THE NATIONALIST ACT OF SUNDAY IN PONCE THE SPEECH DELIVERED BY LIC. P. ALBIZU CAMPOS When Albizu Campos ascended the rostrum, the public of Ponce received him with a prolonged ovation. The President of the Nationalist Party delivered an eloquent and substantial speech that extended for two and a half hours. “My beloved people: I wish to greet you after three years of absence through our América. A profound emotion overwhelms my spirit as I present myself before the people of Ponce who saw me born. To love the soil that gave us life is the first duty of man. I wish to send a collective greeting from this rostrum to my school classmates, to my physical and moral protectors, to my friends and fellow citizens. “We celebrate tonight the great epic of the race that discovered and civilized this continent. To Mother España we owe the immense gratitude of this unparalleled work in human history. With the feat of Colón, the spherical shape of the planet was definitively proven. With this discovery, man realized that he did not live on an isolated land but that he belonged to a celestial system of which he was its collaborator and interpreter. Man was then aware of the infinity of the universe and that within himself were enclosed the possibilities of infinite progress. His concept of the universe and its creator was amplified, and he understood that his mission was to interpret the laws that governed it and to live the superior life of the spirit.” After a philosophical digression on the meaning of the discovery and its transcendence in the life of Western culture, he went on to analyze the transcendental orientation of nationalism. “Nationalism is the force that rises up against any power that denies us personality. It is a movement that aspires to awaken the forces of wisdom in the people, to save nationality for culture and history. It wants this people, which is the first spiritual unit that crystallizes on the continent, which is the most culturally and racially integrated nationality in América, which is an improvable and sensitive mass, not to be annulled and to be reintegrated into the life of culture by the full affirmation of its personality. Nationalism is not merely the reintegration of the lands into Portorrican hands, nor the salvation of its commerce and its finances: it is the nationality standing to rescue its sovereignty and save this people for the superior values of life. Colonialism is the annulment and absorption of our moral forces; independence is spiritual fullness, it is the enjoyment of all the physical and moral gifts that God deposited in our land. If the law denies a madman personality, it also denies him the capacity to verify any legal transaction. If a people is denied its collective personality, it is denied the capacity to govern its own destiny and we are put on the level of an irresponsible madman. Nationalism is not a party in the limiting sense of the word but a movement that tends to save all the constitutive values of nationality. That is why we will not rest until the flag of Estados Unidos has been lowered from Puerto Rico.” The speaker then analyzed the historical, sociological and cultural panorama of the Ibero-American nations and stressed the need to maintain intense links with the sister peoples “because the case of Puerto Rico is the evident example of the intentions that Estados Unidos has for Latin América.” “América is the richest continent in the world because of its territorial extension, its population and its immense natural resources. That is why it is the object of the world’s greed. She is becoming aware of this phenomenon and remains on guard against exotic aggressions. She knows the greedy intentions of Estados Unidos and that is why all the governments that the people suspect are subjected to the Yankees are falling.” He then commented on the policy of Estados Unidos in the Caribe. “The Caribe Sea is the heart of the world. From here depart and converge the maritime currents of the tropics that carry heat and life to all the continents of the earth. This will be the theater of the great war that is eight or ten years away to overthrow the imperialist power of Estados Unidos. We must prepare for that hour, which will be that of our political salvation.” He then made an analysis of the problems of Estados Unidos, of North American social life, of its attitude towards the black race, etc. He announced that one of the bloodiest social revolutions in history awaited him, since there “the exploitation exercised against the people had made the communist seed prosper in a way dangerous for the stability of its plutocratic institutions.” He commented on the recent speeches of President Hoover in which he recognizes the importance that these movements have taken when he takes the trouble to comment on them. He also censured the society of Ponce for the welcome it gave to the North American marines. “The slave can never pay homage to the master,” he said. At the end of his speech Albizu Campos, the public burst into a delirious applause carrying him on their shoulders throughout the plaza while the band played the melodious chords of La Borinqueña. By Manuel Rivera Matos A NATIONALIST ASSEMBLY WAS