This power, to be effective, must be irrevocable. Thus provides Article Two of the additional articles of the autonomic constitution of Puerto Rico, which reads as follows: “Once the present constitution for the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico is approved by the Courts of the Kingdom, it may not be modified except by virtue of a law and at the request of the Insular Parliament. The powers recognized by the Homeland obligated all foreign powers, because the recognition of an international statute by the Homeland is the most perfect recognition, which obligates third powers and grants them the rights to contract with the new entity that begins to take part on the international stage. Where sovereignty resides in a State, using this term in its true sense, whether in the monarch or in the nation, is not a matter of discussion in the Republic. In this latter system of government, it is assumed that the sovereign is the nation. This consideration does not prevent a Republic that exercises dominion over another nationality from recognizing the autonomy of the latter. This depends, however, on the constitution of the imperial Republic. Under the North American constitution, there exist the provincial governments; called state governments, and the federal government which has the power to govern without any responsibility to the territories or nations that fall under the dominion of the United States. The North American province does not have international statute, but within the constitution, the central government has to respect its rights, because it enjoys the constitutional statute that guarantees the existence of all the organisms created by the constitution, such as the National Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency. As the constitution can be amended by the sole sovereign, that is, The People of the United States, the powers of the province, “state,” can be modified when the sovereign so determines within the procedures established in the constitution. Likewise, the powers of the Presidency of the Congress, and of the Supreme Court, can be modified. If the sovereign resolved to destroy the present provincial organization, called state and substitute it with any other, of course, it could do so. The same can be said regarding the modification of the powers or existence of any national organism. The national organisms are obligated to exercise the faculties that are conceded to them in the constitution. These faculties are duties that must be fulfilled. Thus, the Congress of the United States has the duty to govern the territories and nations under conquest without being responsible to the governed in any way. Any law that they approve for a territory or possession is revocable at any moment, in whole or in part, by the same Congress or by another successive Congress.
Any power that is conceded to the governments of the territories is in their character as mandataries of the national power, and for that reason any territorial resolution or law can be annulled in whole or in part, at any moment by the national Congress.
The North American constitution concedes the tariff power to the Congress. The tariffs are uniform. The same types govern in the provinces “states,” as in the territories, possessions, or nations subjected to the dominion like Puerto Rico and Filipinas. The Congress could not in any case concede the tariff power irrevocably to Puerto Rico, because as we have said, all statute of said legislative body is subject to revocation or to amendment by the same. It has been alleged that within the constitution a federal statute can be in practice irrevocable, although constitutionally, it may be revocable at any moment. And as proof, it has been pointed out that not only does desuetude of rights of the Congress exist, but also, the desuetude of constitutional rights. As proof of this assertion, we are presented with the case of the desuetude of political rights in the south of the United States. Here are more than sixteen million North American citizens who, for the sole fact of carrying African blood in their veins, have been deprived of the electoral vote, although the constitution expressly prohibits that a citizen be deprived of the exercise of suffrage for considerations of race. With this example it could be deduced that, if the Congress approves a law conceding a power to one of the territories, such law, due to its transcendence, could be respected by the same Congress subsequently or by other Congresses that would succeed it. The unusual case of depriving more than sixteen million citizens of the electoral right, in frank and open opposition to the constitution itself, is explained however, by the barbaric prejudice that exists in the United States in racial matters. The opinion of the dominant elements of that nation in this matter is almost unanimous. No one in the Congress or in the Presidency or in the Supreme Court of that country, has insisted that the electoral right of those who carry African blood in their veins be respected.
That could be repeated in Puerto Rico with the benefit of those who exercise the omnipotent influence in the United States, if our country were fused into a province “state,” of the North American nation. All the elements of pure African blood in ours or mixed, could be deprived, with the acquiescence of the central power, of suffrage. To concede tariff independence to Puerto Rico, while the United States exercises dominion over our nationality, is an economic question, of greater transcendence for the dominating nation than the racial question.
When the thirteen original states were fused under the present constitution, constituted the sovereignty, called the People of the United States, were reduced to provinces of the new sovereign, and forcibly lost the tariff independence that they had enjoyed during the brief period of the confederation.
The tariff front is uniform, the same in the provinces, “state,” as in the territories. Neither directly nor indirectly has it been permitted that any national political division could intervene in the exercise of this power, which is a symbol, by itself alone, of national unity.
