The Agricultural Strike By Pedro Albizu Campos The agricultural strike is ongoing throughout the East, and in the South, up to Ponce. If Mayagüez rises up today, as is to be expected, this national movement will cover and paralyze the activities of all the sugar mills. The workers have organized themselves into a corporation to have legal personality, and thus prevent anyone from daring to speak on their behalf. Their headquarters are located in Guayama because there, more than six thousand working men, in the most imposing assembly that can be conceived, spoke and acted for themselves the working masses, which in reality constitute around ninety percent of the total population of the country. He is the true people of Puerto Rico who manifest themselves with all serenity and valor. The workers had organized at the end of the activities of last Sunday four sections of the Asociación de Trabajadores de Puerto Rico: Guayama, Fajardo, Luquillo and Ca- nóvanas. On Monday, the organization of the entire nation will continue with the fervor that this noble cause has. The assemblies held in the aforementioned cities have been acts of pure patriotism and high culture, revealing the fact observed by the wise Humboldt in his visit to our lands a century ago, that the Puerto Rican nation constitutes the most intelligent society in the New World. Our people have demonstrated that they can resolve in assembly, in the public square itself, with wisdom and tranquility, and valor, any matter that affects their lives. It is strange that the workers have not organized until now. Lawyers, doctors, school teachers, merchants, sailors, professionals, sugar growers, business employees, employees of the insular government, chemists, pharmacists, indus- El Imparcial, January 16, 1934, p. 1 and 15
trials, tenants, that is, all professions and activities of social scope, are organized in the corporate form, with rights and legal responsibility. The workers already constitute the strongest corporation that can be formed because they are the true power and the true source of wealth that the Homeland has. Each Section of the Asociación de Trabajadores consists of a president and a secretary, and a member for each class of agricultural task, and has to be a bona fide worker, of the absolute con- fidence of his comrades, that is, a natural director in the corresponding agricultural specialty. As the specialties in the sugarcane field are around twelve, the board of directors of the section amounts to fifteen men. Only the specialist in a certain class of work can understand the hardship of the work in their respective field and determine the needs that the men who dedicate themselves to that specialty have to cover. Thus the carpenters, bricklayers, mechanics, cane cutters, “zañeros” etc., will have a member of their midst who represents their specialty in the respective section of the “Asociación de Trabajadores de Puerto Rico”. The harm suffered by the worker is due in large part to the disorganization of their hosts. But this harm will be cut off at the root, with which the apocryphal leadership that has exploited the great working mass until now will disappear. It will also end the barbaric exploitation to which the worker has been subjected at the hands of the great employer interests without human sense. The workers have rejected the proposals formulated by the sugar corporations for very serious reasons that are of interest to the nation. We extract from the list of workers’ demands these reasons: “1. Because salaries are established lower than those already existing. “2. Because the 12-hour day is maintained for the factories, a day that is inhuman. “3. Because the supposed participation of the workers in sugar profits in case of a sugar price increase is a myth. Because the price of the product is already stabilized. “4. Because the sugar growers are earning a fabulous sum of money at the expense of the low wages of the workers and
also because they enjoy the tariff bonus in the North American market, of $2.00 per quintal. If the sugar growers who have interests in Cuba, earn money selling their sugar in the North American market without counting on this bonus of $2.00 per quintal, let the people see what the sugar growers established in Puerto Rico earn. Take into account also that in Cuba higher salaries are paid than in Puerto Rico. “For illustration we present an example according to the “5. The enormous influence that the sugar industry exerts on the insular government, enjoying all kinds of franchises to the detriment of the people of Puerto Rico, is well known. And that it also enjoys the privileges of exemption from payment of taxes due to that same official influence. “6. The country must also take into account that we that (sic) the profits of that industry are spent abroad, United States, because more than 60% of the value of these sugar interests belong to North American interests and the rest is mortgaged in banks in the United States. “7. The only income that Puerto Rico has, is the one we workers receive by way of salary because all the products of Puerto Rico with the exception of sugar for being under North American rule have to be sold in the United States at the price that the North American buyers impose. While they sell us their products at the price that suits them. “8. We also reject this proposition because the same payment system in tickets that completely enslaves us to the will of the centralists is maintained. That system has ruined all Puerto Rican commerce and industry throughout the country, because the centrales have their own store systems, import everything directly and do not pay any of the taxes that all commerce has to sustain. “The dollar that is paid to us is collected again by the Central immediately with advantages always.