Pedro Albizu Campos

Pedro Albizu Campos
Pedro Albizu Campos
Born	June 29, 1893(1893-06-29) or September 12, 1891(1891-09-12) Ponce, Puerto Rico
Died	April 21, 1965 (1965-04-22) (aged 71 or 73) San Juan, Puerto Rico
Nationality	Puerto Rican
Alma mater	Harvard University
Organization	Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
Religion	Roman Catholic (after Harvard)[1][2][3]
Spouse	Laura Meneses

Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Series Flag of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
Events and Revolts Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Ponce massacre · Río Piedras massacre · Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts of the 1950s · Jayuya Uprising · Nationalist attack of San Juan · Utuado Uprising · Truman assassination attempt · U.S. Capitol shooting incident (1954)
Nationalist Leaders Pedro Albizu Campos · Casimiro Berenguer · Blanca Canales · Rafael Cancel Miranda · José Coll y Cuchí · Oscar Collazo · Juan Antonio Corretjer · Lolita Lebrón · Hugo Margenat · Francisco Matos Paoli · Isolina Rondón · Clemente Soto Vélez · Griselio Torresola · Carlos Vélez Rieckehoff · Olga Viscal Garriga
Notable Nationalists Margot Arce de Vázquez · Julia de Burgos · Nemesio Canales · Carmelo Delgado Delgado · José Ferrer Canales · René Marqués · German Rieckehoff · Helen Rodriguez-Trias · Daniel Santos · Teófilo Villavicencio Marxuach

Don Pedro Albizu Campos^{[note 1]} (June 29, 1893 (real date) or September 12, 1891 – April 21, 1965) was a Puerto Rican politician and one of the leading figures in the Puerto Rican independence movement. He was the leader and president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party from 1930 until his death. He was imprisoned for many years, on several occasions, in both United States and Puerto Rico, on charges that included seditious conspiracy. He died shortly after his release from federal prison. Because of his oratorical skills he was known as El Maestro ("The Teacher").

Biography

Early years

Albizu Campos was born in Tenerías sector of Barrio Machuelo Abajo in Ponce, Puerto Rico to Alejandro Albizu and Juana Campos. He was the nephew of danza composer Juan Morel Campos and cousin of Puerto Rican educator Dr. Carlos Albizu Miranda.

Education

In 1912, Albizu was awarded a scholarship to study Engineering, specializing in Chemistry at the University of Vermont. In 1913 he continued his studies at Harvard University.

Lieutenant Pedro Albizu Campos (U.S. Army)

At the outbreak of World War I, he 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. Puerto Ricans of African descent were assigned to the all black units such as the 375th Regiment in accordance with the United States military segregation policies. Albizu was honorably discharged from the Army in 1919, with the rank of First Lieutenant. During the time that he served he was exposed to the racism of the day which left a mark in his beliefs towards the relationship of Puerto Ricans and the United States, thus becoming a leading advocate for Puerto Rican independence.^[4]

In 1919, Albizu returned to Harvard University and was elected president of Harvard's Cosmopolitan Club. He met with foreign students and lecturers, like Subhas Chandra Bose (Indian Nationalist leader with Mahatma Gandhi) 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.

Albizu met Éamon de Valera and later became a consultant in the drafting of the constitution of the Irish Free State. He graduated from Harvard University obtaining a Law degree while studying Literature, Philosophy, Chemical Engineering and Military Science. He was fluent in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Latin and Greek. At the time he received job offers as Hispanic representative for a Protestant church and in the U.S. State Department's diplomatic corps in Mexico, yet Albizu opted to return to Puerto Rico.

Nationalist campaign

On June 23, 1921, at the end of his senior year of law school, Albizu returned to Puerto Rico, but without his law diploma or degree. He had been the victim of racial discrimination by one of his professors delaying his taking of the senior year final exams for the two courses of Evidence and Corporations. Albizu left the U.S. for Puerto Rico from where he attempted to make further progress for the completion of the needed examinations, taking and passing the two required Harvard exams in Puerto Rico in June, 1922. Meanwhile, also in 1922, Albizu married Dr. Laura Meneses, a Peruvian whom he had met at Harvard University. Albizu presented his credentials before the U.S. Federal Court in Puerto Rico for admittance into the bar, and was approved to practice law in Puerto Rico on February 11, 1924.^[5][6]

As had been the case in the U.S., in Puerto Rico Albizu also turned down various job offers including clerkship to the U.S Supreme Court and an appointment to the University of Puerto Rico.^[7] Instead he settled in "La Cantera", an underpriviledged sector of Ponce, to practice labor law.

