PROCLAMATION OF THE NATIONALIST PARTY ON THE OCCASION OF SEPTEMBER 23rd. PILGRIMAGE TO LARES. PROCLAMATION OF THE NATIONALIST PARTY ON THE OCCASION OF SEPTEMBER 23rd, DAY OF THE HEROES AND MARTYRS OF INDEPENDENCE.
SECOND NATIONAL ASSEMBLY Within a few short days, the sixty-third anniversary of the maximum feat in the Homeland’s annals will be commemorated, in which the national sentiment of independence translated into deeds and the Puerto Rican people, from the heroic mountains of Lares, inscribed September 23rd among the decorous dates of the world. The emancipatory movement of Puerto Rico, which the Nationalist Party embodies today, is not a romantic movement; philosophical and juridical ideas serve as sublime buttresses, but it has its authentic ascendancy in an epic day baptized with blood and is cemented in the categorical devotion of the good sons of this land for the cause of the unpostponable restoration of the republic. History attests that the independence of Puerto Rico, like all the redemptive ideals of humanity, has its heroes and its martyrs, and nothing will purify the collective conscience as much as meditation on that immaculate sacrifice, which has been and will always be above all profanations, in the very immortal setting of its glorious apotheosis. The Nationalist Party will therefore sponsor again this year the patriotic national pilgrimage to the sacred land of Lares, which is the august tabernacle of the Homeland. Our Party is the same as last year by reason of the purity and integrity of its ideology, invariable and immutable as the truth, but today it presents itself crowned by success, on the summits, not of the colonial power that it despises, but of the love and recognition and respect of its own and strangers, which is the only thing that interests it. Even the ambient ideas of the current world favor us. The growth of international consciousness is raising the relations between States, which were traditionally resolved by force, to the plane of law more and more each day. The absolute freedom of the powers is increasingly curtailed when it violates the rights of other States. Peoples, like individuals, have already attained the right to recognition of their juridical personality. The enslavement of countries cedes before the concept of the family of nations. Even the mere name of “colony” is reprehensible, and Puerto Rico demands its entry into the society of nations. We must always bear in mind, however, that victory for the cause of independence depends exclusively on the national will that reaches the sacrifice to impose justice and right. Let the entire Puerto Rican nation attend the second national assembly that will be held in Lares next September 23rd to render a tribute of honor and gratitude and at the same time of solidarity and atonement to the leaders of ‘68, who ignited in Puerto Rico, before the Cubans in Yara, the holy fire of the freedom of the Homeland, making the radiance of Bolívar’s sword shine in our sky. Given in the city of San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico on the 15th day of September of 1931, year 63 of the proclamation of the republic. The National Board, Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico.
P. Albizu Campos, President
Manuel Rivera Matos, General Secretary
THE ACTS CELEBRATED BY THE NATIONALIST PARTY IN THE CITY OF LARES ON THE TWENTY-THIRD OF SEPTEMBER CURRENT
ALBIZU CAMPOS SPEAKS When the President of the Nationalist Party was announced to take the floor, the music played La Borinqueña while the public, standing, paid delirious applause that lasted for several minutes. “The human tendency is to be parasitic. Only a spiritual conception of life elevates us to the offering of what we possess for a just cause. Our people in their moral decadence is a parasitic people. But this apotheosis is not a parasitic act. We do not come here to raise a myth, nor to live a past glory. It is very easy to speak of the glories of others, but that does not make the speaker glorious. We come here as an act of consecration to the principles that informed the men of ‘68. “We love and adore the Homeland as a goddess. The last particle of our soil is a sacred thing and we will not allow foreign hands to profane it. But higher than that cult is the cult of our progenitors and we will not allow foreign hands to profane it. They represent the symbolism of the life we possess and of our greatness before Eternity. Peoples who do not know their progenitors, are buried peoples, are dead peoples. We, by remembering their memory today, turn out to be unworthy successors of their memory. Peoples are ungrateful because men are ungrateful; thus our people do not know the descendants of those great men. And we have to honor their memory in their very flesh”. The speaker then proceeded to make an