The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party 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. Its most forceful and renowned advocate was Pedro Albizu Campos, its president from 1931 to his death in 1965. In the 1930s, intimidation, repression and perse- cution of Party members by the government, then headed by a U.S. president-appointed governor, led to the assassination of two prominent govern- ment officials, the attempted assassination of a federal judge in Puerto Rico, and the Rio Pie- dras and Ponce massacres. Under the leadership of Albizu Campos, the party abandoned the elec- toral process in favor of direct armed conflict as means to gain independence from the United States. By the late 1940s, a more US-friendly party, the Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico, had gained an overwhelming number of seats in the legislature and, in 1948, it passed “Puerto Ri- co’s Gag Law”, which attempted to suppress the Nationalist Party and similar opposition. The Puerto Rican police arrested many Nationalist Party members under this law, some of whom were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. With a new po- litical status pending for Puerto Rico as a Com- monwealth, Albizu Campos ordered armed uprisings in several Puerto Rican towns to occur on Octo- ber 30, 1950. In an related effort, two National- ists also attempted to assassinate US President Harry S. Truman on November 1, 1950, in an effort to call international attention to issues related to Puerto Rico’s political status, but the at- tempt failed. The last major armed event by the Nationalists occurred in 1954 at the US House of Representatives when four party members shot and wounded five Congressmen. After Albizu Campos’s death in 1965, the party dissolved into factions and members joined other parties, but some continue to follow the party’s ideals in one form or another, often informally or ad hoc, to this day.[1] Historical Context 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 Span- ish Cortes.[2] 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 arrange- ment were enormous for the United States.[3] When the war ended, U.S. President McKinley ap- pointed Charles Herbert Allen as the first ci- vilian governor of Puerto Rico. Though Allen had a business background, his financial adminis- tration of Puerto Rico was strikingly unsound. By ignoring the appropriation requests of the Puerto Rican House of Delegates, refusing to make any municipal, agricultural or small busi- ness loans, building roads at double the old costs, and leaving 85% of the school-age popu- lation without schools. Instead of making these infrastructure and education investments, Allen raided the Puerto Rican treasury and his ad- ministration re-directed the insular budget to no-bid contracts for U.S. businessmen, railroad subsidies for U.S.-owned sugar plantations, and Charles Herbert Alen, the first sugar baron of Puerto Rico high salaries for U.S. bureaucrats in the island government.[4][5] Allen’s financial acumen improved considerably, when he returned to the U.S. and resumed his own personal business interests. In 1901, Allen resigned as governor and installed himself as president of the largest sugar-refining company in the world, the American Sugar Refining Compa- ny. This company was later renamed as the Domino Sugar company. In effect, Charles Allen lever- aged his governorship of Puerto Rico into a con- trolling interest over the entire Puerto Rican economy.[6] This maneuver by Allen was in keeping with Theodore Roosevelt’s declaration that: “It is manifest destiny for a nation to own the is- lands which border its shores,”[7] and if “any South American country misbehaves it should be spanked.”[8] In 1914, the Puerto Rican House of Delegates vot- ed unanimously for independence from the United States. In 1917, the US Congress passed an act by which it granted citizenship to Puerto Rican res- idents, 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.[9] United States “Manifest Destiny” By 1930, over 40 percent of all the arable land in Puerto Rico had been converted into sugar plantations, which were entirely owned by Domino Sugar Company and U.S. banking interests. These bank syndicates also owned the entire coastal railroad, and the San Juan international seaport. [6] This land grab was not limited to Puerto Rico. By 1930 the United Fruit Company owned over one mil- lion acres of land in Guatemala, Honduras, Colom- bia, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico and Cuba.[10] By 1940, in Honduras alone, the United Fruit Company owned 50 percent of all private land in the entire country.[10] 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.[11] The U.S. government supported all these econom- ic exploits, and provided military “persuasion” whenever necessary.[10] Pres. Roosevelt wielding his big stick in the Caribbean Founding of the Nationalist Party 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 “grant- ing” of U.S. citizenship, formed the “Asociación Nacionalista de Ponce” (Ponce Nationalist Asso- ciation). 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.[12] 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 Ri- can independence. Coll y Cuchí and some follow- ers 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 Par- is, France, to Puerto Rico. The Legislative Assembly appointed Alfonso Lastra Charriez as its emissary since he had French her- itage and spoke the language fluently. Betances’ remains arrived in San Juan on August 5, 1920. A funeral caravan organized by the Nationalist As- sociation transferred the remains from San Juan to the town of Cabo Rojo, where his ashes were interred by his monument. By the 1920s, two other pro-independence organi- zations 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, disagree- ments between Coll y Cuchi and Albizu Campos as to how the party should be run, led the for- mer 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 Nation- alist 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 territo- rial police authorities, culminating in the Oc- tober 1935 Río Piedras massacre, Albizu Campos announced in December 1935 that the Nationalist Party would withdraw from electoral participation while the United States kept control. He advocat- ed direct, violent revolution.[citation needed] The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party maintained that, as a matter of international law, the Trea- ty of Paris following the Spanish-American War could not have empowered the Spanish to “give” to the US what was no longer theirs.[6] In the mid- 1930s, the party staged some protests that devel- oped as celebrated incidents because of police overreaction: the Rio Piedras[13] and Ponce mas- sacres, in which government forces fired on some who were unarmed civilians.[14][15] Nationalist Party during 1930–50 Nationalist Party partisans were involved in a variety of dramatic and violent confrontations during the 1930-50s: In the 1930s, the party organized the official youth organization the “Cadets of the Republic” (Cadets of the Republic), headed by Raimundo Díaz Pacheco and the “Hijas de la Libertad” (Daughters of Freedom), the women’s branch in which Julia de Burgos served as Secretary General. 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 in- sular government. Nationalists preferred the em- blem used during the Grito de Lares.