1975 24 py 1 Just a Word for Porto Rico PEDRO CAPO-RODRIGUEZ Member of the Vermont State Bar and of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States WASHINGTON, D. C. 1918 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/justwordforportoOOcap Just a Word for Porto Rico BY PEDRO CAPO-RODRIGUEZ Member of the Vermont State Bar and of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States WASHINGTON, D. C. 1918 JUST A WORD FOR PORTO RICO * Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I take it, of course, as a great personal honor for me to be here this afternoon with you to participate in this festival so well calculated to promote closer acquain- tance and better understanding between us Porto Ric- ans, Americans of the tropics, and you, New Yorkers, New Englanders, Californians, and all other Americans of the Continent. It is a great personal honor, I say, to be here this afternoon with you, as the representative of Porto Rico, through the kind suggestion of my name by my dear personal friend and beloved fellow countryman, the Hon. Felix Cordova Davila, Resident Commissioner of Porto Rico in Congress, who wished that I should be here as his substitute. In this capacity, I wish, first of all to convey to you, and through you to the American people, a message of gratitude from the people of Porto Rico on this most auspicious occasion. This message, ladies and gentle- men, I wish to convey more specially to one great Amer- ican, whose lofty sense of justice and absolute respect for the rights of peoples, made possible the passage of this alreadjr famous Jones-Shafroth Act, which we are gathered here to celebrate. And that one great Ameri- can for whom the eternal gratitude of Porto Rico I can *This speech was made before the members and guests of the Colo- nial Club of New York on the occasion of the observance of the anni- versary of the so called Jones-Shafroth Act, extending to Porto Ricans a substantial measure of self-government and the privilege of American citizenship, March 3, 1918. confidently pledge here this afternoon before this bril- liant gathering of distinguished Americans, both from Porto Rico and the mainland, could not be other than the First American, our beloved President, Mr. Wood- row Wilson, the champion of honesty, and moderation and fair dealings in the world's politics of our day. It is a remarkable coincidence, a wonderful contrast, that at a time when the notion of self-aggrandizement, dictation, preponderance and force, seems to be sup- planting in the minds of belligerent nations across the Ocean every possible consideration of decency and right, we should be celebrating here this afternoon, away from the poisonous gases of autocracy and im- perialism, such an act of justice by a powerful demo- cratic nation to a self-respecting and dignified, although relatively helpless people. This act of justice is, although partial in its scope and limited in many important ways, a clear and in- dubitable acknowledgment and recognition by the American Congress of the self-evident proposition that the Porto Rican people have a God-given right to man- age their own affairs, and solve their own problems in their own way, and strive in the direction they shall* choose for their own edification and happiness and development. I am aware of the fact that there are amongst us Americans narrow spirits and shortsighted politicians and selfish bureaucrats, who would rather have this great and powerful nation of ours adopt a policy of prejudice and suspicion against a people whose only crime before God or man is to wish to attain the condi- tion of a free people, master of their own affairs and conscious of their own responsibilities before the nation, their posterity and the World. It is to be lamented that in these bitter days of trial and tribulations when all of us Americans should sacri- fice before the altar of our Country all personal feelings, there should be made for personal purposes, or from personal motives, disloyal insinuations of disloyalty against a people whose sense of honor and gratitude is paramount to every possible consideration of self ad- vantage or benefit. I do not know whether at this moment I am trans- gressing upon the sacred rights of my dear friend and exalted Porto Rican, the Hon. Felix Cordova Davila, our official representative in Congress, to answer as he may choose these preposterous and unjustifiable insin- uations; but if I may speak on this auspicious occasion, not as a counsel might for a basely slandered client, but as one of the directly injured parties, as a Porto Rican, as a loyal American, let me say that our loyalty, the loyalty of the Porto Rican people, is not measured by their aspirations as to the ultimate form that shall assume their relations with the United States, but by their sense of honor. We owe loyalty to this great na- tion as American citizens, and as American citizens, you may rest assured that we shall be loyal, and that to be such, as well in this occasion as in any other, no other consideration is necessary than our honor. To those who are cynical enough not to believe in honor, to those who claim that we have no individual interest