In 1924, Albizu Campos joined the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and was elected vice president. In 1927, Albizu traveled to Santo Domingo, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela, seeking solidarity for the Puerto Rican Independence movement.

Albizu, 1936

In 1930, there were some disagreements between Albizu and José Coll y Cuchí, president of the Party, as to how it should be run. As a result Coll y Cuchí abandoned the party and some of his followers returned to the Union Party. On May 11, 1930, Albizu Campos was elected president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and formed the first Women's Nationalist Committee, in the island municipality of Vieques, Puerto Rico.

The election of Pedro Albizu Campos as president of the Nationalist Party radically changed the political organization and tactics of that party. After being elected party president he declared: "I never believed in numbers, independence will be achieved instead by the intensity of those that devote themselves totally to the nationalist ideal."^[8] Under the slogan "la patria es valor y sacrificio" (the motherland is valor and sacrifice) a new campaign of national affirmation was carried out. This idea of self-sacrifice co-existed with Albizu's Catholic faith.^[9]

In 1932, Albizu published a manuscript in which he accused Doctor Cornelius P. Rhoads of killing Puerto Rican patients as part of medical experiments conducted in San Juan's Presbyterian Hospital for the Rockefeller Institute. Albizu quotes as his source a letter, received from a third party, in which the doctor purportedly admitted to injecting patients with live cancer cells. The letter also included inflammatory racist comments denigrating Puerto Ricans for their alleged bad character. Investigations at the time did not publicly reveal evidence of malicious activity to support the claim and Dr. Rhoads was vindicated while Albizu was discredited. Dr. Rhoads went on to head two large chemical warfare projects in the 1940s and later served with the United States Atomic Energy Commission.^{[citation needed]} He was later awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit. Years later, in 2003, after an independent investigation led by the eminent bioethicist Dr. Jay Katz, of Yale University, the American Association for Cancer Research would remove Dr. Rhoads' name from their annual award intended for an "individual on the basis of meritorious achievement in cancer research".

The Nationalist Party obtained poor results in the 1932 election, but continued with their campaign to unite the people behind an independent Puerto Rico. At the same time, continued repression from the United States against Puerto Rican independence was now met with armed resistance.

In 1933, Albizu led a strike against the Puerto Rico Railway and Light and Power Company for alleged monopoly on the island. The following year, he represented sugar cane workers as a lawyer against the U.S. sugar industry.

First Arrest

In 1935, four Nationalists were killed by the police under the command of Colonel E. Francis Riggs. The incident became known as the Río Piedras massacre. The following year in 1936, nationalists Hiram Rosado and Elias Beauchamp assassinated Colonel Riggs. They were arrested, and summarily executed without a trial at the police headquarters in San Juan.

After these events, the U.S Federal Court in San Juan ordered the arrest of Albizu Campos and several other Nationalists for "seditious conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. Government in Puerto Rico." A jury of seven Puerto Ricans and five Americans voted 7 to 5 not guilty. However, Judge Cooper called for a new jury, this time composed of ten Americans and two Puerto Ricans and a guilty verdict was achieved.^[10]

In 1937, a group of lawyers, including a young Gilberto Concepción de Gracia tried in vain to defend the Nationalists, but the Boston Court of Appeals, which holds appellate jurisdiction over federal matters in Puerto Rico, upheld the verdict. Albizu Campos and the other Nationalist leaders were sent to the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia.