To ask that the United States amend its enjoyment of tariff independence, while that right is expressly denied to the same “states,” provinces, and to the other territories, is to fall into one of those dreams of those who do not have the courage to exercise their own inalienable right to Independence.
It goes without saying that neither could Puerto Rico have the corollary power to tariff independence, that is, the faculty to make commercial treaties.
It must be pointed out, for greater clarity, that the powers that the Congress of the United States has conceded to the territorial governments, have always been interpreted by the courts in a restrictive sense as any ordinary mandate.
And it is also to be noted that the Congress of the United States, instead of amplifying powers conceded to a territorial government, has always tried to restrict them by subsequent legislation.
That is why the continental territories tried to leave the territorial condition that imposed on them an irresponsible government of the Congress, in many cases, appealing to violence against the federal authorities that the central government sent them from Washington to govern their destinies.
There are two ways to leave the absolute dominion of the Congress: to convert oneself into a province, “state,” or establishing the Independent Republic.
Within the North American nation, the province, “state,” as happens in all constitutions, lacks absolutely tariff power.
So that Puerto Rico can exercise its tariff independence and the power to make commercial treaties, it has to constitute itself as an Independent Republic.
THE PROTECTORATE IS AN AGGRESSION
To establish Autonomy, and with it the Tariff Independence, and the power to make commercial treaties, it would be compulsory for the United States to recognize the Independence of Puerto Rico, to then burden it with limitations that would reduce the exercise of powers of sovereignty to the limits of the Autonomic status. We have been asked if that political solution should not satisfy the legitimate demands to constitute the Republic. In other words, it is inquired, if the Republic should be established with the protectorate of the United States. The term protectorate, the declarations of guarantee of Independence, the securities to maintain firm the interior regime, etc., are the promises that generally make the strong powers to impose servitude to nations that enjoy the recognition of their Independence, with the purpose of acquiring strategic positions in their territories and acquiring privileged position in their economic development. Territorial integrity cannot be violated either directly or indirectly, without compromising political Independence and economic Independence. This grave danger is not imposed by third powers but by the nation that declares itself a protector. Those who have no notion of national unity, be it territorial or spiritual, do not see the consequences of making cessions of the national patrimony to foreign powers. The establishment of coaling stations, of naval bases, of centers of telegraphic or wireless communication, etc., is not permitted by any country, without imposing immediate and irreducible force, whatever the pretensions of the power that solicits concessions, that put in danger the very life of the nationality. Nation protected, nation aggressed by the supposed protector. Such is the aphorism of international life. To make territorial concessions of the nature that we have described, is to sanction in advance the military and naval coercion of the power that pretends to direct the Homeland destinies, with the aggravating circumstances, that that aggressor is permitted to accumulate troops and war material in the very native soil. Facing the “protector”, the protectorate is always defenseless. The constant presence of an army and of a fleet in territory of the protectorate is only to intimidate it or to mobilize them against its rivals in imperialist ambitions. When the “protector” is at war, the protectorate is forcibly a zone of operations. The territorial concessions, be they ad perpetuam or for a determined time, are considered by the enemies of the “protector”, as territory of their own and subject to attack, to occupation and to annexation itself. As the “protected” nation is an obligatory ally of the “protector”,
it is considered belligerent and as such victim of all the contingencies of the war, which can cost indemnizations, fiscal interventions, and even cession of territory. It is not strange that no nation wants to accept protectorates, and, that all the nations subjected to such a dangerous imposition, fight tenaciously to recover their full Independence. The protectorate chains the “protected” nation to the international policy of its “protector”, but, always to the detriment of it. The international conditions that favor the “protector”, it exploits them for its exclusive convenience. When those same conditions prejudice it, it uses the protectorate as spoils of war. There exist in our continent currently two nations that enjoy independence under the protectorate of the United States: Cuba and Panamá.
