PUERTO RICO: A Dangerous Person

Just before World War I, Pedro Albizu Campos, a Puerto Rican mulatto, was a quiet, intelligent student at Harvard and a patriotic lieutenant in the R.O.T.C. The son of a wealthy Spanish sugar merchant and his Negro mistress, he was proud of his Spanish blood. But when the U.S. Army assigned him to a Negro regiment, it was a shock to Albizu that twisted his whole life. Back in Puerto Rico in 1921, he began to build a political career based on two ideas: hatred of the U.S. and national independence for Puerto Rico.

Albizu organized a following, the Nationalist Party, with about 1,000 members. Nothing he undertook succeeded; his plans for a civil disobedience campaign and the enrolling of a liberation army died for lack of support. Still Albizu, arrogant but a little absurd with his full mustache, uncontrolled hair and black bow tie, preached venomous hate for the U.S.; in the early ’30s Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes called him “a dangerous person.” By 1936 Albizu’s movement came to bloodshed. A Nationalist murdered the popular chief of the Insular Police, bringing on an investigation which landed Albizu in Atlanta federal prison; he served six years for conspiring to overthrow U.S. rule in Puerto Rico.

Freed, he went back to hatred. Last November the few remaining Nationalist fanatics (about 400) of Albizu’s party unleashed an armed revolutionary coup timed with an attempt to assassinate President Truman. In all, 33 persons were killed before the rising was put down. “The law will fall on whoever is responsible for this tragedy,” promised Puerto Rican Governor Muñoz Marín. That meant Albizu Campos. Last week, in a half-empty courtroom, Albizu was convicted on twelve charges of trying to overthrow the Puerto Rican government by force. Maximum penalty on each charge: ten years in prison.

Albizu’s arrogance was gone. Now 60, he suffers from tuberculosis and hallucinations; he charged recently that he was being bombarded with “electronic rays” in his cell. Last week when defense lawyers were given ten days to appeal, Albizu smiled humbly at the judge, said only, “Gracias, gracias.”