By Pedro Albizu Campos
On the date of the ratification of the Treaty of Paris, which concluded the Spanish-American War on April 11, 1899, Puerto Rico was a sovereign nation, as that term is understood in international law, independent of the Spanish Nation by virtue of the Autonomous Charter, granted by the Mother Country, Spain, to Puerto Rico, on November 25, 1897, in which the independence of Puerto Rico from the Spanish Nation was formally recognized.
Whatever may be the validity of a treaty ratified between the United States of America and another sovereign, said treaty is null and void insofar as it refers to another sovereign that has not been a party to the treaty in question.
It is evident that a treaty negotiated between the United States of America and the United Kingdom does not bind the Dominion of Canada, if this Dominion has not been a party to said treaty.
Article 2 of the Additional Articles of the Autonomous Charter reads as follows:
“Once the present Constitution for the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico has been approved by the Courts of the Kingdom, it may only be modified by virtue of a law and at the request of the Insular Parliament.”
This work is part of the argument submitted by Albizu Campos to the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of The People of Puerto Rico v. Luis F. Velázquez, in October 1935. It was reproduced in the book: Puerto Rico — International Problem, (Havana: Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, 1949), pp. 23-29.
It is impossible to summarize the Autonomous Charter. (…) However, we will refer to the articles that specifically relate to sovereignty.
Article 35 establishes the principle that the Insular Parliament shall have the exclusive right to draw up the budget.
Article 32 provides that the Parliament of Puerto Rico shall have the power to legislate on all matters, except those specifically reserved for the Courts in the Autonomous Charter.
Article 37 specifies that commercial treaties negotiated on the initiative of Puerto Rico or Spain, in order to bind Puerto Rico, required the express ratification of the Parliament of Puerto Rico.
Article 38. In the case of a commercial treaty negotiated only by plenipotentiaries of Spain, in order to bind Puerto Rico it needed the express ratification of the Parliament of Puerto Rico.
Article 39. The Parliament of Puerto Rico had the exclusive right to set the customs tariff, both for imports and exports.
Article 40 contains the first treaty made by Puerto Rico as a sovereign, and of course, said treaty is between Puerto Rico and the Mother Country. It is a transitional trade treaty that establishes the principle of reciprocity and determines the taxes that each nation will set when importing from the other nation.
This agreement is transitional, “without prejudice to what the two governments may agree upon in due course,” says Article 40. In other words, relations would be regulated from sovereign to sovereign.
The Autonomous Charter established a type of parliamentary government.
Article 47 determined that ministers, who had to be members of the Senate or the Chamber of Deputies, were responsible to Parliament.
Article 44 clearly stated that no mandate of the Governor General, the representative of the Spanish Crown, was valid if it was not countersigned by a Secretary of Dispatch.
Article 3 established that the power to legislate for Puerto Rico corresponded to the Parliament and the Governor General.
From an examination of the historical document it will be seen that Puerto Rico was recognized by the Mother Country as an independent nation, that the relations between the two powers were to be regulated by treaty; that no treaty of Spain, negotiated by Spain, was valid without the express ratification of the Parliament of Puerto Rico.
The relations between the two powers were comparable to the relations that existed between Austria and Hungary under the Hapsburgs, between Prussia and Bavaria under the Hohenzollerns, or to the current international relations of the United Kingdom and the British dominions of Canada and South Africa under the House of Windsor.
All authorities in international law agree on the fundamental principle of the family of nations: the recognition of international personality is irrevocable and binds all the powers of the family of nations.
By virtue of the Autonomous Charter, Puerto Rico initiated its international relations with all powers. The new government was organized immediately. Our country became, by its own right, a member of the International Postal Union, had its own currency and postage stamps, and all the symbols of sovereignty.
When the United States Congress declared war on Spain on April 21, 1898, Puerto Rico was already a nation independent of Spain. It was the duty of the United States of America to respect this independence.
