THE PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT VETO TO THE ELECTORAL LAW DECLARATIONS MADE TO THAT EFFECT BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONALIST PARTY
“There is no Legislature in Puerto Rico. The legislative power is a myth. The electoral struggle is a periodic farce to keep the Puerto Rican family divided. To play at senators and representatives in a fantastic parliament is now beyond comedy. The Puerto Rican nation has been subjected to this constant mockery during the Yankee intervention. Nationalism has pointed out that there can be no talk of legislative powers when the absolute veto gravitates over every legislative resolution. Deep down, everyone has understood this, and the Legislature did not bother to reconsider the projects vetoed by the Governor, representative of the intervention, aware that his chief, the President of the empire, reserved the absolute and irrevocable veto, and that he would never disavow his own representative, the Governor. The naive believed that Colonel Beverley’s veto was due more to personal whims than to a determined imperial policy. There was hope that since the current governor, Colonel Beverley, was affiliated with the North American Republican party, and the dictatorial president of the United States, Roosevelt, was the head of the Yankee Democratic party, that the President of the United States would revoke the veto of the representative of his Republican predecessor, Hoover. North American politics is simply a calculated, deliberate, and cold system, aimed at displacing us in our own Homeland. There is no disparity of criteria or procedures between the Yankee political parties with respect to the North American intervention in Puerto Rico. Republicans or Democrats are all worse, as a good peasant would say.
The situation has also been clarified for those naive people in Puerto Rico who aspire to convert their Homeland into a Yankee province (“state” sic). The Democratic party, which says in its program that it will convert Puerto Rico into a province of the North American empire (“state” sic), currently governs the United States, and here a coalition dominates the majorities that aspires to that political solution. The coincidence could not be more perfect. However, the electoral law that that coalition approves is rejected by the Yankee president. What can the Coalition expect from a Republican administration, already defined against that political status? For a definitive constitutional lesson, the annexationists must see that the provinces (“states” sic.) and the same Yankee national Congress have disappeared from the North American political reality. It is anachronistic to speak of the sovereignty of the “states”, with which the defenders of statehood deceived themselves. The United States currently lives under the strongest personal dictatorship that could have been conceived.
No less interesting before this imperial ukase is the situation of the other governmental faction, with the amiable name of liberal, but clearly invoking the use of foreign tyranny against their Homeland. The leadership of that group is boasting and rejoicing that, due to their efforts in Washington, with memorials to the President and the Secretary of War of the United States, the imperial veto has been achieved, annulling the legislative will.
The sensible country will never cease to be amazed at this “liberal” action, of that leadership that, although no one believes their protests of independence to be sincere, there was nevertheless some hope in their regional sentimentalism. The unionists of yesterday, today liberals who had spent their lives criticizing identical actions of the declared annexationists before the same enemy powers, are the current spokesmen for the exercise of a frank tyranny in their Homeland, if with it some of the budget falls into their hands. It is seen in the declarations of the director of that group that this concern overwhelms him. It can never be explained why the leadership has taken before the foreign enemies who have erected themselves as masters of the national destinies, all the blemishes, gossip, and pestilences, of this miserable partisanship fomented for their own profit by the same Yankee invaders, before whose chief the leadership of the liberal group has appeared with its file of Puerto Rican entanglements. The dictator Roosevelt must have smiled to see this formal recognition of the two sides, liberals and coalitionists, who recognize in him the legitimate arbiter of our destinies. The political history of the world does not know a more shameful spectacle.
Dirty laundry is washed at home, says an old adage, which deserves respect in politics as well, especially when it comes to the rights of a nation intervened by a foreign enemy power such as the Yankee empire.
The liberal leadership is naive, however, in believing that, due to their unofficial management, the Yankee dictator has decreed the absolute veto to the electoral bill.
