base of our slavery. The Coalición will not raise the problem of Statehood. It is a Yankee government party in Puerto Rico, and it must defend the policy of that government against us. That policy is none other than the maintenance of this irresponsible colonial system that has converted a civilized and rich country into a factory, where the owners are Yankees and the peones are Puerto Ricans. Statehood in the program of the Coalición is nothing more than an apparently respectable veil to protect the Yankee imperialist policy of intervention that leads us to definitive colonialism. Instead of taking the formal steps towards Statehood, the spokesmen of the coalición are already coming with the discredited song of a Puerto Rican governor as a solution to this national tragedy. That thing about Statehood in the coalicionista program is exactly the same as that thing about independence in the program of the liberal faction. The unionistas, today “liberales,” maintained that disposition in their program for twenty-five years of government. They never raised the independence solution. They fulfilled their role as a government party by developing the Yankee imperialist policy and have delivered the country to us in ruins. An impartial observer will not be able to understand how the popular ascendancy of these government factions is possible. It is simple. It is the triumph of skillful imperialist policy. The Yankee takes possession of all sources of wealth, agriculture, communications, commerce, industry, and finance. They place the contributory burden on the natives of the country. Part of what they collect by force is redistributed in salaries among the natives. The directors of local policy are in charge of the distribution. That amount currently amounts to about twenty-two million annually, that is, the assembly of the insular budget and the municipal budgets. In reality, it is the only industry left for the native directors to live on. The most cultured classes flee, as is natural, from peonage, but, to live, they must be overseers in this regime of forced slavery. That privilege is disputed by the politicians of the government factions. They become enraged against each other; since it is about maintaining slavery, no truth is preached, and instead, base passions are ignited in the multitude; they separate and embrace again, according to the needs of that triumph. They obtain means to manipulate votes and commit the most unheard-of outrages against citizen dignity. It is a duty to call the attention of the sensible people left in our country, that this policy is strengthening the national slavery of a people and restoring individual slavery with the purchase of citizen dignity embodied in suffrage. In these elections that we have just witnessed, the government factions have resorted to all methods to stir up the basest passions in the masses, resorting to all forms of bribery. Something unheard of has been resorted to: the kidnapping of voters. The hopes of collective renewal placed in the female electorate have vanished. These directors have not bothered to refrain from initiating women into that disastrous policy. Puerto Rico presents the picture of a shipwreck of the most precious human values: honor, patriotism, sacrifice. Yankee imperialism, in the moral sphere, has led us to despise ourselves; in the material sphere, from owners it has converted us into peones; and from peones into beggars sentenced to death. Nationalism is the only salvation because it revives in each of us the consciousness of a free man for whom human dignity has no price, and who cannot conceive why he does not have the right to govern the destinies of his children or his Homeland. That painful renewal of the slave into a free person is not easy to effect and one must have the patience of waiting for that supreme good of man to crystallize internally, even if we have to make the maximum effort to accelerate the moral process. For this, disinterested, noble, wise, and courageous directors are needed. In a word, patriots, worthy emulators of the Bracetti, of the martyrs of Lares, of the Hostos, Rius Rivera, and Betances. With this solemn invocation to the sacred manes of our Christian civilization, nationalism returns for all the fueros of the Homeland. Hosanna! the liberating army is constituted. It has five thousand places! Its motto: valor and sacrifice. San Juan de Puerto Rico, on the 16th day of November of 1932, 64th anniversary of the Proclamation of the Republic. The National Junta, P. ALBIZU CAMPOS, President Rafael RIVERA MATOS General Secretary THE LIE OF SUFFRAGE By Pedro Albizu Campos Sovereignty resides in the nation. The powers of the State, that is, of the national legal personality, are formed by delegation made by the nation, directly, at times, as still happens in popular assemblies, or as in many Swiss communes, indirectly, through compromisarios, a form that is used to designate the North American executive. When the district exceeds a certain territorial extension or if the population is numerous, the popular assembly to designate the mandatories is replaced by the current electoral precinct with its respective colleges. The sovereign national will is marked on the