Napoleon I, failed in Spain due to the heroic spirit of the inhabitants, men and women of the Spanish cities. If the men and women of Puerto Rico are brave and worthy and assume the attitude I point out, there will be no human power, however extraordinary it may be, that keeps us in servitude. “Latin America has its soul set on Puerto Rico. If we fail in our fight against the invader without assuming gestures of dignity and rebellion, all of America is lost. If we show ourselves worthy of freedom, America and the world will be with us,” concluded Lcdo. Albizu Campos. “At the end of the speaker’s most eloquent oration, which encompassed, according to our review, globally the economic and political situation of Puerto Rico, he received an extraordinary ovation, being lifted on shoulders by the crowd electrified with enthusiasm. Even after one in the morning various groups of attendees were commenting on the extraordinary and courageous speech. “That was the first of the series. Others will follow in the noble mission of propaganda and conviction to the Puerto Rican people that the only solution for the political, economic and social ills of our Homeland lies solely in the constitution of the Puerto Rican Nationality.
Arturo O’NEILL
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A PROCLAMATION OF THE NATIONAL BOARD OF THE NATIONALIST PARTY ON THE OCCASION OF THE 63RD ANNIVERSARY OF THE REBELLION OF LARES
“The Revolution to establish the Independence of the Homeland has never failed. Nationality has been defined. The sacrifice of its martyrs consecrated its sovereignty. On that glorious date the will to be free was fixed, and from it begins the chronology of the Independent Republic, no matter how long it takes to free its sovereignty from foreign interventions.
“September 23 is the supreme day of the Homeland’s feat. Sixty- three years will have passed since the patriots of Lares proclaimed the Republic of Puerto Rico.
“The uprising imposed the series of reforms that culminated in the Autonomic Charter of 1897. A people defined by arms is a respectable and indestructible people.
“The baptism of sacrifice is national and encompasses posterity so that, enlightened by a distinguished example, it may consecrate itself to the decisive effort of absolute liberation.
(“If the ties of blood, religion, culture, and the community of interests were not obstacles to the Independence of the Mother Homeland Spain, when there is no bond that links us to the imperial power of the United States, which, currently, in violation of all rights, makes it impossible for us by force to exercise our powers as a sovereign nation, if not, on the contrary, everything separates us from these invaders and our vital interests are in serious conflict with theirs, to our detriment, it is imperative to declare roundly that the immediate Constitution of the Republic is unpostponable.
“The Municipal Assembly of Lares has ordered that September 23 be celebrated as a holiday. This is a consecration and an example to follow. San Sebastián will respond in the same way because if in Lares the insurrection began, in el Pepino the main combat of the distinguished day was fought. We urge the other municipal governments of the country, which are the legitimate representation of popular sovereignty, to adhere to the patriotic and just resolution of the government of Lares and decree a holiday in their respective jurisdictions the glorious anniversary that is the purest tribute of national decorum. Compatriots
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from now on September 23 will be solemnized as the Day of the Martyrs of Independence, in remembrance and homage to all the men and women sacrificed or persecuted for the cause of freedom. “On that day, the entire Puerto Rican Nation should gather, with the due unction, in Lares, privileged land and consecrated in the Homeland’s history, to pay tribute of respect to the martyrs of the cause of National Redemption; before the tombs of the patricians, let us invoke the spirit of the liberating manes; let us forge the solemn oath to be worthy descendants of our ancestors, and that we will fulfill the patriotic duty of immediately organizing the government of the Republic. It is the August Day! The Day of Independence!”. “I certify that the present is a true and exact copy of the Proclamation approved by the National Board of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico in its session held on the afternoon of Sunday, the 14th of the current month. “Given in San Juan de Puerto Rico, on the sixteenth day of the month of September, year of 1930 and sixty-second of the Proclamation of the Republic”.
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Juan Antonio Corretjer, Administrative Secretary, Party Nationalist of Puerto Rico
LETTER TO MR. LUIS VENEGAS CORTES San Juan, P.R., September 19, 1930 Mr. Luis Venegas Cortés, President of the University Committee Pro-Victims of Santo Domingo, Río Piedras, P.R.
Friend of all my esteem: 56
I acknowledge receipt of your moving communication accompanied by check number 7402, drawn by the University, charged to the “Banco Territorial y Agrícola” of Río Piedras and endorsed to me, for the sum of four hundred ninety-eight dollars and fifty cents, amount of the funds raised to date among university students to help the victims of Santo Domingo. You inform me that the Dominican University Committee Pro-Victims agreed to make the remittance through the mediation of the Party Nationalist.