HELD IN SALINAS AMONG OTHER SPEAKERS SPOKE THE PRESIDENT OF THE PARTY, MR. ALBIZU CAMPOS Mr. Albizu Campos was announced. A long ovation kept the speaker in silence. Afterwards, the speaker excused himself before the public for not being able to make a speech, because having spoken for two and a half hours the previous night in Ponce, he was completely hoarse. Nevertheless, he began by making a brilliant exposition of the economic problems of colonial Puerto Rico. He evoked days of his near and so distant! - youth, when his adolescence ran through the fertile plains of Salinas. Remember “the traditional joy, the daily revelry, the festivity that was done, daily, a rattle in the spirit.” And today, gentlemen, all the faces are sad. The elders of then, also had spirit for the youthful feat, strong, vigorous, had physical and spiritual energies. Today men of middle age look with sad, tragic, desolate eyes. (The speaker looks towards the gallery. The gallery is full of children. The children are quiet, silent). I am alarmed when children are in quietude. I am alarmed when the children of my Homeland attend an act like this, and are quiet, judicious; when they have not torn down all the chairs in the gallery and the belts of the fathers have not had to come out. Because I know that this quietude is symptomatic. I know that when the child does not play, when the child is not a match lighting up mischief, it is that he has on his head the cold hand of the epidemic - an advance of death.” “And why are the men sad, why are the women sad, why are the children of Salinas sad? Ah, gentlemen, can the men of Salinas be happy, can the men of Puerto Rico be happy, when misery pursues them like an implacable greyhound? Can the women of Puerto Rico, those who are aware of the true situation, be happy when they see their husband, their brother, their father, within the fatal circle of the reigning despair? And can our children be happy, when they do not have the illusion of the toy, and not even the security of breakfast? To that state, gentlemen, the system of exploitation to which the Yankee has subjected us has brought us, and, to remedy that evil, what is done? Well, the resident of Fortaleza advises new loans. Why doesn’t the Governor, instead, force the Fajardo Sugar Co., the Guánica Central, Aguirre to pay the millions they owe to the treasury? Ah, no, gentlemen! They, the corporations, are sacred, untouchable. The ghost of the Constitution of Estados Unidos is invoked, which enters Puerto Rico whenever it is to protect Yankee interests, but which always escapes in time so as not to protect the interests of the natives.” “Where does this system of exploitation lead? To ruin, only to ruin. Every minute that passes a new Portorrican landowner falls and a Yankee exploiter rises. And the few Boricuas that remain are fatally condemned to disappear.” By these times the speaker was already in full command of his voice. It seems that combat is a remedy for him, and that his natural environment is struggle. Already in a tribune tone he shook the public with his wide, immoderate, vehement verb. The theater trembled with applause, ovations. HOMAGE TO MR. ALBIZU CAMPOS AND SELLES SOLA SPEECH OF ALBIZU CAMPOS When Mr. Albizu Campos was to make use of the word, the audience, standing, paid him a thunderous ovation that lasted for several minutes. “In answering the invitation letter that the President of the Cultural Society addressed to me, I put in my words what I understood was the meaning of this act. I interpret this act and repeat here those words as an oath that patriots demand of each other. It seems a lie that patriots should ever have to demand of each other the fulfillment of an oath, but there are moments in the Patria’s history in which the constructive elements are postponed because high treason to the most vital interests of the country dominates. Such is, my friends, the historical moment through which our Patria is passing. High treason predominates among us, I repeat; they are the men and women who, alongside the dominator, are demolishing the most sacred of the Patria, from its material interests to its dearest spiritual interests. They are the ones who unfortunately dominate in our country. And we are the patriots who are in frank adversity at this moment of collective work. That is why I interpret the invitation of the Cultural Society as the peremptory demand, as the imperative mandate that all here demand of each other the fulfillment of the patriotic duty. “Everyone is surprised that it is the youth who come to consecrate adult men. It is true that we are not as old as we seem, but we are already adults. Men who have suffered a lot in our few years. I understand that my partner was born in ‘86. I was born in ‘93. Since I was a child, I fixed in my spirit an idea that every man and woman who was born in a slave country should have: to sacrifice his life to free it from all exotic power that intends to subjugate it. And faithful to that norm, faithful to that promise before my own conscience, I have always been humble, and as a humble man, anxious to acquire all possible knowledge to prepare myself physically and mentally with the purpose of