We remind them that foreign despotism is exercised with exclusive regard to its own good, which necessarily results in harm to the intervened nation. The submissive liberal petition has not influenced the indicated result at all, except to serve as a pretext for the chief of the enemies of the Homeland for his act of tyrant.
Every trip to Washington that the liberal leadership has made has been fatal for their party:
To justify its repudiation of independence, it presented a “bill campbell”, whose whereabouts no one was informed of; to glorify the fusion of unionism with annexationist republicanism, it returned from Washington with the marvelous formula of “sovereignty within sovereignty”; and now, without knowing for what purpose, from the Yankee Capitol, the political remedy of “evolutionary” independence was derived, without anyone knowing what was meant by that, and which has turned out to be, in a few days, the maintenance of Yankee tyranny, through the absolute imperial veto over every resolution or act of the Legislature.
The reason for Mr. Roosevelt’s irrevocable veto is none other than to maintain absolute control of the electoral result. This is foreseen in the military regulations with which this country is intended to be bribed and which is called the Organic Charter. In the past elections, for the first time during the Yankee military intervention, it was in the hands of the Puerto Ricans to be the sole arbiters of the electoral result. In principle, it was recognized in the bill that President Roosevelt has just thrown into the trash can. That the project had its defects was undeniable, but the fact that it was Puerto Ricans who would have electoral power in their hands was enough for no one in Puerto Rico to lend themselves to the maneuver of the Yankee government to find a pretext to annul it.
The current constitution of the Insular Electoral Board was respected, with a representative of the empire, and a delegate from each of the parties with public strength and opinion: Nationalism, the Republican Union, Liberals and Socialists. The Liberal party is called upon to publicly recognize that this constituted board guaranteed all its acquired rights. It is true that nationalism retained the power of arbiter, but let its gratuitous enemies of the liberal leadership be honest, that this power was exercised in a strictly legal sense and never with partisan aims, which, in principle, are alien to the nationalist mentality, which was aware at all times of the enormous power it had snatched from the chief of the Yankee intervention.
Moreover, we believe that a political party that feels helpless in the face of this legal situation, when it has one hundred and seventy thousand voters (170,000), must dissolve, if in order to come to power to destroy that miserable budget that does so much harm to civic consciousness, it must resort to begging the North American dictator to exercise the tyranny that the military regulations grant him with which he intends to subjugate the Homeland.
In the current situation, the representative of the intervention, the delegates of the liberals and the Republican Union have a vote on the Insular Electoral Board. The chief of the intervention has regained that power of absolute arbiter.
During the ugly controversy that the liberals and coalitionists were carrying on in Washington, we kept reserve so that the blow would fall on the country in cold blood, so that it would awaken to the reality that the electoral struggle is a farce as useless as it is disorienting; that there is no legislature in Puerto Rico, nor judicial or administrative body under the dominion of the Puerto Ricans; and, that the conservatives who have not finished lining up in nationalism realize that they live in full foreign tyranny, and sanctioned in advance, by what is supposed to be a constitutional charter.
Now, by virtue of Roosevelt’s ukase, the head of the intervention retains the electoral result. Unionism, today liberalism, knows what that means, and will be its propitious victim again at the first opportunity that suits the empire. While liberalism lends itself to the demolishing policy against our Homeland, it will be pleased; if one day it wants to react, it will stumble upon the good-natured but contemptuous smile of the Yankee despot, whom it now deifies as arbiter of justice. The despot is reached peacefully only by flattery and always to serve him. Faced with this harsh reality, clarified by Mr. Roosevelt, the Puerto Rican nation knows that every party that promises to govern under this Yankee intervention deceives it, because only the despot who represents it governs under foreign absolutism.
It is the national hour, Puerto Ricans!! The only arbiter of our destinies is the sovereign will of the Homeland.