analysis of the transcendence of the personality. “The problem of Puerto Rico,” he said, “is the problem of its personality. There is no responsibility where there is no exercise of powers. A people governed by a foreign power is an irresponsible people.” He said that Puerto Rico was in the conditions of a madman who does not have personality before the law for being an irresponsible entity and a tutor is appointed to administer his assets. “The empire says to the colony: “I exercise power because you are an incapacitated person”. And it disposes of all lands and goods as a tutor. Puerto Rico currently appears before the world as a people of imbeciles who have no capacity to resolve their own affairs. To enjoy rights, one must have personality and speak with the other powers as equals”. The speaker analyzed the consequences of the denial of personality in all orders, especially in the educational order. He said that the empire established the educational system that suited its purposes and therefore took care that the truth was not told in the schools. The speaker also addressed the religious problem. He said that no religion in our country could be an enemy of our Independence; that no one, in the name of Catholic or Protestant, could fight for the cause of our freedom. He stated that Puerto Rico before the Holy See was a independent nation that enjoyed ecclesiastical sovereignty. That in its day the Nationalist Party would send a commission to the Vatican to raise the case of Puerto Rico, He stated that all religious institutions had to be nationalized. As this year the mass celebrated last year in honor of the heroes of ‘68 was not on the program, Mr. Albizu Campos personally addressed the Rev. Martínez, of that parish. “Last year,” he said, “a Te Deum was sung in the church of this town and the Rev. Martínez delivered the most eloquent speech in the assembly that we gave in this same theater. Reverend Martínez revealed himself that afternoon as a true Puerto Rican. Reverend Martínez owes an explanation to his people as to why that mass has not been celebrated. He must explain what secret coercions have prevented the perfume of a prayer to the martyrs of our Independence from rising today”. The speaker ended by saying that that pilgrimage was an act of atonement to the heroes of ‘68. Mr. Albizu Campos was carried on shoulders by the multitude, closing the assembly in the midst of delirious enthusiasm.
THE NATIONALIST PARTY PROCLAIMS NINE DAYS OF MOURNING ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF DON PEDRO ANGLERÓ, SURVIVOR OF THE GRITO DE LARES Every time a free man disappears, the Homeland trembles and the future clouds over: the one, feeling in its most intimate essences the painful onslaught of Destiny, and the other, suffering the orphanhood of the constitutive virtues of hope. Hence, when manhood descends from its august pedestal obeying iron and eternal laws, it is necessary to staunch the wound with a vision of eternity, for otherwise the sense of spiritual harmony will succumb to the weight of misfortune. The heroes of the great odyssey of Lares made the heart of their Homeland beat because those venerable trunks had taken root in the depths of the Puerto Rican Spirit. From then on, the Homeland, vilified in hours of joy by the detractors of the Ideal, kept the ashes of its glorious dead very deep in its bowels, sure that the enemies of Liberty, for lacking the vision of the eternal, are not in the disposition to respect the sacred ashes of the dead. But today, shaken the very essence of the Homeland by the death of the survivor of the odyssey of Lares, don Pedro Angleró, at the age of one hundred and ten years, it seems to us that the leading figures of the Revolution of ‘68 make their appearance on the proscenium of their people and impose silence, with the moral authority that induced them to defend, on a not distant day, the reason of the ideals and the transcendence of libertarian thought. Don Pedro Angleró has died today, in the Barrio Obrero, of this city of San Juan Bautista, for physical life, at the moment in which the Homeland, grieved and bleeding, weeps the absence of her true sons and sinks into the despair of historical fatalism. A centennial hero has died, in whose veins beat the redemption of a people subjected by the power of force and by the denial of some of its sons. The exalted banner of the Borincan epic has fallen, and, to fall, with the sadness of the great and the happiness of the beautiful of the soul, has risen with the elegance of the martyrs who always rise above the tabernacle, being in communion with the perfume of sacrifice. Above the tabernacle of disillusionments has jumped this noble defender of morality and this priest of justice; over the tabernacle that indifference hoists in hours of negative potentiality, to