In his 1939 speech Five Years of Tyranny, U.S. Congressman Vito Marcantonio, called the trial a "frame-up", and "one of the blackest pages in the history of American jurisprudence." ^[11] Providing evidence that the Albizu Campos' jury was a prejudiced one, which had been hand-picked by the prosecuting attorney Mr. Cecil Snyder to include "jurors who had expressed publicly bias and hatred for the defendants" and a prosecuting attorney [Snyder] who had been assured via a dispatch from Washington that "the Department of Justice would back him until he did get a conviction", Marcantonio added, "The continuance of this [Albizu Campos] incarceration is repugnant to our democratic form of government; it is repugnant to our Bill of Rights and out of harmony with our good neighbor policy. There is no place in America for political prisoners. As long as Puerto Rico remains part of the United States, Puerto Rico must have the same freedom, the same civil liberties, and the same justice which our forefathers laid down for us. Only a complete and immediate unconditional pardon will, in a very small measure, right this historical wrong." ^[12] Congressman Marcantonio then concluded, "When we ask ourselves, "Can it happen here?" the Puerto Rican people can answer, "It has happened in Puerto Rico." ^[13]

In 1943, Albizu got seriously ill and had to be interned at the Columbus Hospital of New York. He stayed there almost until the end of his sentence. After ten years of imprisonment, in 1947 Albizu returned to Puerto Rico and it was believed that he began preparing, along with other members of the Nationalist Party, an armed struggle against the proposed plans to change Puerto Rico's political status into a commonwealth of the United States.

Second Arrest

Pedro Albizu Campos was jailed again after the October 30 nationalists revolts in various Puerto Rican cities and towns against United States rule in 1950. Among the more notable of the revolts was the Jayuya Uprising, when a group of Puerto Rican nationalists, under the leadership of Blanca Canales, held the town of Jayuya for three days, the Utuado Uprising which culminated in what is known as the "Utuado Massacre" and the attack on La Fortaleza (the Puerto Rican governor's mansion).

On November 1, 1950, nationalists Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola attacked the Blair House in Washington, D.C. where president Harry S. Truman was staying while the White House was being renovated. During the attack on the president, Torresola and policeman, Private Leslie Coffelt, were killed. Albizu Campos was arrested at his home after a brief shootout with the police. Subsequently 3,000 independence supporters were arrested, and Albizu Campos was once more jailed; this time he was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

Albizu was pardoned in 1953 by then governor Luis Muñoz Marín but the pardon was revoked the following year after the 1954 nationalist attack of the United States House of Representatives, when four Puerto Rican Nationalists, led by Lolita Lebrón opened fire from the gallery of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C..

Later years and death

Image of Albizu Campos in prison some time between 1951 and 1953.

The FBI files state that while in prison Albizu Campos' health deteriorated.^[14] In 1956, he suffered a stroke in prison and was transferred to San Juan's Presbyterian Hospital under police guard. He alleged that he was the subject of human radiation experiments in prison and stated that he could see colored rays bombarding him. Officials suggested that Albizu was insane, although many doctors were able to examine Albizu and test for signs of radiation. The President of the Cuban Cancer Association, Dr. Orlando Damuy, traveled to PR to examine him. Dr. Damuy concluded from his examination of Albizu that the burns on Albizu's body were caused by intense radiation. It is said when they placed a metal paper clip with a film on Albizu's skin, the clip was radiated into the film. It is also said he did not receive any medical attention for five days and instead suffered. On November 15, 1964, Albizu was again pardoned by Muñoz Marin. He died on April 21, 1965. More than 75,000 Puerto Ricans carried the remains of his body to the Old San Juan Cemetery.^[15]

In 1994, under the administration of President Bill Clinton, the United States Department of Energy disclosed that human radiation "experiments" had in fact been conducted without consent on prisoners during the 1950s and 1970s. It has been alleged that Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos was among the subjects of such experimentation.^[16]

The FBI files on Albizu Campos

In the 2000s it was revealed that the FBI office in San Juan in collaboration with those of other cities, especially New York and Chicago, had documented in hundreds of pages surveillance of Albizu Campos and all those Puerto Ricans who had any contact or communication with him. By the Freedom of Information Act these documents were released to the public and they are now viewable online, including documents as recent as 1965.^[17][18]

Relationship with Prominent Latin American Figures

Pedro Albizu Campos had very good relationships with many prominent figures of Latin American politics. Nobel Prize laureate and admirer of Albizu Campos, Gabriela Mistral, presented a tamarind tree to Albizu Campos as a symbol of her support for the Puerto Rican Independence Movement. She obtained the tamarind tree from the world-known Venezuelan leader Simón Bolivar's estate in Venezuela. The tree was planted at the Lares, Puerto Rico Plaza de la Revolución with soil taken from the eighteen other Spanish-speaking Latin American countries of the Hemisphere.