P. ALBIZU CAMPOS
The elective offices constitute the only representation that the Puerto Rican nation has under the North American intervention. Of that representation, the most important is the legislature. The liberal group fights to acquire a majority in that body. For what? To keep it submissive to the Yankee power? That was the sad story of yesterday’s unionism and the aspiration of its successor, today’s liberalism. All because of bad leadership. The party has been worthy of better luck.
We are forced to this conclusion by Mr. Barceló’s statement. Thus, if one day the liberals come to have a legislative majority and approve a project over the Governor’s veto, by virtue of a vote of more than two thirds, and then the local head of the intervention submits the project to the absolute veto of the dictator Roosevelt, what would Mr. Barceló say, if the coalitionists strip him of his bag of Puerto Rican gossip and present himself in Washington to unravel it before the President of the empire?
Mr. Roosevelt would repeat for the benefit of the leaders of the Coalition the kind and protective smile — somewhat mocking — that he had for Mr. Barceló and, consulting, as is customary, the Yankee interests exclusively, would veto the legislative project. The coalitionists would paraphrase Mr. Barceló and say with him that Roosevelt’s veto was “a triumph of public morality, justice and decency”, and with legitimate pride and jubilation would celebrate that “triumph”.
If the men who have been elected to occupy legislative seats are not good for anything other than puppets of the Yankee tyranny, they must retire to private life because they have miserably deceived the voters who gave them their votes. The Yankee President and his lieutenants, the Governor and the Secretary of War, will have laughed when reading the words of Barceló, when the liberal chief arrogates to himself that “triumph” of the presidential veto. No empire should exercise tyranny openly, and always uses as a shield for the exercise of its despotism two natives of the intervened nation. Barceló, for that fact, will surely deserve, at least, a hug from the new governor, Mr. Gore.
And now we ask the irascible liberal chief: what has his party achieved with Roosevelt’s veto? In the vetoed project, the Puerto Ricans retained the result of the elections. The loss of this power is cause for jubilation for the “liberal” director. Without courage to face the truth and fearing to make statements of any nature, he insinuates, however, an understanding between the Nationalist party and the Coalition.
There is no way to restore the rectitude of conscience in those who lack memory and who are victims of incurable hangovers. To refute, however, once again the crude insinuation with which he intends to continue deceiving his own party, it is necessary to remind Barceló of the rulings of the Insular Electoral Board in which the representative of the Nationalist Party, among other things of less importance, guaranteed the Liberal Party two senators, a representative, and a municipal government. He will not remember because the liberal chief is currently engaged in the policy of flattering the North American dictator Roosevelt.
As a result of the veto, the Governor retains control of the electoral result. The Yankee representative and the delegates of the Liberal Party and the Republican Union will have a vote on the Insular Electoral Board. As long as the liberals are willing to please the Yankee government, they will have two votes against one in that body, but, the day they try something that does not suit the Yankee interests, the votes against them will also be two.
We must distinguish the liberals from their leadership. The party leaders have a policy: to keep the Yankee government happy and will not hesitate to disregard the interests of their party in certain municipalities, if with it the imperial policy is served.
For illustration we will cite the case of Guánica in the past elections. The candidate for mayor was affiliated with the Republican Union, pleasing to the Central Guánica, and, of course, to the Yankee Government. To ensure his election, the Insular Electoral Board was asked to transfer the polling stations from Guánica to Ensenada, where no one can enter, not even public officials, without prior permission from the administrator of the Central Guánica, who in that area, is absolute king over lives and property.
The local committees of the Nationalist Party, the Socialist Party and the liberals opposed the transfer. So serious was the matter that these three committees requested and obtained a public hearing before the Insular Electoral Board. Submitted the matter to a vote in the Insular Electoral Board voted in favor of the claims of the Central Guánica and the Yankee government: the representative of the Liberal Party, the Republican Union, and of course, the president of the Board, who is the representative of the Government. The delegates of the Nationalist Party and the Socialist Party voted against.
The supreme liberal leadership consciously sacrificed its own electorate of Guánica to serve one of those inexplicable prevailing concupiscences.
