Pedro Albizu Campos
Pedro Albizu Campos was a Puerto Rican attorney and politician, and a leading figure in the Puerto Rican independence movement. He was the president and spokesperson of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico from 1930 until his death. He led the nationalist revolts of October 1950 against the United States government in Puerto Rico. Albizu Campos spent a total of twenty-six years in prison at various times for his Puerto Rican independence activities.
Campos graduated from Harvard Law School in 1921 with the highest grade point average in his law class, an achievement that earned him the right to give the valedictorian speech at his graduation ceremony. However, animus towards his African heritage led to his professors delaying two of his final exams in order to keep Albizu Campos from graduating on time. During his time at Harvard, he became involved in the Irish struggle for independence. A polyglot, he spoke six languages. Because of his oratorical skill, he was hailed as El Maestro.
In 1924, Albizu Campos joined the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and became its vice president. He was elected president of the party in 1930. In 1950, he planned armed uprisings in several cities in Puerto Rico. Afterward he was convicted and returned to prison. He died in 1965 shortly after his pardon and release from federal prison, some time after suffering a stroke. There is controversy over his medical treatment in prison. Albizu Campos alleged that he was the subject of human radiation experiments in prison.
Early life and education
He was born in a sector of Barrio Machuelo Abajo in Ponce, Puerto Rico to Juliana Campos, a domestic worker of African ancestry, on June 29, 1893. There has been a long debate and confusion over his birthday. Official documents say it was September 12, 1891, while Albizu Campos has stated that his real birthday is June 29, 1893. His father Alejandro Albizu Romero, known as "El Vizcaíno," was a Basque merchant, from a family of Spanish immigrants who had temporarily resided in Venezuela. His father never recognized young Pedro as his son and abandoned Juliana, leaving them in poverty. Juliana started to struggle with her mental health, taking a young Pedro to the river and attempting to drown him with her on various occasions. Luckily, he was saved many times by friends and family, though eventually his mother drowned herself in the Portugués River in Ponce. From there, Pedro Albizu Campos would be raised by his maternal aunt, Rosa Campos.From an educated family, Albizu was the nephew of the danza composer Juan Morel Campos, and cousin of Puerto Rican educator Dr. Carlos Albizu Miranda. His father did not acknowledge him until he was at Harvard University.
Albizu Campos graduated from Ponce High School, a "public school for the city's white elite." In 1912, Albizu was awarded a scholarship to study Chemical Engineering at the University of Vermont. In 1913, he transferred to Harvard University so as to continue his studies.
At the outbreak of World War I, Albizu Campos volunteered in the United States Infantry. Albizu was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Army Reserves and sent to the City of Ponce, where he organized the town's Home Guard. He was called to serve in the regular Army and sent to Camp Las Casas for further training. Upon completing the training, he was assigned to the 375th Infantry Regiment. The United States Army, then segregated, assigned Puerto Ricans of recognizably African descent as soldiers to the all-black units, such as the 375th Regiment. Officers were men classified as white. Albizu Campos was black.
Albizu Campos was honorably discharged from the Army in 1919, with the rank of First Lieutenant. However, his exposure to racism during his time in the U.S. military altered his perspective on U.S.-Puerto Rico relations, and he became the leading advocate for Puerto Rican independence.
In 1919, Albizu returned to his studies at Harvard University, where he was elected president of the Harvard Cosmopolitan Club. He met with foreign students and world leaders, such as Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian Nationalist leader, and the Hindu poet Rabindranath Tagore. He became interested in the cause of Indian independence and also helped to establish several centers in Boston for Irish independence. Through this work, Albizu Campos met the Irish leader Éamon de Valera and later became a consultant in the drafting of the constitution of the Irish Free State. Also while at Harvard University he co-founded the university's Knights of Columbus chapter along with other Catholic students.
Albizu graduated from Harvard Law School in 1921 while simultaneously studying literature, philosophy, Chemical Engineering, and Military Science at Harvard College. He was fluent in six modern and two classical languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, and ancient Greek.
Upon graduation from law school, Albizu Campos was recruited for prestigious positions, including a law clerkship to the U.S. Supreme Court, a diplomatic post with the U.S. State Department, the regional vice-presidency of a U.S. agricultural syndicate, and a tenured faculty appointment to the University of Puerto Rico.
On June 23, 1921, after graduating from Harvard Law School, Albizu returned to Puerto Rico—but without his law diploma. He had been the victim of racial discrimination by one of his professors. He delayed Albizu Campos' third-year final exams for courses in Evidence and Corporations. Albizu was about to graduate with the highest grade-point average in his entire law school class. As such, he was scheduled to give the valedictory speech during the graduation ceremonies. His professor delayed his exams so that he could not complete his work, and avoided the "embarrassment" of a Puerto Rican law valedictorian.