“

Albizu Campos is a symbol of the as yet unfree but indomitable Latin America. Years and years of prison, almost unbearable pressures in jail, mental torture, solitude, total isolation from his people and his family, the insolence of the conqueror and its lackeys in the land of his birth — nothing broke his will. —Che Guevara, speech given to the United Nations General Assembly on December 11, 1964.

”

As inspired by Gabriela Mistral, Albizu Campos meant to give the Plaza a living symbol of solidarity with the struggle for freedom and independence initiated by Simón Bolivar (who, while visiting Vieques, Puerto Rico, promised to assist the Puerto Rico independence movement, albeit said promise never materialized due to the power struggles surrounding him), as well as a symbol of the bittersweet (as the trees' flavor) hardships needed to reach Puerto Rico's independence. As such, the Tamarindo de Gabriela was meant to evoke the symbolism and significance afforded to the Gernikako Arbola hailing from the Basque Country, found between Spain and France.

Legacy

The Pedro Albizu Campos statue and monument at the Pedro Albizu Campos Park in Ponce, Puerto Rico.

External audio
	You may listen to one of the speeches made in Spanish by Albizu Campos here
	and view a portion of the Albizu Documentary Trailer made in English here.

The extent of Albizu's legacy is generally the subject of passionate discussion by both followers and detractors. His followers state that Albizu's political and military actions served (even unintentionally) as a primer for positive change in Puerto Rico, these being:

• the improvement of labor conditions for peasants and workers
• a belated yet more accurate assessment of the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States by the political establishment in Washington
• and a set of social and political conditions that led to positive change in the political - and eventually economic - environment prevailing in the country.

Albizu can be definitely credited, however, with preserving and promoting Puerto Rican nationalism and national symbols, at a time where they were virtually a taboo in the country. The formal adoption of the Puerto Rican flag as a national emblem by the Puerto Rican government can be traced to Albizu (even while he denounced this adoption as the "watering-down" of an otherwise sacred symbol into a "colonial flag"); the revival of public observance of the Grito de Lares and its significant icons was a direct mandate from him as leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.

Albizu was the most vocal and visible Puerto Rican of African descent of his generation; Afro-Puerto Rican leaders of other political extractions (such as Ernesto Ramos Antonini and Jose Celso Barbosa) attained similar status only after facing (and enduring) considerable bouts with racism. Albizu, while not exempt from it, confronted it and denounced it publicly.

An alternative high school in Chicago, called the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School, is located in the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. There, students learn about Puerto Rican history and culture, in the context of local community development. Archives there include original letters, representations of Albizu Campos in sculpture and art, as well as other material related to his life.

Additionally, five public schools in Puerto Rico are named after him, as well as numerous streets in most of Puerto Rico's municipalities. In 1976, Public School 161 in Harlem in New York City was named after him as well.

In Ponce there is a Pedro Albizu Campos park dedicated to his memory which includes a full-body statue of the Nationalist leader.

See also

	Puerto Rico portal
	Biography portal
	United States Army portal
	World War I portal

• Puerto Rican Independence Movement
• Puerto Ricans in World War I
• Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts of the 1950s
• Puerto Rican Nationalist Party
• Ponce Massacre
• Río Piedras massacre
• Jayuya Uprising
• Utuado Uprising
• Truman assassination attempt
• Puerto Rican Independence Party
• History of Puerto Rico
• List of famous Puerto Ricans - Politicians
• Gilberto Concepción de Gracia
• Blanca Canales
• Lolita Lebrón
• Private Leslie Coffelt
• Latin American and Caribbean Congress in Solidarity with Puerto Rico's Independence

Notes

1. ^
   This name uses Spanish naming customs; the first or paternal family name is Albizu and the second or maternal family name is Campos.