The Liberal Party has obtained nothing with the veto. On the Insular Electoral Board it is at the mercy of the will and whim of the Governor. It will have to please him in everything to get something.
And it may be that at a given moment, the electorate of a liberal municipality finds itself with a vote on the Insular Electoral Board against it, of three votes against none, because the representative of its political group before that Board, votes according to the instructions of the Central Board of the Liberal Party, as happened in the case cited of Guánica.
The Liberal Party will have no better luck than its predecessor the Unionist and “will be strangled in full childhood in a bed of perfect and inexplicable budget-gathering concupiscences by the surprising kindness and artful generosity of the Yankee Democratic party”.
And this longed-for dream of the budget is almost a delirium. Travieso, honorary president of the Liberal Party, conservative, pro-Yankee, annexationist, and spokesman of his party surrendered in every way to the perpetuation of the Yankee regime, has just announced the need to convert the Liberal Party into a Puerto Rican branch of the Yankee “Democratic” Party. As his words today in this newspaper are not to be missed, we reproduce them verbatim: “Do you think that the Liberal Party should affiliate with the Democratic Party of the United States? We asked him and he answered us: “I believe that between the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party there are many points of contact and community of ideals. The only point that would be in disharmony is the one referring to the political status for Puerto Rico. On the one hand, the Democratic Party has in its platform the statehood for our island and the Liberal Party proclaims independence. It could be that in an exchange of impressions between representatives of one and the other party a formula would be found that would harmonize these tendencies”.
The only difference between the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party is the political status. Well, almost nothing. Travieso knows that this nonsense can be fixed after an exchange of impressions. And it is that he is the guiding and necessary figure of a group that, calling itself independentist and liberal, has as directors reactionary spokesmen of a colonial regime. Nationalism forced them to put on the mask of independence to avoid their political collapse. The farce cannot last much longer, and it will be necessary to act in order to participate in that “noble” budget that obliges certain men to everything. Soon we will have “liberal democracy”.
In the path of apology of foreign tyranny, Barceló sets a theory in line with his policy of submission to the regime. He affirms that minorities should not have protection and that their existence should be at the mercy of the majorities. All wise men maintain that laws are made to guarantee minorities, because majorities can guarantee themselves and intend to crush minorities by force. Of course, the liberal leadership is guided by something other than respect for the rights of others. It needs too much of the budget.
For that reason, Nationalism must be strangled, and its head offered on a tray to the Yankee dictator Roosevelt. Remember Barceló that he tried to do that when the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover were the ones who governed the United States, but he failed and could never inspire confidence in the North American despots of whom he deserved only contempt.
Empires fight their natural enemy, the nationalist cause, but they always respect it. The oppressors wish to measure themselves against the dignity and valor represented by the men who embody the patriotism of the intervened nation.
As no empire can maintain itself without the cooperation of the natives of the country occupied by force, they use them but despise them.
Nationalism is a principle of national affirmation that once it sprouts there is no power that can crush it. It appeals, in the first instance, to the electoral struggle, because it is sensible to exhaust the resources of peace but it has never limited its action in the face of the impediments that the empire and the cipayos have thrown before its advance. The nation knew on the night of April 16, 1932 that Nationalism lives its motto: valor and sacrifice for its flag. It is in everyone’s interest not to hinder its peaceful development. It represents the integral rights of all Puerto Ricans. Puerto Rico is standing. The Homeland was never represented by those who were at the service of its enemies the invaders. Those who had the motto spoke in its name: Valor and sacrifice to make its independence respected. The Liberation Army has five thousand places covered.