electoral ballot. In any case, the condition of ciudadano sui-juris is required, which varies with the constitutions of the nations and their political regimes. The serf or the slave lacks suffrage because he does not meet those constitutional requirements, but, since servitude has already been legally abolished, the denial of that right persists to those who lived in slavery and their descendants, by the superior social mandate. Such is the case of more than sixteen million North Americans, who, for the sole fact of having African blood in their veins, still cannot vote in their own country. The organization of the State is the result of the equilibrium of the social forces that integrate the nationality. The number of mandatories of each class is determined by the constitution or custom, without distinction of political regimes. The virtuality of suffrage is, however, in its power to modify in any form the written or customary constitution of the nationality. In Puerto Rico suffrage does not exist in any form. The organized legal personality of the Puerto Rican State does not exist due to its suppression by force by the North American military occupation. The country is governed militarily by a regulation imposed on it by the occupying imperial power of the United States. The military regulation provides for the holding of elections to designate mandatories who exclusively sustain the regime. The imperial power reserves its intervention to destroy the result of any election as has been demonstrated in the case of the municipality of San Juan. The municipality itself could be abolished if necessary. If it were a matter of representation of the colonial legislature, the occupying power could, through its imperial congress, immediately amend the regulation called the organic charter, to invalidate the result of any election. Neither citizenship nor suffrage exists. Faced with the invading military occupation, the Puerto Rican nation must organize its legal personality. It cannot submit because it will never agree to its extinction. It must do so under the adverse conditions imposed on it by the occupying enemy force. The electoral farce can become a devastating reality for the regime that overwhelms the Homeland. It would be the case of a forced plebiscite against the power as has happened in Spain. In our case, it is a matter of something even more serious; of the suppression of the foreign occupation, to organize the Puerto Rican nationality. The mandatories will be constituents. The convention will establish the government of the Republic and request recognition from all nations and international powers. The dilemma for the North American empire before the firmness of the Puerto Rican nation would be to dissolve the convention with gunfire or to recognize the Republic. Of course, its regime having been declared null by the Convention, no act of the Yankee congress could be imposed on the country unless force were resorted to, with blood and fire. The North American empire knows (sic) that dilemma, according to the opinion of its most illustrious personalities. It must agree, according to them, to the recognition of the Republic. To do otherwise would undermine its prestige in addition to the serious international complications that would necessarily arise. Once the Republic is restored, there would be citizenship and suffrage. REGARDING THE BANKING SITUATION IN PUERTO RICO, THE NATIONALIST PARTY ADDRESSES THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE. San Juan de Puerto Rico March 7, 1933 Hon. Rafael Martínez Nadal President of the Insular Senate San Juan de Puerto Rico Sir: In compliance with a resolution of the National Junta of the Nationalist Party, the undersigned has the honor of addressing the Mr. President of the Insular Senate. In the wake of the San Ciprián hurricane, Nationalism submitted to the consideration of the insular Legislature the measures deemed necessary to avert the economic crisis caused by said hurricane. Among these measures are: The general moratorium and the suspension of payments of the public debt. Faced with the North American financial catastrophe, the head of the intervention, Colonel Beverley, decreed a banking moratorium, sheltering himself in the provision that authorizes him to set holidays on certain occasions. The law on holidays does not authorize said official to decree a moratorium in the interest of anyone, and least of all the foreign banks that retain in their coffers the funds of this people, shielding them with that single measure from the inevitable consequences of the collapse of the economy of the United States. That decree exclusively benefited the foreign banks, because the country’s banks were solvent enough to meet their commitments. The same North American official, as of today’s date, declares his proclamation of March 4, 1933 null and void, in order to comply with the executive order of the President of the United States of North America, which declares banking operations suspended during the days six, seven, eight, and nine of this month. This executive order of the Mr. President of the North American power has been immediately extended to Puerto Rico, without any prior consultation or request