…Cuban: the Club Atenas of La Habana, composed almost entirely of most cultivated men who are mulattoes, blacks or mestizos, and the brilliant Grupo Minorista, almost entirely composed of white elements. This grave problem having been posed frankly by us in the city of Cienfuegos, on the night of December seventh, 1927, upon closing the evening in homage to the martyrs of Cuban independence, anniversary of the death of Maceo, and at the invitation of the cultural society Minerva and the authorities of that most important municipality, we were able to serve, out of the love for the cause of the Independence of the Homeland that at that moment we represented, as the nucleus of the organization that would address with valor, wisdom and patriotism, this grave problem that by itself was sufficient to paralyze all Cuban national activity. In La Habana we had the undeserved honor of a collective homage in the land of the apostle Martí, which was attended by the most brilliant figures of contemporary Cuban intellectuality, without distinction of race. This perverse policy had led Cuban governments to prefer foreign elements, provided that they were white, and to postpone the basic elements of nationality for the sole reason of carrying African blood in their veins. As there cannot exist a Homeland, neither great nor small, with such a cancer in its entrails, current Cuban nationalism, which necessarily is integral and cannot understand anything other than national unity, founded on the principles of equality and fraternity of the ethnic elements that comprise it, is already engaged in this work of renovation to revive in living flesh, the bonds of love that united Martí and Maceo in life and that still unites them in eternity.42 Cuba necessarily became belligerent against Germany in the world war. It had to follow the course of its “protector”, Estados Unidos. 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 victory smiles on the “protector”, the protectorate never derives anything beneficial for itself from that contest. Economically, Cuba had to make great sacrifices, greater in proportion to its wealth than those made by Estados Unidos. When the North Americans imposed their exorbitant prices on their own allies to extract the last peseta from them, they ensured that Cuba limited the price of one of the most necessary products, and which constitute the Cuban economic base, that is, sugar, to eight dollars per quintal. The profit that Cuba could have made if it had been free from the protectorate would have been fabulous. It must be taken into account that, while the Yankees requested that privilege for themselves and for the allies, nothing in compensation was offered to Cuba. North American merchandise necessary for Cuban consumption reached exorbitant prices due to the great international demand that the war produced in the North American market. It should not be forgotten that European production for export had decreased enormously, leaving many nations of the New World at the mercy of the demands of North American commerce in certain merchandise necessary for their consumption. Thus Cuba could not capitalize on the value of its production during the war crisis, despite the fact that sugar and its other products were essential 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 Versalles when it had been repudiated by the Senate of Estados Unidos. It entered the League of Nations in the face of North American opposition. The international position of the great Antilla was reinforced. Cuba struck a master blow at the Platt Amendment. Its interpretation could no longer be according to the whim of the invaders. Our sister Antilla, as a member of the League of Nations, can currently move that powerful world institution, by its own right, if Estados Unidos were to attempt to harm its vital interests, beyond what is prescribed by the treaty that governs relations between the two nations. The nations that make up the great League, interested in counteracting North American hegemony over Cuba, have not spared it the positions that could give it universal prestige. Cuba has reciprocated that trust by appointing to its representation in Ginebra and before the Tribunal of La Haya learned men who, fulfilling the imposed duty, have served the cause of patriotism, either serving as judges or arbitrators in delicate situations of world life, or presiding over the Assembly itself of the League of Nations. Prestige acquired is prestige enlarged. Thus Cuba, from the recognition of its greatness granted in Ginebra, went on to be the favorite of its sisters of América for La Habana to be the seat of the Pan-American congresses. And greater would currently be its ascendancy in the New World if it were not for the errors of Yancophilia that until the last hour the present head of the Republic was exhibiting. The position acquired has served Cuba to rescue the Isla de Pinos from the Yankee clutches after a long struggle in which it was believed that the great Antilla would lose over that precious Isla the sovereignty to which it was entitled. Cuba has continued to negotiate trade treaties with different powers, for its own convenience, without fearing North American interference. North American 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 come into effect due to the negative influence of Dutch interests. When Estados Unidos interpreted the postal treaty in a way that harmed Cuban interests, the sister Republic did not hesitate to refuse to renew it, unless its legitimate economic interests were taken into consideration in order to enjoy commercial reciprocity with Estados Unidos. The new arrangement on postal packages has just come into effect, which allows cigars, elaborated in Cuba, among other products, to be placed through the mail. The influence on the national economy of this new agreement has been immediately felt with the confidence restored in the affected industries. As Estados Unidos recently raised its tariff in the manner we have already analyzed and which deprives Cuba of all the benefit that could result from the reciprocal tariff bonus of twenty percent, the great Antilla 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 rules that strengthen the economic and political solidity of the country where they have 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 proven once again that in order to maintain the economic colony, political colonialism is required in any of its forms: either annexation by force or the protectorate. But when the protectorate returns for the privileges of its political and international rights, it in fact ends 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 junk. Of course, to reach that enviable position, international statute is required, that is, to have the recognition of the Free, Sovereign and Independent Republic. 