Cuba, under the permanent treaty called the Platt Amendment, had to cede to the United States the naval base of Guantánamo and the right to intervene to assure a stable government in the Republic that gives sufficient guarantee to natives and foreigners. It is worth examining how it was that the United States imposed the Platt Amendment on Cuba… The Cuban revolution had triumphed when the United States saw the necessity of intervening for reasons of “humanity” in the war between the great Antille and the Homeland. This intervention was considered an act of generosity by the unwary who did not know the intentions of North American politics. It was believed that the Independence of Cuba and of Puerto Rico was assured. The treaty of Paris, however, established something very different: the annexation of Puerto Rico to the United States and the Independence of Cuba under the Platt Amendment. In spite of its noble declarations, the government of the United States ignored upon entering the war the personality of the Cuban revolutionary government and of its army. It refused to deal with the legitimate representatives of Cuban sovereignty. And it assumed that in Cuba there existed only one sovereignty: the Spanish. That attitude disconcerted the Cuban patricians. A government, a liberating army, and a nationality in arms, was found without recognition before these supposed protectors. They gave Cuba to understand, in the most express form, that its Independence depended exclusively on North American will. Finished the war, the government of the United States decreed the demobilization of the Cuban Liberating Army, and Cuba remained under a North American military occupation. Of course, the occupying power dissolved the Cuban revolutionary government destroying thus all vestige of Cuban representation. Disarmed the great Antille, abolished its government, and under a military occupation of the United States, the invading government convened the constituent convention of the Republic. The patriots drafted the constitution of the new State, but something was lacking, very important for the North American Department of State: to define the relations between the United States and Cuba.
Let us not forget that the Cuban international representation had been usurped by the United States, that had made itself responsible before the world for what happened in Cuba to persons or to foreign interests. Required the Cuban convention to define the permanent relations between the Republic and the North American Nation, it answered in brilliant and sensible document, that in synthesis, declared that the two nations were linked by eternal ties of affections, since Cuban gratitude would never forget the help that the United States lent to the cause of Independence. This answer however, did not satisfy the practical mentality that governs North American destinies. The terms affections seemed good but very ambiguous: the Yankee Department of State wanted material concessions, in consonance with the secret perverse intention that took the United States to the war against Spain. The United States demanded a definition of the relations between Cuba and the North American Republic. The Cuban Constituent Convention that had received this requirement, answered in affective terms, full of gratitude, as we have already said. The North American Department of State gave no importance to that Cuban moral promise. It wanted territorial concessions, economic privileges, tariff dominion. To the Cuban incomprehension of this unusual North American attitude, the Yankee Department of State directed an ultimatum to the Cuban Constituent Convention, in which the North American demands in Cuba are specified. Of them we will cite the most vital: 1o. Privilege of intervention in Cuba when the political, sanitary or financial conditions thus justified it; 2o. Cession on the part of Cuba to the United States of two Cuban naval bases; 3o. That Cuba could not make any treaty without the advice and consent of the United States. The Constituent Convention of the Cuban Republic, upon receiving this enormous aggression on the part of the United States, was shocked. It remembered the memorable words of the immortal Maceo that repudiated the interested help of neighbors, in the cause of Cuban redemption. The vision of Maceo had culminated in very hard reality. The United States wanted by force to impose on Cuba an international statute inferior to that recognized in the autonomic charter granted by Spain. The indignation of the constituents had no limit before this treason of the supposed North American friends and protectors. To no one was this aggression comprehensible when Cuba had done no harm to the United States. And when in reality Cuba had nothing to thank the United States for its intervention in the war. On the contrary, many were the damages that derived from that intervention, damages still deeply felt in the Republic. By express declaration of the United States in the terms of armistice imposed on Spain, the damages that the Yankees had suffered by the war would be compensated with the cession of Puerto Rico. It was our Homeland the pledge of immense value that Spain had to cede to the United States so that the Yankee power would recognize the Independence of Cuba. Unarmed Cuba under a North American military occupation, and its Constituent Convention besieged by Yankee bayonets, realized that upon liberating itself from Spanish sovereignty, it had fallen into the more brutal claws that it could ever have supposed. The privilege of intervention, the pure and simple cession of two naval bases, and the annulment of its right to make treaties of all nature destroyed the libertarian effort of two Cuban generations. In addition, it was demanded of the Convention that it not define the political situation of the precious Isle of Pines, that would continue under North American military occupation, until its international status was defined by a subsequent treaty