IN PUERTO RICO A PLAN IS PROPOSED FOR THE ANNEXATION OF THAT COUNTRY’ TOGETHER WITH CUBA AND HAITI TO THE UNITED STATES6
A PUERTO RICAN ALSO PROTESTS
In addition to this vibrant and magnificent protest by the Cuban Consul, who has known how to come to the defense of our dignity, a distinguished Puerto Rican, Mr. P. Albizu Campos, responded to Mr. Tous’s manifesto with noble virility. “Convinced Mr. Tous -says Mr. Albizu Campos- that the Americans do not esteem us as equals despite citizenship, but always desirous of seeing us tied to the Yankee imperial chariot, he advises our acceptance in fact and contrary to right and to the effect he sustains a project of amendment to the Constitution, to admit Puerto Rico as a “state” with representation but without vote in Congress, except in its own matters. Such an amendment would well reflect the American attitude, but it is not moved by an ingenuity that allows to unmask its hypocrisy. Even if the amendment were feasible, it is so humiliating that we accept a position of inequality, that that is enough to reject it outright. The most painful thing of all this is that Mr. Tous is not satisfied with the sinking of his Homeland, but offers the United States a plan that would destroy the aspirations for the independence of the great Filipino people, and that constitutes a gratuitous attack on our brother peoples in the race, Cuba, Haiti and Santo Domingo, who with sacrifice, the only saving thing, freed themselves from the clutches of the conquest. Why instead of facilitating the annexation of Cuba, Haiti and Santo Domingo, does he not protest the vandalistic outrage of which the Dominican people are victims, the promiscuous slaughter of thousands of Haitians, of the failed attacks against the sovereignty of Cuba after having sworn to defend it? He does not protest. We form a chain with those untamed peoples, whose example we must imitate, and since we sink with pleasure, he believes that we must drag them also to the same abyss. This attitude is logical, after preaching so much to this unhappy people that it is not capable of anything, comes the conviction of moral incapacity to resist the brutal attack of the strong, and he forgets that these men in other lands ARE NOT MADE OF GELATIN. It is dishonorable that Puerto Ricans serve as an instrument to facilitate the plan premeditated by American statesmen, to annex their Latin neighbors, with the economic penetration, disorganizing their institutions and finally applying the garrote of military force”.
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE UNIONIST PARTY AND PUERTO RICAN NATIONALISM”
The Puerto Rican Alliance, a fusion of the Parties that were called Unionist and Republican, has placed the country in the dilemma of submitting to the dictatorship of the plutocracy or to the dictatorship of demagoguery. The electoral right has been destroyed; the directory will decide who we must vote for in the next elections if we are to allow it to exercise the will it pretends.
When the electoral right is destroyed, the gesture is made of favoring women’s suffrage. Dictatorships have used many subterfuges to impose themselves, but we never believed that they would have to use a woman’s skirt as a shield,
Why a dictatorship in Puerto Rico? This is imposed only in moments of great crisis and to obtain or protect fundamental collective rights when all the ordinary means of government have failed. It is an extremely exceptional measure and is tolerated and sanctioned by an imperative necessity.
Our people are accused of not being prepared for self-government. Their rulers deny them the opportunity to prepare themselves and exercise over them a veiled imperialism. To culminate their humiliation, their own sons want to assume over them the gesture of dictators.
Each political party in Puerto Rico should be a school of democracy. Apparently, it is an inconvenience to certain leaders of the public opinion.
What purpose does the dictatorship pursue? In the definitive agreements of the assemblies there is talk of the agrarian problem, the problem of schools and other problems, for whose solution a dictatorship is not justified because today we have powers to solve those problems. We are also told that the alliance will direct all its efforts to the consideration of full self-government to achieve the sovereignty of the people of Puerto Rico within the sovereignty of the United States. The authors of this phrase have explained to us that achieving full self-government is confined to obtaining the approval of the bill pending consideration before the United States Congress, under which Puerto Rico may elect its own governor in
- But that same project provides that that governor may be removed by the President of the United States. The governor thus elected, will feel responsible to the President of the United States and not to the people who granted him their representation. We will achieve with his election putting one more puppet at the disposal of Yankee imperialism in Puerto Rico, which will thus be able to escape the responsibility for its bad government and the sons of our country will bear it. Wise is the Yankee policy that knows how to find good instruments for its execution! The debated phrase “sovereignty within sovereignty” some tell us that it means the federal “state” and others that it means free associated state. Its authors offer interpretations that constitute an antithesis. It carries death within it. Of course, it cannot refer to the federal “state”, because it is neither a state nor sovereign. It is a mere province of the American nation. As the other interpretation is so contrary to this, we come to the conclusion that the phrase does not mean anything.
