The Nation is standing and serenely contemplates those who, sheltered by force, have the audacity to proclaim themselves arbiters of its destinies. Mr. Roosevelt has been administering Puerto Rico for fifteen months. As was to be expected, all he has done is continue the policy outlined by his predecessors to demolish the economy of Puerto Rico, and thus convert a great nation of free and happy citizens into a herd of peons, into a sugar batey at the mercy of Yankee overseers. Mr. Roosevelt has increased consumer taxes paid by the people, in the respectable sum that amounts to more than twenty-five million dollars annually, to enrich the industrialist and the farmer of his country.
Within the Yankee tariff fence, Puerto Rico has lost all its favorable trade balance, which has gone to the Yankee coffers, a sum that amounts to some four hundred million dollars in thirty-four (34) years. Within the same regime of Yankee commercial monopoly, forced to sell at the price that the enemy imposes and to buy from them at the price they dictate to us, conservative calculations yield a loss for Puerto Rico for the same period of time of some six hundred million dollars.
The Administration of Mr. Roosevelt has not considered sufficient that tribute of one billion dollars during the presence of the Yankee military forces in Puerto Rico, and raises the tribute at a rate of some twenty-five million additional per year.
The United States feels its international isolation, the loss of its markets and the worries of a social crisis. The Yankee financial oligarchy had lost its popular prestige, and Mr. Roosevelt has restored it in a short time. The working masses, with twelve million men without work and without opportunity to organize before the absolute power of capital, are in worse conditions than before he came to power, due to the rise in the prices of essential goods without the corresponding rise in wages. Strikes are resolved in the traditional Yankee way, machine-gunning the people; and before feeding the indigent, food is destroyed so that it rises in price, and the consumer will pay the capitalist the cost of the reduction. The ignorant Yankee masses are anesthetized with the mellifluous verb of the current occupant of the White House.
In foreign relations, there have not been those triumphs, despite the declarations of “good neighborliness”. Yankee imperialism wants to consolidate what it has and has simulated concessions in Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. Its ambition is always the order of the day and its Press reveals its true intentions in Colombia.
Mr. Roosevelt is coming to Puerto Rico on his way to Haiti, Colombia and Panama. Here he will say some kind words for our America, its culture and its civilization. He, like every enlightened North American, knows that Iberian America is one at its core, and that Puerto Rico is part of that great whole that is the object of North American greed.
In such circumstances, the announced visit of the President of the United States of North America is doubly unwelcome.
Given in San Juan de Puerto Rico, on the twenty-ninth day of June of 1934, 63cr. of the Proclamation of the Republic.
Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico Junta Nacional P. ALBIZU CAMPOS President
JOSE LAMEIRO General Secretary