between Cuba and the United States. The intention of the Yankees to stay with the Isle of Pines by force remained manifest. Before this aggression in full peace against a nation welcomed to its protection, the North American nation revealed itself in the full nakedness of its absorbing intentions. It pretended practically the annexation of Cuba. Imposing a treaty of that nature, it reduced the Republic to a skeleton without life, that could move only to assent in the future to the definitive annexation of Cuba to the United States. And in exchange for what did the United States demand these concessions? The United States committed itself to guarantee the Independence of Cuba! History repeated itself. The “protector” speaks of guaranteeing an Independence that it has already destroyed or pretends to destroy. The Cuban Constituents, moved, with the anger that the liberating spirit gives upon witnessing an attack on the Homeland, stood up and invoked the influence of the patrician spirits so that they would save their nationality from this ambush attack when the nationality was completely disarmed and exhausted all its resources after the long and bloody wars of Independence. There arose in the bosom of the Convention the voice of patriotism. The hero, Juan Gualberto Gómez, director of the revolution in Cuba itself during the Spanish occupation proposed to return to the bush, no longer against Spain, but against these hypocritical invaders, who, under the title of protectors, wanted with a single blow and without any sacrifice, since Cuba was completely impotent to resist an aggression, to end Cuban nationality, pretending that the defenseless great Antille would assent to establishing the conditions for the future annexation to the United States. The Convention showed itself unanimous. It repudiated the ultimatum of the Yankee Department of State. The negotiations came. The omnipotent Yankee invader had to cede in some of its vital pretensions. Such is the force of the right before the aggressor itself. The United States assented that Cuba could make treaties freely with all the powers. Without that power independence does not exist. They were inexorable, however, in their pretensions over the Isle of Pines and in their pretensions to the privilege of intervention. They consented to snatch from Cuba only one naval base: that of Guantánamo. The North Americans believed that with what they snatched from Cuba they could assure the future annexation of the Republic to the United States. Immediately, and with its spirit of a hunting dog, they began to work to destroy the Independence that they had just recognized. Let us see the process.
The Platt Amendment established the bases for North American hegemony, political, economic and military in Cuba. In addition it assures to the United States the free transit to the Gulf of Mexico over whose waters ends the vast basin of the Misisipi, the richest region of North America. And on the contrary, its hegemony in Cuba constitutes a danger for Mexico whose Atlantic commerce has to pass forcibly between Yucatán and the Cuban province of Pinar del Río or between Habana and Cayo Hueso. With its naval base in Guantánamo they dominate all the international commerce via the strait between Cuba and Haiti towards Central and South America. That those have been the intentions of the United States, the repeated declarations of North American treatise writers on the privilege of intervention that the permanent treaty concedes to them proves. They allege that the United States in its quality as guarantor of the Independence of Cuba, is the sole interpreter of the situations that justify an intervention. The consequence of this pretension, would impose on Cuba a North American intervention each time that the Yankee interests were seen threatened by Cuba or by other powers. Cuban patriotism, informed by pure juridical doctrine, has rejected these North American arrogances, pointing out with reason that, if a treaty exists between Cuba and the United States, its interpretation has to be bilateral. The contrary doctrine, would establish that there does not exist
such a treaty, but the North American imposition in Cuba, consigned in the Platt Amendment.
It was not enough for North American egoism the enjoyment of these enormous advantages snatched by force from its Cuban victims. It was necessary to snatch from the hands of the Cubans all the riches of their homeland so that this would be North American property. Thus the invaders obstructed by all means the consignment of an article in the Cuban Constitution that would prohibit foreigners from possessing real estate in the Republic. In that respect, Cubans and foreigners remained on an equal footing before the Constitution, but, given the disparity of economic force, between Cuba and the United States, it was to be expected that the invaders would overwhelm the natives. In ‘98, the sole interest that Washington had in Cuba was reduced to its strategic pretensions and to the acquisition of the Cuban goods. To arrive at those ends, the invaders were disposed to impose on Cuba the annexation, from whose calamity the Great Antille was saved by its legendary patriotism. It was proven once again that the empire is never exercised for sentimental reasons but to satisfy collective material egoisms of the invading nation or of the privileged class that governs its destinies. Under this enormous North American pressure, the most valuable wealth of Cuba has passed into North American hands. The commercial treaty between Cuba and the United States facilitated the process, which concedes a rebate of twenty percent in the tariff types of both nations to the importation proceeding from one to the other. But, as the dominant capital in Cuba was North American, the tariff bonus benefited almost exclusively the interests of the invader and increased its greed to acquire the lands, maritime fronts, communication routes and to dominate the Cuban banking.
