In the edition of La Democracia dated October 28, 1935, and which circulated the night before, Colonel Riggs, chief of the police in the service of the Yankee interventionist government, threatens the Puerto Rican nation with a declaration of war. The Colonel says that there will be war, war and war! It is necessary to note that the newspaper La Democracia is the official organ of the Liberal Party, the governing party and currently a fanatical defender of North American imperialism and of the administration of the President of the United States, Mr. Roosevelt. No other newspaper has reproduced that interesting trilogy of Colonel Riggs: war, war and war! An act of war was the invasion of the United States Army on July 25, 1898; an act of war constitutes the military intervention that Puerto Rico has suffered since that fateful date; acts of war are all the acts perpetrated by the Yankee interventionist power in Puerto Rico during the thirty-six years of North American intervention. The war has been waged in the name of Freedom, of Equality, of Fraternity, of the Holy Bible, and paradoxically also in the name of order and peace! The nation has received the blows of war with the passive resistance of its superior culture and its Christian civilization that have prevented its annexation to the invading empire. The intervening power has resorted to extreme measures of war. It has used all the weapons prohibited by civilization to wage war between civilized peoples. The goal of that war for the enemy has been none other than the total extermination of all Puerto Ricans.
In January of 1932, as our contribution in defense of nations unwary or confident in the good faith of the United States of North America, we addressed the following circular to His Holiness The Pope, to the League of Nations and to all civilized nations:
NATIONALIST PARTY OF PUERTO RICO NATIONAL BOARD Secretariat of Foreign Relations Apartado 420 San Juan, Puerto Rico Telephone 2083 San Juan, P.R. January 1932
Sir: In compliance with the instructions given by the President of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, Don Pedro Albizu Campos, the undersigned has the honor to inform you of the serious matter that motivates this communication. Under the guise of helping our people to solve public health problems, some time ago a North American medical corps of the Rockefeller Institute, an American institution that works in close cooperation with the government of its country, the United States of North America, was established at the Presbyterian Hospital of San Juan of Puerto Rico. Apparently dedicated to curing patients victims of anemia and malaria, in reality, it has been developing a plan to exterminate our people by inoculating patients who have had the misfortune of falling under its direction, the virus of incurable diseases such as cancer. At the date of the North American invasion, thirty-three years ago, we constituted a strong and healthy community. Wealth was well divided. There was work and abundance. The country produced almost everything it needed. There was practically no public debt. The general government and the city councils had substantial reserves in cash to face any crisis. We were a rich country in fact and in name, and joy was the common heritage of all Puerto Ricans and of the foreigners who lived with us. These facts were stated in the official reports of the first heads of the North American military occupation. The invading power forced the displacement of Puerto Ricans by its own North American nationals. More than fifty thousand native landowners have disappeared and currently four American companies own more than sixty percent of the total wealth of the country. Barely twenty percent of the national patrimony remains in the hands of the nationals. The system implemented is simple: all the public burden falls on the nationals; the Americans and their companies are practically exempt from all public contribution and enjoy the monopoly of franchises. The United States imposed its tariffs on Puerto Rico and practically destroyed our foreign trade with other nations. This is its sixth market in the world, which averages approximately two hundred million dollars. By virtue of this commercial monopoly, the Americans impose the conditions of purchase of our products and the conditions of sale of their products. The mercantile monopoly is seconded by the financial monopoly. There is practically no credit for Puerto Ricans. The United States has mortgaged the country to its own financial interests. The military intervention destroyed agriculture. It turned the country into a huge sugar plantation forcing it to buy in the most expensive market in the world, that is, the North American market, which imposes on us merchandise not acceptable in any other part, under conditions and prices authorized by the monopoly it enjoys in our country. We depend on the food that the Americans sell us. They launch on our market many products that are not fit for human consumption and that are the source of serious diseases. There is no health regulation prohibiting the importation of food of that quality and epidemics increase. The last head of the military occupation has just informed his government that more than sixty percent of the population is in chronic unemployment, without any means of support; that the average of salaries in the main industry, that is, the sugar industry, is one hundred and eighty dollars a year. This means that sixty percent of the population is condemned to perish from hunger.