It is a veil to cover up the colonialism that wants to be implanted with the consent of the men in whom we placed our trust.
- The Department of War, which disposes of life and property in Puerto Rico, has just published an official report in which it makes a complete narration of the policy of the United States in Puerto Rico from the Spanish-American War until now. We are told clearly that Puerto Rico will never be admitted into the American Union in accordance with all the precedents followed until now. It is denied also its right to constitute itself as a free nation. And cynically it is affirmed that American citizenship for us is only an imperial means to keep us subject to the Yankee mandate. Our leaders seem resigned to the situation imposed on them by American kaiserism, and for “convenience”, they want to subject their people to that will that is hostile to their happiness and dignity. Faithful to the imposed mandate, they have constituted the Alliance to formalize the colonialism already established. We have been told that the object is to sanitize the political environment, to protect us against the socialist calamity, etc., etc., but no one has believed this, with the exception of the people who are interested in the constitution of the directory.
None of the militant parties will take care to defend our collective personality and our inalienable right to constitute a free people among the free peoples of the world. The ideal of independence has died among the militant parties, our people have been toyed with. Its great majority is independentista to the bone.
We offer the most exceptional spectacle: the people are the action, their leaders, the reaction; the people, the vanguard, their leaders, the impedimenta. All the effort of our leaders seems to have been limited to organizing hosts that, after being organized, have taken fright and have decided to surrender with their army in order not to incur the malevolence of the enemy.
For the Unionist Party, whose soul was always nationalist, what has happened is death. It has been formally decreed by stipulating that the Alliance will be for an indefinite time and that all its official bodies will be suspended. No one may convene the Union of Puerto Rico to any meeting after this agreement.
“The preservation of the insignia, the name, and the personality”, is a skillful formula to maintain the cohesion of the hosts so as not to see the directory reduced to a pretentious skeleton. The truth is that the Union of Puerto Rico and the so-called Republican Party has been dissolved and a new party dominated by the plutocracy has been constituted. No people could expect any benefit from this combination and much less ours that, excessively trusting, places its trust everywhere. The only goodness of said movement is the resurgence of Puerto Rican Nationalism. The new nationalism will be true. It will watch over the economic well-being of the working classes, it will bring the lands back into Puerto Rican hands, it will not allow the imposition of an exotic culture, and it will not cease its effort until it vindicates the Homeland dignity. This painful imposition has been invested with the language that is used to consecrate the great ideals. Strip the proposition of that beautiful attire and you will find the macabre figure of an audacity committed by sons and the tranquility, of reconstruction. (sic). It will not be the plutocratic Alliance, nor will it be the demagoguery that will impose itself on this people. All of Puerto Rico will rise up with the patriotic ideal of a pure nationalism and will punish at the polls the men who have violated its trust. The Homeland is indestructible and will survive all the impositions of its own or of strangers.
PEDRO ALBIZU CAMPOS Ponce, Puerto Rico, May 12, 1924
OUR INTERVIEWS
We went to see Lcdo. Albizu Campos, at his law office in the city of Ponce, where we talked extensively with him, about the political topics that in this hour of concerns and thoughts worry the world; Albizu is deeply documented, and he is also in direct relations with the men and associations abroad who at this moment are interested in the right of the peoples, and in the justice of humanity. Albizu Campos is a nervous and dynamic spirit that acts silently, without stridencies, but placing his absolute faith in the solid creed of his ideal. His precise and forceful conversation cracks like a whip, it phosphoresces, sometimes it burns like a flame. He is one of our most distinguished tribunes. His oratory is not sprinkled with rhetoricisms but abounds in ideas and virile exaltations. When he speaks to the people, his word takes on strength and flashes of fire, shaking the masses in a vortex of gusts of tempest. Then, the blizzard becomes soft and when he speaks to the heart, even the most recalcitrant multitudes, meditate. Albizu Campos is a reality unquestionable, but his great promising harvest is already in season. The ears of corn are turning yellow, while they are weighed down with pure maternal feelings. Having finished our interview, we asked for his portrait. -I don’t have a portrait -he told us. -But, we need it. -It doesn’t matter, publish the interview without it. It is not necessary. -Let’s go to Valiente’s studio. The man became surly. -It would be an outrage, -he protested. Our gaze was running through the paintings of the office, while we were talking. With a glance we found the object of our desire. We already had the photograph. In a careless moment it would be ours. It would also offer us the occasion to