Puerto Rican Nationalist Party

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Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
President Francisco Torres
Founded September 17, 1922
Ideology Puerto Rican Independence
Colors Black and White
Notable past presidents
*José Coll y Cuchí
*Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos
Part of a series on the
Puerto Rican
Nationalist Party
Flag of Puerto Rico (Light blue).svg

Flag of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.svg
Flag of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party

The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party was founded on September 17, 1922. Its main objective was to work for Puerto Rican Independence, and its most forceful and renowned advocate was Pedro Albizu Campos, its president from 1931 to his death in 1965. Afterward the party dissolved into factions, and people joined other parties.

In the 1930s after the Rio Piedras and Ponce massacres (in which an independent commission said the police in the latter were guilty of a massacre), Albizu Campos vowed to avoid the electoral process while Puerto Rico was under United States control. During this period, Nationalists assassinated two prominent government officials, and tried to assassinate a federal judge in Puerto Rico. More of their members were killed by police and at protests.

The Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico (PPD) gained an overwhelming number of seats in the legislature by the late 1940s. In 1948 it passed Law 53, known as the "Gag Law", which was intended to suppress the Nationalist Party and other opposition. The Puerto Rican police arrested many Nationalist members under this law, some of whom were sentenced to lengthy terms in jail.

With a new political status pending for Puerto Rico as a Commonwealth, Albizu Campos ordered several armed uprisings in Puerto Rican towns on October 30, 1950. In an associated effort, two Nationalists attempted to assassinate US President Harry S. Truman on November 1 to publicize issues related to Puerto Rican status; they did not harm him. The last such event of the 1950s was the armed attack by Nationalists in the US House of Representatives, in which they shot and wounded five Congressmen.

Contents

Historical context [edit]

After four hundred years of colonial domination under the Spanish Empire, Puerto Rico finally received its sovereignty in 1898 through a Carta de Autonomía (Charter of Autonomy). This Charter of Autonomy was signed by Spanish Prime Minister Práxedes Mateo Sagasta and ratified by the Spanish Cortes.[1]

Charles Herbert Alen, the first
sugar baron of Puerto Rico

Despite this, just a few months later, the United States claimed ownership of the island as part of the Treaty of Paris which concluded the Spanish-American War.

Opponents to the colonial government noted that the profits generated by this one-sided arrangement were enormous for the United States.[2]

In 1901, the first civilian U.S. governor of Puerto Rico, Charles Herbert Allen, installed himself as president of the largest suger-refining company in the world, the American Sugar Refining Company. This company was later renamed as the Domino Sugar company. In effect, Charles Allen leveraged his governorship of Puerto Rico into a controlling interest over the entire Puerto Rican economy.[3]

The U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt declared, “It is manifest destiny for a nation to own the islands which border its shores,”[4] and if “any South American country misbehaves it should be spanked.”[5]

In 1914, the Puerto Rican House of Delegates voted unanimously for independence from the United States. In 1917, the US Congress passed an act by which it granted citizenship to Puerto Rican residents, although this was overwhelmingly opposed by the island's political leaders. Critics said the US was simply interested in increasing the size of its conscription pool for soldiers for World War I.

United States "Manifest Destiny" [edit]

Pres. Roosevelt wielding his big stick in the Caribbean

By 1930, over 40 percent of all the arable land in Puerto Rico had been converted into sugar plantations, which were entirely owned by Charles Allen and U.S. banking interests. These bank syndicates also owned the entire coastal railroad, and the San Juan international seaport.[3] This land grab was not limited to Puerto Rico. By 1930 the United Fruit Company also owned over one million acres of land in Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico and Cuba.[6] By 1940, in Honduras alone, the United Fruit Company owned 50 percent of all private land in the entire country.[6] In Guatemala, the United Fruit Company owned 75 percent of all private land by 1942 - plus most of Guatemala's roads, power stations and phone lines, the only Pacific seaport, and every mile of railroad.[7]

The U.S. government supported all these economic exploits, and provided military "persuasion" whenever necessary.