43 NATIONALIZATION OF FOREIGN WEALTH Free cabotage is only convenient for the super-industrialized nation. As long as that superiority of economic organization lasts, free trade is advocated. That superiority gives it dominion of the foreign market, which is reduced to the exportation of manufactured products and of a restricted number of raw materials super-abundant within the nation. The bulk of the raw materials necessary for factory life are necessarily imported, which are from all regions and climates, free of duty. The same is done with food products. Importation is limited to raw materials and food products, and to very rare manufactures that are consumed only by the wealthiest classes. Only that last group of elaborated products that constitute a luxury are taxed by the tariff. The rest of the importation that forms the great part of foreign products enters the country free of duty. Of course, this rule is not imposed out of kindness to foreign products, but because the importation of raw materials free of duty is convenient for the same factory interests, because that ensures its low cost, which represents a substantial profit. And when food products enter freely, the cost of living for the worker is lower and his salary can be reduced considerably without provoking his rebellion, in the form of strikes, or in any other more energetic mode of action against the capital that exploits him. When other nations organize equally in the industrial field, in the same factory specialties, surpassing them in certain important aspects, it obliges the nationality to vary its theory of free trade. Such is the case of Inglaterra. Super-industrialization in comparison with the other nations of the globe gave it great advantages. Its importation limited to raw materials, to food products, in the conditions that we have indicated, and to manufactured merchandise of exceptional factory quality, it was able to maintain until recently a great ascendancy in the foreign market with the enormous exportation of factory products and of the raw material super-abundant in its territory such as hard coal, which was replaceable not long ago, in the industry, by hydroelectric power and petroleum. Foreign manufacture has been immediately felt in the foreign consumer markets, thus diminishing the demand for English products. But that is not all, but that, in the same English market, many foreign manufactures have penetrated producing grave competition to the same British specialties. The inevitable result has been the present grave industrial economic crisis that Inglaterra is currently going through and that obliges it to radical changes in its free trade policy. The political and social repercussions of the current crisis has brought the Labor Party to power, without until now having found the adequate solutions to overcome the difficulties created fundamentally by international factory competition. Estados Unidos, due to the partial paralysis of European production, acquired great advantages in certain foreign markets. Mistaken North American economists believed that the commercial ascendancy of their country was due to the superiority of its economic organization. North American tariffs were always very high to protect native industry against external competition. But despite the high tariff rates, once the European war ended, foreign competition was felt within its own tariff borders and they began to lose the advantages they had in foreign markets. Therein lies the key to the misery in Estados Unidos among the workers. More than eight million are currently unemployed. In the city of Nueva York alone there are more than one million who cannot find work. They are prey to hunger, misery and disease. The central government, given the manifest impotence of all the municipalities, of the states, provinces, has had to intervene making a large disbursement, which has proven absolutely insufficient. The middle class that had risked itself in the stock market games was ruined by the sudden drop in values. And as happens in every country organized within the plutocratic system, that state of general misery benefits only a reduced number of interests that have hoarded the basic sources of wealth: real estate, communications, maritime fronts, industrial plants, mines, etc. Despite the official declarations that the Yancophile propaganda has maintained before the world, the North American worker has always been subject to the exploitation of these great interests, but his natural passivity had kept him tolerating the miserable and appalling life of the “slums”, that is, the urban neighborhoods such as those that exist in Nueva York where the human mass is crowded in buildings without electric light and which by their arrangement, in broad daylight, sunlight only enters the rooms facing the street and the rear of the apartments and the hallways and corridors have to be lit with gas day and night. Electric lighting is not installed because it costs more than gas lighting. In these very poor sanitary conditions, and taking into account the cold climate during the winter, these neighborhoods constitute centers of constant epidemics and all kinds of