Pedro Albizu Campos - Nationalist Campaign, Later Years and Death, Legacy

Revolutionary, born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, USA. He studied at Harvard (1916 BS, 1923 LLB), then joined the Nationalist Party (1924) and was the most prominent independentista of his time. He was jailed (1936–47) for advocating the violent overthrow of the US administration of Puerto Rico. He masterminded a 1950 nationalist uprising in Puerto Rico and was accused of being behind the assassination attempt (31 Oct 1950) on President Truman at Blair House. After he was sentenced to prison for 53 years, Governor Luis Muñoz Marín offered him a conditional pardon in 1953, but withdrew it after the nationalist attack on the US House of Representatives the next year. Campos spent his final years in prison.

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Pedro Albizu Campos (September 12, 1891 – April 21, 1965) born in Tenerías Village in Ponce, Puerto Rico was the son of Alejandro Albizu and Juana Campos. He was also the nephew of Juan Morel Campos, one of Puerto Rico's greatest composers of danzas. Albizu was the leader and president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and avid advocate of Puerto Rican independence from the United States by what ever means necessary. Albizu felt that Puerto Rico deserved the same right as the United States and other countries had to fight for independence. During this time 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.

In 1919, Albizu returned to Harvard University and was elected president of Harvard's Cosmopolitan Club. At the time he received job offers as Hispanic representative for a Protestant church, as a legal aide to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in the U.S. State Department's diplomatic corps in Mexico, yet Albizu opted to return to Puerto Rico .

Nationalist Campaign

In 1919, José Coll y Cuchí, a member of the Union Party, felt that the party wasn't doing enough for the cause of Puerto Rico and he and some followers departed from the party and formed the Nationalist Association of Puerto Rico in San Juan. On September 17, 1922, the three political oraganizations joined forces and formed the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.

In 1922, Albizu married Dr. Laura Meneses, a Peruvian whom he had met at Harvard University. Two years later in 1924 he 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.

In 1930, there were some disagreements between Coll y Cuchí and Albizu as to how the party should be run. On May 11, 1930, Dr. Pedro 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. In the manuscript Doctor Rhoades admits to killing Puerto Rican patients and injecting many with cancer cells as part of a medical experimentation conducted in San Juan's Presbyterian Hospital for the Rockefeller Institute.

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

San Juan Federal Court ordered the arrest of Pedro Albizu Campos and several other Nationalists for "seditious conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. Government in Puerto Rico." A jury of seven Puerto Rican and five Americans voted 7 to 5 not guilty. 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 jurisdiction over federal matters in Puerto Rico, upheld the verdict. 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.

Pedro Albizu Campos would be jailed again after the revolt of 1950 when a group of Puerto Rican nationalists staged a revolt in the island, known as the Jayuya Uprising (El Grito de Jayuya) and which an attack on La Fortaleza (the Puerto Rican governor's mansion) and Blair House, by nationalist Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, where president Harry S.

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 Nationalist, led by Lolita Lebron opened fire from the gallery of the Capitol Building in Washington D.C.. The shooters did not resist arrest, claiming the action was to attract the world's attention to the US military occupation of Puerto Rico.

Later Years and Death

While in prison, Pedro Albizu Campos' health deteriorated.

Legacy

The extent of Albizu's legacy is generally the subject of -sometimes passionate- discussion by both accolytes 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 (even if other politicians, such as Luis Muñoz Marín, were the ones who reaped the political benefit of these changes while essentially burying the Puerto Rican independence movement in the process). Detractors denounce Albizu as a radical fascist, whose actions only brought turmoil to Puerto Rico. Some claim that the weak following of the Puerto Rican independence movement in the present day can be traced, if not to Albizu, to the repression that his actions brought upon the movement (which, during Albizu's lifetime, attained its best acceptance levels in Puerto Rican history).

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;

Albizu's diagnosis of the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States earned him prison time, yet modern scholars take surprise at how accurate the diagnosis is, even years after Albizu's death.

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.

Additionally, five public schools in Puerto Rico are named after him, as well as numerous streets in most of Puerto Rico's municipalities.