American, with enormous national and international problems, does not have time to attend to submissive and servile men. The formation of a rebel organization is required, one that encompasses all the people of Puerto Rico and that definitively breaks with the regime of the colony, and solicits from the free nations the recognition of our independence, in order to achieve the reconcentration of the American mind on our situation. -Another thing: I have heard something about a political crusade that you intend to undertake shortly through the Antilles, Central and South America. What is certain in that? -Our painful situation under the empire of the United States is the situation that North America intends to impose on all our sister peoples of the Continent. Our cause is the continental cause. Ibero-American thinkers clearly see the joint problem of Iberian America facing Yankee imperialism. If North American absorption triumphs in our land, the spirit of Yankee conquest will have no restraint. North American liberals wield an effective argument against the expansion of their country: the impossibility of assimilating peoples of a race and a civilization distinct, and superior to North Americans in many aspects of human culture. Puerto Rico is the most homogeneous people of America and of the greatest density of population, with more than 350 inhabitants per square kilometer, of Hispanic culture and civilization. If the empire triumphs in our environment, it would be a strong blow for the Ibero-American race. Its prestige would be seriously injured, and a Yankee invasion, without measure and without quarter, would be attracted. We must repeat Foch’s phrase in the face of the last German invasion: “They must be stopped where they are and dislodged from the positions they occupy.” -Then, in your way of seeing, what is the Ibero-American concern? -The Ibero-American concern is not to defend México, Colombia, Venezuela, or other republics of our blood. The continental concern is to tear the Yankee boot from all the positions it occupies in the Caribbean. -Do you believe that the Antilles constitute a wall of containment to Yankee ambition or a battlefield for their colonial experiments? -Puerto Rico and the other Antilles constitute the battlefield between Yankee imperialism and Ibero-Americanism. Ibero-American solidarity demands that all Yankee interference cease in this Archipelago to restore the continental equilibrium and ensure the independence of all the Colombian nations. Within that supreme necessity, our independence is indispensable. That is, in synthesis, what I must expose in my mission to the Ibero-American nations. -Who accompanies you on that crusade? -No one, I go alone, he answers me with decision. -Which is the first country you are going to visit? -The heroic and indomitable República Dominicana, in saying this, I notice that in his eyes shines a ray of light and sympathy towards the noble
República Dominicana. -Do you estimate that from that campaign a practical result will derive for Puerto Rican nationalism? -There is no doubt, he responds with enthusiasm. -Do you count on the support of the intellectuals of the countries that you visit? -We count on the loyal and sincere cooperation of all the liberal nuclei of the Continent. -Tell me, what opinion do you have of the current Puerto Rican youth? -Despite the Yankeeism of the schools and the seduction of the colonial budget, a powerful youth emerges inspired by the apostolate of Hostos, of Betances, of De Diego, of Duarte, of Martí, and of the great proceres of Ibero-America, among whom the egregious continental figure of Bolívar stands out. -Are you a nationalist by a natural feeling of patriotic pride or because you believe that such a solution is practically beneficial for Puerto Rico? -For both things. It is a sacred duty to defend and die for the cause of Homeland independence even if personally we only have the glory of the sacrifice because this will ensure the spiritual and material well-being of our nationality. -What concept have you formed of José Vasconcelos as a political man, as an educationist, and as a thinker?