We reproduce below the letter of one of the doctors of the Rockefeller Institute in Puerto Rico, found among the documents abandoned at the Presbyterian Hospital upon their hasty departure:
Presbyterian Hospital San Juan, P.R. Dear Ferdie: The more I think about the appointment of Larry Smith the more disgusted I get. Have you heard any reason to justify it? It is certainly strange that a man completely divorced from the Boston group, dismissed by Wallach, and as far as I know absolutely devoid of a scientific reputation could be given the position. There is something wrong somewhere, probably in our point of view.
The situation in Boston is already determined. Parker and Nye will manage the laboratory together and Kenneth or Mac Mahon will be assistant; the chief will stay. As far as I can see the opportunities for me to get a position in the next ten years are absolutely none. One certainly does not feel stimulated to make scientific efforts when that is more of a disadvantage than a help to progress. I can get a magnificent position here and feel tempted to accept it. That would be ideal except for the Puerto Ricans. They are, beyond doubt, the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere. It makes you sick to inhabit the same island with them. They are even lower than Italians. What the island needs is not public health work but a tidal wave or something to exterminate the population. It might then be livable. I have done my best to further the process of extermination by killing off 8 and transplanting cancer into several more. The latter has not resulted in any fatalities so far. The matter of consideration for the patient’s welfare plays no role here; in fact, all physicians take delight in the abuse and torture of the unfortunate subjects.
Let me know if you hear of any more news.
Sincerely, DUSTY.
The North American intervening power in Puerto Rico, faced with the immense national protest against such crimes, opened an investigation through one of its officials called the “Attorney General” who named a special prosecutor to elucidate the truth of what had occurred. This official affirmed that it was a strange coincidence that eight patients of Dr. Rhoads had died and that eight were the victims indicated by him in his letter. The empire offered Dr. Rhoads escape by airplane and absolute immunity against any process in the United States. The goal of absolute extermination of all Puerto Ricans continues to be the definitive goal of North American imperialism in Puerto Rico. In the name of the prosperity of millions who will never arrive, mendicity is made the norm of life. In the name of health, neo-Malthusianism is implanted to eliminate the offspring, and the epidemics that kill those who have seen the light of day are spread. Nationalism has assumed its historic duty to definitively stop that attack against the very existence of the nation. It has organized and mobilized the vital forces of Puerto Rico to confront the enemy. The nation has moved from passive resistance to counterattack. The national commotion produced by the assassinations perpetrated by the Yankee police under the Command of Colonel Riggs of the United States Army and the worldwide interest that this brutal attack against the life of a people has awakened, merits the most severe analysis. For this we are obliged to expose the true causes that have impelled the Yankee government to act in its traditional form wherever it has encountered defenseless nations. At the beginning of the month of August of this year, the supreme leadership of Nationalism received confidences from the centers of the enemy power itself, which revealed the firm purpose of the Yankee government to have the directors of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico assassinated under any pretext, and of course its president. The tactic to follow was the bribery of elements within the Nationalist Party who enjoyed the confidence of our supreme leadership. The intervening government would support by all means including publicity a campaign against our supreme leadership with the aim of weakening the nationalist moral resistance and thus developing a necessary national indifference at the moment of the realization of the assassination.