P. ALBIZU CAMPOS
THE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONALIST PARTY COMMENTS ON THE TAKING OF POSSESSION OF GOVERNOR ROBERT H. GORE
“The monarchical absolutism of the eighteenth century was also consecrated, by force. With the doctrine of the divine right of kings, it imposed the invocation to divinity so that tyranny could be clothed in sanction. A gross blasphemy was perpetrated. Despotism has no sanction, and is ridiculed when it invokes it. It is only respectable when it speaks through the mouth of its cannons. As foreign despotism has no justification whatsoever, it has never invoked divine power to impose itself. The North American empire, which has profaned everything in its advance through extermination, had to be the exception. We have just witnessed the inauguration of the new head of the Yankee intervention. The outgoing governor, Presbyterian and Mason and affiliated with the Yankee Republican party, hands over the imposed power to the new imperial representative, Catholic and Knight of Columbus, and member of the North American Democratic party. Two bishops bless the ceremony and formulate the divine invocation, one Catholic and the other Protestant. The actors are, of course, all Yankees, who, despite their antagonistic political and religious convictions, reveal an impressive unity of purpose in maintaining the North American empire in Puerto Rico, even if it is necessary to appeal to God through all imaginable religious paths.
It is good to remember that the new head of the intervention, despite being Catholic and Knight of Columbus, is representative of the North American dictator, Roosevelt, who is Protestant and Mason. The empire manifests itself united before us. It deliberately breaks the routine of appointing Protestant and Masonic representatives, and opts for a Catholic Knight of Columbus, attentive exclusively to its policy of absorption. The unsuspecting could not suspect that the government of the United States would appeal, for the exercise of its devastating imperialism, to the cooperation of North American Catholicism. It is known that that empire is governed by a Masonic and Protestant oligarchy that postpones as far as it can, its Catholic and Jewish fellow citizens. It is a Yankee constitutional dogma — so natural that there has been no need to record it in writing — that no Catholic can occupy the presidency of the empire. An illegitimate power uses all means to impose itself, and does not hesitate to use its own enemies for its purposes. When these revealing that unity of imperialist purpose against the Puerto Ricans. This desire to command and possess material things that was already organized for the pontificate of His Holiness, León XIII, gave rise to the formation of the heresy called Americanism, which deserved to be condemned by this wise pontiff. That attitude is alive and has begun to act aggressively in our country. We notify you that it will not be tolerated.
We will make a brief gloss to the inaugural words of the new head of the intervention, who has received such a religious investiture. The Yankee empire fights to displace us in our own country. It has appealed to neo-Malthusianism, emigration, diseases, everything that promotes our extinction. It has already been said: “the Yankees are interested in the cage but not the birds”. From the armchair of the palace of Santa Catalina, in whose shadow the Puerto Rican Nation was raised, consecrated to the ideals of pure Christianity, a people of fine sentiment has contemplated a Yankee representative publicly advocating demoralizing practices such as neo-Malthusianism. It is to be congratulated Mr. Gore for having rectified his immediate successor in the position.
The new governor supposes a citizen community between the Puerto Ricans and the North Americans. He is profoundly mistaken. From one end of the country to the other, there exists inextinguishable hatred against the North American military occupation.
Grave is his error in believing that Puerto Rico has been the object of North American gift. He must study the statistics of our commerce and he will find that the nation has always had a favorable trade balance during thirty-five consecutive years, including the last four, characterized by the deepest crisis. That favorable balance amounts to a sum that exceeds one billion two hundred million dollars, enough for Puerto Rico to be today a financial power of the first order. But Yankee capitalism, protected by its government, has taken that enormous profit and instead of our country being an emporium of wealth, it has sixty percent of its population unemployed and the entire country mortgaged to the Yankee banks.
Mr. Gore says well that there is a need for emigration. What we do not agree with is in the selection of people. All foreigners must leave Puerto Rico immediately, starting with the Yankee colony that exceeds two thousand parasitic individuals, representatives of the Yankee interests that control ninety percent of our wealth. The Puerto Ricans have rights in their Homeland that they will make respect and no one thinks of emigrating, and much less to a place like Florida, governed by laws that deny the electoral vote to every person of color; laws that declare null every marriage between people of different races, that make that conjugal union a public crime punishable by imprisonment and condemn to illegitimacy the children born therein, laws that impose the forced separation of the races in theaters, churches, places of amusement, vehicles of transportation, etc.; laws crowned by the most humane of the laws of barbarie, the law of lynching.