- Vasconcelos broke our isolation. He directed the Puerto Rican mind with his privileged verb towards the center of our culture and of our civilization. He personifies the Ibero-American union, which has instilled respect and love in all the ethnic elements of his own Homeland, raising the postponed Indian to the level of civilization that corresponded to him by right, an exemplary work that will undoubtedly extend throughout the Continent so that the civilizing effort of the missionaries of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, detained by the caciquismo of the absorbing Republic, be undertaken again by all the Iberian nations, not out of charity towards supposed inferior races, but out of a just and real appreciation of the force, power and intelligence that they represent. -Tell me something about dictatorships. -In great crises, dictatorships are pretended to be justified, but they always remain on the defensive, because they represent a principle that harms the free exercise of suffrage, and a harsh affirmation of a group that appropriates the privilege of directing, against the will of a people, the destinies of the Homeland, always with the laudable excuse of saving it from grave danger, but which generally ends in tyranny. Nationalists combat dictatorship in principle and that is why we confront the irresponsible regime that Estados Unidos maintains by force in Puerto Rico. -All liberal men should prepare themselves to combat dictatorships. Dictatorships (civil or military), represent a leap backward; they are the remora of the peoples, the shame of the 20th century; it is the cruelest denial that could have been given to the human slaughter carried out in
the last world conflagration to save (as some misguided believed) the Democracy and the Liberty of the world. And Democracy, as has already been seen: was violated and Liberty, trampled, outraged, violated without scruple of any kind. It is no longer a question of small and defenseless peoples absorbed by certain foreign powers, who to deceive the world preached “free determination and non-support for improvised governments and children of the armed forces”, but it is a question of peoples who discovered and civilized half the world and instead today have to bear, resigned, on their shoulders, the heavy burden that represents a government of uniformed thieves.
BERNAL DIAZ DEL CANEY PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS
“THE GREAT MAJORITY OF PUERTO RICO FEELS REPULSION AND REBELLION AGAINST YANKEE COLONIALISM” THUS ALBIZU CAMPOS EXPRESSES HIMSELF IN AN INTERVIEW GRANTED TO THE DOMINICAN PRESS
Lcdo. Pedro Albizu Campos was interviewed by the journalist J.B. Lamarche upon his arrival in Santo Domingo. The text of the interview held, which we reproduce today, appeared in one of the latest editions of “Listín Diario”.- -“Dr. Albizu Campos is a man little accessible, despite his exquisite culture. Little accessible because, journalist of pure stock, he hates interviews, or, as he calls them, interview factories.” He is reluctant to make declarations, which, many times, reproduce, distorting and mystifying, the thought of the declarant, and which, in other cases, only serve as a pretext for the journalist to put in another’s mouth everything that occurs to him. The illustrious Puerto Rican nationalist knows the trade thoroughly. And, therefore, evades the occasions that present themselves to exteriorize himself by this means. We, who divine his scruples, calm him, channeling his attention towards suggestive topics, and manage to break his watchword of silence.” -What plans, Dr. Albizu Campos, do you bring to Santo Domingo?
- “My work must be mostly of organization. I try to unify the Dominican sentiment in favor of the independence of Puerto Rico. I have been able to notice that here that sentiment is unanimous. It means that the ground is already fertilized by itself. This is already a great advantage. I see in this country one of the most civic nations and that has the most character in America. That is why I wanted to come to learn in this school.”
- How do you propose to develop your propaganda work? -“I will interview the representative elements of all sectors of opinion in the Republic, I will get in contact with them; I will pronounce some conferences, if it were necessary; but this in the last term, because I am resolved to speak as little as possible. It is not my object to pronounce beautiful speeches to reap ephemeral applauses. I desire something more intense and lasting. I want to leave here, when I go, a living and permanent organism that is in charge of reproducing the palpitations of Puerto Rican nationalism outside the Homeland, counting, of course, for it, with the cooperation of all the elements of the colony of my country established, which I suppose will lend themselves to it, since it is an unavoidable duty.”
- What policy, in its general lines, does Puerto Rican nationalism follow? -“Nationalism, after the death of De Diego, has
evolved much in its tactic. It is more intransigent; it sustains absolute non-cooperation with Estados Unidos in Puerto Rico. And this due to the experience that it has had in the propaganda of the Apostle. At the last hour, he arrived at the conviction that it was necessary to stand against the Yankee in a decided manner. And this has been the key to the new nationalist policy. We are sworn enemies of all colonial system,”
- Do you have a political platform?
- “Yes, sir. Our Program, in general thesis, tends to bring the Puerto Rican people back to the moral situation in which they found themselves in the year 68, when Betances, Hostos, etc. They preached the revolutionary creed. We translate it into every form of resistance that can be disposed of against foreign colonialism.”
- Do you have faith in the triumph of your ideals? -“Absolute. It can, of course, be the work of seven years or seven centuries, let us say. But it cannot be denied that nationalist ideology dominates in Puerto Rico. The people, en masse, are with us. It can be affirmed that the great majority of Puerto Rico feels repulsion and rebellion against Yankee colonialism. This attitude will be what consolidates the nationalist movement there.”