The Cuban has been impoverishing rapidly, without distinction of classes. The number of wealthy families of the great Antille is reducing violently due to this demolishing invasion. The great North American ingenios try to import cheap laborers to lower the salary of the Cuban worker. The great Antille is found in a desperate economic situation. The development of the sugar industry in the United States and in the nations under its dominion like Filipinas and Puerto Rico which are victims of free cabotage, of benefit almost exclusive for the North American capital, has developed Yankee capitalist interests in competition with interests of the same nationality in Cuba. We have just witnessed the great tariff struggle that these encountered interests have fought in Washington during the discussion of the bill lately approved, on the tariff. The treaty of reciprocity that concedes a reciprocal bonus of twenty percent in the tariff types is still standing. But the tariff type on the sugar not produced under the dominion of its flag has been elevated to two dollars per quintal. With this protection that the new tariff offers them the Yankee capitalists within the North American tariff framework, have struck a harsh blow, to the capitalists of their same nationality dedicated to the same industry in Cuba. It will be difficult for Cuban sugar to maintain a position of benefits in the North American market, and as the continental Yankee production increases, stimulated by this very high tariff, and in the nations under North American military occupation like Filipinas and Puerto Rico, forcibly the entrance of this Cuban product will diminish.
The harsh shock between bands of Yankee egoism has been necessary, so that Cuba can reconquer the liberty to regulate its own economy as far as the sugar industry is concerned. We cannot say the same about tobacco, always necessary in the North American market for its superior quality, of the citrous fruits and of the products of vegetable garden, in demand during the winter in the United States. Always the invading capital will have incentives to continue in its advance, although a little cooled with the tariff policy in agricultural products that Washington has just initiated upon recently approving the new tariff.
The Yankee agriculturist demands that Chinese walls be established around the empire as high as those that today protect the North American manufactory industry. The call is strong to the Yankee capital so that it abstain from investing money in countries outside the tariff framework of the United States.
And although between Cuba and the invaders the treaty of reciprocity continues with a reciprocal bonus of twenty percent in tariff matters, the Yankee Congress can destroy the effects of this legal advantage consigned in the tariff, elevating the tariff type to an amount so high, that reduced from it twenty percent, the total to pay for the products of Cuban origin upon entering North American port, would be so elevated, that the merchandise could not compete with that produced within the Yankee tariff chart.
The effects of that agrarian policy will without doubt benefit Cuba because it will obligate the nationalization of the investments currently existing. Thus the wise patriotism of that Republic has understood it.
No one knows, however, the surprises that in economic matters the United States keeps against Cuba due to the privileges that the Platt Amendment concedes it.
The supposed North American protection of our sister Antille has brought as a consequence the enormous exploitation that overwhelms Cuban nationality. Nation “protected”, nation aggressed and exploited by the supposed protector.
DEFENSE OF THE PROTECTORATE FACING THE AGGRESSION OF THE TYRANT
The protectorate is an aggression in full peace against a defenseless nation. The independence of a nationality does not depend on its exclusive relations with the power that subjugates it. It is the result of the international equilibrium. When this favors the oppressor, the colonialism continues; when the international equilibrium is against the empire, it is obligated to its reconcentration for its own defense, and the retreat of its forces from the colony, leaves this one in liberty of action to organize the sovereign and independent State. In this international equilibrium, as far as the independence of the nationality is concerned, the unwavering will of the nation subjected to colonialism, to constitute itself in free sovereign and independent state, cost what it may, lives and properties, is decisive. For that reason, every nationality under exotic dominion, has to resort to its organization in all the orders, in the very presence of the invader, to give it the effective blow when the international situation presents itself difficult for the oppressor. In a word, the colony cannot stand idly by, without defining itself under the empire itself and without organizing itself, because it would run the risk of becoming spoils of war, from a colonialism to another colonialism. That apotegma has no exception in the history of the constitution of the nationalities. It recommends the independence, however, imposed by the will of the subjected nation and by the international forces that cooperated to that work, can remain at the mercy of the will of one or more of its presumed allies facing the previous empire. Such is the case of Cuba after the Spanish-American war. The desire of the United States to annex Cuba was explicit, but, they feared the Cuban determination to make its independence respected by means of a new war, if it were necessary, against the United States. The Yankees also feared the international complications that would have arisen if they had dared impose the annexation by force, as would have been necessary, facing the manifest Cuban hostility to its absorbing pretensions. It was easier for the invaders to resort to the protectorate. They were able to save thus a great part of their material egoisms without obligating the Cubans to a new uprising and without attracting upon them a bellicose attack of interested powers. Cuba understood then the struggle for its liberation from that “protection”. It began by destroying the annexationist sentiment within its frontiers. It is currently engaged in the reconstruction of the moral and racial unity of the nationality. Due to the noxious influence of the United States, the first republican government presided over by Estrada Palma, committed the grave error, of dividing Cuba into two social classes, blacks and whites.