impose the beheading of faith and decree that the vital force of Right resides in the imposition of inequality and not in the consciousness of men. Don Pedro Angleró has died for physical life; but as in every action of freedom two vital currents converge, the physical and the moral, don Pedro Angleró, by losing the vibration of matter, has seized the sources of morality, the plant of faith that he sowed in the living furrow of the Homeland, will be cultivated with zeal and affection by the noble hand of the present generation. And it will never die because the dream crystallized in the heat of Eternity cannot die. Before the pain that overwhelms the consciences of free Puerto Rican men before the disappearance of this knight of the Ideal, the Nationalism of Puerto Rico, is moved in its depth of purity and patriotic love and pays the noble champion of feeling the tears that perhaps all of Puerto Rico will have to shed before the venerable ashes of their dead. The nationalism of Puerto Rico, through this message of mourning and in accordance with the illustrious lineage of don Pedro Angleró, AESTHETIC MAN of the Borincan dream, proclaims nine days of national mourning and orders the National Boards and sub-National Boards of Puerto Rico that during these nine days dedicated to rendering religious homage to the memory of the noble man, the Flag of the Homeland be flown at half-mast and that they impose on themselves the Pain that the fall of a Man who had the merit of being a true Man produces in us. Given in San Juan de Puerto Rico, today, the sixteenth day of October of 1931, and year 64 of the Proclamation of the Republic.
THE NATIONAL BOARD
P. ALBIZU CAMPOS President
M. RIVERA MATOS General Secretary
THE UNITED STATES HAS A DUTY TO FULFILL WITH US AND THAT IS TO WITHDRAW FROM OUR COUNTRY - IT IS THE ONLY WAY TO DEMONSTRATE RESPECT TO THE LAW OF NATIONS - ALBIZU CAMPOS On Monday morning we visited the top leader Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos in his office at the central offices of the Nationalist Party, who at that moment was extremely busy, answering the numerous correspondence from the interior and abroad coming from countless organizations, co-religionists and friends inside and outside the nation. Upon noticing our presence in his office he immediately extended his firm right hand and with his proverbial smile inquired: “what news is there?” “None, Don Pedro”, we answered, “aside from the ones that you can provide us. Do not forget that the readers of LA NACION are anxiously awaiting your announced declarations”. -Ask, then - he replied. -What do you tell us about the current political moment? -“I already had the occasion to officially expose from the nationalist tribune in Guayama our attitude in relation to the present political panorama of the country. -“As we publish in another part of this edition the review of the act of Guayama we immediately formulated another question. -How will the United States Congress consider the project of the elective governor of Mr. La Guardia, Democratic Representative for New York in that legislative body? -The nationalist movement is not interested in the consideration that the United States Congress gives to any project that is submitted to that legislative body. We maintain that the Puerto Rican nation is absolute arbiter of its destiny, that the Treaty of Paris imposed by the United States on Spain is null and void, in what refers to Puerto Rico, because our country was not a contracting party in that treaty; neither did Spain have powers to cede Puerto Rico nor the United States to accept it in cession. By virtue of the Autonomic Charter, which constituted a treaty between the Mother Homeland and the island of Puerto Rico, our sovereignty was recognized internationally and it was the duty of every nation to respect it, starting with the United States. When Nationalism rises energetically for the vindication of its sovereignty, the invading power intends to disorient public opinion to protect its usurpation and its dispossession by imposing concessions to the oppressed country that perpetuate the foreign oppressor regime. Liberalism has its insolences. Let us not forget, the pretended liberals of all empires; they have always been imperialists who have suggested the most subtle means to complete foreign absorption. It is preferable for a nationality, victim of a military occupation, a frank and decisive despotism that serves as an incentive and that awakens indigenous resistance, to a veiled and liberal despotism that anesthetizes the national conscience. The United States has a duty to fulfill with us. And it is to withdraw immediately from our country. It is the only way to demonstrate respect to the law of nations. Immense damage has that invading nation caused to our nationality, by depriving