- Is nationalism constituted in a political grouping, in accordance with the laws of the country? -“Yes, sir. In 1924 we went to the electoral struggle in thirteen of the main municipalities, including the capital and Ponce. We resorted to the polls sure of suffering an absolute defeat, because in Puerto Rico suffrage does not exist.”
- Explain that to us, Dr. Albizu.
- “I will give you a little history, so that you can give yourself an exact account of the problem. Transactionalism led the majority party, that is, the unionist, to the renunciation of the idea of independence and to the resignation of submitting to American colonialism, for reasons very easy to explain; first, by a feeling of impotence in the face of the force of Estados Unidos; second, by the inordinate desire to continue participating in the colonial budget. Thus was forged an alliance with the unconditional party of Puerto Rico, badly called Republican. Of this, a part went with the alliance and another constituted the so-called coalition, with a political party that bore the name of socialist, presided over by Santiago Iglesias Pantín, Spanish Secretary of the “Pan American Federation of Labor”, which is an important collective defending colonialism in Puerto Rico. The elector was placed in the dilemma of choosing between two unconditional, servile groupings, and decisive instruments of the Yankeeization of my country. Then, by amendments introduced to the Electoral Law, with the purpose of definitively suppressing separatist propaganda, the constitution of new parties was prohibited. To postulate a candidacy in any electoral precinct is required and I speak of the present, because that is the law in force to present a number of requests sworn by the electors, individually, whose number must not fall below ten percent of the total number of electors of the precinct. Now then, those
sworn requests take the elector before a magistrate, Municipal Judge of the Colony, who administers administrative justice, that is to say, who is an instrument of the will of the Governor of the Colony, a Yankee. In this way, when he does not oppose objections to the admission of the requests -which as it is a technical document can be declared null for any circumstance, he gets sick or disappears, obeying the specific instructions of his mandante.” -“As you can see, consequently, it is a mockery, a mockery, of the electoral right such a procedure.” -“Upon arriving at the elections of 1924, notwithstanding the situation created by the Government, with the premeditated purpose of not appearing separatists in the polls of Puerto Rico, the Nationalist Party, waving the insignia of De Diego, went to the electoral struggle, in the Municipalities already cited, with the sole purpose of avoiding the approbrium and the shame that the flag of the Homeland did not appear in the elections of Puerto Rico, which none of the other parties dared to wave during the election period, obeying the mandate of the Government of Washington” –“Recently, our interviewee continues - the situation has been worsened. In 1924 there was among the servile contending factions a struggle for public posts, despite their agreement to suffocate the nationalist movement. Recently, the Electoral Law has been amended, to avoid the reorganization of the Parties, giving them “status” jurídico that they did not have to the two conjunctions called Alliance and Coalition-Republican-Socialist. Thus suffrage is violated and the country is taken to the necessity of resorting to adequate means to make respect the will of the people, which is separatist, in absolute. -“No one knows ends Dr. Albizu Campos- how far a people can go when it is harassed, exploited and vilified without measure or quarter. And that people has to be prepared for all the contingencies that honor imposes on it.”
J.B. LAMARCHE
“TO BE ATTENDED TO, PUERTO RICO HAS TO PRESENT A GRAVE CRISIS TO THE COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION”
“IN WASHINGTON THEY HAVE DISREGARDED THEIR COMMISSIONERS, WHO HAVE LIMITED THEMSELVES TO MAKING ANOTHER GENUFLECTION”
Albizu Campos says from the columns of the Dominican press.
From our Dominican colleague, “La Opinión”, we take the following interview done to the licenciado Albizu Campos: “Pedro Albizu Campos… The Nationalist of Ponce… Independentist ideals… Heroic struggle… Will of steel… Shame… Dignity… Apostolate. When the siren of the “San Lorenzo” greeted yesterday the Placer de los Estudios, in my mind jumped all the vocabularies that serve to qualify the civic virtues of the men.