carrying out a work of patriotism and dignity. To be a patriot it is not enough to carry the words on the lips and the feeling in the heart. It is required to have a physical strength, it is required an intellectual strength, it is required a moral strength, it also requires a vision of the transcendental ends for which man is placed in creation. That is why I say to you the youth that you cannot waste your energies, that the Patria needs your bodies, that your physical organisms must be strong and healthy. The life of the colony has always tended to the physical degeneration of the dominated people because it is a regime of exploitation. It conspires against the work of true patriotism, it denies men and women of superior mentality the exercise of superior faculties. In the colony, the elements without character that are often of great intelligence are brought to flotation: they are the high traitors of the Patria. Thus in the colony all superior activities are restricted from the exercise of public law to the exercise of power in the government; the only activity that is not restricted is that of servility, that of acting as instruments of the dominator in his work of demolition of the dominated country. When that state is reached, the people are denied even the right to educate themselves according to their own criteria. This is the only people, on earth, gentlemen, where by express provision of the law, or rather of the empire of Estados Unidos, a man is appointed who has the absolute power to determine what is to be taught to the children of Puerto Rico. Neither Tsarist Russia, nor Imperial Germany dared to impose such a tyranny on Poland. “I have said, gentlemen, that the most serious aggression that has been perpetrated against Portorrican nationality has been the creation of this systematic tyranny over the native intellect. I repeat that in no people in the world has a man erected himself as arbiter of the wisdom and culture of a people as in Puerto Rico. I say this before the university youth so that they are aware of the true situation in which the Portorrican youth find themselves. “In other countries, the study programs and texts are established in schools by agreements of boards and commissions and after a comparative analysis of the educational systems of various nationalities.” The speaker then attacked the intervention of Estados Unidos in the education of the country. “A few vital questions must be formulated to the educational system: “What are we citizens of? What do we educate Portorrican children for? To be men of free consciences or colonial henchmen? It is not enough to sow schools everywhere. The school can equally serve to build and to destroy. We must seek the purpose that is pursued with teaching. Education cannot be an instrument of domination; education must form men informed of a patriotic criterion and not servants of the ruling regime.” The speaker then related his experiences in Estados Unidos and said that there “education is a system that creates the predominance of a privileged class over the great mass of the people.” He strongly combated Americanization. “The Americans themselves do not know what Americanization is. Americanization is a collective aspiration of Estados Unidos that will take a long time to crystallize because that is a people without racial unity or cultural unity. There live large nuclei of various countries of the world divided by a myriad of interests and barriers; there are profound religious divisions, not to mention the large African population that lives isolated from the rest of the republic. The educational system aspires then to consolidate all that conglomerate of races, languages and cultures, and to form a compact national integration. Well, what in Estados Unidos is an aspiration has been wanted to be implanted in Puerto Rico, which is a people that enjoys a perfect racial and cultural integration.” He combated the system of optional subjects in higher schools. “What selective criterion does a boy have to choose the subject that suits him? Latin is not required, however, this is the matrix language of our civilization. It is a barbarity to teach Latin and French through English; students are being subjected to unnecessary mental torture.” He also formulated a bitter censure against bilingualism which “mutilates the mentality of the student. An absurd system that we are tolerating despite having been discarded by pedagogical science.” He disapproved of the bisexual school. He said that this system had arisen in the west of Estados Unidos for economic and not pedagogical reasons. He said that women and men possessed a distinct psychology and therefore a specific methodology was required for each, although both could reach the understanding of the same truths. He also lashed out against the tendency to bring to the mind of the Portorrican child the idea that our civilization began in 1898. “In the official history texts our history before 1898 was a chain of hurricanes and piracies. We are a civilized nationality, a vanguard nationality in the New World. Here was founded the first Bishopric of América, from here the Christian work in the New World was directed. More than a