Founding of the Nationalist Party [edit]

Jose Coll y Cuchi

The origins of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party date to 1917, when a group of Union Party members in Ponce, dissatisfied with the attitude of the Union Party of Puerto Rico towards the "granting" of U.S. citizenship, formed the "Asociación Nacionalista de Ponce" (Ponce Nationalist Association). Among its founders were Dr. Guillermo Salazar, Rafael Matos Bernier, J. A. Gonzalez, and Julio Cesar Fernandez. These men also founded the newspaper El Nacionalista.[8]

The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party was formed as a direct result of the American colonial regime. In 1919, José Coll y Cuchí, a member of the Union Party of Puerto Rico, felt that the Union Party was not doing enough for the cause of Puerto Rican independence. Coll y Cuchí and some followers left to form the Nationalist Association of Puerto Rico in San Juan. Under Coll y Cuchí's presidency, the party convinced the Puerto Rican Legislative Assembly to approve an Act that would permit the transfer of the remains of the Puerto Rican patriot, Ramón Emeterio Betances, from Paris, France, to Puerto Rico.

The Legislative Assembly appointed Alfonso Lastra Charriez as its emissary since he had French heritage and spoke the language fluently. Betances' remains arrived in San Juan on August 5, 1920. A funeral caravan organized by the Nationalist Association transferred the remains from San Juan to the town of Cabo Rojo, where his ashes were interred by his monument.

Don Pedro Albizu Campos

By the 1920s, two other pro-independence organizations had formed on the Island: the Nationalist Youth and the Independence Association of Puerto Rico. The Independence Association was founded by José S. Alegría, Eugenio Font Suárez and Leopoldo Figueroa in 1920. On September 17, 1922, these three political organizations joined forces and formed the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Coll y Cuchi was elected president and José S. Alegría (father of Ricardo Alegría) vice-president.

In 1924, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos joined the party and was named vice-president. By 1930, disagreements between Coll y Cuchi and Albizu Campos as to how the party should be run, led the former and his followers to leave and return to the Union Party. Alegría was named Nationalist Party president in 1928 and held that position until 1930. On May 11, 1930, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos was elected president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.

Under Albizu Campos's leadership during the years of the Great Depression, the party became the largest independence movement in Puerto Rico. By the mid-1930s, after disappointing electoral results and strong repression by the territorial police authorities, Albizu Campos opted against electoral participation. He advocated direct, violent revolution.[citation needed]

The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party maintained that, as a matter of international law, the Treaty of Paris following the Spanish-American War could not have empowered the Spanish to "give" to the US what was no longer theirs.[3] In the mid-1930s, the party staged some protests that developed as celebrated incidents because of police overreaction: the Rio Piedras[9] and Ponce massacres, in which government forces fired on some who were unarmed civilians.[10][11]

Nationalist Party during 1930–50 [edit]

Nationalist Party partisans were involved in a variety of dramatic and violent confrontations during the 1930-50s:

  • On April 6, 1932, Nationalist partisans marched into the Capitol building in San Juan to protest a legislative proposal to establish the current Puerto Rican flag as the official flag of the insular government. Nationalists preferred the emblem used during the Grito de Lares. A melée ensued in the building, and one partisan fell to his death from a second floor interior balcony. The protest was condemned by the legislators Rafael Martínez Nadal and Santiago Iglesias; and endorsed by others, including the future leader of the statehood party, Manuel García Méndez.
  • On October 24, 1935, a confrontation with police at University of Puerto Rico campus in Río Piedras resulted in the deaths of 4 Nationalist partisans and one policeman. The event is known as the Río Piedras massacre. This and other events led the party to announce on December 12, 1935, a boycott of all elections held while Puerto Rico remained part of the United States.
  • On February 23, 1936, in San Juan, two Nationalists assassinated the Insular Police Chief and ex-U.S. Marine officer, E. Francis Riggs. The Nationalist perpetrators, Hiram Rosado and Elías Beauchamp, were arrested, transported to police headquarters, and killed within hours without trial. No policeman was ever tried or indicted for their deaths.[citation needed]
The Ponce Massacre. Police open fire on unarmed marchers and bystanders on Palm Sunday. The 19 dead included a 7-year old girl, who was shot in the back.
  • On March 21, 1937, the Nationalist Party organized a peaceful march in the southern city of Ponce. At the last moment, the permit was withdrawn, and the Insular Police[12] (a force "somewhat resembling the National Guard of the typical U.S. state" and which answered to the U.S.-appointed governor Blanton Winship[13]) were arrayed against the marchers. They opened fire upon what a U.S. Congressman and others reported were unarmed[14] and defenseless[15] cadets and bystanders alike,[16][17] killing 19 and badly wounding over 200 more.[18]
Many of these unarmed people were shot in the back while trying to run away - including a 7-year old girl, who died as a result.[19][20] An ACLU report declared it a massacre[21] and it has since been known as the Ponce Massacre. The march had been organized to commemorate the ending of slavery in Puerto Rico by the governing Spanish National Assembly in 1873, and to protest the incarceration by the U.S. government of nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos.[22] Soon thereafter, the Puerto Rican government arrested the leadership of the Nationalist party, including Pedro Albizu Campos. In two trials, they were convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.
A government investigation into the incident drew few conclusions. A second, independent investigation ordered by the US Commission for Civil Rights (May 5, 1937) led by Arthur Garfield Hays (a member of the ACLU) with Fulgencio Piñero, Emilio Belaval, Jose Davila Rice, Antonio Ayuyo Valdivieso, Manuel Diaz Garcia, and Franscisco M. Zeno, concluded that the events on March 21constituted a massacre. The report harshly criticized the repressive tactics and massive civil rights violations by the administration of Governor Blanton Winship.[23]
External video
and view a portion of the Albizu Documentary Trailer made in English here.
You may watch newsreel scenes of the Ponce Massacre here
  • On July 25, 1938, the municipality of Ponce organized celebrations to commemorate the American landing in 1898. This included a military parade and speeches by Governor Blanton Winship, Senate president Rafael Martínez Nadal, and others. When Winship rose to speak, shots were fired at him, slaying police Colonel Luis Irizarry, who was seated next to the governor. The Nationalist Interim President M. Medina Ramírez repudiated the shooting and denied any involvement in it, but numerous Nationalists were arrested and convicted of participating in the shooting. Winship worked to repress the Nationalists. Jaime Benitez, a student at the University of Chicago at the time, wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt which in part read as follows:

"The point I am to make is that the Governor [Winship] himself through his military approach to things has helped keep Puerto Rico in a unnecessary state of turmoil. He seems to think that the political problem of Puerto Rico limits itself to a fight between himself and the Nationalists, that no holds are barred in that fight and that everybody else should keep out. As a matter of fact he has played the Nationalist game and they have played his.[24]

Soon afterward, two Nationalist partisans, among them Raimundo Díaz Pacheco, attempted to assassinate Robert Cooper, judge of the Federal Court in Puerto Rico. On May 12, 1939, Winship was summarily removed from his post as Governor by President Roosevelt.[25]
  • Albizu Campos ordered Nationalist uprisings to take place on October 30, 1950 (they had originally been planned for 1952, when Commonwealth status was expected.) These involved a dozen or so skirmishes throughout the island.