from any Puerto Rican entity. It is the historical law that is repeated. Intervened nations like ours will add their wealth to that of the power that dominates them for the exclusive benefit of the latter. When the empire enjoys prosperity, misery will be the fate of the subjected nation: and when the empire is in crisis, total ruin is what awaits the intervened nation. Foreign interventions are excuses to hoard the wealth of the peoples who are victims of force. The legislation of the North American Congress that, applied to Puerto Rico, exclusively benefits the United States, will be extended to Puerto Rico without consulting us at all; but the laws that could possibly protect Puerto Rico are of course not extended to this country. We must clarify that what comes as a mere concession from the power that holds its sovereignty could never benefit Puerto Rico. It is true that, to disorient the public opinion of Puerto Rico, some crumbs from the budget of the United States are distributed in businesses that the dominating nation is interested in maintaining here, but that in no way benefits us because it only serves to stimulate the apologists of the regime. The exploitation that the monopoly of our market signifies cannot be compensated in any way. It cannot be otherwise. That is why the North American intervention exists. Proof of what we have just affirmed appears in the Press with the same date as the aforementioned executive order of the President of the United States of North America. The congress of that country has denied the loans requested from the Financial Reconstruction Corporation and the Agricultural Credit Corporation, North American entities created to rehabilitate the North American people. The terms of these loans are liberal: they could benefit the country even if they are poorly administered by the North American officials who govern their disbursement, and their concession to Puerto Rico had to be denied. It is childish to pretend that North American finance will facilitate us the slightest help to get out of its clutches. As Judge Evans already said in the light of the concept that the United States has of the law, Puerto Rico is a domestic country in the international sphere, and it is foreign in the North American national sphere. Later we will see how these concepts are shuffled to harm our country. The executive order of the Mr. President of the United States is the preliminary step to accustom the public to the inevitable; the banking moratorium for an indefinite time. At the expiration of the term stipulated in said order, small amounts only will be allowed to be withdrawn. The moratorium will be effective as imposed by the collapse of the economic castle of the United States. While the banks are exonerated from the obligation to return the deposits, they are protected in their right as creditor lenders. Executions of businesses, farms, and homes will continue for failure to pay obligations contracted with the banks. While these corporations enjoy the privilege of retaining in their coffers all the numerario! A more effective system could not be invented to ruin everyone and to definitively concentrate in the power of North American companies what little remains of the national wealth in Puerto Rican hands. To prevent this dispossession, a moratorium is required on the payment of all obligations to a bank, whether the obligation is personal or mortgage. That measure can be initiated by the Insular Legislature to save its responsibility to the extent permitted by the legal means at its disposal. The veto of the head of the intervention is considered certain. It is to be expected, but the country will be able to orient itself and adopt the measures that protect it against strangulation. The procedure that informs the executive order of the Mr. President of the United States is not new. It has been the norm of action in the financial crises that the North Americans have suffered, crises that, compared to the present one, can be described as benign. Given the seriousness of the situation that arises in Puerto Rico, patriotic duty obliges the clarification of such a delicate matter. In no country in the world can a bank be opened with the ease that it is done in the United States or in countries subject to its laws. The banking law that governs in Puerto Rico proves it. It seems liberal. In reality, the small bank that opens its doors becomes a compulsory branch of the most powerful bank in the country, which through that elastic system becomes a rediscount bank. In order for the obligations of small banks to circulate, the rediscount bank must give its prior consent that it will accept them, but for this it will require as collateral the assets of the small banks, their shares, and deposits. If the small bank goes bankrupt, the rediscount bank loses nothing. On the contrary, it always wins because it speculates with the pledged value. But if the rediscount bank goes bankrupt, it ruins the small banks and their depositors. Then, the great interests that dominate finance buy the lands, transportation vehicles, mines, franchises, etc., at derisory prices. The financial panic results in a ruin for that unhappy North American people, but it