Albizu Campos has not been a dancer in politics, He hates theatricalism. He is a well-prepared intellectual. He does not like small-town exhibitionism. He is consecrated to the high ideals of nationality. Pedro Albizu Campos luminous eyes, sad smile, tropical brown color is a Man. (I beg the linotypist to put his attention on the capital V).
The Vice-President of the Nationalist Party verb to the red ignited the Director of El Nacionalista de Ponce buffalo leather whip, Mississippian overflow was my friend: is my friend. I am a friend of all the men that love the word redemption be they Chinese, Cantonese, Indians of Ghandi or boricuas involuntarily subjected to the Nordic empire. It was, then, easy for me, to see and converse with the granitic leader of Puerto Rican nationalism.
The interview had several episodes and different scenarios Hour: 9 a 1 at night. Place: Parque Colón; interior of a “guagua”, San Gerónimo; Parque Colón, Restaurante Fausto. Pedro Albizu Campos, born in Ponce on September 12, 1891, graduated in the famous Universidad de Harvard in the courses of Chemical Engineering, Letters and Philosophy, Military Sciences and Law, exercises, with success his profession as a Lawyer. He knows what he has in his hands. His conversation is very pleasant and his answers quick and precise.
In front of the statue of the Great Admiral, after a brief chat: -And what is it that Puerto Rico must do then? -Puerto Rico has to present a grave crisis to the colonial administration in order to be able to be attended to in its demand. Until
now the colono has formulated requests for things of little mount. In Washington they have disregarded their commissioners and these have resigned themselves to making another genuflexion. A nation like the North American, with enormous national and international problems, does not have time to attend to submissive and servile men. The formation of an organization is required that encompasses all the people of Puerto Rico and that definitively breaks with the regime of the colony, and requests from the free nations the recognition of our independence in order to be able to achieve the reconcentration of the North American mind on our situation.” In the “guagua”, in front of two enormous ladies that spoke in tone of si bemol overagudo:
- Does Puerto Rican nationalism open its way in the soul of the people? -“Nationalist ideology dominates the country. No one dares to combat it. The leaders of the old and low politicking cannot attack it openly because to do so they would lose their influence in the colonial government. The university youth, the new generations that rise are frankly, sincerely nationalists.” Albizu Campos speaks serenely; but his words are dazzling with warm enthusiasm. We abandon the “tone” of interview and we chat about some very pleasant topics: Vasconcelos, young intellectuals of Puerto Rico, criollo love, Russian ideology… The chocolate ice creams of “Fausto” were last night as pleasant as on Sunday. New compass of interview. It is 12 at night. -What are, in your judgment, the pragmatic lines that Ibero-Americanism must follow? -“We Ibero-Americans are fully convinced of the necessity of carrying out in practice the immediate organization of Ibero-Americanism. That ideology that will reestablish the world hegemony of the Iberian race, requires the constitution of an international organism representative of all the Ibero-American countries that functions to the margin of the constituted governments, stimulating its action or detaining it, in accordance with the supreme conveniences dictated by the purposes that are pursued. It is already time that the generalizations on this theme cease. Established the federative Ibero-American organism of which we have spoken, it is necessary to proceed to the realization without delay of specific ends. “Although Europe pretends to exercise on Ibero-America economic and cultural influence, and gladly, it would also enter into political interventions, if the circumstances thus permitted, its action does not constitute danger for us, and rather it is a force of counter-weight to the influence of Estados Unidos de Norte América.” “It is necessary to study the North American penetration in the Colombian continent. The North American interventions are military, economic, cultural and even religious. We have to cut them all at the root.” “Ibero-Americanism concentrate its attention on the territories most