diseases. Tuberculosis there wreaks havoc. The great interests absolutely refuse to reform the sanitary conditions that cause the death of thousands and thousands annually and no official power can alter that situation. To appease popular resentments, since almost two thirds of the population of the city of Nueva York lives in these conditions, North American philanthropy makes the simulations that we all know for the public welfare, but the same “philanthropists” who exploit that people, take care to ensure that the conditions described do not change. And that policy is maintained, because it is the necessary rule to reduce the working class to impotence in order to impose on them conditions of life and salary that make them submissive and docile to the management of the great interests. This is the reliable picture of North American urban life that every traveler not dedicated to frivolity but interested in fundamental studies of collective life can observe. In each North American city there exists a true frontier of misery. Juxtaposed are the zones of the wealthy and the unhappy. When you go to Nueva York, cross eastward the Quinta Avenida, seat of opulence, to enter the zone of hunger, disease, crime and death where necessarily more than seventy percent of the population of the great metropolis lives. The working class passivity in the face of this enormous crisis of unemployment produced, as we have said, by international competition and which will be accentuated with the tariff reprisals that the other nations are imposing on Estados Unidos in response to its latest tariff, seems to have reached its end. Strong underground currents of social revolution are felt and the nation that was believed to be so strong in material terms we see as poor as any other without being able to give bread, or shelter, or work to so many millions of its citizens. The case of Inglaterra and of Estados Unidos has demonstrated that free trade is not possible without grave prejudice to the national economy and without endangering the social and political structure of the nation itself. If this is the situation that is created for these powers despite the enormity of their natural resources and their financial organization, we would like to know how a person who has meditated a little on these problems can believe for a single moment that free cabotage can benefit a nation subject to foreign empire, completely tied, and without political powers of any nature, subjected to an absolutely irresponsible regime, without it being possible to compare its resources with those of the occupying nation, can survive economically and in the social and political within the insurmountable tariff wall of the occupying empire. Such is the case of Puerto Rico in the face of Estados Unidos. We have demonstrated how free cabotage does is foment the greed of North American capital towards our natural wealth, and how a deliberate system directed by the government of Washington has been displacing the natives in the possession of their goods and replacing them with invading interests. We have also seen that the struggle for political autonomy or for absolute Independence has always been based on economic Independence, which is not possible without tariff Independence and the termination of free cabotage. When a nation faces another, both enjoying their political Independence, the dominant capital in each of them that wishes to penetrate the other has to nationalize itself where it resides. We have presented the case of Cuba. We will study the current economic situation of Estados Unidos that obliges its invading plutocracy to nationalize itself in competing countries of Norte América and how the same North American capitals, watching only for their own interests and caring very little about the well-being of their own fellow citizens, adapt themselves to the policy of rival nations when these have the political power sufficient to liquidate them within their borders if they do not constitute themselves as guardians of their own economic, political and social well-being.⁴⁴ In 1914 Estados Unidos was still a tributary nation. Great interests had to be paid to foreign capital invested within its borders, especially to French, English and German nationals. The European war offered the North Americans the opportunity to nationalize the foreign wealth that dominated them. It was not possible for the allies to meet the payments for Yankee merchandise necessary for the fight against the German Empire and their values quickly passed into North American banking hands. This liquidation ended in the conversion of Estados Unidos from a debtor nation into a creditor nation of all the allied powers for a sum that does not fall below eleven billion dollars. Although it may seem paradoxical, the incommunication of Alemania with the exterior, due to the Allied blockade, defended its external interests, because not being able to make purchases it did not have to make payments and the liquidation of its foreign interests had to be carried out by violence. Thus is explained the declaration of war of several nations against Alemania, and also the confiscatory law of German goods of the Congress of Estados Unidos that subjected to public auction all German interests, within its borders. To determine its amount, it suffices to say, that subjected to such unfavorable conditions, they yielded a total asset of more than two billion dollars, without taking into account the value of its merchant fleet confiscated as war prize. When the armistice was filmed, Estados Unidos had remained creditor of all of Europa and in an ascending position, estimated definitely predominant by mistaken economists. Hence arose the illusion of continuous North American prosperity. The supposed miracle of high salaries and great production. For their own defense, the debtor nations immediately began to reconquer their foreign market giving battle to North American exportation. At the same time they restricted and continue to restrict the importation