noble and worthy; that the United States faces in Puerto Rico the spirit of Lexing- ton, of Zaragoza and of Ayacucho.
He then added that “the United States in the exercise of the empire has established the most disgusting plutocratic tyranny that history knows”. (Applause).
“De Diego dreamed that one day the chimera would rise over his ashes and it is the hour of De Diego, it is the hour of immorality tality, it is the hour of independence.”
“We have buried a hundred kilometers north of the island, in the deepest site of the ocean, a lady who was called the cowardice of Puerto Rico”. Later he said that “we look face to face at tyranny, betrayal and apathy. We do not fear any conspi- ration that is made to imprison the nationalists”. And he added that the nationalists know that the Yankee empire has at their service children of Puerto Rico who serve as spies, and for whom the nationalists have the greatest contempt. “This is the movement of national unity,” he said later. “The socialists are over, the liberals are over, the republicans are over, the nationalists are over. There exists only the sacred soul of Puerto Rico facing the North American empire”. “We are not a bloodthirsty movement nor of gangsters. Yes, we say that the law is above our lives and that if in order to make respect the right of the independence of Puerto Rico it is necessary to shed Puerto Rican blood and the blood of North Americans, the independence of Puerto Rico will be kneaded with it”.
THE AFTERNOON ACTS: Then Mr. Albizu Campos climbed the platform, whose presence was greeted with great demonstrations of enthu- siasm. Mr. Albizu Campos ended the day’s events with the following words: Gentlemen: “Just a few words of farewell before you retire to your homes. “We come to renew our vows. Maintain your discipline. Maintain your institutions. Maintain orga- nized the national will. Freedom laughs at the organized peoples, at the disciplined peoples. Keep intact all our institutions. Join the supreme contest. It is the decisive hour, the hour that will put our valor to the test.