in this death struggle between democracy and imperialism, I say: Even if it were not a sacred duty imposed upon us by honor, because of our Ameri- can citizenship; even if we had no interest whatsoever in the triumph of right and justice and liberty and decency over oppression and tyranny, and despotism, which is the concern of all the Western Hemisphere at least, we would still be bound to be loyal to this great Republic, not only in our outward actions and expres- sions of opinion, which can be seen and heard, but even in our innermost thoughts and sentiments, which are born and felt in the secrecy of our brains and hearts, as an eternal debt of gratitude, as an eternal debt of love, to those who have been kind and patient with us in our political struggle to attain our present degree of preparation for complete self-government, to those who have taught us the great lessons of liberty and democracy, and shown us the advantages of moder- ation and tolerance and respect for the opinions of others and the preservation of our constitutional order and the supremacy of justice and the imperium of law. But in nearly two decades of American intervention, we have managed to learn beyond your expectations. With your help, we have made enormous strides in the exercise of self-government; we have developed our re- sources; we have expanded our political and econom- ical activities; we have acquired the consciousness of our being as a distinct and characteristic Porto Rican people; we have already proved that we are capable, that we are intelligent, that we are patriotic, that we can assume and discharge the duties and obligations of a self-governing people; and we should be cowards, we should not deserve your estimation, we should not be worthy even of your respect, if now, for fear of the results of these unjustifiable and irrational insinuations, 7 Ave should refrain from telling you candidly and frank- ly, as true and honorable men should, and out of re- spect, gratitude and loyalty to you, that we, as a people, recognize and expect you to recognize also, that we have attained already our political majority, that we are already of age, and must be given the full measure of liberty belonging to us as a people. And let me say at this time and here that while we are little and you are big, our destinies are largely bound together. For this reason we must be always united in love, in interests, and in the purpose of our lives. It matters not whether we shall ultimately be an independent State, an absolutely autonomous commonwealth, or an integral part of this nation as a full-fledged State there- of. The thing to remember, the thing which we all must keep constantly in mind, when dealing with each other as self-respecting peoples mindful of our respective claims, is that, as a result of the historical elements which enter into the composition of the Porto Rican people, and by virtue of the geographical, strategical and political position of Porto Rico, which is so near and so important for the national security of the United States, and the security of everything which they possess or have in the Caribbean or in the vicinity of the Pan- ama Canal, and for the development of greater and better relations with the other sister republics of the American Continent, the thing to remember, I say, is that our most cherished hopes of solidarity and recipro- cal support must necessarily depend on our mutual understanding, cordiality and friendship. And let me say in passim, that this mutual understanding, cordial- ity and friendship is also the supreme ideal of Pan Americanism, of which by one of those hidden and inscrutable designs of Providence, Porto Rico is now the key. It must not be forgotten, ladies and gentlemen, that Porto Rico is one of the peoples of America. Our blood, our history, our language, our customs, our religion and our temperament and mental processes and ideals are characteristically those of all Spanish-American peo- ples. And although characteristically Spanish Ameri- can, as a people distinctly Porto Rican, we claim our own history, our own literature, our own customs, our own laws. We have our own idiosyncracies, our own temperament, our own mental processes and carry in our hearts and souls as a sacred possesion of ours, our own ideals, our own aspirations and our own definitions as to what our own individual place should be in this great concert of American peoples. You know, however, that the American people, is the ultimate arbiter of our destinies; you know that all good or bad that may come to us as a people must come to us, I say, by your hand through a wise or unwise law en- acted by your Congress. I have said your Congress, but this I mean only in a qualified manner. What I mean is that we legally and really have no voice or vote in the making and enactment of what I might call in the same manner your laws; the laws which must affect our own political, social and economical life, as well as the laws which must necessarily affect the nation as a political whole only, or any or all of the States and Territories and possessions, indirectly, in their indi- vidual capacity, because the only participation that you have