of North American products. The nations that were neutral during the war, like España, had to adopt the same tactics of the North American allies converted into economic tributaries of Estados Unidos. The concerted effort by the strongest nations against the brief economic hegemony of Estados Unidos was immediately felt in the North American economy, which has ended in the present painful disaster that the Yankee nation is currently going through, without it being possible to predict at these hours the possibility of a nearby improvement in its economic tragedy. North American capital, upon reaching its apogee, and upon encountering tariff barriers restrictive of North American importation, placed itself directly within the borders of the competing Estados Unidos, investing large sums of money in industrial plants. In the Senate of Estados Unidos, when currently studying the grave crisis of unemployment in its country, they have realized that this situation depends in considerable part on the expansion of their own capital. It is the own North American factories installed in foreign territory protected by nationalist tariffs that make impossible the entry within those territories of North American products. And the chain is easy to form: decrease in North American exportation, closure of factories, workers without employment by millions, social unrest in the face of misery and hunger, and the fear of revolution. We have already pointed out the ruin of the North American middle class due to stock market speculations. With the decline in values, a national liquidation has been made in Estados Unidos of the weakest capitalists, increasing in bulk the proletarian class, and restricting the number of the plutocracy concentrating capital in a dangerous form for social equilibrium. Foreign capitalism has been able to re-enter within North American borders due to that same decline. We have read with great interest the new penetration of English capital especially in the oil industry, a significant fact, both from an economic and political-international point of view. This situation would not have been possible to impose on Estados Unidos, if its competitors great and small had not had political independence. When one enjoys full sovereignty and knows how to exercise the powers that that privileged situation grants, foreign capital, if it wants to continue within the national borders, has to march in unison with the national interests, even if these are in conflict with the nationality of its own origin. Such is the summary of the situation that we have just analyzed. Can Puerto Rico nationalize foreign wealth currently? Impossible. We will explain. 45 The nation cannot exist without the possession of all its material wealth. Agriculture, industry, commerce, communications, franchises and every form of wealth must be in native hands in order to ensure the life of the nationality. Insurance companies, banking institutions, and every organism dedicated to the mobilization of wealth, it is necessary that they belong to national interests. If to acquire economic independence, within colonialism, it is necessary to impose political independence, by arms, if it were necessary, when the nation enjoys its full sovereignty, to guarantee its existence as an independent state, it has to nationalize its wealth and not allow foreign elements to take possession of it. Modern life, despite the international economic relations has not been able to fundamentally alter this dogma that guarantees the very existence of the nationality. Neither commercial exchange nor the ebb and flow of emigrations have been able to impose a different criterion on the leading statesmen of free nations or those subjected to empires. When the nation has little population and great territorial extension and numerous material riches, it is natural that it stimulate foreign immigration. Foreign men or capitalists may come. The possession of real estate, the granting of franchises of any nature, is always conditioned, when it is a foreigner who is concerned, that he, before receiving such right, either become a native citizen previously, or formulate the declarations of rigor before a competent court that as soon as he meets the residency requirements, he will immediately renounce his citizenship of origin. When these privileges are granted to legal or natural foreign persons, because the national interests so demand it, the conditions are always set, that the concession, within a fixed term, necessarily returns to native hands. This attachment to the material interests of the nationality is imposed by the very need for the physical existence of its citizens. The principle is unalterable. It is indisputable. The very life of the country so demands it. Of course, for the comprehension of this dogma of political economy the comprehension of what the nationality is is required. It is not only the ethnic, cultural and religious unity of human society, but also the community of its material interests over a determined territory, in which its own children are lords and masters. When the nationality becomes invading, it denies this right to the inhabitants of the country that it occupies by force within its theory of conquest. Its political expansion carries as its engine its economic expansion, that is, to increase the wealth in the hands of its own citizens and thus be able to broaden the material base of its existence as a power. Conversely, the nationality attacked, has to immediately establish the defense of its material interests, which is the only thing that is sought to acquire with the military and naval conquest of the empires. Invasions for reasons of disinterest have never existed in human history. When the nationality feels powerful acquires the pretensions of hegemony, first over its immediate neighbors, then over the continent where it is located, and finally, to top off its madness, it intends to dominate the world. The acquisition of the material goods of the countries within reach