Flavia Marichal Lugo for all the attentions and cooperation to facilitate the work of photocopying the located material. To Idalia Delgado and the companions of the Puerto Rican Collection. And to the typists Dalia M. García, Sara León and Julie Roche, who were in charge of typing all the originals.
Our gratitude is also committed to the maestro Lorenzo Homar, who designed the cover of the two volumes, and with the companions Víctor Rivera Torres and Antonio Colón y De Jesús, who were in charge of the art and design thereof.
Finally, we wish to express our gratitude to the students of the course Nationalism in Puerto Rico who helped us correcting the galley proofs.
CHRONOLOGY OF PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS
By J. Benjamín Torres
1893: June 29. He is born in the city of Ponce and his parents were doña Juliana Campos y Campos and don Alejandro Albizu y Romero. He pursued his primary education in the public schools of Juana Diaz and Ponce. 1912: He travels to study at the University of Vermont in the United States on a scholarship from the Logia Aurora of Ponce. 1913: He moves to Harvard University to continue his studies on the recommendation of two professors. 1916: He receives his bachelor’s degree, pursues post-graduate studies and enters the Law School of Harvard University. 1921: He finishes his studies. He obtains diplomas in Engineering Chemistry; Letters and Philosophy, Military Sciences and Law. He returns to Puerto Rico. 1922: He marries in Juana Diaz with Dr. Laura Meneses, of Peruvian nationality and whom he had met at Harvard. On 17 September 1922 the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico is founded in Río Piedras, but Albizu Campos does not participate in the organization of this group. 1923: Albizu Campos makes his formal entry into the Unión Party of Puerto Rico. 1924: March 26. His son Pedro Albizu Meneses is born in Ponce. In May he breaks with the Unión Party and enters the Nationalist Party. On May 18, he is elected first vice president of the Nationalist Party. 1925: August 30. His daughter Rosa is born in Ponce. On September 6 the Nationalist Party commissions him to visit the countries Latin Americans in a propaganda campaign of the ideal nationalist. 1927: June 20. He begins the pilgrimage through Latin America. He visits first Santo Domingo, then Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Venezuela. On October 16, his daughter Laura Esperanza is born in Peru. 1930: January 4. He returns to Puerto Rico. He will reside in the Barrio Villa Palmeras of Santurce. On May 11, he is elected president of the Nationalist Party in the assembly held by the group in the Ateneo and begins a gigantic campaign of education and awareness of the people through all the countryside, neighborhoods and public squares of Puerto Rico. His motto: “Nationalism is the Homeland organized for the rescue of its sovereignty.” 1932: April 16. The Legislature of Puerta de Tierra presents a project to convert the mono-starred flag of Puerto Rico into a standard of the colony. Albizu Campos, along with the multitude that commemorated the birth of José De Diego in San Juan, storms the Capitol to protest the attempt by the colonized to profane the national symbol. To the penetrate the crowd to the Capitol, the handrails yielded and several people fell and the young Manuel died Rafael Suárez Diaz, the first martyr of the struggle of Nationalism. 1934: January. Albizu Campos leads the strike of the workers agricultural. The sugar corporations are alarmed by the intervention of Albizu Campos in the conflict and conspire to paralyze his action through bribery or murder. 1935: August. The Nationalist Party receives confidences from the centers of North American power itself in Puerto Rico that revealed the firm purpose of the North American regime to have the leaders of the Nationalist party and its president, Albizu Campos, murdered with any pretext. Don Ramón S. Pagán was one of the men who corroborated the existence of the plan that was directed by the secret police North American in Puerto Rico. October 24: The police, directed by Colonel Elisha Francis Riggs, murders in Río Piedras the nationalists Ramón S. Pagán, Pedro Quiñones, Eduardo Rodríguez Vega and José Santiago Barea. Another nationalist, Dionisio Pearson, was seriously injured. This event is known as: The Río Piedras Massacre. 25 of October: Albizu Campos gives a farewell speech of mourning and swears in those present so that this murder does not go unpunished: “We have come here to take an oath so that this murder does not go unpunished. Raise your hand high all who believe themselves free. We all swear that the murder will not endure in Puerto Rico.” 1936: February 23: The young nationalists Hiram Rosado and Elías Beauchamp execute in San Juan Colonel Elisha Francis Riggs, Chief of Police, for being responsible for the Massacre of Río Piedras, Rosado and Beauchamp were arrested, locked up in the Police Headquarters in San Juan and right there murdered by the police themselves. February 24: Albizu Campos again delivers the speech of mourning: “We have already brought here precious ashes of other heroes. The Nationalism has brought to the Homeland