Don Ramón S. Pagán was one of the men who corroborated the existence of that plan which was directed by the Yankee secret police in Puerto Rico. It did not escape the sagacity of the Yankee government in Puerto Rico that our supreme leadership had knowledge of its criminal purposes and its officials in Puerto Rico knew that it was common knowledge within the Nationalist Party of said plan due to the meticulous investigation carried out by this National Junta and communicated to all its affiliated organisms in the nation and abroad. We were waiting to communicate to those Puerto Ricans who did not serve in the ranks of Nationalism to acquire greater documentation from the hands of the Yankee officials themselves in Puerto Rico. The crimes perpetrated in Río Piedras on October 24, 1935 have precipitated events. What was the pretext that the Yankee police, called insular, obtained to assassinate in their own closed car Don Ramón S. Pagán and his companions Don Eduardo Rodríguez Vega and Don Pedro Quiñones? For greater clarity we reproduce the report issued by the Adjutant General of the police: “Río Piedras, Oct. 25, At 11:00 A.M. yesterday, while the police were conducting under arrest Ramón S. Pagán, driver of automobile number 6268 and nationalist leader, because he had refused to give his personal information to the police, he fired shots at Lance Corporal Jorge Pérez wounding him in the right arm, originating a shootout between civilians occupying said automobile and the police, from which resulted dead Ramón S. Pagán, Pedro Quiñones from those in the car and wounded Dionisio Pearson and Eduardo Rodríguez. Juan Muñoz Jiménez, a person who was not intervening in the shootout, also resulted dead from a bullet. When the dead and the wounded were being taken to the Municipal Hospital, two bombs were thrown against the Insular Government automobile driven by policeman Jacobo Cebollero, destroying the left part. At those moments, another nationalist leader, José Santiago, sustained a shootout with policeman Angel Samuel Bonilla, using a regulation pistol, caliber 45. Santiago died. Another passerby Félix Cruz, received a bullet during the shootout. Arrested for carrying arms were Juan Sánchez Padín, Silvano Rivera González and José Maldonado Ruiz, who turned out to be nationalist leaders as well. Two bombs without firing, that is, loaded to make them explode, were also seized. Police reinforcements were sent from San Juan. The prosecutors Romaní and Quiñonez and the local Municipal Judge proceeded to the investigation of the facts. The authorities of the University of Puerto Rico suspended classes until further notice. Special police surveillance was established at the University and in the town of Río Piedras. Eduardo Rodríguez, one of the civilians wounded yesterday in Río Piedras, died at six in the afternoon at the Municipal Hospital. By order of the Chief of Police,
J. JUDICE Auxiliary Chief and Adjutant”.
That report says that Don Ramón S. Pagán was arrested “for having refused to give his personal information.” The Chief of Police of Río Piedras affirms that he had given orders to arrest Don Ramón S. Pagán under any pretext. Here is the account that said chief gave to the newspaper El Mundo: “Beniamino discovers the automobile they described to him” Chief Beniamino continued alone driving his automobile when upon passing through North Street he saw stopped to his right the automobile that the two detectives had described to him and in which they told him an individual he was pursuing had gotten into. It was a small Willys-77 automobile, sedan type and with plates 6268. Inside were four individuals, two in the front seat and two in the back seat. Beniamino tells us that he continued on his way discreetly, as if he had not seen anything but he headed towards the place where he had left Corporal Pérez and guard Colón, whom he ordered to get into his automobile.
Stop that automobile
The Chief told the policemen that he had seen the automobile that the detectives had described to him on North Street and that they should stop the vehicle under any pretext.” (El Mundo, October 25, 1935, page 4).
There was a need “to stop the vehicle under any pretext” and a need to kill its occupants under any pretext. The adjutant of the chief of the insular police and the chief of that corps in Río Piedras affirm that Don Ramón S. Pagán initiated the shootout by firing and wounding the police corporal who had gotten on with other policemen on the running boards of the automobile. Eyewitnesses declare the contrary. The police riddled Don Ramón S. Pagán and his friends with bullets at point-blank range. He and they were shot at close range. Their faces appeared burned by the powder incrustated with projectiles fired at extremely close distance. The automobile presents proof that the shots were made from the side at point-blank range. The discharges that the police platoon made against Don Ramón S. Pagán and his companions were almost all made from behind the automobile. The vehicle has no less than eighteen perforations made by projectiles with entrance orifice in the rear part. The automobile does not present a single shot received from the front. The policemen positioned on the sides and in the rear of the automobile fired continuously against its defenseless occupants shouting: “Don’t let them get out alive! Don’t let them get out alive!” We will reproduce the version of these facts as it appears in the English section of El Imparcial, edition of Friday, October 25, 1935. This section is in charge of North American journalist Mr. Holliday, from whom no prejudice against the government of his homeland, the United States of North America, can be expected: “When Chief Beniamino arrived, however, he ordered Corporal Pérez, of the Insular Police, to stop the car. As the car approached, coming slowly down the street, Pérez leaped in the front of it, halled it and demanded to see the driver’s license. Pagán who was driving, was unable to produce one. Pérez jumped on the running board ordered Pagán to drive to the police station.” Pérez fire brings on gun battle: “As the car proceeded down Braumbaugh Street, between Arzuaga and De Diego streets, Pérez thought that Pagán was acting suspicious. Nervous as a cat, faced with five men who he was certain were armed, Pérez apparently lost his head, shot Pagán through the breast. Pagán drawing his own automatic 45, shot Pérez through the abdomen. Another shot from Pérez wounded Eduardo Rodríguez.”