given us in the making of those laws is mere- ly a courtesy extended to the Resident Commissioner of Porto Rico to have a seat in the House of Repre- sentatives. And from this seat in the House at Wash- ington the Resident Commissioner of Porto Rico looks more like a stranger and an intruder than the repre- sentative of my people in the making of your laws. I say these things, ladies and gentlemen, with no spirit of resentment, antagonism, or disrespect; but I do say them in a spirit of enlightenment, in a spirit of candor and in a spirit of friendship. The law which we are celebrating here is in many particulars a good law. As far as it extends to Porto Ricans a substantial measure of self-government, it opens up to them an opportunity to prove, still farther than they have so far proved, their capacity for manag- ing their local affairs and cope with the intricacies and difficulties and temptations attending the administra- tion of public interests. By this law it is extended also to Porto Ricans the privilege and the honor of Ameri- can citizenship. I find no words in my English vocabu- lary to express to you, ladies and gentlemen, the pro- found appreciation and deep gratitude of all of us Porto Ricans for this distinct proof of confidence and trust deposited in us by the American people. But now, at this very time, when the old and dis- credited international organization seems to be crumb- ling to pieces amid the horrible confusion of this great war which is devastating Europe, and when all the peo- ples of the World seem to be groping in the dark, seeking orientations to find a new international order which may supplant the archaic and discredited sys- tem of imperialism, preponderance, dictation and force, 10 which has resulted in this appalling butchery and waste, it may not be entirely amiss, ladies and gentlemen, to remind you that Porto Rico is a distinct and separate people and not an integral part of the United States. As you all well know, the Act which we are celebrating here has not the effect of incorpo- rating Porto Rico as a territory of the United States. That most august and exalted of all tribunals, the Su- preme Court of the United States, reversing two deci- sions of the Supreme Court of Porto Rico and the Dis- trict Court of the United States for Porto Rico, has recently reaffirmed its solemn declaration made nearly twenty years ago, in the famous Insular Cases, that Porto Rico is still merely a possession, a piece of terri- torial property, something appurtenant and belonging to the United States, and nothing more. From a purely Porto Rican point of view, and having regard only to our present status as a thing possessed, as a thing beyond the pale of the Constitution of the United States, we consider this definition of our status as very humiliating and repulsive and loathsome to our sense of dignity and self-respect. Considering it, how- ever, as an expression of American policy and patriot- ism, no intelligent man in Porto Rico can deny, and nobody there does deny, that this statesmanlike and far-sighted declaration of the Supreme Court, made by Mr. Chief Justice White, leaves entirely open for future consideration by an enlightened public ODinion the ultimate disposition to be made of Porto Rico by the United States. But, in the meantime, why not look at this problem 11 squarely in the face? Why dodge and evade the real issues involved! Why not examine the facts! If you wish us to be real Americans, do not deprive us of rights and privileges which you have yourselves proclaimed in that wonderful monument of American history known by the Declaration of Independence, and in so many state papers and documents from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln and from Abraham Lincoln to Woodrow Wilson, the three great names which mark the three great American epopees. The epopee of acquiring liberty and democracy for your- selves; the greater epopee of consolidating that liberty and democracy also for yourselves, and the greater of all, the epopee of acquiring and securing liberty and democracy for the World. It is not now a question of giving us a merely nominal citizenship as the one which this Act has given us; the question now is to make that citizenship effective. If you have made us citizens of this great Republic, you must realize that while this citizenship imposes upon us burdens and duties which we are obliged to bear and discharge as faithfully and as loyally as anyone of you, by a reciprocal law of compensation you must recognize to us ungrudgingly and generously the rights and privileges and immunities appertaining to that citizenship. How can you, for instance, consistently with your beautiful traditions pass and impose on us laws and regulations which affect our social, political and eco- nomical life; laws and regulations which affect our individual and collective happiness; laws which impose upon us burdens and taxes, and deprivations and con- 12 tributions of blood and the shedding of tears of our mothers, and our wives, and our sisters, and our sweet- hearts; how can you, I say, in the name of justice and equity and fair play, how can you do all these things, without