of its military power seems to it, not just a convenience, but an imperative necessity. Without this dominion, the existence of the empire is believed impossible. Of course, every empire founded on force as the only justification must fall into these absurdities which ultimately cost it its own existence. Restrictions against foreigners in the acquisition of real estate and vital franchises are imposed to prevent them from serving as a bridge within the nationality to the invasion of the empire they represent. In our Iberian América, where after the war of independence, the Madre Patria was no longer considered as an empire but as the source of the very existence of our nationalities, these limitations were not imposed on its subjects. But the principle remained standing. There was always the certainty that the Spanish Colonia would become an integral part of the same nationality. The example led some of our republics to make identical concessions to other citizens of non-Iberian origin. Experience has shown that these are not assimilable. They appear gregarious, entrenched, aggressive and absorbent, and have not hesitated to collaborate with their respective governments in endangering the very existence of the republic. Such is the harsh continental experience received from the conduct of these elements, especially from the North American colonies. The history of the Hispanoamerican War should already be known to all. At the end of the nineteenth century, North American capital had already left its borders. It took seat in Cuba. It interested its government in the acquisition of the Antillas, not only for strategic purposes exclusively but for the enormous wealth contained in the precious archipelago. The war was forged. Puerto Rico fell under the North American empire. The first thing the invader did was to carefully examine with its experts our material, agricultural, mining, industrial, commercial and banking wealth. It seized everything immediately. Somewhat pitied by our defenseless condition, they approved a joint resolution in their Congress prohibiting any corporation dedicated to agriculture from owning more than five hundred acres. But this consideration soon ceased to concern them, and in thirty-two years they have monopolized more than eighty percent of the real estate wealth of the entire country. The rest will also be theirs shortly if a collective resistance is not interposed to their advance. The same has happened with the other sources of wealth: commerce, banks, industries, communications, etc. Before the illusion that the North American flag was a metallic symbol, the Puerto Ricans prepared to give the invaders every facility to acquire that enormous economic power within our country. They forgot that in ‘98 we were owners of our own wealth. It was almost totally in our hands. That was the basis of the old collective happiness that has been extinguished. An aggressive policy was necessary in the face of this penetration to offer it all possible resistance. The Filipinos, who have gone through our own experience, established the norm that we abandoned. And since they were militarily defenseless against the yanquis, they resisted lending them any cooperation in the economic field. Not long ago, a large yanqui automotive company attempted to acquire large portions of land to plant rubber. Before formulating their petition to the Philippine Legislative Assembly, they spread their vulgar propaganda that they were going to save the Filipinos, promote their well-being, enrich them. But the Filipinos, who are neither traitors nor fools, refused the pretensions of this octopus. And Quezón, the noble Tagalo patrician, ended the illusion of the need to give entrance to the invading capital with these lapidary words: “Every North American dollar that is invested in Filipinas is a nail that is hammered onto the coffin of Independence.” Our directors, improvident, abandoned, unaware of the Homeland responsibility, and some of them true traitors, sowed everywhere the false theory of cooperation with the invading capital, a policy that has led us to total ruin. We cannot cross our arms before this tragedy. The country has to reconquer its material goods. Neither the United States nor its citizens have the right to dispossess the Puerto Ricans of the native wealth. This is ours, and if we have been dispossessed of it, it is our right and our duty to reconquer it immediately. We will analyze the uselessness of the present political regime to reach that saving purpose. 46 From the very moment of the North American invasion, the legal bases were laid for our collective dispossession. In the Foraker Act, a decree of the United States Congress, by which it was intended to govern the destinies of this nationality until the year 1917, a political body called El Pueblo de Puerto Rico was recognized, integrated by natives of own citizenship and North Americans. The pretension of assimilating the resident North Americans to our political body carried with it the intention of granting them, not only the equality of rights to acquire all kinds of goods in our country, but also, to recognize them the privilege to become totally owners of everything of value existing. This provision was interpreted by the annexationists as a desire of good faith on the part of the North American government to make us a federal sub-division called Estado. For this, apparently, the bases of juridical equality between the invaders and the citizens of Puerto Rico were laid. And we have said apparently, because in reality what happened was to grant the North Americans the privilege of dominating everything. There would be reciprocity if the administrative machinery had not been dominated as until now it has been by the government of Estados Unidos, which retains all legislative, executive and judicial powers, as always happens in an irresponsible government like the one that exists in Puerto Rico. The North American residents and the non-residents, through legal