THE NATIONALIST RALLY HELD IN MAYAGUEZ
STATEMENTS BY THE HEAD OF THE PARTY, MR. ALBIZU CAMPOS
Upon being announced, Mr. Albizu Campos, the band performed “La Borinqueña” and a long ovation occurred. Such was the anxiety that was manifested in everyone to hear the word of the illustrious leader of nationalism. He analyzed the system by which the ruling regime carries out the demolition of Puerto Rican society with the fomentation of deep divisions; first: The promotion of women’s work in competition with men to cheapen labor and bring about the split of families, making women rivals of men in the economic terrain and therefore disengaging the home. He said that in itself the independence of women was praiseworthy if it was stimulated in good faith, but not if, as in the current circumstances, it is imposed as a means to demoralize a society. He explained how the United States and England are the only countries in which militant feminism exists as a safeguard of the rights of women who are thrown into economic activity. Already in Puerto Rico there are many families where women provide the sustenance of the home, an inversion of roles that is a certain index of the definitive ruin of a people. Second: Division in financial matters, which exists in the United States but which has been deepened here by the misnamed Socialist Party. In the United States a small group or ruling class exploits almost the entire country; there does not exist there a society or a nation in the correct sense of the word but a large conglomerate that suffers the oppression of the meager oligarchic class that is not concerned about the fate or much less the common aggrandizement of the mass of the country. In Puerto Rico, on the contrary, there was homogeneity among all the components and a great social sense interested in reciprocal help for the perpetuity and conservation of the nation, this is a deep-rooted and unanimous sentiment of Homeland. Consequently, juxtaposing in a class struggle the man who owns nothing against the one who has two pesetas was imposing a strange element of discord that was superfluous in our midst. Third: The division fostered between the white and African races, which is evident by comparing the systems used by the invader in Cuba and Puerto Rico respectively at the termination of the Spanish-American war. In our country, where there was a majority of whites, they imposed as leader the colored class with the triumph of the Republican Party, whose leader was Dr. Barbosa. In Cuba, where the element of color predominated, they raised in the shadow of power a political leadership of individuals of European race and discharged the liberating army composed mostly of men of color. Fourth: To the above is added the division in the spiritual terrain tending to counteract the undoubted hegemony of Catholicism through the elevation to power of individuals of all Protestant sects, and although nationalism extends its arms to the proselytes of all creeds, it cannot fail to point out the historical fact and the intention and the political meaning that in itself embodies the stimulus offered to the forces contrary to the religious unity of the country. By way of prologue and epilogue, he expanded on brilliant considerations on all the political and economic problems of Puerto Rico. He referred, for example, to the exchange of currency demonstrating how ab initio property had been devalued by forty percent through the change of the peso for the dollar at the rate of sixty percent when in reality both currencies had equal purchasing power. This collective and rapid depreciation of property together with the cyclone of San Ciriaco, opened the door to latifundismo in the hands of foreigners, a plague so voracious that not even the effort of Muñoz Rivera managed to contain it with his attempt to create in front of the native latifundista, because the latter, as soon as he prospered somewhat, was also entangled in the horrible jaws of crematistic combinations. He then attacked the large corporations as the cause of the general decadence and even of the ruin of the treasury; the organization of public health externalizing his opinion that “the increase in diseases in the last three decades is due in large part to the terrible quality of the articles offered for consumption, especially canned foods”; public instruction, committed to educating hungry toddlers to whom it would be better to physically sustain with the luxurious budget destined to the branch; and finally to the projects of industrialization of the country, impossible in a colony without tariff protection. Mr. Albizu Campos concluded his pithy and eloquent dissertation exuberant in a multitude of resounding data said with astonishing precision and opportunity and difficult to reconstruct, exhorting the people of Mayagüez to coldly investigate the capital problems of their Homeland, so that the healthy reaction would operate within their bosom that would vindicate for the Sultana of the West its timbre of honor and its place of honor that it always occupied in the past at the vanguard of our civilizing and liberating struggles. Thunderous applause and expressions of general approval exteriorized the feelings of the public that listened with profound attention for more than two hours to the only political leader who dissects before the people, converting the tribune into a chair, the most intricate national problems to fundamentally study the roots of our prostration.