giving us, not as a courtesy, not as a favor, but as a right, as an American right imbedded in the very heart and core of American institutions, an adequate and just and equitable and fair representation in the making of those laws? Is it fair, is it equitable, is it just, is it American, that you should go into Congress and dispose of our boys, without giving us the privilege to raise our voice in pride and claim the glory of proclaiming highly, very highly, that we, ourselves through our legitimate rep- resentatives in Congress, had sent them to Europe, to fight for the rights of peoples and the liberty of the World? No, I say; it is not American, it is not just, it is not equitable, it is not fair. . . . I have not come here, ladies and gentlemen, to ques- tion the validity nor the enforcement, nor even the applicability to Porto Rico of the National Draft Laws. As the representative of Porto Rico, on this occasion, as a Porto Rican myself, I feel proud that our boys are gladly going to the battlefields of Europe to fight, shoul- der to shoulder with your boys, for democracy and liberty, which is our own cause and the cause of the United States, and the World. As the representative of Porto Rico on this festival of rejoicing and gratitude, I am here this afternoon to convey to you a message of frankness, a message of loyalty, a message of solidar- ity and frienship. 13 But it would not be an act of faithfulness on my part, I should not be properly discharging the obligations of my trust, if I did not speak to you with candor and told you all these things lest that by mere praises, which might soothe your vanity but not disclose to you the real state of things, the Act which we are celebrating here should be taken as fulfilling and satisfying the whole aspirations of the people for whose welfare it was undoubtedly intended by the men who took part in its passage and by those who took in it a favorable interest. It is not our intention, it is not our wish and it shall not be our action, to create any difficulty or embarrass- ment for the United States at this critical moment in which we all must be united as a single man, with a single purpose, for a single cause: the triumph of democracy over despotism and force, the winning of this war. But we want to make it clear, we want to leave no room for misunderstanding, no room for intentional misrepresentation or honorable mistake, that if we are now sharing the infinite sufferings and deprivations and sacrifices of our active and direct participation in this war; if we are good enough, and capable enough, and competent enough to contribute with our efforts, and with our treasure, and with the flower of our manhood and blood to the liberation of the world; when this war is over and liberty and democracy are safe for the World, we expect you to do us complete justice; we expect this great and noble and generous nation to give us our full measure of liberty, whether in the form of political independency, administrative 14 autonomy, or American statehood. In the first case, we might be established as a republic, like Cuba; in the second case, we might be established as a Republi- can and autonomous commonwealth much on the same plan of Australia or Canada; and in the third case, we might be established as a full-fledged State of this Union on an equal footing with the other States. Let me warn you, by the way, that I am not speaking here for any of the political parties of Porto Rico, for I am representing none of them, and therefore I am not ex- pressing the views of any of them as to the ultimate choice to be made of any of these solutions. I do say, however, that whatever that choice may be, it must be founded on the wishes of the Porto Rican people, and on sound and satisfactory reasons of national and in- ternational policy to be followed by the United States. And when the proper time arrives, I have no doubt that we all shall come to a satisfactory understanding in order to consolidate and secure for all time the bonds of solidarity and friendship, which must unite us for- ever. In the meantime, however, is it not perfectly reason- able, perfectly natural, and just, and equitable and fair that when our boys are sent abroad to fight and lay down their lives to maintain a right and a principle, we should regard it as very important that they be made to feel that this same right and this same princi- ple is not to be denied, but to be accorded and assured to the land of their birth at the conclusion of this war? I must not impose any longer upon your indulgence. I know that the short time assigned to me for my dis- 15 course has already expired. But let me say just one word more, and that is of apology, for I know that some of the things I have said to you this afternoon are rather unpleasant, rather disagreeable, rather out of the ordinary run of things. For all that, I must ask your forbearance and tolerance, and I am sure that, in exchange, you will be largely compensated by the pleasant and agreeable things that will be said by the silver-tongued speakers who are to come after me to occupy this floor. I thank you. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 015 813 969 8