Albizu Campos left the United States, took and passed the required two exams in Puerto Rico, and in June 1922 received his law degree by mail. He passed the bar exam and was admitted to the bar in Puerto Rico on February 11, 1924.
Marriage
In 1922, Albizu married Dr. Laura Meneses, a Peruvian biochemist whom he had met at Harvard University. They had five children named Pedro, Laura, Rosa Emilia, and Héctor.Historical context
After nearly four hundred years of colonial domination under the Spanish Empire, Puerto Rico finally received its colonial autonomy in 1897 through a Carta de Autonomía. This Charter of Autonomy was signed by Spanish Prime Minister Práxedes Mateo Sagasta and ratified by the Spanish Cortes.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. Persons opposed to the takeover over the years joined in what became the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. Their position was that, as a matter of international law, the Treaty of Paris could not empower the Spanish to "give" to the United States what was no longer theirs.
Several years after leaving Puerto Rico, in 1913 Charles Herbert Allen, the former first civilian U.S. governor of the island, became president of the American Sugar Refining Company, the largest of its kind in the world. In 1915, he resigned to reduce his responsibilities, but stayed on the board. This company was later renamed as the Domino Sugar company. According to historian Federico Ribes Tovar, Charles Allen leveraged his governorship of Puerto Rico into a controlling interest over the entire Puerto Rican economy.
Early career
Puerto Rican Nationalist Party leadership
Nationalist activists wanted independence from foreign banks, absentee plantation owners, and United States colonial rule. Accordingly, they started organizing in Puerto Rico.In 1919, José Coll y Cuchí, a member of the Union Party of Puerto Rico, took followers with him to form the Nationalist Association of Puerto Rico in San Juan, to work for independence. They gained legislative approval to repatriate the remains of Ramón Emeterio Betances, the Puerto Rican patriot, from Paris, France.
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 vice president.
In 1924, Pedro Albizu Campos joined the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and was elected vice president. In 1927, Albizu Campos traveled to Santo Domingo, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela, seeking support among other Latin Americans for the Puerto Rican Independence movement.
In 1930, Albizu and José Coll y Cuchí, president of the Party, disagreed on how the party should be run. Albizu Campos did not like what he considered to be Coll y Cuchí's attitude of fraternal solidarity with the enemy. As a result, Coll y Cuchí left the party and, with some of his followers, returned to the Union Party. On May 11, 1930, Albizu Campos was elected president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. He formed the first Women's Nationalist Committee, in the island municipality of Vieques, Puerto Rico.
After being elected party president, Albizu declared: "I never believed in numbers. Independence will instead be achieved by the intensity of those that devote themselves totally to the Nationalist ideal." Under the slogan, "La Patria es valor y sacrificio", a new campaign of national affirmation was carried out. Albizu Campos' vision of sacrifice was integrated with his Catholic faith.
Accusation against Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads
In 1932, Albizu published a letter accusing Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, an American pathologist with the Rockefeller Institute, of killing Puerto Rican patients in San Juan's Presbyterian Hospital as part of his medical research. Albizu Campos had been given an unmailed letter by Rhoads addressed to a colleague, found after Rhoads returned to the United States.Part of what Rhoads wrote, in a letter to his friend which began by complaining about another's job appointment, included the following:
Albizu sent copies of the letter to the League of Nations, the Pan American Union, the American Civil Liberties Union, newspapers, embassies, and the Vatican. He also sent copies of the Rhoads letter to the media, and published his own letter in the Porto Rico Progress. He used it as an opportunity to attack United States imperialism, writing:
A scandal erupted. Rhoads had already returned to New York. Governor James R. Beverley of Puerto Rico and his attorney general Ramón Quiñones, as well as Puerto Rican medical doctors Morales and Otero appointed thereby, conducted an investigation of the more than 250 cases treated during the period of Rhoads' work at Presbyterian Hospital. The Rockefeller Foundation also conducted their own investigation. Rhoads said he had written the letter in anger after he found his car vandalized, and it was intended "as a joke" in private with his colleague. An investigation concluded that he had conducted his research and treatment of Puerto Ricans appropriately. When the matter was revisited in 2002, again no evidence was found of medical mistreatment. The American Association for Cancer Research considered the letter offensive enough to remove Rhoads' name from a prize established to honor his lifelong work in cancer research.