is one of the effective methods with which the Yankee banking oligarchy counts to remain in power indefinitely. This is not allowed in any other country that we know of. Everywhere the savings of the people are considered sacred. The organization of banks is made difficult, their number is limited. All governments require guarantees that cannot be evaded in a moment of crisis. In the absence of a Puerto Rican National Bank, because it is impossible to organize it under the present regime, the bank called National City of New York is functioning as a rediscount bank. Its importance in North American finance is known to all. Without a doubt, the executive order of the North American President has automatically been extended to Puerto Rico due to the links of said bank with the chain of North American banks. Let’s see how this bank works. Its name gives the idea that it is a national institution of the United States. It is a private corporation with a franchise from the North American Congress. Hence its name “National”. It has a franchise to do business exclusively in the city of New York. We must repeat that it cannot do business in any other North American city. However, based on permission to do business abroad, it does business in Puerto Rico. We are in the financial sphere also a foreign country! But when it is wanted to inspect it or make it pay contributions in Puerto Rico as a foreign bank, it alleges with success that it is a domestic federal institution. In this way, it occupies an enviable position. It is the depositary of the funds of the People of Puerto Rico when no insular official can inspect it and specify the state of its cash. The banking situation of Puerto Rico cannot be regulated without determining the conditions under which a bank with a franchise from the North American Congress can operate in our country. We believe that Puerto Rican depositors will have better guarantees when the depository banks of the funds of the People of Puerto Rico have in their directives an official interventor designated by the Economic Commission of the Insular Legislature. Given the seriousness of the situation, we trust that the Legislature will exercise its initiative to immediately declare the suspension of the service of the public debt, which amounts to about six million dollars annually. Another matter of capital importance is the absence of gold in the coffers of the banks that operate here. Before the North American invasion, gold and silver circulated almost exclusively in the country. Now the monetary medium is all North American paper. We were forced to exchange the good numerario in metal that we had for North American paper with a loss of forty percent. Our gold and our silver are in the North American coffers. The situation of gold reserves in the United States is described by the President of that country himself. The export of gold and all transactions in that metal have been prohibited! It is the crisis in the value of paper money. We all remember the spectacular decline of the mark first and then the franc and the ruin of the holders of securities in those currencies. We trust that the Insular Legislature will negotiate from power to power with the United States, that the part that is deemed necessary of the North American securities in circulation be exchanged for gold immediately and deposited in Puerto Rico. Lest those who are now hoarding bills find themselves with depreciated paper in their power when they need to dispose of it. Nationalism fulfills a duty of Patria by sending these considerations through the Mr. President of the Insular Senate to all members of the legislature. With the most distinguished consideration. P. ALBIZU CAMPOS President AN ARTICLE BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONALIST PARTY REGARDING THE NEOMALTHUSIAN LEGISLATION THAT HAS BEEN PRESENTED It invites the most serious consideration the memorial addressed to the insular Legislature by the Mr. Bishops, Their Illustrious Highnesses Monsignor Byrne and Monsignor Willinger. This document covers all aspects of the social problem raised by the neomalthusians. The reflections it contains are irrefutable. However, the legislators who promote that legislation believe they have the power to regulate the population of Puerto Rico, and, victims of that illusion, they are tenacious in their absurdities and defy public opinion that repudiates them. The insular Legislature does not have the power to regulate even its own existence. Its life depends on the North American Congress which has been shortening it for the benefit of Yankee interests. It will be suppressed the day it suits the United States. The power that exercises its sovereignty regulates the population of a nation. Thus, under the North American intervention, no Puerto Rican can leave for abroad without a Yankee passport. All foreigners who are pleasing to the United States can enter Puerto Rico. The insular Legislature is powerless to intervene in the entry or exit of population. The Congress of the United States imposes on us its emigration and immigration laws, and entrusts its strict compliance to officials designated directly by the president of the empire. It is noteworthy that Puerto