14 Proclamation On Electoral Abstention
CONSIDERING: that every four years the Yankee interventionist regime imposes upon the nation the holding of elections with the sole purpose of producing a state of civil war among Puerto Ricans; CONSIDERING: that the electoral triumph that any group might have is mocked by the action of the Yankee power immediately that by virtue of the tyranny that it exercises over the Homeland immediately annuls the will of the majority expressed at the polls: CONSIDERING: that this disastrous experience was evidenced when the Unionist party for twenty-five years had the suffrage of the majorities and nevertheless the Yankee power frustrated all patriotic action that the Unionist leaders could conceive, contemplating these with great astonishment that while the Yankee regime obstructed the will of the triumphant majority, it supported the defeated minority with the malicious purpose of paralyzing the Puerto Rican national action; CONSIDERING: that when that minority became an electoral majority by virtue of the pact of the Coalition of 1932, the Yankee enemy regime has repeated the same tactic of preventing all action of the coalitionist majority while it has pretended to favor the liberal minority with the same perverse purpose of impeding the joint Puerto Rican national action against the Empire of Estados Unidos. La Palabra, January 13, 1936, p. 11 and El Mundo, January 8, 1936, p. 5.
15 CONSIDERING: that in view of those facts it is worthless for a political party to win elections because the day after the triumph its directors will find themselves without power of any kind that can facilitate the fulfillment of the will of the majority that has elected them at the polls and they will be harassed and attacked by the Yankee regime that will lead the party of the triumphant majority to dissolution; CONSIDERING: that that has been the sad history of the Republican party, of the Unionist party, of the Alliance party and of the Coalition; CONSIDERING: that the Yankee electoral policy in Puerto Rico is to foment fraud and the corruption of the civic conscience of the citizenry: CONSIDERING: that the Yankee regime in Puerto Rico is null and the Yankee Empire has no right to convoke the Puerto Rican nation to elections under its flag; CONSIDERING: that the Puerto Rican nation in full exercise of its sovereignty must by a joint direct national action demand from the Yankee Empire the immediate evacuation of the national territory; CONSIDERING: that the Yankee Empire has just ordered general registrations for new electors with the purpose of continuing that electoral farce in Puerto Rico; THEREFORE: the National Board decrees: the Puerto Rican national abstention from those electoral registrations that the Yankee regime has fixed. Given in San Juan de Puerto Rico on the first day of January of one thousand nine hundred and thirty-six, year 68th. of the Proclamation of the Republic. Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico The National Board P. ALBIZU CAMPOS, President JUAN ANTONIO CORRETJER, General Secretary
16 Nullity of the Treaty of París
By Pedro Albizu Campos
On the date of the ratification of the Treaty of París, which liquidated the Hispano Yankee 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 Autonomic Charter, granted by the Mother Homeland, España, 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 Estados Unidos de América and another sovereign, said treaty is null and without value insofar as it refers to another sovereign that has not been party to the treaty in reference.
It is evident that a treaty negotiated between Estados Unidos de América and the United Kingdom does not obligate the Dominion of Canadá, if this Dominion has not been party to said treaty.
Article 2 of the Additional Articles of the Autonomic Charter says thus: “Once the present Constitution for the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico has been approved by the Courts of the Reino, it may not be modified except by virtue of a law and at the request of the Insular Parliament”.
This work forms part of the plea submitted by Albizu Campos to the Supreme Tribunal of Estados Unidos in the case of El Pueblo de Puerto Rico v. Luis F. Velázquez, in October of 1935. It was reproduced in the book: Puerto Rico Problema Internacional. (La Habana: Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, 1949), ps. 23-29.
17 It is impossible to summarize the Autonomic Charter. (…) Nevertheless, we will make reference to the articles that refer especially to sovereignty. Article 35 establishes the principle that the Insular Parliament shall have the exclusive right to elaborate the budget. Article 32 provides that the Parliament of Puerto Rico shall have the power to legislate on all matters, excepting those specifically reserved to the Courts in the Autonomic Charter. Article 37 specifies that the treaties of commerce negotiated by initiative of Puerto Rico or of España, to obligate Puerto Rico required the express ratification of the Parliament of Puerto Rico. Article 38. In case of a commercial treaty negotiated only by plenipotentiaries of España, to obligate 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 fix the customs tariff, both for imports and for 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 Homeland. It is a transitory treaty of commerce that establishes the principle of reciprocity and determines the taxes that each nation will fix upon importing from the other nation. This agreement is transitory, “without prejudice to what the two governments may agree upon in their day,” says Article 40. In other words, the relations would be regulated from sovereign to sovereign. The Autonomic Charter established a type of parliamentary government. Article 47 determined that the ministers, who had to be members of the Senate or of the Chamber of Deputies, were responsible to the Parliament.
