I B B T E M E E K 13 lie regime of Governor Winship, protecting the sugar investments of 'Wall Street, has been responsible for a virtual civil war there By John Buchanan

OT all of your sugar comes from Cuba. campaign of terror and intimidation that is American historians is that, when we grabbed Some comes from Hawaii, some from being carried on by Winship and his clique, the island from Spain, Puerto Rico had al­ N the Philippines, a little from Louisiana. the rough and ready business agents of the ready been granted autonomy. The act had A lot of it comes from Puerto Rico. The next sugar trust. Winship is particularly anxious been signed by the Spanish crown but was not time }'ou put a lump of sugar in your coffee to avoid publicity on this case. yet in force, pending the outcome of the war. think of this. From what news about the trial has come Then the American imperialists stepped in. Think of eleven gallant fighters against im­ through, in the Spanish-language press, it is Puerto Rico is still struggling to win some perialism, lawyers, students, university gradu­ known that eleven out of the twelve jurors form of autonomy. ates, leaders of the Nationalist Party of Puerto are self-declared enemies of independence. Under American rule there were rapid Rico. They have been buried alive for half a (Seven are Republicans, four "Socialists," one economic changes. Small land holdings began year in the medieval fortress of La Princesa, a liberal.) to disappear. Spaniards who held larger tracts in the shadow of the ancient battlements of Perez Marchand, former prosecuting attor­ of sugar lands sailed for home, leaving Ameri­ El Moro in San Juan. They have been held ney (resigned) who conducted the first inves­ can banks to buy up the holdings dirt cheap. under bail totaling a quarter of a million dol­ tigation of the "crime" now being tried, is a Absentee ownership became the rule instead of lars. As this goes to press they have been taken defense witness. the exception. Meanwhile there were "im­ from La Princesa. Hardly had the trial opened when it was provements." The American authorities intro­ Under heavy guard they were rushed across announced that ten more Nationalists had duced modern sanitation and hygiene. The the island. The cars they rode in rolled over been arrested in Guanica, sugar capital of the birth rate went up. It is still up. A high birth mountain roads that reveal vistas of breath­ south coast. Nationalists are being arrested rate means cheap labor. taking beauty, between fields that at this time on every conceivable charge. Sympathizers There were also improvements of the mind. of year breathe the heavy-sweet scent of sugar are being arrested for the crime of collecting The great, benevolent power of the North pre­ cane. They were taken to the tovi^n of Ponce. money for the defense. pared a program of enlightenment for its little, Ponce is one of the oldest towns on the One witness stated that he was not testify­ brown children of the South. "Americani­ island. It is one of the most Spanish. Physi­ ing of his own free will, that he had received zation" was begun on a grand scale. It tried cally, the twentieth century has scarcely a bribe from government agents, and that he to extirpate the Spanish language by forcing touched it. In one of its ancient courtrooms had contributed the sum of the bribe to the Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican teachers to the eleven men have faced a jury made up of defense. teach all their classes in English. plantation managers and cipayos, (A cipayo is This has had several results. First, it has a Puerto Rican who licks the boots of his IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND the war that is rag­ provoked bitter resentment on the part of most American oppressors.) They are being tried ing in Puerto Rico—for it is war as surely as Puerto Ricans. Second, it has produced a for murder. Hitler's "revolution" was war—it is necessary small class of pitiyanquis or cipayos, who today They are being tried in connection with the to go back a few years. are the native apologists for American impe­ brutal police massacre that took place in Ponce The acquired Puerto Rico in rialism. Third, it has produced a new, hybrid on March 2i, Palm Sunday. Just how eleven 1898. A fact conveniently forgotten by most English-Spanish dialect to puzzle future ety­ Nationalists, most of whom were not even mologists. present, can be responsible for the slaughter of The rapid expropriation of the native land­ eighteen helpless citizens by the police and owners, first the small and then the big, caughf the wounding of nearly two hundred more is a the Puerto Rican worker between the blades mystery that only Governor of an economic scissors. Deprived first of land and a few of his police tools can answer. Hun­ and then of his source of home-grown food, dreds of police, scores of G-men, and "ex­ not only did he have to work for the absentee perts" of all descriptions have been working landowner at low wages, but he also had tc for months to prove the connection. import all his food from the United States ai The trial, which began September 13, is shockingly high prices. Nothing was grown an event of major importance. Its causes and in Puerto Rico except export crops. its consequences touch the lives of millions of Cheated of autonomy when the American Americans. Yet you will not find the details imperialists brought them "freedom from the in your local newspapers. slavery of Spain," the Puerto Rican leaders That sounds startling, but the reason is sim­ never ceased to struggle for political freedom. ple." The correspondents of the American Finally, in 1917, they won American citizen­ press in Puerto Rico are Governor Winship's ship. The Jones Act provided for an elected publicity men. Take Harwood Hull. He sup­ legislature with limited powers. It gave plies both the Associated Press and the New Puerto Rico a resident commissioner at Wash­ York Times; and both he and his jroung son ington, whom the Puerto Ricans have to pay are on the Winship payroll. Hull is a prose­ for sitting in Congress without having the cution witness in this trial. privilege of a vote. It left the office of gover­ That is why you see so little news about nor to be filled by appointment by the Presi­ the struggle for Puerto Rican independence. dent of the United States, and the governor That is why you see no news at all about the Buth Gttow was to appoint men to fill most of the key-