Ricans, as good islanders that they are, do not emigrate. Their home is their Homeland and they consider all residence abroad to be transitory. There is talk of overpopulation, but the truth is that Puerto Rico is a country of immigration. The population of the Virgin Islands is emptying into Puerto Rico at an average rate of one thousand souls per year. By the year nineteen thirty, some eight thousand inhabitants of that archipelago had already entered through our ports. The Yankee Government has been able to prevent that immigration, but it has not done so. Rather, it encourages it. It stimulates, of course, Yankee immigration. They figure in their phalanxes, from the “experts,” known to all, to the blond tobacco workers who occupy benches in the factories of Puerta de Tierra. The labor in the United States, due to the economic ruin of that country, is worthless. The North American worker invasion is already underway and will be stimulated by the North American Government in accordance with its policy of displacement of our population. But the head of the intervention, Colonel Beverley, who speaks on behalf of his government, says nothing of the immigration from the Virgin Islands and the United States and which is a serious cause in the increase of the population. What population do Colonel Beverly and his Government then want to decrease in Puerto Rico? Simply, the Puerto Rican population! We Puerto Ricans are the ones who are bothering in Puerto Rico. Our ports have been closed to the mother race of our culture, the Spanish. The entry of Spaniards or Hispano-Americans is made impossible because they reinforce the Hispanic structure of our nationality and that is not convenient for North American political plans. Let Yankees and santomeños enter in unlimited quantities, but not Hispano-Americans or Spaniards! And let all the Puerto Ricans who emigrate leave, or all the Puerto Ricans die! The density of population is the power of the defined nationality. If in Puerto Rico there were ten million Yankees, the head of the intervention would consider that a blessing for his Patria that would then have enormous power in these waters. But to think that the Puerto Rican population rises to ten million souls is to fall into a terrible nightmare. It is that the fact would be definitive. It would make the Yankee intervention impossible here and in the neighboring countries. All North American provinces (“states” sic), strive to have the density of population that Massachusetts and Rhode Island boast of, the richest provinces in proportion to their territory and the most civilized, and that enjoy the highest per capita wealth in the United States. Those provinces, despite having a density of population greater than that which Puerto Rico boasts of, fight to increase the number of inhabitants and punish neomalthusian propaganda with jail. The North American Federal Government protects all its provinces with identical legislation so that they reach the development of Massachusetts. The North American statisticians clearly see that the only defense against foreign invasion is the human reserves. But here we find another paradox. The Government of the United States describes neomalthusianism and its propaganda as a crime, but its mandatary in Puerto Rico, Colonel Beverly, tolerates it, stimulates it, and gives it prior sanction. The paradox is easy to solve. The Yankee intervention requires one more means to determine the composition of the population of Puerto Rico. The current settlers are neither pleasing nor convenient and their number must be lowered. The methods used for that purpose have failed. Our country has been subjected to the most barbaric economic exploitation that human ingenuity has been able to conceive, but death by hunger has not been able to impose itself on our entire nation. The Yankee regime is characterized by the increase in epidemics but these have also been ineffective. We are so strong that not even these have been able to diminish our population. God is the creator and protector of nationalities and men are powerless to destroy his divine
work. The United States Congress could implant here neomalthusianism in the form that has imposed upon us the bank moratorium to bail out its banks and ruin our country. That has been the first blessing that the other smiling Roosevelt has bestowed upon us. But that measure would seem unusual when in the United States neomalthusian practices and their divulgation constitute a public crime. How to do it? By not making the laws of the invading power itself respected here and sanctioning the practices that are condemned there. When the insular Legislature wanted to take measures to defend our people from the Yankee banking collapse, the head of the intervention, Colonel Beverly, struck the project down as legislative interference and annulled it with his absolute veto. Yankee interests demanded it. The governor is here to protect them, and he fulfills his duty to protect his own. It is up to fools to give weapons to their enemies. Now it turns out that the insular Legislature is not interfering. Neomalthusianism is a Yankee convenience in Puerto Rico, and the head of the intervention has given it his prior imperial