it of the exercise of its sovereignty and subjecting it to the most barbaric and inhuman economic exploitation that history knows. If any North American legislator wants to do some good to his Homeland he should propose the respect for the right of others. If the representative La Guardia wants us to deal with his projects, let him propose to his country the immediate withdrawal of the North American armed forces from our land, and the payment of reparations that they owe us for the immense damages caused in our country during 33 years of North American military occupation. “The apparently liberal manifestations of Mr. La Guardia are directed especially to the Puerto Rican colony of New York to obtain from it the votes that Mr. La Guardia needs to sustain himself in power. “The National Board has given instructions to the New York Board to enlighten our compatriots in that modern Babel to refrain from the internal struggles in that country so that they do not let their feelings be exploited by any North American politician; that their only duty is to organize to restore the Republic of their Homeland. -What significance do you attribute to the revolutionary movement of the Philippines? Fearing the Philippine revolution the North American government by Law of the year 1917 committed itself to recognizing the Independence of the Philippine Islands (as soon as there was a stable government) and in the opinion of the government of the United States, there has not yet been “a stable government” in the Philippines nor will there ever be despite the fact that the Philippine government is of North American making. “The Filipinos have been waiting fourteen years with this promise”. “In that period North American interests have been becoming stronger. The conservative sentiment has been stimulated in important nationalist sectors of that archipelago to such a point that the eminent statesman Roxas, more or less ten months ago, has raised the flag of non-cooperation adopting tactics very similar to those of Puerto Rican nationalism. “The Filipinos see clearly that the moment is most opportune for the immediate suppression of the North American military occupation. United States does not have today a friendly nation in the entire Universe, because its policy of absorption has been unmasked. The North American power is going through an internal crisis of revolutionary characters produced by the economic crisis, consequence of the loss of the markets. “I firmly believe that the Filipinos will act to impose their independence. “The opportunity that the Puerto Rican nation has is identical to the one that the Philippine nation has. Our duty is to act immediately.
THE RADIO CORPORATION OF PORTO RICO’, SUBSIDIARY OF THE INTERNATIONAL TELEGRAPH & TELEPHONE CO., REFUSES TO TRANSMIT POLITICAL SPEECHES
CENSORSHIP ON NATIONALISM PROPAGANDA. DECLARATIONS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE PARTY DON PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS
“For some time influence has been exerted on the company “Radio Corporation of Porto Rico” subsidiary of the “International Telegraph and Telephone Co.” for the radio transmission of nationalist speeches to be suspended. It is absolutely certain that the North American government wanted to suppress our propaganda through the airwaves and it is also absolutely certain that the pro-Yankee elements yearned for the same purpose. We must call attention to the fact that in the United States freedom of speech through the airwaves does not exist. What has been called indirect censorship prevails there, which is a formal admission that freedom of speech or thought does not exist in that country. In the Yankee Congress a bill is being considered to suppress those restrictions of thought and of right. Under a regime of force like the one that prevails in Puerto Rico, under this North American military occupation, no right exists and only a mere tolerance in the emission of thought, because the North American power trusts in its strength and in the dominion of the press. The propaganda through the wireless way produced national and international effects and has forced the invader to unmask himself, imposing a censorship. The excuse that the “Radio Corporation of Porto Rico”, subsidiary of the “International Telegraph and Telephone Co.” gives is trivial. To allege that a thought emission so vital for Puerto Rico is suppressed, to dedicate its apparatus to commercial announcements and to news reports of the races of the Hippodrome, is to confess that they are acting under the coercion of the North American government and in intelligence with the oppressive policy of that government, especially when those radio transmissions represented a very substantial income for the company. They intend to besiege us by air since we are by sea and land.