On behalf of our Party I accept the noble commission and I will immediately send to the Most Excellent Mr. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, President of the Dominican Republic, the funds placed at the disposal of his government for the charitable purpose you have arranged.
No Puerto Rican act in the face of the catastrophe that has overwhelmed us with sorrow has the significance of this yours. It indicates, first, the clear orientation of university students in national and international issues. In that heroic nation, noble and hospitable, to the point of exaggeration, if one can exaggerate in that order, no memory of its immense sorrow will produce the emotion that yours will. Here is an absolute selflessness and a love of brothers to brothers.
The ideal of the Antillean Confederation will be realized by the present Antillean youth because they are willing to create a power that must impose itself on every invader.
This heartfelt act of yours is the message of solidarity that announces the era that is already glimpsed.
Our Party, which in reality is not a Party, but the Homeland organized to rescue its sovereignty, so that even those who today fight Independence may enjoy the dignity of being free, enjoys the respect and sympathy of all Dominicans because of the purpose it pursues. And it will be pleasing to them that this demonstration of your sensitivity arrives through our mediation.
With my cordial congratulations for the work of nobles,
I am yours affectionately,
P. ALBIZU CAMPOS
THE CIVIC ACT OF THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY IN LARES REPRESENTATIONS FROM VARIOUS PARTS OF THE COUNTRY ATTENDED
ALBIZU CAMPOS SPEAKS
Since the crowd did not fit in the theater, the public asked that Mr. Albizu Campos speak on the tribune of the plaza since the threats of rain had passed. When the President of the Nationalist Party climbed the tribune he was received with a prolonged burst of applause. “Today a supreme desire of my life is fulfilled in finding myself in this city of Lares. I would have entered Lares on my knees: one enters holy land on one’s knees. The men and women of the generation current do not even know how to walk and get tired walking two kilometers even if it is to pay homage to the heroes of our freedom. Our grandparents did not know the automobile, nor the electric train and yet, they performed wonders. They did not know the paved roads, nor the modern means of communication, but they had a physical and moral strength superior to us, and they climbed those peaks with ease and risked their lives for an ideal. What consisted of the superiority of those heroes? In that they were men of high principles in their conscience. Devotion to an idea is not enough, consecration to the idea is necessary and this implies sacrifice. “You are not like the hero Ramírez because you do not have the consciousness of consecration to an ideal, nor the consciousness of your own strength. The day that happens the independence of Puerto Rico will have been achieved as a fatality in history. “The force that weighs on our people is the sense of impotence. We must evoke, then, the contrary forces, the forces of wisdom and beauty immanent in the nature of man. “Science itself puts powerful weapons in our hands. With a microphone installed on this tribune I can inform the world of what is happening in Puerto Rico. “The strength of nationalities and empires depends on the esteem that is held for them. If the concept that an empire deserves is poor, the stronger it seems its duty will be more deletable. All empires maintain propaganda in their colonies to maintain the myth of their superiority. United States resorts to all means of propaganda to maintain a
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THE NATIONALIST ACT OF SUNDAY IN PONCE THE SPEECH DELIVERED BY LCDO. P. ALBIZU CAMPOS When Albizu Campos climbed the tribune, the people of Ponce received him with a prolonged ovation. The President of the Nationalist Party delivered an eloquent and substantial speech that extended for two and a half hours. “My beloved people: I want to greet you after three years of absence through our America. A deep emotion overwhelms my spirit in presenting myself before the people of Ponce who saw me born. To love the land that gave us life is the first duty of man. I want to send a collective greeting from this tribune to my school classmates, to my physical and moral protectors, to my friends and fellow townsmen. “Tonight we celebrate the great epic of the race that discovered and civilized this continent. To the Mother Spain we owe the immense gratitude for this work without parallels in human history. With the feat of Columbus the spherical shape of the planet was definitively proven. With this discovery man realized that he did not live on an isolated land but that he belonged to a celestial system of which he was its collaborator and interpreter. Man was then aware of the infinity of the universe and that within himself were enclosed the possibilities of infinite progress. His concept of the universe and of his creator was amplified, and he understood that his mission was to interpret the laws that governed it and live the higher life of the spirit”. After a philosophical digression on the meaning of the discovery and its transcendence in the life of Western culture he went on to analyze the transcendental orientation of nationalism “Nationalism is the force that rises against any power that denies us personality. It is a movement that aspires to awaken the forces of wisdom in the people, to save the nationality for culture and history. It wants this people who are the first spiritual unity to crystallize on the continent, which is the most culturally and racially integrated nationality in America, which is an improvable and sensitive mass, not to be annulled and to be reintegrated into the life of culture through the full affirmation of its personality. The nationalism is not merely the reintegration of lands into Puerto Rican hands, nor the salvation of its commerce and its finances: it is the nationality standing to rescue its sovereignty and save this people for the higher values of life. Colonialism is the annulment and the absorption of our moral forces; independence is spiritual fullness, it is enjoyment of all the physical and moral gifts that God deposited in our land. If the law denies personality to a madman