A grave illusion has taken possession of Mister Gore. He believes he has true powers that he may exercise with responsibility before his own conscience. It is necessary that he observe that he must abide at all times by the instructions he receives from that den of conspiracy against Puerto Rico, which they call the Negociado de Asuntos Insulares. As a matter of conscience, we must remind him that in conscience he cannot exercise foreign despotism. He speaks again of a dead issue among us, such as annexation to convert Puerto Rico into a Yankee province (“estado” sic). Everyone knows that annexation is reprehensible in any form, and especially today, when Estados Unidos is governed by the personal dictatorship of Roosevelt, a dictatorship that everyone expects will become a firm political institution.
Let Mister Gore not feel overwhelmed by duties of his or of his Homeland towards the Puerto Ricans. He can rest assured in that regard. Estados Unidos de Norteamérica has a single duty to fulfill with Puerto Rico, and it is to immediately withdraw its armed forces from our territory. We know that does not depend on Mister Gore. Nor are the Yanquis our doctors — we already know what the North American doctors come for — nor are we the Puerto Ricans sick to be cured by such physicians. Puerto Rico is a nation of superior civilization and culture and does not need mentors mired in barbarie like that prevailing in more than half of Estados Unidos of the type existing in la Florida to which the Puerto Ricans must go again, — reminiscent of the immortal Ponce de León —, to reintegrate it into Christian civilization.
P. ALBIZU CAMPOS
THE ACTS THAT THE PARTIDO NACIONALISTA WILL CELEBRATE TOMORROW IN THE CIUDAD DE LARES TO COMMEMORATE THE DATE OF SEPTEMBER 23
PROCLAIMS
In the glorious ephemeris of the revolution of Lares, next Saturday, September 23, the national assembly will be held in Lares to commemorate the sixty-fifth anniversary of the proclamation of the republic and the sesquicentennial of the birth of the Liberator, Simón Bolívar. “This entire year has been dedicated especially to the study of the genius personality of the excellent man whose work would require creating another world to liberate,” as proclaimed the wise Chuquihuanca, when he had the privilege of delivering the historical and inimitable speech to welcome the Liberator, in commemoration of his triumphal entry into Azángaro, Perú. Before the memory of the heroes and martyrs of the revolution of Lares, nationalism pays its homage to the Liberator, who put his genius and his sword at the disposal of the cause of the independence of Puerto Rico.
All free nations pay homage this year to his sublime figure, because the salvation of peoples lies in the cult of their independence and the memory of the men who consecrated themselves to it. Puerto Rico is free, independent, and sovereign by its right and by its will, and fulfills the duty that is the exclusive patrimony of free men. Lares is the Bolivarian repercussion of Ayacucho in the Antilles. In that heroic deed, the American Homelands were represented by their blood, very especially Venezuela, which was the cradle of the Liberator. And it is that those illustrious men knew the greatness of this archipelago that served as the basis for the expansion of Christian civilization in América, and is today a fortress of resistance against the barbarie that comes to us from the Norte.
It is fitting, then, that before the memory of the heroes and martyrs of the Revolución, who offered their lives to give us the only example to follow to suppress foreign intervention, the nation renews its faith in the ideals of Bolívar that are embodied in the union of the nations of our race to impose their hegemony for the diffusion of the civilization that the world needs.
Given in San Juan de Puerto Rico on the twenty-first day of the month of September of the year 1933, sixty-fifth year of the proclamation of the República.
LA JUNTA NACIONAL
P. ALBIZU CAMPOS Presidente
José LAMEIRO Secretario General