INTERVIEW WITH LCDO. PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS
The manifesto of Messrs. Barceló and Tous Soto is impressive, and for that reason requires a cold and equanimous analysis.
The proposition to arrive at a definitive understanding on the political basis upon which the policy of the Homeland should revolve is a cause for satisfaction for the country. If this is self-government, as is said in the Manifesto, it will surely be welcomed among all liberal elements of Puerto Rico. A government responsible only to us is imperative. This is a truth that we have been discussing for some time, but an agreement had not yet been reached among people with sufficient authority in the electorate. It seems incredible that until now there has not been that unanimous consensus. The major obstacle thus far to reaching that extreme was the policy of intransigent unconditionalism of the Republican party, which, advocating statehood, refused to preach to its people that they demand the rights they have to govern themselves. This policy evidenced a lack of understanding of what statehood is, which is only government by and with the consent of the governed. And although statehood limited the personality of our country in essential extremes for its existence as a defined people in the civilized world, it required, in order to achieve it, that our people become accustomed to exercising all rights in Puerto Rico. The idea of statehood has been relegated to the inconceivable remote, the official declarations, such as those of Mr. Tous Soto, have been clear and definitive. Within the program proposed, the complete development of our political personality is in no way limited, and within it we can arrive at complete sovereignty, to which we have an indisputable right. The declarations regarding the preservation of our language, of our culture, of our material interests, and of our distinctive civilization are not empty. Mr. Tous Soto has made a great sacrifice to arrive at this conviction that he frankly and honestly puts before his compatriots, unconcerned about the personal results, favorable or unfavorable to him. We admire the patriotic gesture.
We must distinguish the indisputable constitution of the country from the means to realize what that constitution determines. I understand that our future constitution establishes a government responsible to us in certain important extremes. To develop the aspirations that this Constitution entails, the depreciation of none of the existing parties is required. And this would be convenient because then there could be greater harmony among all. It seems clear to me that the proposition of Messrs. Tous Soto and Barceló that the Unionist and Republican Parties reach a partisan understanding between themselves, or dissolve to form a new party, is not feasible and is out of place in Puerto Rico. I fear that Mr. Tous Soto is alone within his party in that important extreme. His Party and the Socialist Party, having been allies of adversity until now, feel an affinity between themselves of such a nature that distances them as a group from the Unionist Party. The immediate effect of the declarations made in the Manifesto will be to precipitate the General Ligao [Coalition] between the Republicans and Socialists, despite the official hostility that the coalition would encounter. There is no doubt that in the United States there is currently no room for tolerance towards socialist parties or coalitions with socialist parties. The Unionist party is then presented with a situation that requires immense internal organization to prepare for the electoral struggle that will be extremely passionate.
The moment is one of expectation, especially for the socialists who have been disauthorized as a political party in the manifesto. This has been the cause of protests among all socialists. We sincerely believe that it would have had a better effect to invite them as well to a general understanding since they are a party constituted in Puerto Rico representing living forces in the country.
Our duty is clear, whatever the result of the assemblies that the militant parties hold, we will be within the liberals defending each and every one of the rights of our people to enjoy their integral civilization without restrictions that arise from their will.
PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS
EL LCDO. ALBIZU CAMPOS RESPONDING TO THE IDEA OF MR. BARCELO SUBMITS TO THE CONSIDERATION OF THE COUNTRY A NEW PLAN FOR THE FORMATION OF THE PUERTO RICAN ALLIANCE
Ponce, Puerto Rico April 24, 1924
Hon. Antonio R. Barceló, President of the Senate San Juan, Puerto Rico
Very distinguished friend:
Throwing stones at our compatriots is foolish. I applaud the invitation that “La Democracia” makes to all Puerto Ricans to suggest the necessary ideas to carry out the beautiful idea of uniting us all in the Homeland. That invitation is inspired by good faith and by the highest patriotism. Responding to it and in fulfillment of a civic duty, I allow myself to offer the following plan: First: Formally invite the Socialist Party to be part of the Puerto Rican Alliance. The reasons for not doing so presented in the alliance project between the Unionist and Republican Parties do not seem sufficient to me. Not doing so would be committing a preterition against a legally constituted Party, represented in our Legislature, and signatory of the Joint Resolution, and whose representatives went to Washington and worked as members of the Joint Commission to obtain the rights that were demanded in said resolution. This preterition will be capital, in the hands of the enemies of a good faith understanding among all Puerto Ricans and will bring down the noble end that is pursued, and instead of consolidating the Homeland in a beautiful unity, deeper divisions will arise to the detriment of the country.