References

1. ^ The Albizu End of Summer Update. Albizu: The Docummentary.
2. ^ American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman--and the Shoot-out that Stopped it. By Stephen Hunter and John Bainbridge, Jr. (New York: Simon & Schuster. 2007.)
3. ^ La Nación puertorriqueña: ensayos en torno a Pedro Albizu Campos. By Juan Manuel Carrión, Teresa C. Gracia Ruiz. Page 145.
4. ^ Negroni, Héctor Andrés (1992) (in Spanish). Historia militar de Puerto Rico. Sociedad Estatal Quinto Centenario. ISBN 8478441387. 
5. ^ Juramentacion de Pedro Albizu Campos como Abogado: Regreso de Harvard a Puerto Rico. Periodico "La Voz de la Playa de Ponce", November 2010.
6. ^ Juramentacion de Pedro Albizu Campos como Abogado: Regreso de Harvard a Puerto Rico. Periodico "La Voz de la Playa de Ponce", Edicion 132, November 2010. Page 7. A reproduction of a segment from the book "Las Llamas de la Aurora: Pedro Albizu Campos, un acercamiento a su biografia" by Marisa Rosado (San Juan, Puerto Rico: Ediciones Puerto. 1991.)
7. ^ American Gunfight. Simon and Schuster. 2005. ISBN 0743281950. http://books.google.com/books?id=5b2dnzu54ZEC&pg=PA27&dq=%22pedro+abizu+campos%22+catholic&as_brr=3#PPA28,M1. Retrieved 2009-05-05. 
8. ^ Maldonado, A. W. (2004). LMM: Puerto Rico's democratic revolution. La Editorial, UPR. ISBN 0847701581. http://books.google.com/books?id=aP2rD2wtmVMC&pg=PA87. 
9. ^ Bridging the Atlantic. SUNY Press. 1996. ISBN 0791429172. http://books.google.com/books?id=4KBKj7f9E7EC&pg=PA129&dq=pedro+albizu+campos&as_brr=3#PPA145,M1. Retrieved 2009-05-05. 
10. ^ The Imprisionement of Men and Women Fighting Colonialism, 1930 - 1940 Retrieved December 9, 2009.
11. ^ Congressional Record, 76th Cong., 1st Sess.,81:10780 Appendix
12. ^ Congressional Record, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., 81:10780, (Appendix)
13. ^ Congressional Record, 76th Cong., 1st Sess.,81:10780 (Appendix)
14. ^ FBI File on Albizu Campos while Albizu Campos was in the hospital. Retrieved December 9, 2009.
15. ^ "Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos". http://albizu.8m.com/. Retrieved 2009-05-03. 
16. ^ Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. National Security Archives. George Washington University. Retrieved July 26, 2010.
17. ^ FBI Files on Pedro Albizu Campos
18. ^ FBI Files on Surveillance of Puerto Ricans in general

• Acosta, Ivonne, La Mordaza/Puerto Rico 1948-1957. Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, 1987
• Connerly, Charles, ed. Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, Vieques Times, Puerto Rico, 1995
• Corretjer, Juan Antonio, El Lider De La Desesperación, Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, 1978
• Davila, Arlene M., Sponsored Identities, Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1997
• Garcia, Marvin, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, National Louis University
• Torres Santiago, Jose M., 100 Years of Don Pedro Albizu Campos

External links

• Portraits of Notable Individuals in the Struggle for Puerto Rican Independence
• FBI Files on Puerto Rico
• DOE Openness: Human Radiation Experiments
• Profile of Don Pedro Albizu Campos High School
• Albizu Biography on Biografias y Vidas
• Habla Albizu Campus on Paredon Records
• Albizu Campos Documentary: "¿Quien Es Albizu Campos?
• AACR Cornelius P. Rhoads Memorial Award name change

Persondata
Name	Campos, Pedro Albizu
Alternative names
Short description	Politician and United States Army officer
Date of birth	June 29, 1893
Place of birth	Ponce, Puerto Rico
Date of death	April 21, 1965
Place of death	San Juan, Puerto Rico