persons, corporations, have been systematically privileged so that they could acquire at our expense all our goods and definitively displace us in the possession of the national riches. The case is not extraordinary. It is the repetition of the vulgarity that marks the colonial experience. The monopoly of political power is to establish the monopoly of economic power. There would have been equality between the invaders and us, if Estados Unidos had granted us the monopoly of political power in one of its “estados”, province, where we could have, by means of that power, displaced the North Americans residing in the possession of all kinds of goods. And for the equality to be perfect, the province ceded for that purpose would have had to be as rich as our country. Where political powers do not exist, as happens within the colonialism that prevails here, the nationalization of foreign wealth is not possible, because for this it is necessary to enjoy sovereignty in the strict sense of the term: legislative, executive and judicial. The laws that favor native interests and prohibit the entry of invading interests or hinder the permanence of already established foreign interests are required; the Executive has to dedicate itself to the strict fulfillment of these laws with the patriotic zeal that informs them, surrounding itself with personnel willing to make the rights of the country respected; and finally, the courts have to interpret these legal provisions with that spirit of national conservation and cannot open a breach in any sentence that favors the continuation of invading interests or greater penetration of those already established. Only the independent Republic can solve these problems. The unconditional ones who pretend to deny the existing colonialism do not dare to give any explanation to the total dispossession that the people of Puerto Rico has suffered from their wealth during this North American military occupation that still lasts. They are protected to justify that unheard-of outrage, not in any legal principle, but in an economic fatalism, which, according to them, obliges weak nationalities to deliver their material goods to the power that submits them by force. As soon as a man takes refuge in fatalism it is because he has stopped thinking. Any student of elementary economics knows that there are powerful nations that have small States within their borders, which, enjoying their political independence, are formidable competitors in the economic struggle. It is enough to glance at the European situation. Bélgica, Holanda, Dinamarca, limiting ourselves to citing only three of the many small nations of Europa, are economic rivals of the great powers such as Francia, Inglaterra and Alemania. The secret is their political independence. At the last hour, it has been wanted to deny the colonialism imposed on our country, alleging that, having the Congress of Estados Unidos imposed its citizenship on the Puerto Ricans, by that mere fact it cannot be said that colonialism exists here. Let us point out that this argument implicitly admits the existence of yanqui colonialism from the date of the invasion in 1898 until the year 1917, when it was intended to impose North American citizenship collectively on the Puerto Ricans. The unconditional ones admit that we have been victims of a yanqui colonialism for at least nineteen years! Of course, we do not admit the validity of that imposition of citizenship because Puerto Rico is not obliged by the Treaty of París signed between España and Estados Unidos, and necessarily, neither does any act subsequent to said treaty, carried here by the invader, oblige our nationality, and much less, a pretended law that imposing their citizenship on us has the audacity to deny us our natural citizenship and our national personality. Already a North American resident in Puerto Rico, Mr. Walter Mck Jones has publicly declared the reasons that the government of Estados Unidos had to approve that citizenship law. Reasons of war. It was the year 1917. Alemania was still a very respectable empire. Until that date, as we were not citizens of Estados Unidos, our personality was formally recognized by the same invader and the military occupation was maintained with all its rigorous legal formality. Although during those first nineteen years of military occupation the invaders dedicated themselves to our economic dispossession, colonialism had not been formalized in terms of natural persons. The empire extends by granting its citizenship to individuals and denying recognition to the nationality that they form. And the empire contracts when the recognition of the nation invaded by it is imposed and when the citizenship that it extended to the natives of the nation that it was oppressing is annulled by that same recognition. The Jamaiquinos are English subjects but Jamaica is a British colony, a sugar factory. We choose the case of Jamaica because it has a larger territorial area than ours and there prevails the same political and economic regime existing among us. It is the mirror in which we can look at ourselves. There are administrative and legislative bodies there that are strictly agents of the empire. Exactly happens among us. But there is no recognition of the Jamaiquina nationality. The extension of citizenship by an empire to the natives of a nation invaded by it is with the deliberate purpose of atomizing its collective resistance. Thus the nationality is formally dissolved. The empire instead of having in front of it a constituted country with governmental organisms exclusively responsible to the governed, and that can offer resistance to its policy, has a mass of its “citizens”, willing to cooperate with its policy to destroy the nationality that those same natives constitute. Lacking collective personality, these “citizens” can never make a claim to the empire that is not individual, and we already know that the individual facing the empire is absolutely impotent. Imperial citizenship has always been attractive to some of the natives of the invaded country, because of the political apothegm that says: that men are not so interested in freedom as in being part of a victorious army, even if they are slaves in that same army. Such is the history of all past and contemporary empires. Its expansion is due to the atomization of the nationalities that it occupies militarily by granting its imperial citizenship to the natives; and its destruction is forced when the natives repudiate that imperial citizenship and return for the fueros of their natural citizenship, which is not valid without establishing the political independence of the nationality that they form. Such is the experience of Puerto Rico under the empire of Estados Unidos. This colonialism that has devastated all our values. 