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED NX! W MASSES positions in the insular government. This was that of the poorest southern sharecroppers. this bankers' paradise. The danger brought something, but not much. Now it was worse, indescribably worse for the out all the latent fascism. What the Liberty In 1919 a delegation of the Unionista masses of Puerto Rico. And the blessed birth League crowd tried to hide at home, they did Party traveled hopefully to Washington. At rate that had come with American "freedom" not bother to conceal in Puerto Rico. And a hearing before the House Committee on In­ was adding thirty-eight thousand new workers they found their Fiihrer in Major General sular Affairs, they asked for a popularly elected to the unemployed count every single, blessed Blanton Winship, LL.B. and LL.D. Experi­ governor. Began a curious game of pass-the- year. enced in the Philippines and in Liberia, he buck between Washington and San Juan, the The Roosevelt administration, through the knew all the ins and outs of imperialism, A island capital. Our peculiar form of bourgeois Puerto Rican Reconstruction Administration, former judge-advocate general, he knew all democracy supplies a perfect machine for the has allotted between sixty and eighty million the tricks and loopholes of the law. He landed breaking of promises. One administration is dollars to be spent on the island for relief. on the boiling island like a pitcher of ice not bound to keep the rash promises of its pre­ It has been found that, far from relieving the water. decessor. And the Harding regime was noted crisis, this paltry sum will care for only about for its promises. half of the normal, annual increase in popula­ WITH WINSHIP at their head, the insular In 1924 the United States Senate passed a tion. Early in the game, it was easy for the police threw away their kid gloves and bought bill giving Puerto Rico the right to elect its Puerto Ricans to see that government relief a flockxof machine guns. Meetings were bro­ own governor, but no action was taken by the was not the answer. ken up. Nationalists were terrorized. In the House of Representatives. It was easy to see that behind all of Puerto fall of 1935 they killed four Nationalists at a In 1926 the House passed a similar measure, Rico's troubles lay one, big thing: the land student demonstration on the campus of the but the Senate adjourned without taking ac­ monopoly. It was easy to forget that other University of Puerto Rico. tion. By now this gesture has become so fa­ causes were involved, causes equally a part of Persecution drew more and more sympathy miliar that not even the most trusting cipayos the complicated structure of the capitalist sys­ to the Nationalists. It became increasingly put any stock in it. tem. The time was ripe for a militant, revolu­ obvious that the foreign exploiters were will­ The above bills were backed by the Union­ tionary party to appear. ing to go to any lengths to protect their profits ista and the Alianza Parties, the then dom­ It appeared. It was called tfie Nationalist and made the Nationalists even surer that force inant political parties of Puerto Rico. The Party of Puerto Rico and on its banner was was the only possible answer. Some of the so-called Socialist Party of Puerto Rico, bow­ inscribed the slogan: Land and Bread! younger element began to think in terms of ing to the necessity of assuming an "advanced" Because there is no mature labor and trade- direct action. position, began to mumble vaguely about union movement in Puerto Rico, it had certain Elias Beauchamp, a young Nationalist, shot "statehood." It worked. special characteristics. It attracted some of the and killed Francis Riggs, the chief of police. lo 1928, on the eve of the depression, the most brilliant of the younger intellectuals, Police immediately seized him and a friend, iasular elections turned into a Socialist land-- mostly middle class youth. Pedro Albizu Cam­ , whom they happened to recog­ slide. The island voters, disillusioned with pos, a Harvard graduate and a former admirer nize as a Nationalist. They took both boys to both the Alianza and the Unionista politicians, of Ghandi, became its leader. Though com­ the San Juan station, and, on a flimsy pretext, turned to Santiago Iglesias, leader of the paratively small in number, so great was the killed them without the formality of a trial. Socialist