Second: Platform. A. Economic Part
- Return our lands to Puerto Rican hands.
- Industrialization of the country.
- Develop maritime and commercial life to make Puerto Rico an essentially maritime country as its island condition indicates.
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Raise the standard of living of our workers. B. Cultural Part.
- Promote the study of mechanical arts and physical and natural sciences.
- Restore our culture, guiding youth towards the sources of our civilization. C. Political Part. (a) Transitory Regime.
- Elective Governor without impediments of any kind.
- Abolition of the Federal Court to unify our judicial system.
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Creation of a Supreme Court with final jurisdiction in all cases except those involving the interpretation of American constitutional law and public international law. (b) Definition of Status.
- Formal commitment between all current parties for our Legislature to approve a Joint Resolution requesting the United States Congress to convene the people of Puerto Rico to a constituent convention. D. Administrative Part.
- Selection of the best men for positions, applying the Civil Service Law with absolute impartiality.
- Creation of the judicial career, selecting for it men by rigorous position. To achieve this, it will be necessary to raise the salaries of judges and for higher positions to be filled by the promotion of those already appointed, and for these to occupy their positions as long as they demonstrate good conduct in them. This measure will be effective in sanitizing the collective environment.
- Preponderance in the insular administration of bona fide elements residing outside the capital to force it to concentrate its attention on the general interests of the country. Third: Procedure. A. Creation of mixed local boards representing the current parties in the proportion determined by the assemblies that said parties are to hold. B. Candidacies for local boards must be endorsed by a certain number of electors and these will be submitted to primaries in each municipality. C. Each local board will designate two representatives from its midst, who with the representatives designated by the local boards of the district, will constitute the district board. D. In general primaries, in each district, from three candidacies that the district board will submit to the electorate, three representatives, bonafide residents, will be elected for each of them, and these will constitute the Central Board of the Puerto Rican Alliance. This will have the power to enforce the plan approved by the assemblies of the current parties. To be free from official influence, it will have its seat in Ponce or in any district other than San Juan. E. Municipal candidates and candidates for the Chamber will be selected in primaries of candidacies submitted to the electorate by the Local Board or by a certain number of electors. The number of candidacies that the Local Board must submit to the electorate will be three. F. In primaries in each district of the candidacies that the District Board submits to the electorate, or a certain number of electors, the senators for said district will be selected. The District Board will submit three candidacies to the electorate. G. In general primaries throughout the country, candidates for senators and representatives will be chosen by accumulation and candidates for insular elective positions, from three candidacies that the Central Board will submit to the electorate, provided that the Senatorial District of San Juan may not have more than one senator or representative by accumulation. H. Change of residence invalidates the right to represent the city that granted it, whether this is a Local Board, a District Board, Municipality, representative District or Senatorial District. I. The Central Board with a representative designated ad hoc by each District Board, will constitute the Board that will recommend to the executive the candidates that it will select for insular administrative positions. Fourth: distribution of power.
This will be done on the basis of proportional representation according to the result of the 1920 elections. The general sanitation has to start with the decentralization of representation. The progress of the country will be uniform and rapid. This is a patriotic understanding and requires new orientations that emanate from good faith and from the sacrifice of prejudices and vested interests. We can all well dispense with current names, since there are no reasons for great pride for anyone when the partisan struggle of the last 25 years has reduced us to pariahs in our Homeland. You and Mr. Tous Soto have broken the collective inertia. The movement begins, and although we do not constitute a large people in territory or population, we can be great in material wealth, in art and sciences, and be in the vanguard of civilization. Please accept this humble effort as proof of the appreciation that motivates the beautiful idea of rebuilding our Homeland. With all my consideration.
Your friend and S.S., P. ALBIZU CAMPOS.
IN PUERTO RICO A PLAN IS PROPOSED FOR THE ANNEXATION OF THAT COUNTRY’ TOGETHER WITH CUBA AND HAITI TO THE UNITED STATES”
A PUERTO RICAN ALSO PROTESTS
In addition to this vibrant and magnificent protest of the Cuban Consul, who has known how to come to the defense of our dignity, a distinguished Puerto Rican, Mr. P. Albizu Campos, replied to Mr. Tous’ manifesto with noble virility. “Convinced that Mr. Tous-says Mr. Albizu Campos- that Americans do not esteem us as equals despite citizenship, but always eager to see us tied to the Yankee imperial chariot, advises our de facto acceptance and contrary to law and to the effect maintains a project of amendment to the Constitution, to admit Puerto Rico as a “state” with representation but without a vote in Congress, except in its own affairs.