make known to our readers the cordial reception that was given in the city of the South to José Vasconcelos passing through to Santo Domingo, by this group of men who love Puerto Rico above all things. Here is some of the much that we talked with Pedro Albizu Campos. -Where did you graduate as a lawyer? -At Harvard University of New England. -When you came to Puerto Rico, which political party attracted your attention? -None. -We would like to tell the readers of “Poliedro” your personal political process until its culmination as Vice-president of the Nationalist party. I was always a defender of the absolute independence of the Homeland. I called the annexationist “republicans” renegades and the “socialists” misguided and the parties they integrated, instruments of the imperialism of the United States and responsible in great part for the destruction of our nationality. The Unionist party despite its fifth base requesting the recognition of our independence, did not interest me, because it was a party frankly governmental and that cooperated directly to the work of demolition directed from Washington instead of sustaining a collective action that would allow us to conserve our wealth, as a necessary base to establish our national sovereignty. When Mont Reily arrived in Puerto Rico, of grateful memory for many traitors, and who threw the unionists out of power, I suffered a grave mistake in believing that, outside of the pain, a rebellious party would be organized. I confused the hubbub formed by those who had lost the public posts with the true rebellion. Then I entered the Unionist party. I was the only one who entered the struggle when the party could not count on a single post. Everyone knows how it ignominiously surrendered to the imperial power. Despite that I continued sustaining the ideal of independence in all the meetings and assemblies of the party. When this one resolved to constitute with the Republican party the Puerto Rican Alliance, I understood that the party of the majority was definitely submitting to colonialism and I withdrew immediately from its ranks. My work in the Nationalist Party is known throughout the country. -What about your trip to Hispanic America as Special Envoy of Puerto Rican Nationalism? -The Nationalist party, in its last assembly, imposed that duty on me, and I hope to leave for the lands of Ibero-American promise at the beginning of this year. -What plan would you draw up for Puerto Rico to achieve the right to enjoy its sovereignty in the concert of free peoples? -Intense economic organization, conservation of our culture and Hispanic civilization, suppression of yacophile influences, non- cooperation with the North American imperial government, passive resistance and preparation of our people for the international struggles that are approaching. -Do you believe that the United States represents a danger for Hispanic America or on the contrary is it the point through which the new civilization must enter for us? -The United States is the danger for all of humanity, and especially for Ibero-America because of its absorbent policy. In Europe and in America there is a civilization of origin Greco-Roman and of which we Puerto Ricans are direct heirs because of our link with Spain. That civilization has degenerated in the United States. The knowledge that it has offered to man, the North Americans have dedicated it to exploit the immigrants and the blacks within their borders, and now they intend to continue the same work
with the neighboring nations. Lacking responsibility in human relations, for them all means are good if it is a matter of increasing their material wealth. And that is not civilization but barbarism armed with some knowledge of civilization. The North Americans have nothing to offer the world for its improvement unless it is the destruction of their empire. -Don’t you believe in the possibility of a new world war? If it were so, what do you think would be the destiny of the Antilles? -It is inevitable. The common enemy is the United States. The battlefield will be our waters in front of Panama, Europe, Ibero-America and Asia, will not tolerate being reduced to the vassalage that the United States intends to impose on them, be it by direct force against defenseless peoples of their territories or by economic penetration. The Antillean Archipelago occupies a privileged position in the world geography. It becomes essential to throw the United States out of its territories and to consolidate them under a confederation with sufficient naval power to resist any revenge, because I have no doubt of the decision that the next war will have. This will not end until the North American empire is reduced to impotence. -What concept do you have of the Puerto Rican literary movement in relation to our politics? -Almost all of our literati have extinguished their numen in the shadow of the budget, or they believe themselves completely defeated. The letters tell us only of pain, uncertainty, deception, suicide or conventionalism. There are the noble exceptions of those men who know for what God has given them the privileged faculty of seeing clearly and expressing gallantly. They, although few, invoke the irresistible force that emanates from our Hispanic civilization and culture and from our racial traditions. They wield the verb with courage and inspiration so that our people may regain faith in their own greatness and prepare for the struggle for the vindication of their rights. -Do you believe that our poets are doing something with their