Moore, the illustrious Yankee historian, offers the key to his country’s abandonment of the elementary principles of international law. The United States of America has tenaciously maintained a policy of annexation of the Antilles for more than a century. The United States offered Spain a fleet and an army to block the efforts of Bolívar and Marshal Valero, the great Puerto Rican commander, to liberate Cuba and Puerto Rico at the beginning of the last century. The United States has sustained careful and systematic propaganda of annexation in all the Antilles since that date.
When, after the declaration of war against Spain; Spain, to avoid bloodshed, offered an armistice, and when no controversy had arisen between the belligerents about Puerto Rico, and when no United States force had landed in Puerto Rico, the United States of America answered through the French Ambassador in Washington that the Americans were willing to accept an armistice, however, among other preconditions was the demand that Spain cede Puerto Rico to the United States.
The whole world was surprised by this demand, since the United States said that it had declared war for humanitarian purposes in favor of Cuba.
However, the United States was intransigent in said demand and the war had to continue.
Later, when Yankee troops occupied a small part of our national territory, Spain again offered an armistice. It received an ultimatum from the Yankees demanding the cession of Puerto Rico. Spain, exhausted by the war, had to accept that ultimatum.
The war between those two nations ended. Puerto Rico, despite the violation of its territory by Yankee forces, despite the bombardment of San Juan by the Yankee fleet without prior notification, in violation of international law, did not perform any act of hostility.
Puerto Rico trusted in the words of friendship of the Commander of the Yankee forces, General Nelson A. Miles.
Puerto Rico had not been conquered by the Yankee forces, its territory was only partially occupied at the end of hostilities between the belligerent nations. Its wealth and its military resources had not been touched practically on the assumption that the declaration of war by the United States on Spain was only an incident to force Spain to recognize the independence of Cuba.
Puerto Rico has never been conquered. It has rejected the invasions of the British, the French and the Dutch on more than one historical date.
The condition imposed as an ultimatum for an armistice, the cession of Puerto Rico, was consigned in Article 2 of the Treaty of Paris, ratified by the belligerents on April 11, 1899.
Said treaty is null and void as far as Puerto Rico is concerned.
Spain could not cede Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico was not res in commercium. Puerto Rico became a sovereign nation by virtue of the Autonomous Charter that Spain could not change without the consent of Puerto Rico. (Article 2 of the Additional Articles, Autonomous Charter).
And the United States could not accept said cession because it was obliged to respect the independence of Puerto Rico.
As a precedent we cite the case of Finland.
Sweden had recognized the autonomy of the Grand Duchy of Finland; by the Treaty of Fredrikshamm, signed in September 1809, Sweden had to cede the Grand Duchy to Russia; Emperor Alexander I recognized the autonomy of Finland but his successor to the imperial throne intended to annul the autonomy of the Grand Duchy. The case was submitted to an international commission of jurists which decided, in 1910, that the ukase of the Tsar revoking the recognition of the autonomy, made by his predecessor, who respected the independence of Finland, was null and void. “The right of a people to national freedom is independent of warlike conquests and diplomatic treaties”. (Rovira y Virgili, History of Nationalist Movements, pp. 34-35).
The Treaty of Paris was not negotiated by the plenipotentiaries of Puerto Rico and was never submitted to the ratification of our National Parliament.
The Commander of the Yankee invaders simulated, at the beginning, respect for our national Government and Parliament, but finally, he took off the mask and dissolved both by force. Since then Puerto Rico has been under the military intervention of the United States.
…Judge Morton said, in the dissenting opinion in relation to the ruling of the Court of Appeals (in this case): “There is only one sovereignty in Puerto Rico, that of the United States. For the purposes of self-government in local matters, the United States has established by law a local government, “The People of Puerto Rico”. But the insular government is in no way an independent state; it is the creature of Congress and can be eliminated or modified at the will of Congress. The laws issued by it derive their sanction from the authority of the United States…
“There is only one government in Puerto Rico, that of the United States”.