placet. Now the legislators can give their vote to satisfy the aspirations of Yankee politics, but they will not even be able to boast that the law is theirs. It is certain that without this prior official sanction the neomalthusian projects would not have merited serious attention. Even women have been mobilized to defend them. A woman signs it as co-author. The authorized word of patrician mother who is La Hija del Caribe must have moved them. Doña Trina’s words against neomalthusianism are definitive. The protest of the Student Federation against these projects must have caused deep emotion. It is strange that there are women who conspire against their health and their lives. The most eminent doctors condemn the neomalthusian procedures, already so vulgarized, because they endanger the health of the spouses and especially the health of the woman. We do not believe it just or courageous that men should unload on women the disastrous results of their whims. The woman is the source of life and the Homeland cannot render useless a single potential mother. The lessons of the war tell us that the nation can lose many men and therefore can sacrifice them for it, but it cannot lose a single woman without great risk to its own security and therefore prohibits female participation in any action dangerous to life. Medical eminences also maintain that sterilization of the male can be harmless. It would be effective for neomalthusian purposes. Here is an expeditious route for men who consider the advent of a child as a misfortune. Once the law of the Legislature is signed, it will lose all intervention to regulate the population. This enormous power is given to the Yankee authorities under the direction of the Governor. They will prevent procreation and if the Legislature later wanted to change its mind it could not do so. Its delegations to the executive are never revocable against the will of the head of the intervention. The legislative initiative will be law when it favors North American politics and will be null when it intends to confront that politics. How do nations regulate their population? Always promoting its growth. There is the example of the United States itself. It is an insolence to say that there is a single Puerto Rican too many in the world. That statement constitutes a crime of lèse patrie. Economists adjust their country’s economy to a population that is always in crescendo. That to reach that supreme national good it is required to be masters of our sovereignty is indisputable. Then, gentlemen, face the truth. Independent Puerto Rico would foster its economy to develop its population, always growing. Free from the suicidal tendency of political slavery, the parliament of the republic, like all parliaments of civilized sovereign nations, would never think of preventing the birth of Puerto Rican posterity. Proud for having constituted a Homeland, all Puerto Ricans would be jealous guardians of the future glory of Puerto Rico. P. Albizu Campos THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONALIST PARTY COMMENTS ON THE VETO TO THE PROJECT RELATED TO ELECTORAL REPRESENTATION There is no legislative power. The legislative initiative will be law when it suits North American politics, and it will be null when it protects Puerto Rican interests. The nation has been deluded by a brand-new legislature that has only served to provide concessions to the invaders. Faced with this reality of the Governor’s veto, no time is lost in discussing what he is not going to approve. In reality, the head of the intervention is the one who really legislates. The members of the Legislature are entertained by playing with all seriousness at representatives and senators. By vetoing the electoral law project, the head of the intervention has lifted the veil for the naive. The Legislature has ratified its approval by a vote of two-thirds of the members that constitute it. But that does not turn the project into law either! The President of the United States retains the absolute veto. Even if the Legislature approves a project unanimously, it will not be law if the head of the empire does not feel like it. If that were not enough, the Yankee Congress retains the power to annul each and every one of the laws of Puerto Rico. We are witnessing the most ridiculous and costly legislative farce in history. It is not known why the head of the intervention has vetoed a bill that contains the provisions of his previous recommendations to the Insular Legislature. That retraction is not easy to explain. It may be that he acted for personal reasons, on instructions from his government, or that his personal reasons coincided with the instructions he receives daily from Washington. The President of the United States, against his will, is going to do us a favor by clarifying this mystery when he dictates his resolution when considering the project. Colonel Beverley’s reasoned veto offers a wonderful resemblance to the dissenting opinion of the legislative minority headed by the president of the Liberal Party, Mr. Barceló. We will deal exclusively with the statements in which the Nationalist party is alluded to. The history of militant nationalism is diaphanous and is of public domain