Party, as their laSt hope for some influence of the Nationalist Party that the A political crisis resulted. In Washington, form of autonomy. Their cause could not other political parties, seeing which way the the Tydings Bill was introduced. The Tydings have been placed in worse hands. Iglesias, wind blew aijd fearing to lose their mass sup­ Bill was one of the crudest instruments of once a radical, is now working in a majority port, began waveringly to adopt the issue of political revenge in the history of the country. coalition with the quasi-fascist Republican independence. It oflered the Puerto Ricans independence on Union Party. He is one of the bitterest en­ Albizu told his followers that the sugar terms that were like offering a beggar a rope emies of the struggle for liberation. barons would never give the island further and inviting him to hang himself. The mo­ So far the independence struggle had been autonomy, or statehood, or, least of all, inde­ tive was to be rid of all talk of independence carried on with all the amenities of bourgeois pendence. There was no use in sending delega­ for all time. The Marcantonio Bill, intro­ politics, and with Spanish courtesy besides. tion after delegation to Washington. The only duced shortly afterward, did a little to neu­ Militancy was lacking, there was not even any hope of the Puerto Ricans lay in wresting their tralize the bad smell of the Tydings Bill. rough talk. Only the Independentista Party, a island by force out of the grip of the monopo­ But Puerto Rico was under a reign of handful of young intellectuals, dared to talk lists. Albizu's movement swept the island. terror. Police, national guard, and the regular of revolt. Complete independence became, and still is, army were mobilized on a military basis. the leading topic of conversation, the center of Police hunted down Nationalists in every discussion in the newspapers, the uppermost THEM came the crisis. It served to speed up town and registered them like criminals. Per­ the process of expropriation that had been going thought in the minds of the vast majority of mits for parades and meetings were refused. Puerto Ricans. And Albizu was right about on steadily for years. Large tracts of sugar On one occasion police and soldiers surrounded the sugar barons. land that were still independent and native- a church and denied the people entrance. owned tumbled into the tills of the National Puerto Rico is God's gift to the sugar in­ Pressure was brought on the newspapers. City Bank and the Chase National Bank by terests. There they can raise and refine sugar Radio wires were cut when a speaker said any­ the mortgage-foreclosure route. Absentee almost as cheaply as in Cuba and export it to thing that might be construed as sympathetic ownership grew until 85 percent of the sugar the United States tariff free. The resulting to the cause of independence. Every effort lands were in the hands of foreigners. Land profits are fabulous. The whole absentee in­ was made to prevent the Nationalists from starvation spread from the small peasant and vestment in Puerto Rican sugar, for instance, reaching the masses with their messages. the petty bourgeois to the upper strata of the is only about forty million dollars, yet in the Civil service employees with independent native owning class. years 1920-35 three of the big sugar com­ sympathies were intimidated and hounded out Wages fell. Before 1929 the family of a panies alone made more than eighty million of office. They were replaced with pseudo- worker in the sugar cane fields had only about dollars in profits. Added to that, the same American newspaper writers and others whose two hundred dollars a year to live on. Now banks have a rich investment in insular and job it was to spread the propaganda of reac­ the peones worked for half of that, a third, municipal bonds, a railway, a power company, tion. Political discussion was barred at the whatever they could get. Half of the island's and sunf^nVs. Three northern steamship lines University of Puerto Rico. A lynch spirit was workers were unemployed. Before the depres­ do a ric in freight to and from Puerto generated against all Nationalists. It was fas­ sion, poverty was abysmal. Workers in Rico, si virtual monopoly. cism at its nakedest. Puerto Rico lived on a standard lower than The 1 for independence threatened Albizu Campos and seven comrades (the