Such an amendment would well reflect the American attitude, but it is not moved by an ingenuity that allows it to unmask its hypocrisy. Even if the amendment were feasible, it is so humiliating that we accept a position of inequality, that that is enough to reject it outright.
The most painful thing of all this is that Mr. Tous is not satisfied with the sinking of his homeland, but offers the United States a plan that would destroy the aspirations to independence of the great Filipino people, and that constitutes a gratuitous attack on our brother peoples in race, Cuba, Haiti and Santo Domingo, who with sacrifice, the only saving thing, freed themselves from the clutches of conquest.
Why instead of facilitating the annexation of Cuba, Haiti and Santo Domingo, does he not protest the vandalistic outrage of which the Dominican people are victims, of the promiscuous massacre of thousands of Haitians, of the failed attempts against the sovereignty of Cuba after having sworn to defend it? He does not protest. We form a chain with those indomitable peoples, whose example we must imitate, and since we sink with pleasure, he believes that we must drag them too into the same abyss. This attitude is logical, after preaching so much to this unhappy people that it is not capable of anything, comes the conviction of the moral incapacity to resist the brutal attack of the strong, and he forgets that these men in other lands ARE NOT MADE OF GELATIN. It is dishonorable that Puerto Ricans serve as an instrument to facilitate the plan premeditated by American statesmen, to annex their Latin neighbors, with economic penetration, disorganizing their institutions and finally applying the bludgeon of military force.”
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNIONIST PARTY AND PUERTO RICAN NATIONALISM”
The Puerto Rican Alliance, a fusion of the Parties that were called Unionist and Republican, has placed the country in the dilemma of submitting to the dictatorship of the plutocracy or to the dictatorship of demagoguery. The electoral right has been destroyed; the directory will decide for whom we must vote in the next elections if we are to allow it to exercise the will it intends. When the electoral right is destroyed, the gesture is made of favoring women’s suffrage. Dictatorships have availed themselves of many subterfuges to impose themselves, but we never believed that they would have to avail themselves of a woman’s skirt as a shield. Why a dictatorship in Puerto Rico? This is imposed only in moments of great crisis and to obtain or protect fundamental collective rights when all ordinary means of government have failed. It is an exceptionally exceptional measure and is tolerated and sanctioned by an imperative necessity. Our people are accused of not being prepared for self-government. Their rulers deny them the opportunity to prepare themselves and exercise a veiled imperialism over them. To culminate their humiliation, their own children want to assume over them the gesture of dictators. Each political party in Puerto Rico should be a school of democracy. Apparently, it is an inconvenience to certain leaders of public opinion. What purpose does the dictatorship pursue? In the definitive agreements of the assemblies there is talk of the agrarian problem, the problem of schools and other problems, for whose solution a dictatorship is not justified because today we have powers to solve those problems. We are also told that the alliance will direct all its efforts to the consideration of full self-government to achieve the sovereignty of the people of Puerto Rico within the sovereignty of the United States. The authors of this phrase have explained to us that achieving full self-government is confined to obtaining the approval of the bill pending consideration before the United States Congress, by virtue of which Puerto Rico may elect its own governor in 1928. But that same bill provides that that governor may be removed by the President of the United States. The governor thus elected will feel responsible to the President of the United States and not to the people who granted him his representation. With his election we will manage to put one more puppet at the disposal of Yankee imperialism in Puerto Rico, which will thus be able to escape the responsibility of its bad government and the children of our country will bear it. Wise is Yankee politics that knows how to find good instruments for its execution! The debated phrase “sovereignty within sovereignty” some tell us that it means the federal “state” and others that it means a free associated state. Its authors offer interpretations that constitute an antithesis. It carries death within itself. Of course, it cannot refer to the federal “state”, because it is neither a state nor sovereign. It is a mere province of the American nation. As the other interpretation is so contrary to this, we come to the conclusion that the phrase means nothing.
It is a veil to conceal the colonialism that wants to be implanted with the consent of the men in whom we placed our trust.
The Department of War, which disposes of life and property in Puerto Rico, has just published an official report in which it gives a complete account of the policy of the United States in Puerto Rico from the Spanish-American War until now. We are told clearly that Puerto Rico will never be admitted into the American Union in accordance with all the precedents followed until now. It is also denied its right to constitute itself as a free nation. And cynically it is affirmed that American citizenship for us is only an imperial means to keep us subject to Yankee rule.