century ago the Baron of Humboldt found here the most intelligent disciples of the entire continent. But these things are hidden in the textbooks to narrate the false grandeurs of the dominant nation.” “SAN GERMAN IS CURRENTLY THE MOST SERVILE TOWN IN PUERTO RICO”, ALBIZU CAMPOS SAID THERE AT A NATIONALIST MEETING SPEECH OF ALBIZU CAMPOS As the figure of the supreme leader was outlined, the compact crowd burst into a thunderous ovation. “Peoples,” he said, “become amiable and known for their artistic and cultural manifestations, but they only become respectable by one virtue: valor. San Germán, whose current location synthesizes in our history the secular struggle between the Ibero power and the English peoples, which was a refuge of Portorrican heroism for four centuries, which was the center of conspiracies in the twilight of Spanish rule and always spokesman of regionalism, is currently, gentlemen, the most servile town in Puerto Rico and bulwark of annexationism. This has occurred because of the political and legal error of supposing that the Yankee State is sovereign and independent, which was true under the regime of the Articles of Confederation, but completely fallacious under the current Constitution which was drafted precisely to do away with all vestige of that sovereignty and convert the States into provinces. “Puerto Rico is imbued with the maxim of the invader that each individual has his price, and thus is explained the moral and civic shipwreck to which we are witnessing. I want to declare here tonight that the venal man is equated to the beast that is what has a price, that whoever sells himself for so much is less than an animal that after all lacks reason; such a person will never be a free man; he will always be a slave and must die. Norte América has created its material wealth on the basis of human servitude: it enslaved in the South the African and in the north the European immigrant.” “It is up to us to restore the ancient virtues and the freedom of man. This is the work of the home and of the Portorrican woman. Extravagance and luxury are our natural enemies; it is up to the woman to be the economist of the nation, and to educate her children in shame.” “The Nationalist Party will not accept executive positions nor will it sell itself on the counter of La Fortaleza. We will accept the elective positions that are of popular mandate. The current municipal administration of Caguas offered us some positions of importance, which were rejected because the government of Dr. Reguero González does not derive its powers from suffrage.” “The other existing parties do not think so. When Mr. Tous Soto, disenchanted before the public manifestations of Mr. Towner, at that time President of the Committee on Insular Affairs of the Cámara, to the effect that no liberal reform for Puerto Rico should be understood as a promise of statehood required Mr. Barceló so that both would unite to demand absolute independence, the head of the Unión did not dare to accompany him in that definitive step pretexting that that would compromise the situation. Thus was born the Alianza with its formula of “sovereignty within sovereignty”, gibberish without explanation, which before their respective questions Mr. Tous Soto unleashed answering: “That is the State”, and Barceló “that is independence”. “And the Socialist Party, gentlemen, the Socialist Party is a branch of the American Federation of Labor, which is why Mr. Iglesias is careful not to intervene in the propaganda of the Socialist Party of Estados Unidos. I was in Boston when the police strike broke out and it was necessary for the then Governor of Massachusetts, Coolidge, to call on the marine infantry to take care of public order. The police requested their registration as a guild in the American Federation of Labor. Gompers supported his management, but it was impossible for him to incorporate them into the Association because the high powers of the Nation made it very clear to him that they in such a case would ruin the organization. Since then the American Federation of Labor is a simple instrument of capitalism and Yankee imperialism.” “If under España we suffered despotisms they were but a reflection of those that were suffered in the peninsula; the same men who governed there were also sent to Puerto Rico. Under the current regime, on the other hand, we suffer officials of extremely low political category.” “Finally, to the ladies of San Germán who are gathered here, lending prestige to this act, I want to say that Santa Rosa de Lima, who for the Peruvians will be a native of the Viceroyalty, but for us is Portorrican of San Germán, should serve as a model and perennial inspiration in this path of self-denial for the Patria’s vindication that we have proposed.” Albizu Campos places a floral offering before the tomb of one of the heroes of the Grito de Lares. Albizu Campos next to Lic. Obdulio Bauzá, Reverend Father Martínez Girau and the Mayor, José Auretio Bernal. In the City Hall. THE NATIONALIST MEETING HELD IN MAYAGUEZ STATEMENTS BY THE HEAD OF THE PARTY, MR. ALBIZU CAMPOS When Mr. Albizu Campos was announced, the band played “La Borinqueña” and a long ovation ensued. Such was