The Nationalist Revolts of 1950 [edit]

The 296th Regiment of the U.S. National Guard occupy Jayuya
External audio
You may listen to one of the speeches made in Spanish by Albizu Campos here
External video
Newsreel scenes in Spanish of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts of the 1950s
Newsreel scenes in English of the assassination attempt on U.S. President Harry S Truman
Newsreel scenes in Spanish and in English of the attack on the U.S. Capitol led by Lolita Lebrón
El Imparcial headline: "Aviation (US) bombs Utuado"

The first battle of the Nationalist uprisings occurred in the early hours of October 29, in barrio Macaná of Peñuelas. The police surrounded the house of the mother of Melitón Muñiz, the president of the Peñuelas Nationalist Party, under the pretext that he was storing weapons for a Nationalist revolt. Without warning, the police fired on the Nationalists and a firefight ensued, resulting in the death of two Nationalists and wounding of six police officers.[27]

In the Jayuya Uprising, led by Nationalist leader Blanca Canales, a police station and post office were burned. The town was held by the Nationalists for three days.[28]

  • The Utuado Uprising culminated in the Utuado Massacre by the local police, in which five Nationalists were executed.
  • The San Juan Nationalist revolt was a Nationalist attempt to enter the Governor's mansion, La Fortaleza, in order to attack then-governor Luis Muñoz Marín. The hour-long shootout resulted in the death of four Nationalists: Domingo Hiraldo Resto, Carlos Hiraldo Resto, Manuel Torres Medina and Raimundo Díaz Pacheco. Three guards were also seriously wounded.
  • Various other shootouts took place throughout island - including those at Mayagüez, Naranjito, Arecibo, and Ponce, where Antonio Alicea, Jose Miguel Alicea, Francisco Campos (Albizu Campos's nephew), Osvaldo Perez Martinez and Ramon Pedrosa Rivera were arrested and accused of the murder of police corporal Aurelio Miranda during the revolt. Raul de Jesus was accused of violating the Insular Firearms Law.[29]
  • On October 31, police officers and National Guardsmen surrounded Salón Boricua, a barbershop in Santurce. Believing that a group of Nationalists were inside the shop, they opened fire. The only person in the shop was Campos barber Vidal Santiago Díaz. Santiago Díaz, who fought alone against the attackers for three hours, received five wounds, including one in the head. The battle was transmitted "live" via the radio airwaves to the public in general.[30]

Truman supported development of a constitution for Puerto Rico and the 1952 status referendum on it; 82% of the voters approved the constitution. The US Congress also approved the constitution.

  • On March 1, 1954, Lolita Lebrón together with fellow Nationalists Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irving Flores and Andrés Figueroa Cordero attacked the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. The group opened fire with automatic pistols. Some 30 shots were fired (mostly by Cancel, according to his account), wounding five lawmakers. One of the congressmen, Representative Alvin Bentley from Michigan, was seriously wounded. Upon her arrest, Lebrón yelled "I did not come to kill anyone, I came to die for Puerto Rico!"

Current independent movements [edit]

The New York Junta is an autonomous organ of the party that recognizes, and is recognized by, the National Junta in Puerto Rico.[31]

The vast majority of followers of independence movements in Puerto Rico belong to either the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) or other smaller organizations, such as the Hostosian National Independence Movement.

Photo gallery [edit]

See also [edit]

Portal icon Puerto Rico portal
Portal icon Biography portal

Articles related to th equest of Puerto Rican independence:

19th Century male leaders of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement

19th Century female leaders of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement

Male members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party

Female members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party

Articles related to the Puerto Rican Independence Movement

References [edit]

