Approximate reading time: 2 minutes and 55 seconds
On December 7, 1927, the paths of two great figures of Latin American independence crossed in Cienfuegos: the Liberation Army Lieutenant General Antonio Maceo y Grajales and the Puerto Rican lawyer Pedro Albizu Campos.
It had been exactly 31 years since the Cuban entered glory through the door of San Pedro and the Puerto Rican began his fight so that the other wing of the Antillean bird would not be an eagle.
The Minerva Society, a social group of black and multiracial people, collaborated with the mayor’s office to honor Baraguá’s namesake in an evening that filled the seats at the Luisa Theater.
The hosts gave the honor of saying the last words to the son of Ponce, who happened to be the Pearl of the South on the island of Borinquen. Before him on the podium were Mayor Pedro Antonio Aragonés, Lorenzo M. Arrechea, Carlos T. Trujillo, Idelfonso Morúa Contreras, Roque Garrigó and Santiago Rey Pernas, his father’s son and young boy of Republican politics.
Albizu’s verb still echoed as the strains of the Bayamo anthem, with their martial fervor, buttoned up the act that recalled the deadly Monday afternoon near Punta Brava.
Like so many things in life, history cannot be viewed through black and white binoculars.
What is striking is the treatment of the famous Puerto Rican by politicians from Cienfuegos, in whose thinking it is difficult to find some points of contact with the anti-imperialist work of the hero who should be recognized as the master and last liberator of America.
I quote a paragraph from the edition of El Comercio that reviewed the evening the following day: “Brilliant, inspired, exquisite in content and form were the speeches of (…) and Pedro Albizu Campos, the distinguished Puerto Rican lawyer who spoke in our office is.” country for several weeks. The presentation of this prominent intellectual from the sister island was made by Mr. Pedro Antonio Aragonés, who said he was one of the leading men of Latin America and, like Martí, an ardent apostle of the emancipation of his people.
On the 9th, the newspaper itself published the full text of Santiaguito Rey’s speech, according to an abridged version by Alfredo Hernández D’Cerice. Referring to the guest of Cienfuegos, who was his interior minister during the Batista dictatorship, he said: “I will conclude, ladies and gentlemen, so that you can listen with the joy that the brilliant words of the.” Speakers who will succeed me, and in particular the living verb of Dr. Albizu Campos, that famous Puerto Rican, of whom the great Mexican Vasconcelos said that our ungrateful America would one day do him justice, and he added that he was one of the men who had taught him the most in a single day; that Doctor Albizu Campos makes clear the brotherly love of Cuba and Puerto Rico, which recalls those loving verses (by Lola Rodríguez de Tió: Cuba and Puerto Rico are/ like a bird, the two wings/ receive flowers and balls/ on the same heart. ”
It is unfortunate that the newspaper did not also give space to Don Pedro’s dissertation in its pages, but at least the imprint of his time in this city remained in print, a fact for which the author had previously found no evidence in local historiography. .
Biographical notes on Albizu Campos (1891-1965) indicate that in the same year, 1927, the third Machadato, “he founded the National Pro-Independence Board of Puerto Rico in Cuba and finally returned to the island with his family in 1930.” ready to actively lead the independence movement. At the same time, he was appointed president of the Nationalist Party, which he led to revolutionary struggle as a means of achieving its goals. “He preached electoral disengagement because he saw it as a mechanism in the service of the oppressor.”
The future independence leader, who was educated at the North American universities of Vermont and Harvard, became interested in political affairs during his stay in the United States. After graduating with degrees in chemical engineering and philosophy and literature, he turned down several positions in the diplomatic service and on the U.S. Supreme Court to return home and complete his law degree at the University of San Juan in 1921.
He soon joined the independent Puerto Rican Union Party, but left shortly thereafter to join the newly formed Nationalist Party led by José Coll y Cuchí, of which Albizu was appointed first vice president in 1925. Under his influence, this group advocated an active struggle for Puerto Rico’s independence, but faced with obstacles, the Ponce patriot had to send his family to Peru (the homeland of his wife Laura Meneses), sell all his possessions and start a new life on a long journey of almost three years, which took him through the Antilles, Central America, Mexico and Venezuela to learn more about and gather support for his cause and to promote political solidarity between Latin American countries.
He was on these walks when he linked his name to that of the Titan at the Minerva Society evening in Cienfuegos.
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