Just a Word for Porto Rico
"If you wish us to be real Americans, do not deprive us of rights and privileges which you have yourselves proclaimed..."
From: 1918 C.E. To: 1918 C.E.
[This speech was given in Washington, D.C. in 1918 to celebrate the passage of the Jones-Shafroth Act, which extended citizenship and certain, but not full, rights to the people of Puerto Rico under US control. The act also allowed the conscription of Puerto Rican men as the USA entered World War I.]
From Just a Word for Porto Rico by Pedro Capó-Rodriguez, 1918.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
Pedro Capó-Rodriguez
Member of the Vermont State Bar and of the Bar of the Supreme Court of the United States
Washington, D.C.
1918
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 acquaintance and better understanding between us Porto Ricans, 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 gentlemen, I wish to convey more specially to one great American, whose lofty sense of justice and absolute respect for the rights of peoples, made possible the passage of this already famous Jones-Shafroth Act, which we are gathered here to celebrate. And that one great American for whom the eternal gratitude of Porto Rico I can confidently pledge here this afternoon before this brilliant gathering of distinguished Americans, both from Porto Rico and the mainland, could not be other than the First American, our beloved President, Mr. Woodrow 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 supplanting 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 imperialism, such an act of justice by a powerful democratic 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 indubitable acknowledgment and recognition by the American Congress of the self-evident proposition that the Porto Rican people have a God-given right to manage 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 condition of a free people, master of their own affairs and conscious of their own responsibilities before the nation, their posterity and the World….
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 peoples. And although characteristically Spanish American, 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 possession 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 enacted 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 individual capacity, because the only participation that you have given us in the making of those laws is merely a courtesy extended to the Resident Commissioner of Porto Rico to have a seat in the House of Representatives.
And from this seat in the House at Washington the Resident Commissioner of Porto Rico looks more like a stranger and an intruder than the representative 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 managing their local affairs and cope with the intricacies and difficulties and temptations attending the administration of public interests. By this law it is extended also to Porto Ricans the privilege and the honor of American citizenship. I find no words in my English vocabulary to express to you, ladies and gentlemen, the profound 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 discredited international organization seems to be crumbling to pieces amid the horrible confusion of this great war which is devastating Europe, and when all the peoples 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 system of imperialism, preponderance, dictation and force, 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 incorporating Porto Rico as a territory of the United States. That most august and exalted of all tribunals, the Supreme Court of the United States, reversing two decisions of the Supreme Court of Porto Rico and the District 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 territorial 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, however, as an expression of American policy and patriotism, 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 opinion the ultimate disposition to be made of Porto Rico by the United States.
But, in the meantime, why not look at this problem 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 yourselves; 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 economical life; laws and regulations which affect our individual and collective happiness; laws which impose upon us burdens and taxes, and deprivations and contributions of blood and the shedding of tears of our mothers, and our wives, and our sisters, and our sweethearts; 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 representatives 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 question 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, shoulder 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 solidarity and friendship.
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 embarrassment 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 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 Republican 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 expressing 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 international 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 forever.
In the meantime, however, is it not perfectly reasonable, 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 principle 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 discourse 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.
Capó-Rodriguez, Pedro. Just a Word for Porto Rico. 1918.
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