18 Article 44 fixed clearly 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 faculty to legislate for Puerto Rico corresponded to the Parliament and to the Governor General. From the examination of the historic document it will be seen that Puerto Rico was recognized by the Mother Homeland as an independent nation, that the relations between the two powers had to be regulated by treaty; that no treaty of España, negotiated by España, 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 Hungría under the Hapsburgs, between Prusia and Baviera under the Hohenzollerns, or to the current international relations of the Reino Unido and the British dominions of Canadá and Africa del Sur under the Casa de Windsor. All the authorities in international law agree on the fundamental principle of the family of nations: the recognition of international personhood is irrevocable and obligates all the powers of the family of nations. By virtue of the Autonomic Charter, Puerto Rico initiated its international relations with all the powers. The new government was organized immediately. Our country came to be, by its own right, a member of the International Postal Union, it had its own currency and postal stamps, and all the symbols of sovereignty. When the Congress of Estados Unidos declared war on España on April 21, 1898, Puerto Rico was already a nation independent of España. It was the duty of Estados Unidos de América to respect this independence. Moore, the illustrious Yankee historian, offers the key to the abandonment by his country of the elementary principles of international law. Estados Unidos de América has sustained
19 tenaciously for more than a century a policy of annexation of the Antilles. Estados Unidos offered to España a fleet and an army to block the efforts of Bolívar and of Marshal Valero, the great Puerto Rican commander, to liberate Cuba and Puerto Rico at the beginning of the last century. Estados Unidos has sustained a careful and systematic propaganda of annexation in all the Antilles since that date.
When, after the declaration of war against España; España, to avoid bloodshed, offered an armistice, and when no controversy had arisen between the belligerent parties concerning Puerto Rico, and when no force of Estados Unidos had disembarked in Puerto Rico, Estados Unidos de América answered through the French Ambassador in Washington that the North Americans were ready to accept an armistice, however, among other prior conditions was found the demand that España cede Puerto Rico to Estados Unidos.
The entire world was surprised by this demand, since Estados Unidos said that it had declared war with humanitarian purposes in favor of Cuba.
Nevertheless, Estados Unidos was intransigent in said demand and the war had to continue.
Later, when Yankee troops occupied a small part of our national territory, España offered again an armistice. It received an ultimatum from the Yankees demanding the cession of Puerto Rico. España, 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 the 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.
20 Puerto Rico had not been conquered by the Yankee forces, its territory was only partially occupied at the end of the hostilities between the belligerent nations. Its wealth and its military resources had not been touched practically on the assumption that the declaration of war of Estados Unidos to España was only an incident to obligate España 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 París, ratified by the belligerents on April 11, 1899. Said treaty is null and without value insofar as Puerto Rico is concerned. España could not cede Puerto Rico because Puerto Rico was not res in commercium. Puerto Rico became a sovereign nation by virtue of the Autonomic Charter that España could not change without the consent of Puerto Rico. (Article 2 of the Additional Articles, Autonomic Charter). And Estados Unidos could not accept said cession because it was obligated to respect the independence of Puerto Rico. As a precedent we cite the case of Finlandia. Suecia had recognized the autonomy of the Grand Duchy of Finlandia; by the Treaty of Fredrikshamm, signed in September of 1809, Suecia had to cede the Grand Duchy to Rusia; Emperor Alejandro I recognized the autonomy of Finlandia but his successor on the imperial throne pretended to annul the autonomy of the Grand Duchy. The case was submitted to an international commission of jurists which decided, in 1910, that the úkase of the Zar revoking the recognition of the autonomy, made by his predecessor, who respected the independence of Finlandia, was null and without value. “The right of a people to national liberty is independent of the warrior conquests and of the diplomatic treaties”. (Rovira y Virgili, Historia de los Movimientos Nacionalistas, pgs. 34-35). The Treaty of París 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 Estados Unidos. …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 Estados Unidos. For the purposes of self-government in local matters, Estados Unidos has established by law a local government, “El Pueblo de Puerto Rico”. But the insular government is not in any sense 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 Estados Unidos… “There is only one government in Puerto Rico, that of Estados Unidos”.
The Nation of Puerto Rico has serenely read the brief, precise and sincere description that Judge Morton has made of the foreign despotism of the Yankee military intervention.
This military intervention of Estados Unidos created a corporation, a kind of Corporation of the East Indies, to demolish the very existence of the Nation of Puerto Rico. This imperialist corporation of Estados Unidos is the Plaintiff, “El Pueblo de 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 Estados Unidos collected and remitted to their government in accordance with the instructions of the Department
22 of War of Estados Unidos. Thirty-six years later, the entire country is in bankruptcy.
By virtue of the Autonomic Charter, Puerto Rico could negotiate treaties with all the powers. Now its ports are closed to commerce, except with the ports of Estados Unidos, which has imposed a commercial monopoly, imposing the conditions in which the 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 commercial 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, integrally, into the hands of absentee Yankee capitalists.
When the Yankees forced entry into our ports, we had an education system destined to form a virile community with intelligent leadership. The sexes were educated separately; the men had professors and the women professors. The same system that conserves the dominant class in Estados Unidos to assure 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 teaching staff. This system has produced here the same deleterious results that they have experienced in Estados Unidos.
English was imposed as the only vehicle of instruction, producing the absurdity that Latin, French and the other foreign languages are taught in English. The purpose of such a system can be none other than to form an ignorant and soulless society.