Police Gather:
“Pérez fell to the paving unconscious. Pagán apparently died within few seconds. The three unwounded occupants of the car removed Rodríguez who was seriously wounded, left him lying in the street while they attempted to get the car moving again. The motor had stalled when Pagán slumped over the wheel, Pérez bullet through his breast.”
“Hearing the shots, Chief of Police Beniamino called other policeman to his assistance, hastened to the scene. The Nationalist were just getting the car started again when Beniamino and his aides closed in, aided by other police attracted to scene by the sound of the shots.”
Nationalist put up fight Cornered, the remaining men whipped out their weapons, began firing at the police, who took refuge behind tree trunks and the police car poured a veritable stream of bullets in the direction of the cornered Nationalists.”
Once the assassination of Don Ramón S. Pagán and his companions was consummated, a pretext had to be invented to justify this vandalism of the police in the service of the Yankees. It has been wished to give to understand that it was necessary to perpetrate that assassination because it was feared that Don Ramón S. Pagán and his friends were going to disturb a certain student assembly that was to be held in the assembly hall of the University on the same day.
To the confession of the police chiefs, that body lacks instruction and knowledge to prevent the commission of a crime.
It has only one resource at its disposal in that case: to assassinate the presumed author before he can commit the supposed crime. If he is accompanied, assassinate his companions as well. If there are innocent people in the surroundings, assassinate them as well. That public peace is disturbed, bah! what interests the police is to assassinate a presumed author of a hypothetical crime.
That criterion it receives from its Yankee chief. The juridical apology of that criterion is made by none other than the attorney general of the Yankee regime in Puerto Rico.
That is a monstrosity, but it is the barbarous and bloodthirsty reality that seeks to impose itself on the Puerto Rican nation to sow terror, and with terror, absolute submission to the pretensions of the Yankee empire.
That monstrosity will not be tolerated. The Nation will rise in arms to reject it and dissolve it.
But, let us see the facts. At the moment the Yankee police detained Don Ramón S. Pagán and his friends, no student assembly was being held at the University. When he and his companions were assassinated, they were more than a kilometer from the grounds of the University, walking in the opposite direction from where the University is located. Their car was heading south on Braumbaugh Street. Every second it was moving further from the University. On that route came the arrest under any pretext, as the chief of police said, and Don Ramón S. Pagán was ordered to drive to the police station, which was even further south. The police confess that he complied with that order. Furthermore, he allowed policemen to get on both running boards of the vehicle, despite this being a small five-passenger sedan. Behind came a police escort in a Yankee government car armed with carbines.
In the first place it is contrary to the laws of the Yankee regime itself to take anyone arrested to a police station. When a person commits a crime it is the duty of the police to file the corresponding complaint and take the accused before a judge or prosecutor to give the accused the opportunity to post bail. If the accused cannot post bail he will be taken to jail, but never to a police station.
When one intends to take an accused to a police station, all that is intended is to torture the accused to extract confessions from him. If he dies in the torture, there will be no witnesses to the assassination. The prosecutors of the regime will take care of exonerating the police if they receive the corresponding superior Yankee order.
Nevertheless, Don Ramón S. Pagán submitted to being taken to the station. As he offered no opportunity to the police to start a fight, they riddled him and his companions with bullets without further delay. A superior order had to be fulfilled. Everything had been prepared by the corresponding officials of the Yankee regime.