The Nation of Puerto Rico has serenely read the brief, precise and sincere description that Judge Morton has made of the foreign despotism of Yankee military intervention.
This military intervention of the United States created a corporation, a kind of East Indies Corporation, to demolish the very existence of the Nation of Puerto Rico. This imperialist corporation of the United States is the Plaintiff, “The People of Puerto Rico”. On the date of the Yankee invasion, Puerto Rico was a creditor nation; the national government, all the provinces and all the municipalities had a surplus in gold in their coffers, gold that the military chiefs of the United States collected and remitted to their government in accordance with the instructions of the United States Department of War. Thirty-six years later, the whole country is bankrupt.
By virtue of the Autonomous Charter, Puerto Rico could negotiate treaties with all powers. Now its ports are closed to trade, except with the ports of the United States, which has imposed a commercial monopoly, imposing the conditions in which Yankee products are to be sold in Puerto Rico and imposing the conditions in which the Yankees are to buy the merchandise produced in Puerto Rico. The result has been the ruin of our agriculture, industry and commerce and the creation of large absentee Yankee corporations. It has been calculated that this cold exploitation amounts, in dollars and cents, to no less than nine hundred million dollars in thirty-five years. This is certain because the statistics indicate that the trade balance apparently favorable to Puerto Rico during that period amounts to three hundred and fifty million dollars. (Reports of the Governors of Puerto Rico), and that sum has passed, in its entirety, into the hands of absentee Yankee capitalists.
When the Yankees forced entry into our ports, we had an education system designed to form a virile community with intelligent leadership. The sexes were educated separately; men had male teachers and women female teachers. The same system that preserves the ruling class in the United States to ensure its leading position.
The Yankees destroyed this natural and scientific system and replaced it with a coeducational school in which women constitute the majority of the faculty. This system has produced here the same deleterious results that they have experienced in the United States.
English was imposed as the only vehicle of instruction, producing the absurdity that Latin, French and other foreign languages are taught in English. The purpose of such a system can only be to form an ignorant and soulless society.
Puerto Rico was the healthiest country in the Americas. It has the historical privilege of having put into effect the first public health law in the New World. On the date of the Yankee invasion, our demographic statistics compared favorably with the best in the Yankee states; now, for every Yankee who dies, four Puerto Ricans die!
A plan to exterminate the entire nation was discovered in full execution under the auspices of the local Department of Health and the Rockefeller Institute. A doctor from said institution wrote a handwritten letter reporting on his work in said plan and disclosed that he had killed eight people.
The matter is so serious that it is considered impossible, and for that reason in the appendix… the circular letter that the Nationalist Party addressed to the Holy See, to the League of Nations and to all the powers of the world, and a photostatic copy of the letter of said doctor, will be found.
Despite the sworn statements and the indubitable evidence, the United States never prosecuted the criminal and he is free in his country. This illustrates the extreme to which irresponsible government can lead.
Therefore, no argument of convenience can be found in favor of such a system.
The feudal concept of international law that allowed the conquest by war of one nation by another, the retention of the victim as the property of the victor, as a possession… should be dead also in the United States. The Briand-Kellogg Treaty, which condemns the use of war as an instrument of national policy, is law in the United States. That is the ratification of the principle that informs the League of Nations. The law of conquest cannot be sustained any longer.
The Supreme Court of the United States, in view of the universal condemnation of war as an instrument of national policy, and in the presence of the Briand-Kellogg Treaty, will undoubtedly find, as a body of jurists, that the Treaty of Paris, ratified by Spain and the United States on April 11, 1899, is null and void as far as Puerto Rico is concerned; that the United States nor its government have the right to accuse and judge in its courts the defendant nor any other person for an act committed in the territory of Puerto Rico where there is only one sovereign, the Nation of Puerto Rico.