Estrada Palma established the bases of that social schism when he decreed that all citizens who were not white would be excluded from the Cuban Artillery Corps.
We all know the racist division that exists in the United States in the very armed institutions. Here in Puerto Rico there exists a regiment of the North American army from which all the persons who are not white are excluded, and there exists an armed guard, badly called National and of Puerto Rico, in which there cannot be any officer that has African blood, although blacks, mulattos and mixed are still admitted as soldiers and classes.
This exclusion of the armed forces of a certain race, does not obey a clumsy prejudice. It is the preconceived plan to maintain the hegemony of one race over another. What happens in the internal order is repeated in the external order: to maintain colonialism it is required to maintain armed the empire that exercises it and disarmed and militarily disorganized the subjected nation; thus in the internal order, so that one race can dominate another, without any right, the dominating race, will take possession of the armed institutions, army, police and marine, and from these institutions the race or races condemned to a social, political, economic and cultural life of inferiority will be excluded, dressing some of its members with military uniform only in special corps that are a minority in the armed institutes and, in spite of that, in quality of enlisted soldiers or mere subordinates.
It is that of the political apotegma that the power is of the one that possesses the arms and knows how to brandish them to impose oneself.
We will treat the case of Puerto Rico in this order of things opportunely in our study of contemporary Homeland sociology.
Let us return to Cuba. This division in Cuba was completely suicidal. Eighty percent of the Cuban Liberating Army was composed of blacks, mulattos and mixed, including in their number its very high command, represented in the immense personality of Antonio Maceo. Only twenty percent could be estimated as white.
To exclude from the armed forces of the Republic the men that had constituted it and accustomed to the discipline of the arms and to the sacrifice of the very life for the homeland, was to place in advance the nation in complete defenselessness, and to create the most grave schism that can be established in a country: the racist schism.
We said that with the protectorate the United States established the bases for the annexation, and among them figured forcibly, the imposition in Cuba of the social division that exists in the United States. The frightful and barbaric picture prevailing in almost all the United States was reproduced in the sister Antille. Cuba had to pass through the shame of a racist war.
With the abatement of the annexationism in Cuba upon awakening the intellective conscience of the value of nationality, the program of the national social reconstruction has arisen, which is none other than that of the unification of all Cubans.
We had the privilege of being witnesses of the loving fraternization of the two most powerful groups currently of the Cuban intellectuality: the Athens Club of Habana, composed almost in its totality of very cultured men who are mulattos, blacks or mixed, and of the brilliant Minorista Group, almost integrated in its totality by white elements.
This grave problem posed frankly by us in the city of Cienfuegos, on the night of December seven of 1927, upon closing the soiree in homage to the martyrs of Cuban independence, anniversary of the death of Maceo, and at the invitation of the cultural society Minerva and of the authorities of that very important municipality, we were able to serve, for the love that we represented at that moment to the cause of Homeland Independence, as nucleus of the organization that would have to approach with courage, wisdom and patriotism, this grave problem that by itself alone was sufficient to give paralysis to all Cuban national activity.
In Habana we had the unmerited honor of a collective homage in the land of the apostle Martí, to which the most brilliant figures of contemporary Cuban intellectuality concurred, without distinction of race.
This perverse policy had taken the Cuban governments to prefer foreign elements, whenever these were white and to postpone the basic elements of the nationality for the sole fact of carrying African blood in their veins.
As neither a great nor a small homeland can exist with such a cancer in the entrails, the current Cuban nationalism, which forcibly is integral and cannot understand of anything other than national unity, founded on the principles of equality and fraternity of the ethnic elements that integrate it, is already engaged in this work of renovation to revive in living flesh, the ties of love that united in life Martí and Maceo and that still unites them in eternity.
Cuba forcibly became belligerent against Germany in the world war. It had to follow the course of its “protector”, the United States. Such is the fate of every protectorate when the empire faces powerful enemies.