Whatever the pretext for arresting Don Ramón S. Pagán, it was impossible to invent one for arresting his friends. It was clear that the Yankee regime preferred that there be no survivor to tell what had happened. The evidence had to be suppressed and they were murdered in cold blood. They had the right to get out of the automobile, but the police shouted, “Don’t let them get out alive! Don’t let them get out alive!”
This monstrous crime was perpetrated in the most central location of the university city, near the church. The police wounded a large number of passersby and killed Don Juan Muñoz Jiménez. This is confessed by policeman Alejandro Castillo, badge number 16. In La Democracia, edition of October twenty-fifth, 1935, page eight, the following information appears: “What Policeman Alejandro Castillo tells us” “Insular policeman Alejandro Castillo, badge 16, was an eyewitness to the events. He tells us that he was near the Police Station when he heard the detonations. He ran to the site of the events and found Corporal Jorge Pérez wounded under an automobile. He picked him up and headed with him toward the Municipal Hospital. Policeman Castillo informs us that when the bullets of the instigators of the tragedy were directed at him, the police in order to prevent him from being hit by the projectiles fired against their opponents, with the misfortune that their bullets fell on the body of citizen Don Juan Muñoz Jiménez, who was getting off a White Star Line bus, the victim dying on the spot. In that way the life of policeman Castillo was saved, while that of Mr. Muñoz was lost.” A few minutes later the children were leaving school. It gives one horror to think of the carnage these savage policemen would have made. The valiant man Don José Santiago, who was the only person who could improvise a defense, and who fought alone with shots against more than sixty police, when he ran out of bullets surrendered, raising his hands above his head. Then the police riddled him with bullets. A brigade of Chicago “gangsters” would have had more valor and more nobility before a hero like Santiago than these henchmen born on our soil. The most wretched peasant does not kill his enemy when he disarms him. The police affirm that they had confidences that obligated them to act in that monstrous way. Those confidences could have been nothing other than specific instructions to assassinate Don Ramón S. Pagán and the heroes who accompanied him. Since Don Ramón S. Pagán clarified for this Nationalist Junta and for all the Juntas of the nation the plans that the Yankee secret police had in Puerto Rico to have all the directors of Nationalism assassinated, starting if possible with our President, he was advised to remain in reserve because we knew that the Yankee regime was going to do everything possible to have him assassinated as it has done.
From there the horrendous exploit that accuses a deliberate and cold plan carried out to the letter by men paid with money extracted from the pockets of our exploited people. The enemy could not allow anyone to survive such a frightful savagery.
We have pointed out that at the moment of his arrest Don Ramón S. Pagán and his companions were more than a kilometer from the entrance of the University and that he was heading south moving away from said center of instruction; that no student assembly was being held at that moment at the University.
We will add that the assembly hall was closed at the moment that such a horrendous crime was being perpetrated.
Therefore, it is a mockery to insinuate a justification of these crimes under the pretext that it was intended to prevent a supposed interruption of a hypothetical student assembly.
The police did not even bother to tell Mr. Pagán and his companions that it was feared they were going around Río Piedras to interrupt the supposed student assembly and that they should not do that.
A police force that had not been under the instructions that the group chosen to perpetrate these assassinations had would certainly have approached Mr. Pagán and his companions if there was grounds for harboring fears of an interruption of the assembly and would have advised the presumed authors to refrain from committing a crime. Don Ramón S. Pagán and his companions were men of responsibility and refinement and they would certainly have withdrawn.
We harbor the moral certainty that on that day with the pretext of a supposed student assembly that was not being held, the police chosen for this act of “gangsters” would have assassinated Pagán and his companions in any place in Puerto Rico they had found them, for it is clear to all that those were their instructions and that the regime had given them the assurance of impunity in the perpetration of said crimes as has occurred.