Our leaders seem resigned to the situation imposed on them by American kaiserism, and for “conveniences”, they want to subject their people to that will that is hostile to their happiness and their dignity. Faithful to the imposed mandate, they have constituted the Alliance to formalize the colonialism already established. We have been told that the object is to sanitize the political environment, to protect us against the socialist calamity, etc., etc., but no one has believed this, with the exception of the people interested in the constitution of the directory.
None of the militant parties will take care to defend our collective personality and our inalienable right to constitute a free people among the free peoples of the world. The ideal of independence has died among the militant parties, our people have been played with. Its great majority is pro-independence to the bone.
We offer the most exceptional spectacle: the people are the action, their leaders, the reaction; the people, the vanguard, their leaders, the baggage. All the effort of our leaders seems to have been limited to organizing hosts who, after being organized, have become afraid of them and have decided to surrender with their army in order not to incur the malevolence of the enemy.
For the Unionist Party, whose soul was always nationalist, what has happened is death. It has been formally decreed to stipulate that the Alliance will be for an indefinite time and that all its official bodies will be suspended. No one may convene the Union of Puerto Rico to any meeting after this agreement.
“The preservation of the insignia, the name, and the personality”, is a skillful formula to maintain the cohesion of the hosts so as not to see the directory reduced to a pretentious skeleton. The truth is that the Union of Puerto Rico and the so-called Republican Party have been dissolved and a new party dominated by the plutocracy has been constituted. No people could expect benefit from this combination and much less ours, which, excessively confident, places its trust everywhere. The only kindness of said movement is the resurgence of Puerto Rican Nationalism. The new nationalism will be true. It will watch over the economic well-being of the working classes, return the lands to Puerto Rican hands, will not allow the imposition of an exotic culture, and will not cease its effort until it reclaims the national dignity. This painful imposition has been invested with the language used to consecrate great ideals. Strip the proposition of that beautiful wardrobe and you will find the macabre figure of a daring act committed by children and the tranquility, of reconstruction. (sic). It will not be the plutocratic Alliance, nor will it be the demagoguery that is imposed on this people. All of Puerto Rico will rise with the patriotic ideal of a pure nationalism and will punish at the polls the men who have violated its trust. The Homeland is indestructible and will survive all impositions from its own or from strangers.
PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS Ponce, Puerto Rico, May 12, 1924
OUR INTERVIEWS
We went to see Lcdo. Albizu Campos, at his office in the city of Ponce, where we talked extensively with him about the political topics that in this hour of anxieties and thoughts worry the world; Albizu is deeply documented, and is also in direct relations with the men and associations from abroad who at this moment are interested in the right of peoples, and in the justice of humanity. Albizu Campos is a nervous and dynamic spirit that acts silently, without stridencies, but with his absolute faith placed in the solid creed of his ideal. His precise and forceful conversation snaps like a whip, phosphoresces, sometimes burns like a flame. He is one of our most distinguished tribunes. His oratory is not sprinkled with rhetoricisms but abounds in ideas and in virile exaltations. When he speaks to the people, his word takes on strength and flashes of fire, shaking the masses in a whirlwind of gusts of storm. Then, the blizzard becomes gentle and when he speaks to the heart, even the most recalcitrant multitudes, meditate. Albizu Campos is an unquestionable reality, but his great promising harvest is already ripe. The ears are turning yellow, while they are overwhelmed by pure maternal feelings. Having already done our interview, we asked him for his portrait. -I have no portrait-he told us. -But, we need it. -It doesn’t matter, publish the interview without it. It is not necessary. -Let’s go to Valiente’s studio. The man became skittish. -It would be an outrage, -he protested. Our gaze was running through the paintings in the office, while we were talking. At a glance we found the object of our desire. We already had the photograph. In an oversight it would be ours. It would also offer us the opportunity to make known to our readers the cordial welcome that was given in the city of the South to José Vasconcelos on his way to Santo Domingo, by this group of men who love Puerto Rico above all things. Here is something of the many things we talked about with Pedro Albizu Campos. -Where did you graduate as a lawyer? -At Harvard University in New England. -When you came to Puerto Rico, which political party attracted your attention? -None. -We would like to tell the readers of “Poliedro” your personal political process until its culmination as Vice-president of the party