  1. ^ Ribes Tovar et al., p.106-109
  2. ^ Puerto Rico Statehood: To Be or Not To Be? C.G. Salgado. Inside Government. Feb 20, 2009. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  3. ^ a b c Ribes Tovar et al., p.122-144
  4. ^ Perkins, Dexter (1937), The Monroe Doctrine, 1867-1907, Baltimore Press; p. 333
  5. ^ Roosevelt, Theodore (1913), Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, The Macmillan Press Company; p. 172
  6. ^ a b Rich Cohen; The Fish That Ate the Whale; pub. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012; pp. 146-150
  7. ^ Rich Cohen; The Fish That Ate the Whale; pub. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012; p. 174
  8. ^ Neysa Rodriguez Deynes, Rafael J. Torres Torres and Carlos Aneiro Perez. Breviario sobre la Historia de Ponce y sus Principales Lugares de Interes. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Model Offset Printing. 1991. Page 63.
  9. ^ THE IMPRISONMENT OF MEN AND WOMEN FIGHTING COLONIALISM, 1898 - 1958: 1930 - 1940. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  10. ^ Rovira, "Remember the 1950 Uprising of October 30: Puerto Rico"
  11. ^ Victor Villanueva, "Colonial Memory and the Crime of Rhetoric: Pedro Albizu Campos" . Washington State University,Program in American Studies. Common Reading Assignment. Also in College English, Volume 71, Number 6. July 2009. National Council of Teachers of English. (Also appearing as “Colonial Research: A Preamble to a Case Study” in "Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process", Gesa Kirsch and Liz Rohan, editors. Southern Illinois University Press.) Page 636. Retrieved 21 October 2012.
  12. ^ "Law Library Microform Consortium". Llmc.com. Retrieved November 20, 2011. 
  13. ^ "Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Civil Rights in Puerto Rico. The Commission, 70p, np, May 22, 1937". Llmc.com. Retrieved November 20, 2011. 
  14. ^ "Law Library". Llmc.com. Retrieved November 20, 2011. 
  15. ^ Don Luis Sanchez Frasquieri, President of the Ponce Rotary Club at the time
  16. ^ "The "police riot" shot at the demonstrators as well as the crowd standing by". Llmc.com. Retrieved November 20, 2011. 
  17. ^ "US Congressman Vito Macartonio". Cheverote.com. Retrieved November 20, 2011. 
  18. ^ "Over 200 were wounded". Cheverote.com. Retrieved November 20, 2011. 
  19. ^ Antonio de la Cova. "Photos of police shooting with rifles (from positions previously occupied by marchers and bystanders) at bystanders running away". Latinamericanstudies.org. Retrieved November 20, 2011. 
  20. ^ Five Years of Tyranny, Speech before the U.S. House of Representatives. The entire speech is contained in the Congressional Record of August 14, 1939. It is reported in the Cong. Rec., and various other publications elsewhere, that among those shot in their backs was a 7-year-old girl, Georgina Maldonado, who "was shot in the back while running to a nearby church."
  21. ^ "Report of the ACLU as echoed by U.S. Congressman Vito Marcantonio". Cheverote.com. Retrieved November 20, 2011. 
  22. ^ Latino Americans and political participation. ABC-CLIO. 2004. ISBN 1-85109-523-3. Retrieved 2009-05-01. 
  23. ^ American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman—And the Shoot-Out That Stopped It. Simon and Schuster. 2005. ISBN 0-7432-8195-0. Retrieved 2009-03-17. 
  24. ^ "Strategy as Politics"; by: Jorge Rodriguez Beruff; Publisher: Universidad de Puerto Rico; pg. 178; ISBN; 0-8477-0160-3
  25. ^ Five Years of Tyranny. Piri Thomas. Berkeley, CA: Cheverote Productions. 2003. Retrieved 8 December 2012.
  26. ^ "Puerto Rican History". Topuertorico.org. January 13, 1941. Retrieved November 20, 2011. 
  27. ^ El ataque Nacionalista a La Fortaleza. by Pedro Aponte Vázquez. Page 7. Publicaciones RENÉ. ISBN 978-1-931702-01-0
  28. ^ http://nylatinojournal.com/home/puerto_rico_x/history/puerto_rico_s_october_revolution.html
  29. ^ "Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico-FBI files" (PDF). Retrieved November 20, 2011. 
  30. ^ Premio a Jesús Vera Irizarry
  31. ^ [1]

Pagán, Bolívar. Historia de los Partidos Politicos Puertorriqueños 1898–1956. San Juan: Librería Campos, (1959).

External links [edit]
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