47 Imperial citizenship is imposed on the natives of a subjected nation, only with the purpose of dissolving the nationality victim of the force and to consolidate the military regime to which it is subjected. After the Jones Act was approved by the Congress of Estados Unidos that consigned the powers of the territorial legislature over the management of the wealth and its cultural and political development, it had to favor the possession of goods in the hands of bona fide residents, and the territorial legislature shows a uniform policy of making burdensome the possession of goods in the power of the non-domiciled. This norm was forced upon them to defend themselves against their own North American fellow citizens residing outside the territory, even though they pretended to acquire goods, whether as natural persons or through corporate organizations. Not being able to flatly prohibit this acquisition of goods by non-residents, the initiative was limited to lightening the contributory burden for residents. The system developed eventually produced the desired effects.
That is the struggle of the North Americans against their own continental brothers.
The North American Congress had, in each continental territory, by virtue of the constitution of their country, the legislative rights that it here pretends to exercise by force. As the territorial initiative implied national promotion, and as the resident possessors were their own fellow citizens, Congress stimulated that initiative while it required great heroism to populate the territories. The territorial wealth having been created, the force of the centralist economic powers arose in the imperial Congress, which from Wall Street and the great financial centers of the East, pretended to exploit their own fellow citizens who lived under an irresponsible territorial regime at the mercy of the central powers.
The struggle was established between the imperial octopuses who wanted to dominate Congress and the territories subject to the will of that same Congress. The territorial population realized that to partially exit those absorbing powers, it had to resort to converting itself into a national province, “state.” The process required violence as a necessity of defense. No one voluntarily parts with a monopoly.
And for illustration, let us use the case of the territory of Arkansas. The territorial legislature asked the national Congress for the approval of an “Enabling Act,” that is, a law that would allow it to hold the constituent convention to transform the territory into a province, “state.” The petition was denied by Congress.
The territorial powers by their own will, held the constituent convention for that purpose and elected their representatives and senators to the national Congress. They appealed to violence against all federal authority within the territory that did not want to recognize the territorial will.
Faced with the political crisis posed, Congress, then, had to facilitate the proceedings for the recognition of Arkansas as a province “state.”
This has been the bitter struggle of brother against brother, of the same nationality. Those who believe they are going to achieve the conversion of Puerto Rico into a North American province, “state,” by means of flattery and submission, are very mistaken. To achieve that aim, although suicidal, the defenders of statehood have to dedicate themselves from now on in the most bitter and violent form to combating all North American interests established in Puerto Rico. Those interests are not going to renounce their current privileged condition and will not allow it to be endangered by any political change. All cooperation with them reinforces their present monopoly and stabilizes the irresponsible regime that prevails.
All suppression of their influence destroys their interest in the country and facilitates, of course, the necessary political changes. When the continental territory passed to province “state,” it found that the territorial will had been mocked by new financial combinations of the interests that dominate that country. We will opportunely analyze this aspect of Yankee internal imperialism.
Although for the ends of our exploitation, they are flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, the reality is another, we are enemies confronted with them with all the disadvantages that the disparity of forces implies in the present.
As there was nothing to promote here, and they, the invaders, found a made nation, much more advanced than the great majority of their provinces “states” and comparable favorably with any of their most advanced “states,” the colonial legislative initiative was not stimulated to promote native wealth, but rather the process of native dispossession was violently initiated.
Admitted that no legislative power exists within that colonial regime, we have been asked if the body that legislates for Puerto Rico, that is, the Congress of the United States, could not be moved to decree the necessary laws so that the Puerto Ricans recover the goods that have passed to the invaders. It has been indicated that in that Congress we have a representation established by its own will, that is, a resident commissioner, who could influence its deliberations.
