Albizu Campos, acting as the main defense attorney for Dionisio Pearson, at the moment when he takes in his hands the pistol that the police allegedly seized from the nationalist Ramón S. Pagán assassinated in the shooting of October 24, 1935. The event is known as the Río Piedras Massacre. District Court of San Juan, March 5, 1936.
There is a supreme duty to fulfill and this is the restoration of the Republic. All united as brothers and moved by a single soul, let us march to the conquest of national independence.
The Aspirations of the Partido Nacionalista
By P. Albizu Campos
Sixty-eight years ago the Republic was founded. When, on September 23, 1868, our ancestors proclaimed our independence from Spain, they solemnly affirmed that the revolution was not based on any complaint against our Mother Patria. Puerto Rico was rich in name and in reality; our Christian heritage had created a model family and a solid society; the nation figured in the vanguard of modern civilization. Great men in all fields of human conquest were honoring their Homeland: privileged mentalities such as Stahl and Tanguis in the natural sciences; Morel Campos, the musical genius; Oller and Campeche, masters in painting; great thinkers like De Hostos; inspired poets of pure spirituality like Gautier Benítez; men of the sea of the greatness of Admiral don Ramón Power; liberating soldiers of the New World, such as Marshal Valero and General Rius Rivera; statesmen and noble patriots like Betances; spiritual directors of a generous, hospitable, and peaceful nation, Bishop Arizmendi. These were the outstanding figures in the legions of great men and great women of a nation, which, for three centuries, had served as a base for the expansion of Christian civilization in the Americas.
It should not be forgotten that an expedition from Puerto Rico under the command of Ponce de León planted the cross on the
El Mundo, March 25, 1936, p. 1 and 4, and La Palabra, March 30, 1936, p. 7 and 9.
continent of North America, in 1513, one hundred years before Jamestown was founded in Virginia.
The founders of the republic in 1868 fought only for the principle that no nation shall be the owner of the destiny of another nation.
This principle is the basis of international law and universal civilization and cannot be violated under any pretext of convenience.
It is the principle of human dignity formulated in its application to the family of nations.
The Mother Patria, Spain, the noble founder of modern world civilization, recognized this fundamental principle of international relations as our ancestors of 1868 expounded it, and granted Puerto Rico the Magna Carta Autonómica by virtue of which the relations between Spain and Puerto Rico would be regulated by treaties, thus recognizing our country as a sovereign, free, and independent nation.
This recognition of our place in the family of free nations was irrevocable and obligatory for all powers and could never be at the mercy of the vicissitudes of the wars of our Mother Patria, or of any other war.
The Treaty of Paris, imposed by force by the United States on Spain on April 11, 1899, is null and void insofar as it concerns Puerto Rico. Therefore, the military intervention of the United States in our Homeland is simply one of the most brutal and abusive acts that has been perpetrated in contemporary history.
We demand the withdrawal of the armed forces of the United States from our soil as a natural and legitimate defense of the independence of Puerto Rico.
We are not as fortunate as our ancestors of 1868. They fought for the pure principle of national sovereignty. They had no complaint against the Mother Patria, Spain.
Against the United States of North America we must file claims for compensation for the enormous damages perpetrated systematically and in cold blood against a peaceful and defenseless nation. The favorable trade balance of Puerto Rico during the thirty-five years of North American military intervention yields in numbers approximately four hundred million gold dollars. According to that imposing figure, Puerto Rico should be one of the richest and most prosperous countries on the planet. In fact, misery is our patrimony. That money is in the possession of North American citizens on the continent. Conservative estimates on the financial value of the commercial monopoly that the United States imposed on us by force and by virtue of which we are obliged to sell our merchandise to the North Americans at the price that suits them, and we also have to pay for the North American merchandise the price that the North Americans want to impose on us, yield a figure of no less than five hundred million gold dollars. Of course, the result of that merciless exploitation and abuses perpetrated on our nationality is evident in the universal poverty, in the diseases and high mortality of our population, the highest in the Americas. Seventy-six percent of the national wealth is in the hands of a few North American corporations, for whose exclusive benefit the present military government is maintained. A stupid assault has been directed against our Christian social order in a brutal effort to dissolve the structure of our family and destroy the morality of a noble race, imposing through government agencies the diffusion of the practices of prostitution, under the deceptive banner of birth control; the ridiculous effort to destroy our Hispanic civilization with a system of public instruction used in the United States to enslave the masses; the arrogant pretension of guiding in the spiritual order a nation whose soul has been forged in pure Christianity; these are our most serious grievances.
The United States of America stands face to face in Puerto Rico with the spirit of Lexington, of Zaragoza, of Ayacucho.
The present imperial policy by which it is intended to dissolve nationalism through terror and assassination is a provocation and an imperialist foolishness to satisfy a few North American corporations.
The people of the United States, if they have not become totally insensible to the principles that allowed them to be a free nation, must have common sense, must be guided exclusively by their national interest.
That national interest is guaranteed by respecting the independence of Puerto Rico.
These are the aspirations of the nationalism of Puerto Rico.