it also denies him his capacity to verify any legal transaction. If a people is denied its collective personality, it is denied the capacity to govern its own destiny and we are placed on the level of an irresponsible madman. Nationalism is not a party in the limiting sense of the word but a movement that tends to save all the constitutive values of nationality. That is why we will not rest until the flag of the United States has been lowered from Puerto Rico”. The speaker then analyzed the historical, sociological and cultural panorama of the Ibero-American nations and stressed the need to maintain intense ties with brother peoples “because the case of Puerto Rico is the evident example of the intentions that United States has for Latin America” “America is the richest continent in the world due to its territorial extension, its population and its immense natural resources. That is why it is the object of the world’s greed. It is becoming aware of this phenomenon and remains on guard against exotic aggressions. She knows the greedy intentions of the United States and that is why all the governments that the people suspect are subjected to the Yankees are falling”. He then commented on the policy of the United States in the Caribbean. “The Caribbean Sea is the heart of the world. From here depart and converge the maritime currents of the tropics that carry heat and life to all the continents of the earth. This will be the theater of the great war that is eight or ten years away to overthrow the imperialist power of the United States. We must prepare for that hour which will be that of our political salvation”. He then made an analysis of the problems of the United States, of the North American social life, of its attitude towards the black race, etc. He announced that one of the most bloody social revolutions in history awaited him, since there “the exploitation exercised against the people had made the communist seed prosper in a dangerous way for the stability of its plutocratic institutions”. He commented on the recent speeches of President Hoover in which he recognizes the importance that these movements have taken when he takes the trouble to comment on them. He also censured the society of Ponce for the welcome it gave to the American sailors. “The slave can never pay homage to the master,” he said. At the end of his speech Albizu Campos, the public burst into a delirious applause carrying him on their shoulders throughout the plaza while the band played the melodious chords of la Borinqueña.
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By Manuel Rivera Matos
A NATIONALIST ASSEMBLY WAS HELD IN SALINAS AMONG OTHER SPEAKERS SPOKE THE PRESIDENT OF THE PARTY, MR. ALBIZU CAMPOS Mr. Albizu Campos was announced. A long ovation kept the speaker in silence. Afterwards, the speaker excused himself before the public for not being able to make a speech, since having spoken for two and a half hours, the night before in Ponce, he was completely hoarse. Nevertheless he began making a brilliant exposition of the economic problems of colonial Puerto Rico. He evoked days of his near and so distant! youth, when his adolescence ran through the fertile plains of Salinas. He recalled “the traditional joy, the daily revelry, the festivity that was done, daily, jingle in the spirit”. And today, gentlemen, all faces are sad. The elders of then, also had vigor for the youthful feat, strong, vigorous, they had physical and spiritual energies. Today men of middle age look with sad, tragic, desolate eyes. (The speaker looks towards the gallery. The gallery is full of children. The children are quiet, silent). I am alarmed when childhood is in stillness. I am alarmed when the children of my Homeland attend an act like this, and they are quiet, judicious, when they have not knocked down all the chairs of the gallery and the belts of the fathers have not had to come to light. Because I know that this quietness is symptomatic. I know that when the child does not play, when the child is not a match for mischief, it is that he has on his head the cold hand of the epidemic -advanced from death”.
“And why are the men sad, why are the women sad, why are the children of Salinas sad? Ah, gentlemen, can one be happy, can the men of Salinas, the men of Puerto Rico, be happy when misery pursues them like an implacable greyhound? Can the women of Puerto Rico, those who are aware of the true situation, be happy when they see their husband, their brother, their father, within the fatal circle of reigning desperation? And can our children be happy, when they do not have the illusion of the toy, and not even the security of breakfast? To that state, gentlemen, the system of exploitation to which the Yankee has subjected us has brought us, and, to remedy that evil what is done? Well, the resident of Fortaleza advises new loans. Why does the Governor, instead, not oblige the Fajardo Sugar Co., to the Guánica