In the first place, it is puerile to assume that this North American Congress, which from the date of the invasion until now has imposed its legislative will in our country, organizing the system of displacement of the native by the invader, and consolidating the prevailing regime of exploitation, has any interest in destroying its own work with which the North American nation has enriched itself.
The Congress of the United States has a definitive and preconceived intention: to maintain the current regime for the exclusive benefit of the invaders.
When our country is asleep, the Yankee Congress does not worry. The exploiting regime then functions marvelously. Substantial benefits are derived by North American industry and commerce from this market of ours that occupies sixth place in the international commercial relations of the United States, amounting to the great sum of two hundred million dollars annually. A commercial monopoly that it retains without any concern, because no international competition is possible due to the tariff wall.
Very different is the situation of North American commerce and industry in any other market in the world. There it encounters bitter international competition. The native, as seller or as buyer, has markets to choose from and advantageous conditions must be offered to secure a commercial operation with him. To understand this, it is necessary to visit any South American country where international competition is bitter and systematic.
The Congress of the United States is not going to alter a state of affairs that it has itself created for the exclusive benefit of imperial power. The presence of the resident commissioner of Puerto Rico in the lower Chamber of that Congress has in no way influenced to alter these facts. In the first place, the commissioner has no representative power in the Congress of the United States because he cannot vote on any question before that body. He cannot vote on any question affecting Puerto Rico itself. There is no legislative representation when one cannot intervene in legislation with the vote.
But it is said that he has voice. It is good that our country know that for its commissioner to be able to address the North American House of Representatives, he needs to previously acquire the unanimous consent of all the representatives. And this consent is granted when it is convenient exclusively to the interests of the United States, as is natural. The rule has been established for that. And the consent is granted for a period of time that rarely reaches FIFTEEN MINUTES.
For those reasons, no commissioner has been in a position to be able to address at its core the problem of his Homeland before that representative body of the North American empire.
He has been permitted to speak ten or twelve minutes about matters of lesser importance, such as those that have recently been presented before Congress, such as the extension of the vocational instruction law, which serve only to disorient our country.
Of course, he is permitted to speak to promote any legislation that is convenient to the interests of the United States. Currently being considered in petit comité is a bill for Puerto Rico to have two resident commissioners. Neither of the two will have a vote and will be in the same conditions, as regards the use of the floor, as if there were only one Commissioner. The intent is to increase the number of deaf-mutes that represent Puerto Rico.
This mockery of our right has not been considered in its proper form. The intent is to mock once more the public opinion of the country as it has been mocked by the fictitious representation of a single commissioner in accordance with the current law.
The measure has been presented as a liberal act. Everything is a farce. There would be liberality if the present commissioner were given voice and vote in the Congress of the United States on an equal footing with his supposed representative colleagues. There would be liberality if it were proposed to elect two commissioners with voice and vote, with the same privileges and rights of their companions. Any Yankee congressman has the imperial power to vote and legislate on any question affecting Puerto Rico against the will of the Puerto Rican nation. This outrage against our collective right has not been attacked with sufficient bitterness yet. But how is the Congress of the United States going to allow the sacrilege, according to its own opinion, of a single Puerto Rican being able to have a vote or voice in any matter affecting the United States even though it directly attacks his own country, Puerto Rico? Such is the one-way rule of every empire. Our nation is indignant at this new mockery of its most sacred rights. That same bill, it has been said, provides that the two commissioners will be appointed by the governor of the colony. It is preferable that it be so. Our people should not continue to go through the shame of displaying a fictitious representation that has served only to disorient them. The invading government needs to dominate in a more direct way the selection of the commissioner. It needs to transfer to the capitol itself one more henchman, well chosen and selected, who distracts the North American representatives in their leisure hours, with praises to his regime in Puerto Rico. Let the country see that this chain of restrictions and centralization of power in the hands of the colonial governor obeys a definitive plan. Puerto Rico will never have under the North American empire a responsible government. The empire wants “representatives” of ours who will second it in its demolishing work; “native representatives” who will contribute to the demoralization of our youth subjected to a regime of public charity for their feeding when their parents are condemned to die of hunger for lack of opportunity to earn a living, within a regime that promotes unemployment to cheapen labor. All this is cynical, because, while through those demoralizing measures the gratitude of our generous people is intended to be provoked, the exploiting latifundiary regime remains untouched, and the monopolization of all our riches which constitutes the fundamental causes of this tragedy.