This National Junta had long had information from confidential sources within the Yankee regime that a attorney general born in Puerto Rico would be named to bear responsibility in case of the assassination of the directors of Nationalism and its president, as in the case of Dr. Rhoads that we cited at the beginning of this exposition. The press has just announced that the prosecutor has exonerated the police of all responsibility for these assassinations and that the report of said official will be kept secret. The prosecutor announces that the only survivor of the occupants of Don Ramón S. Pagán’s automobile, Don Dionisio Pearson, is accused of assassination, attempted murder, carrying arms, infraction of the Law of Explosives, etc., etc. That is, upon Don Dionisio Pearson all possible crimes within the Penal Code have been accumulated. It seems that the prosecutor desires the resurrection of the victims assassinated by the police to accuse them of assassination, voluntary homicide, etc., etc. The prosecutor cannot justify the assassination with the well-worn resource of pretending to burden the victims with arms and explosives of the Yankee army. We doubt that under the most despotic and barbarous regime on earth there exists a scene of justice such as exists under the Yankee regime in Puerto Rico. Within that regime of North American intervention any prosecutor can guarantee impunity in case of the commission of any crime by an agent of the North American government. He can do it in the most brazen way because the laws that the regime has imposed so authorize it. The prosecutors are lieutenants who act under instructions of an official called “Attorney General” of The People of Puerto Rico. The very president of the United States appoints him to his post with the consent of the Senate of the United States and he is under the direction of the “Attorney General” of the United States who is a true attorney general of that nation. This insular official must be a person disposed to comply with the instructions communicated to him by his chief, the “Attorney General” of the United States. Foreigners who do not know the North American intervention regime in Puerto Rico will ask in astonishment, how is it possible that a prosecutor can exonerate without incurring any legal responsibility anyone who commits an assassination or another crime, if that is what the will of the Yankee empire in Puerto Rico requires?
It is that in Puerto Rico there prevails a foreign despotism that has covered itself with the cloak of hypocrisy but whenever it is necessary to act brazenly it does not hesitate to do so. Of course, where a regime of force prevails, true prosecutors cannot exist. A prosecutor is an official who will watch over personal and collective guarantees within a regime of law.
In a despotism the so-called prosecutors are mere accusers, agents of the despotic power whose sad mission is to imprison, have citizens killed and despoil them of their property. The military intervention of the United States in Puerto Rico has merited a precise juridical definition. The one given by Judge Morton of the Circuit Court of Boston in the case of Don Luis F. Velázquez. Here are the words of said magistrate: “There is only one sovereignty in Puerto Rico, that of the United States. For the purposes of self-government in local affairs, the United States has placed by law a local government, The People of Puerto Rico. But the insular government is in no sense an independent state; it is the creature of Congress and can be abolished or changed as Congress sees fit. The laws it makes derive their sanction from the authority of the United States.”
For greater clarity, this entity called The People of Puerto Rico is a Yankee corporation established to demolish the Puerto Rican nation in the name of the sacred name of Puerto Rico.
It is not the only corporation that the United States has established for those purposes. There exist the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act), the NIRA (National Emergency Industrial Recovery Act), the FERA (Federal Emergency Relief Administration), the PRRA (Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration) and other entities that act directly on the citizen in Puerto Rico depriving him of his property and liberty without due process of law.
Furthermore in the bosom of this entity, The People of Puerto Rico, there exist officials such as the Commissioner of Instruction who has Tsarist powers to impose whatever educational system in Puerto Rico he sees fit and to determine how the funds dedicated to public instruction are to be invested. He is not responsible to anyone in Puerto Rico. The president of the United States appoints him and he is an official at the mercy of the North American executive will.
In the same personal statute there is an official called auditor whose obligation is to ensure that the contributions collected by this entity, The People of Puerto Rico, are dedicated to developing the North American imperial policy, that is, to dynamite the existence of the Puerto Rican nation.
The same position is occupied by the official called “Attorney General.” His position is in a certain way more wretched because he is obliged to give the appearance of legality to what is simply international piracy and assassination. Of course, if the occupant is a man born in Puerto Rico he serves as a curtain for the nefarious purposes of the Yankee empire, as occurred when Dr. Rhoads of the Rockefeller Institute assassinated eight Puerto Ricans according to his own confession and the prosecutor who intervened exonerated him of all responsibility.