the anxiety that was manifested in everyone to hear the word of the illustrious leader of nationalism. He analyzed the system by which the ruling regime effects the demolition of Portorrican society with the promotion of deep divisions; first: The promotion of women’s work in competition with men to cheapen the labor force and bring about the split of families, making women rivals of men in the economic field and therefore severing the home. He said that in itself the independence of women was laudable if it was stimulated in good faith, but not if, as in the current circumstances, it is imposed as a means to demoralize a society. He explained how Estados Unidos and England are the only countries in which militant feminism exists as a safeguard of the rights of women who are thrown into economic activity. Already in Puerto Rico there are many families where it is the women who procure the sustenance of the home, an inversion of roles that is a certain index of the definitive ruin of a people. Second Division in financial matters, which exists in the Estados Unidos but which has been deepened here by the misnamed Socialist Party. In the Estados Unidos a small group or ruling class exploits almost the entire country; there does not exist there a society or a nation in the correct sense of the word but a great conglomerate that suffers the oppression of the meager oligarchic class which is not concerned with the fate nor much less the common aggrandizement of the mass of the country. In Puerto Rico, on the contrary, there was a homogeneity between all the components and a great social sense interested in reciprocal help for the perpetuity and conservation of the nation, this is a deep-rooted and unanimous feeling of Patria. Consequently, juxtaposing in a class struggle the man who possesses nothing against the one who has two pesetas was imposing a strange element of discord that was idle in our environment. Third: The division fostered between the white and African race that is evidenced by comparing the systems used by the invader in Cuba and Puerto Rico respectively at the end of the Spanish-American war. In our country, where there was a majority of whites, they imposed as leader the class of color with the triumph of the Republican Party, whose head was Dr. Barbosa. In Cuba, where the element of color predominated, they raised in the shadow of power a political direction of individuals of European race and licensed the liberating army composed mostly of men of color. Fourth: To the previous ones is added the division in the spiritual field tending to counteract the indubitable
hegemony of Catholicism through the elevation to power of individuals from all Protestant sects, and although Nationalism extends its arms to the proselytes of all creeds, it cannot fail to point out the historical fact and the intention and political significance that the encouragement given to forces contrary to the religious unity of the country embodies. By way of prologue and epilogue, he expanded on brilliant considerations about all the political and economic problems of Puerto Rico. He referred, for example, to the exchange of currency, demonstrating how ab initio property had been devalued by forty percent through the change from the peso to the dollar at a rate of sixty percent when in reality both currencies had equal purchasing power. This collective and rapid depreciation of property, united with the San Ciriaco cyclone, opened the door to the latifundio in the hands of foreigners, a plague so voracious that not even the effort of Muñoz Rivera was able to contain it with his attempt to create a native latifundista front, since the latter, as soon as he prospered somewhat, was also entangled in the horrible jaws of pecuniary combinations. He then attacked the large corporations as the cause of the general decadence and even the ruin of the treasury; the organization of public health, expressing his opinion that “the increase in diseases in the last three decades is largely due to the poor quality of the articles offered for consumption, especially canned foods”; public instruction, engaged in educating hungry infants who would be better sustained physically with the luxurious budget destined for the branch; and finally, the country’s industrialization projects, impossible in a colony without tariff protection. Mr. Albizu Campos concluded his medullar and eloquent dissertation, exuberant in a multitude of resounding data stated with astonishing precision and timeliness and difficult to reconstruct, urging the people of Mayagüez to coldly investigate the capital problems of their Homeland, so that the healthy reaction would operate within them that would vindicate for the Sultana del Oeste its badge of honor and its place of honor that it always occupied in the past at the vanguard of our civilizing and liberating struggles. Thunderous applause and displays of general approval externalized the feelings of the public who listened with deep attention for more than two hours to the only political leader who dissects before the people, converting the tribune into a chair, the most intricate national problems to fundamentally study the roots of our prostration.