literature for the cause of the ideal of independence? -Almost nothing. When they do not contribute directly to its defeat with bloodless verses that smell of suicide and dissolution. The poet who evokes in our people all their greatness has not yet emerged. -Then, what orientations should the poets have to give a strong contribution to those ideals? -They must recover the value that inspires all creation so as not to disfigure it by thinking of external conventionalism. They must not drown their numen in their sterile subjectivism and love affair at odds with aesthetic expression. They must be the vanguard in the defense of their own dignity and that of their Homeland, as well as of their Hispanic culture, so that they may figure in the world Parnassus -We would like to know what is your vision of the future of Puerto Rico in the face of the United States. -Our Homeland will be a free and sovereign nation against the will of the United States. Its independence without limitations as well as that of the nations of the Caribbean and of Central America under the pernicious influence of the United States currently, will be imposed as a universal necessity that sustains the balance between the nations, and a state of law between them in this hemisphere. -What do you think is the destiny of Hispanic America in the concert of the great nations? -Our Iberian nations are the nations of the future. Europe and North America intend to secure privileged positions within them with a view to future events. A harmonious understanding between the Ibero-American nations would immediately reestablish the international equilibrium destroyed by the Great War that gave the North Americans the economic hegemony of the world, thus creating the most serious danger with which humanity has stumbled until now. These are in broad strokes some of the ideas poured out by Albizu Campos in the course of our long conversation. Naked and frank, they enclose between the lines serious and profound commentaries. We meditate…
“MACFADDEN IS THE ONLY CONGRESSMAN WHO HAS PENETRATED THE CONSCIENCE OF THIS PEOPLE. WE ARE ANTI-AMERICAN BECAUSE WE HAVE TO COMBAT A GOVERNMENT THAT ONLY SERVES TO TEAR FROM OUR LAND ITS RICHES”: ALBIZU CAMPOS 10
(From our Editor in Ponce, Mr. Maldonado)
In the “Hotel Meliá” we greet the Vice-president of the Nationalist Party, Lcdo. P. Albizu Campos. We ask him several questions of political actuality, to which he answered immediately: -What do you think, we ask him, about the manifestations that Representative MacFadden 11 made to President Coolidge, with respect to Puerto Rico? “MacFadden has told the absolute truth. He is the only congressman who has penetrated the conscience of this people”, Lcdo. Albizu Campos answered us. “We Puerto Ricans are anti-American because we have to combat a government that the only thing it serves in our land is to tear out its riches, destroy its culture and reduce it to an amorphous, despicable mass of day laborers”. “A strong people like the United States, with all the means to make Puerto Rico happy, denies it the most elementary rights of life and liberty, presenting itself in the crude form of the old empires oppressors, who have deserved the curse of history”. -“What opinion have you formed about the cablegram addressed by Mr. Barceló to the Resident Commissioner, Mr. Córdova Dávila, asking him to confirm if MacFadden had really made the declarations that are imputed to him? “Sad message of disloyalty. We must be loyal even with our enemies. It is of interest to Puerto Rico that the gentlemen of the colonial Legislature, manifest themselves with more civility, so that they can inform the government of the United States the way of thinking and feeling of our people”.
The definitive definitions are the only base of permanent understandings between friends and between enemies. That message contributes to the disorientation of the North American people, who need to be told frankly that their policy in this land and in other parts of the world, has created deep hostility”.
What scope do you give to the manifestations of Representative Mac Fadden with respect to that “the North American government must adopt measures to avoid that the pro-American feeling does not weaken in Puerto Rico”?
“Puerto Rico has never been Yankee nor will it ever be. Every measure that the government of the United States adopts to denature our country, with the purpose of “Yankeeizing” it, assimilating it to annex it definitively, will be rejected by the Puerto Ricans, consciously or unconsciously, because there is an eternal conflict of race, of culture, of civilization and of material interests between the people of Puerto Rico and the people of the United States, harmonizable only on the basis of the only understanding between defined nationalities, which is the mutual recognition of their independence, which postulates reciprocal treatment on the basis of equality restored by the law of nations and by the principles that inform our Western civilization. “We Puerto Ricans will combat every executive, legislative or judicial act of the United States in this land, because its only sanction is the force of the United States, and is contrary to our will. North America has a duty to fulfill with us, and with the Ibero-American peoples, of which we are part, and it is to recognize the full independence of Borinquen”. “And that duty will be imposed on it by the force of incontestable international facts that are approaching to reestablish the equilibrium disturbed by North American imperialism”.