The consequences of that participation can be fatal for the protectorate if the empire that maintains hegemony over it suffers a defeat. And if the victory smiles on the “protector”, the protectorate never takes anything beneficial for itself from that contention,
In the economic, Cuba had to make great sacrifices, greater in proportion to its wealth than those that the United States made. When the
North Americans imposed their exorbitant prices on their same allies to snatch from them the last peseta, they watched that Cuba would limit the price of one of the most necessary products, and that constitute the Cuban economic base, that is the sugar, to eight dollars per quintal. The gain that Cuba could have made if it had been free of protectorate, would have been fabulous. It is necessary to take into account, that, while the Yankees solicited for themselves and for the allies that privilege, nothing in compensation was offered to Cuba. The North American merchandise necessary for Cuban consumption arrived at exorbitant prices due to the great international demand that the war produced in the North American market. It is not to be forgotten that the European production for exportation had diminished enormously, remaining many nations of the New World, at the mercy of the exigencies of North American commerce in certain merchandises necessary for their consumption. Thus Cuba could not capitalize the value of its production during the bellicose crisis in spite of the fact that sugar and its other products were indispensable for the belligerents. For its sacrifice in the world war, however, Cuba found its defense against the North American empire. It ratified the treaty of Versailles when it had been repudiated by the Senate of the United States. It entered the League of Nations facing North American opposition. The international position of the great Antille was reinforced. Cuba struck a master blow in the Platt Amendment. Its interpretation could no longer be according to the caprice of the invaders. Our sister Antille, as member of the League of Nations, can currently move that powerful world institution, by its own right, if the United States pretended to injure its vital interests, beyond what the treaty that governs the relations between the two nations prescribes. Interested the nations that compose the great League in counteracting the North American hegemony over Cuba, they have not stinted Cuba the positions that could give it universal prestige. Cuba has corresponded to that confidence naming for its representation in Geneva and before the Court of The Hague learned men who, complying with the imposed duty, have served the cause of patriotism, already serving as judges or referees in delicate situations of world life, or presiding over the Assembly itself of the League of Nations. Prestige acquired is prestige widened. Thus Cuba, from the recognition of its greatness granted in Geneva, passed to be the favorite of its sisters of America so that Habana would be the seat of the Pan-American congresses. And greater would be currently its ascendancy in the New World if it were not for the errors of yancofilia that until the last hour the present chief executive of the Republic has been exhibiting.
The position acquired has served Cuba to rescue from the Yankee claws the Isle of Pines after a long struggle in which it was believed that the great Antille would lose over that precious Island the sovereignty to which it had the right.
Cuba has continued negotiating commercial treaties with different powers, for its own convenience, without fearing North American interference. The Yankee political opinion, not long ago, felt alarmed at the prospects of an international sugar consortium presided over by Cuba, which unfortunately has not been able to enter into force, due to the negative influence of Dutch interests. When the United States interpreted the postal treaty in a way that injured Cuban interests, the sister Republic did not hesitate to refuse to renew it, unless its legitimate economic interests to enjoy commercial reciprocity with the United States were taken into consideration. The new arrangement on postal parcels has just come into force, which allows placing through the mail, among other products, cigars manufactured in Cuba. The influence on the national economy of this new agreement has been felt immediately with the confidence restored in the affected industries. When the United States raised its tariff recently in the form that we have already analyzed and that removes from Cuba all the benefit it could derive from the reciprocal tariff bonus of twenty percent, the great Antille has initiated the program of the nationalization of its wealth. North American capital itself within its borders, for its own conservation, will have to follow the norms that ensure the economic and political solidity of the country where it has been formed. The selfishness of foreign capital and its imperialist ambitions diminish with the termination of free cabotage. Placing native exports in the same circumstances as exports of any other origin in the North American market, obliges Yankee capital, to contribute as has been said to the transformation of the Cuban economy. It is proved once more that to maintain the economic colony the political colonialism is required in any of its forms: either annexation by force or the protectorate. But when the protectorate returns to the rights of its political and international prerogatives it in fact terminates the imperial interference in the political order and consequently in the economic order. Not in vain, the present Cuban Executive has declared that the Platt Amendment is an old piece of junk. Of course, to arrive at that enviable position an international statute is required, that is, to have the recognition of the Free, Sovereign and Independent Republic.