affected by that North American imperialism, and it will dislodge it from the positions where it believes itself most secure, as in Puerto Rico and in other nations of the Caribbean and Central America. The case of Puerto Rico is a synthesis of the general situation. There is one of our most defined nationalities, of greater density of population and a surprising industrial and commercial progress and organization. Estados Unidos has established in Puerto Rico an irresponsible regime of Government. The Administration, the tribunals and the legislation, everything depends on the supreme will of the military man that occupies the post of supreme Chief of insular affairs in the Department of War of Estados Unidos, and that is responsible exclusively before the President of the North American Empire.” “The fact that in Puerto Rico, after twenty-seven years of North American occupation, a nationalist movement hostile openly to the colonial regime is consolidated, is an index of the effect of that occupation. A systematic plan has been developed for collective dispossession, the Yankee latifundios absorbing the best lands of the country, the Government has delivered to North American Corporations the franchises that give them the exclusive in the exploitation of all the sources of riches, of the communications, and of the finance, and a system of obligatory Public Instruction has been established, imposing the instruction of all the subjects in the exotic language English, with the perverse purpose of destroying our Hispanic culture.” “Ibero-Americanism must concentrate its attention on the concrete case of Puerto Rico, which summarizes the general situation. North American politics presents itself in all its nakedness before this pacific and defenseless people ruled by the Yankee military boot.” -Do you believe that the omnipotent power of Estados Unidos will diminish? -“Until the year 1914, Estados Unidos was a debtor nation and still nationals English, French and other countries are owners of numerous interests located within its borders. The European war produced the defeat of the whole of Europe and the Yankee financial hegemony. But that North American power that is exercised in the rudest form to paralyze the economic life of competitor nations or to subject to exploitation consumer nations, is necessarily transitory. The next world war will liquidate it.” My ice cream melts. I listen attentively to Albizu Campos. -Which countries will you visit? -“I will tour the nations of the Caribbean, of Central and South America and if there is time, I will visit in this mission the Madre Patria España, where currently there are organizations of elevated influence in favor of our cause.”
- Do you plan to establish some entity or organization in Santo Domingo, that fights for the independence of Puerto Rico? -“I hope from all the Dominicans their noble cooperation to constitute a national Dominican junta pro-independence of Puerto Rico. I know that there is not a Dominican that is not willing to cooperate in that elevated purpose.”
“Directors of the numerous Puerto Rican colony in this hospitable country, have indicated to me the convenience of establishing a nationalist junta of Puerto Ricans pro-independence of the afflicted Homeland.” “Nothing more noble, and nothing else could be expected of the patriotic sentiments of my fellow citizens.” One o’clock. Two handshakes. The tottering car of Mateito conducts me to my house. I think. I dream. There are dreams that are truly apotheosis…’
ALBIZU CAMPOS WAS SOME HOURS IN PUERTO PRINCIPE, HAITI
THERE HE RELATED WITH THE LEADERS OF HAITIAN NATIONALISM
“We have had the great pleasure of receiving the visit of Lcdo. Albizu Campos, Vice-President of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico and Director of the newspaper “El Nacionalista” that is edited in Ponce. “Mr. Campos, delegate of the Puerto Rican people in the Ibero-American Republics and in Europe, proceeds from Santo Domingo where he has passed some weeks and pronouncing conferences on Yankee imperialism and on the necessity for the Latin peoples of this hemisphere to unite to put a brake on the ferocious appetites of the Ogre of the North. “In all his conferences he has spoken of Haití and in favor of the de-occupation of its territory. Here is the thesis that he has developed to interest in our cause the Dominicans and the other Hispanic-American peoples: “The de-occupation of Haití is a necessity for all the Ibero-American peoples, because if they do not help the Haitians liberally, spontaneously and without conditions, the Haitian people will have to seek with our enemies the support that we have not known how to offer them nor give them. It is a matter of high politics to win the sympathy of Haití by means of eloquent manifestations and of sentiments of friendship and of justice that we feel for it.” “He has spoken also of the strategic situation of Haití in the case in which an action were undertaken against the Spanish peoples of this hemisphere, and above all he has made the Dominicans observe “that they have been conceded the privilege of fulfilling a gesture of transcendent chivalry helping without restriction Haití against the Yankee invaders and making of the República Dominicana a center of continental propaganda in favor of Haití”. “From his arrival, Mr. Albizu Campos made a visit to our friend and collaborator Pierre Paul, to whom he had been recommended by our delegate in Santo Domingo, the indefatigable and prestigious Enriquillo Henríquez García. After a long exchange of opinions with our collaborator on the situation of the Latin peoples of this hemisphere with respect to Estados Unidos del Norte and on the necessity of a politics of “interpenetration” between all those peoples, to