the transmutation of its being, because man was not born to vegetate or to be fat and strong; man was born to stand on supreme principles in accordance with his immortality. To enter the immortality there is only one entrance: the door of valor that leads to sacrifice for a supreme cause. You have to sacrifice yourself for the independence of the Homeland.” March 4: The District Court of the United States in Puerto Rico (Federal Court) issued an arrest warrant against Albizu Campos and other nationalist leaders under the charge of “conspiring to overthrow by force the government of the United States in Puerto Rico”. July 14: The trial against the leadership begins nationalist. They are tried: Pedro Albizu Campos, Juan Antonio Corretjer, Erasmo Velázquez, Juan Gallardo Santiago, Julio H. Velázquez, Pablo Rosado Ortiz, Clemente Soto Vélez and Luis Florencio Velázquez. They acted as lawyers defenders: Pedro Albizu Campos, Gilberto Concepción de Gracia, Julio Pinto Gandía and J.M. Toro Nazario. The prosecutors who intervened in the process were: A. Cecil Snyder, Marcelino Romaní, Jorge Ortiz Toro, James E. Ruffin and Amos W.W. Woodcock, The process was presided over by Judge Robert Cooper. July 20: The jury composed of seven Puerto Ricans and five North Americans failed to agree and was dissolved by Judge Cooper. The five North Americans voted for conviction and the seven Puerto Ricans voted for acquittal. July 27: the second trial against the nationalist leadership. This time the jury was composed of ten North Americans and two Puerto Ricans linked to the North American interests. July 31: at 12:12 in the early morning the jury returned a guilty verdict, were sentenced to six to ten years in prison and were transferred to the La Princesa prison while an appeal was filed. 1937: February 12: The Supreme Court of the United States confirmed the sentence imposed on the nationalist leadership by the Federal Court in San Juan. March 21: In Ponce the Board Municipal Nationalist organized a parade of Cadets and a rally in the plaza of Ponce in protest of the imprisonment of the nationalist leadership. The police opposed the activity and mobilized hundreds of well-armed agents and with instructions to shoot to kill. When the nationalists proposed to start the parade on the corner of Marina and Aurora streets, the police began the shooting, massacring 19 people and leaving nearly 200 people badly injured. This event is known as: The Ponce Massacre. June 7: Albizu Campos and the other seven nationalist leaders are transferred to the Penitentiary of Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States. 1943: June: Albizu Campos leaves Atlanta Prison dying and is confined to Columbus Hospital in New York. 1945: After two years of treatment at Columbus Hospital he decides to return to Puerto Rico, but the authorities North Americans prevent him from returning to his Homeland and he sees forced to remain in the city of New York rendering reports to the federal authorities of their addresses. He had the city as a prison. 1947: December 15: Albizu Campos returns to Puerto Rico after extinguishing six years of imprisonment in the dungeons of Atlanta, two of hospitalization and another two of probation in New York. In the welcoming ceremony held by the people Puerto Rican and the Nationalist Party in the Sixto Park Escobar of San Juan, Albizu reaffirmed himself in his open struggle and frank against despotism and colonialism. He pronounced his famous words: “I have never been absent…”. He begins the total reorganization of the Nationalist Party and prepares to give a revolutionary blow to the colonial regime. 1950: October 30: The Nationalist Insurrection breaks out. Albizu Campos is arrested after a dramatic battle in front of his home on the corner of Sol and Cruz Streets in San Juan, the capital city. 1951: February: Albizu Campos is tried and sentenced to 80 years in prison. 1953: September 30: Muñoz Marín pardons him due to the pressure exerted by the Latin American peoples in favor of the release of the nationalist leader. The pardon coincides with a delicate situation of his health. 1954: March 1: The nationalist heroes Lolita Lebrón Soto, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irvin Flores and Andrés Figueroa Cordero attack the House of Representatives in the Capitol of the United States. Muñoz Marín revokes the pardon to Albizu Campos granted five months earlier and orders his immediate arrest. After another dramatic shootout in front to his home in San Juan Albizu Campos was taken unconscious and imprisoned again. 1956: April: Albizu Campos suffers a thrombosis in prison that leaves him hemiplegic and speechless. He is transferred to the Hospital Presbyterian where a heavily guarded room-cell is set up. 1964: November 15: Muñoz Marín aware that Albizu Campos is on the verge of death, pardons him for the second time. Muñoz Marín did not want Albizu Campos to die in prison. 1965: April 21: Albizu Campos, called “The Last Liberator of America”, dies in San Juan. His widow, Dr. Laura Meneses declared: “The murder is consummated. Albizu Campos died in prison. Albizu Campos has not died in his house; when he arrived there he was already dead.”