Thus has been repeated with the assassination of the nationalist leaders in Río Piedras; the prosecutor who has intervened, the only thing that has occurred to him is to exonerate of all responsibility the assassins, officials in the service of the Yankees.
We repeat that the appointment of a man born in Puerto Rico to the post of “Attorney General” has obeyed in large part the purpose of the Yankee empire to provide itself with a native shield in its policy of assassination of the nationalist leadership, a policy that has been brutally exposed in Río Piedras.
This entity, The People of Puerto Rico, has ceased to be the main North American entity within the Yankee intervention regime. It continues to exist only for the purpose of criminally persecuting the nationalists of Puerto Rico and despoiling them of their goods fulfilling that imperial dogma that the citizens of subjugated countries shall be imprisoned, killed and despoiled of their goods in the name of their own enslaved Homeland.
For other administrative purposes an entity superior to this entity, The People of Puerto Rico, has already been implanted. It is called PRRA (Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration) which is under the direction of the chief of the bureau of insular affairs of the United States government before which the intervening governor in Puerto Rico is directly responsible. The Yankee despotism appeals to the “gangster” policy pretending to repeat in Puerto Rico the case of Sandino. The entire nation has condemned these assassinations and is firm in its resolution that they shall not be repeated. As a corollary to said crimes, various persons have been imprisoned without bail. Others have had their homes searched at the very moment they were attending the funerals of the victims. All in violation of the supposed laws of the present regime. As it has been insinuated that Don Ramón S. Pagán and his valiant companions might possibly have been going to interrupt an assembly that the students of the University were to hold, we must clarify the particulars of that crude pretext for an assassination. At the moment when Don Ramón S. Pagán and his companions were arrested they were more than a kilometer from the University walking south, that is, moving away from said center of instruction. To return to the University they needed to cross the Río Piedras plaza and the entire center of the city heading north. When they were arrested the assembly hall of the University was closed. Of course, no assembly was being held at that moment. As soon as it became known at the University that Don Ramón S. Pagán and his companions had been assassinated in the Río Piedras plaza, the assembly hall of the University was immediately opened and the student body was convened for the assembly in question. It is logical to think that the beginning of the assembly had to be synchronized with an act of terrorism perpetrated by the police in the Yankee service. The clear purpose of the intervening power was to intimidate the nationalist students of the University and the student body in general so that they would leave the assembly to the free will of the four or five students in the service of the Yankee government who were to approve a resolution project declaring our President “Enemy Number 1.” It is common knowledge that nationalist sentiment prevails throughout the youth. All the chancellors of the University, including Chardón, have fought by all means to destroy Nationalism within the University. Bribery has been resorted to; violence has been appealed to, applying the expulsion of the most brilliant of the University without bothering to give any explanation, since the university administration acts on instructions from the Yankee government itself.
All that policy of violence and despotism has done is to accentuate the nationalist spirit within the University and has increased the fervor of the student body for the cause of the independence of Puerto Rico.
On October 10th, at the invitation of the Cervantes Circle of the University, our President delivered a conference in the paraninfo on the glorious commemoration of La Raza Day.
The act was imposing. Our President received a solemn tribute from the student body and the professors present at the beginning and at the end of his conference.
He drew the attention of the student body to the purposes of the prevailing Yankee school, that is, to create traitors, cowards and effeminate men who serve as good instruments of the North American empire.
He pointed out to the students their duty before that demoralizing school to be patriots, valiant and virile.
At this invocation of their dignity as Puerto Ricans the entire student body rose to its feet.
Ten days later, by radio from Maunabo, our President repeated those same concepts for all the youth of Puerto Rico.
The immense crowd gathered on Sunday, October 20 in Maunabo, on the occasion of the radio broadcast, gave our President an ovation upon finishing to encourage him in his patriotic work.
As proof of the unanimous reception of his speech, it suffices to point out that the three presidents of the three political parties represented in Maunabo, that is, Liberal, Unión Republicana and Socialista, accompanied by members of their respective political committees, presented themselves at the home where our President was lodging to congratulate him for his speech and offer him their patriotic solidarity.
That congratulation was one of the many that our President received from all parts of the nation for the same reason.