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED (sEP BMBBB, 8»8 IS ST ILBUL ^..-J-

h isn't exactly a steady job. I'm scabbing."

Winship machine always knocks off its enemies Nationalists tried to hold a parade an(l-.^niass he ' t'n best police officer I have ever me in round numbers of eight or ten) were ar^ meeting in Ponce. They may have pickecf" It f • civilians are being tried thisw rested and indicted ori the charge of attempt Ponce because it was as far as possible from ti?\ th 't those two policemen, ele\ to overthrow the United States government by the seat of the Winship government. Pressure lea-'' - 'ionalist Party, most force. Reams of patriotic propaganda were was brought by the governor on the mayor of wh ' r. "sent when the slau thrown out by the Winship scribblers. It has Ponce not to grant a permit. Nevertheless the ter tot. s of only ten ha been said that the panel from which the Al- mayor did grant a permit. Colonel Enrique been relen. . ~ "lio Pinto Gandi bizu Jury was to be selected was carefully de Orbeta, the governor's chief of police, Plinio (ijacu : -^> i^^op^de Victoria checked over by the prosecuting attorney and rushed to Ponce to persuade the mayor to Ca^^imirr, Berengu !" GoJ^alez Ruiz, his friends at a cocktail party in the governor's change his mind. With him he took the police Elifaz Escobar, Luis Corr( 'Santiago mansion to see who was "okay." It is also said of fifteen surrounding towns and, to use the Gonzalez, Luis Ca=ti esada^ ^1 \

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED N E W M 1 i S E1 Rememi>>.,fing Isador^ Duncan Her stormy and generous career is seen ijs having been part of the democratic tradition in our art By Michael Gold

ANCING is an art that dies with the But Isadora! Duncan did not fail; she had pu/t an end to expanding life. At its worst artist. In America, there is a double discovered a wky of dancing democracy. it was a matter of wigs, corsets, and acro­ D death, since art, as an expression of It was the old transcendental democracy of batics; at its best, it had the soulless beauty the national spirit, is still rated far below the Emerson and Walt Whitman that inspired of a machine. aluminum business. her. It is difficult today to realize what an, Isadora stripped off the corsets and wigs, There is a statue in New York to Samuel effect she had dn her time. The formal ballot and all the feudal artificiality. She rediscov­ S. Cox, a minor congressman. But where are of the czar's pourt ruled the dance wjgrld ered the flowing line of the Greeks, a line that the monuments to Isadora Duncan? Does the then; there was nothing else. Like feidalism, was not imposed on the human body, but was TOunger generation of revolutionary dancers the ballet had frozen into a static ^^^tern that its most natural expression. She brought ever speak of her or remember the great pio­ neer? It was ten years, this September 14, that tljjs first creator of an American dance, Isadora J ancan, completed her generous and stormy e. Even before her death, she had begun be "out of fashion" in America. The post- r generation in Europe was passing through,'' decade of shell-shock. Bourgeois war-m^'t- had betrayed all the human valutas'; and irgeois artists, ignorant of the sa^ial forces at contained a heaven a.s],fe\\ as a hell, jund refuge and^^itgSt in a new ivory tower that resembl5(i;;at times, nothing less than a padded cd' Here/ intoms were mistaken for reality, and hu "ty was locked out as though it were ^^ ' An. 3*his was the period that sub- J geometry and technique for emotion -id the spirit; that celebrated ugliness and leath, using sneers, angularities, perversions, Contortions, and mystifications for its medium. Some called the period a waste land; others spoke of themselves as the lost generation. But ""ver the forms, over all the chaos snick- ^ bawdy, crackpot face of Dada, father "ion and lies. had earned the right to such pro- 'r; in France alone a million young lad been slaughtered in the imperialist 3ut what place had it in America, which ififered little? tat right had any artist, American or ean, to lose his faith in the people?

ATTNESSED, however, in our country, the of an art, talented enough, but sterile be- .se it had no roots except in Montparnasse. . was a negation of democracy, it was a com­ plete secession from the American folk-life. Is it any wonder that during this time Isadora became a stranger in her own house, a naive old devotee surrounded by the young philis- tines of a new sophistication? Today some young revolutionary dancers continue the geometrical contortions of the post-war German Dadaists. They attempt to put the spirit of the native democracy into these strange and alien molds, and never know why they fail.

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED