<aside> 🇵🇷 Status: Real
</aside>
Pedro Albizu Campos (September 12, 1891 – April 21, 1965) was a Puerto Rican attorney and politician, and the leading figure in the Puerto Rican independence movement. Gifted in languages, he spoke six. He graduated from Harvard Law School with the highest grade point average in his law class, an achievement that earned him the right to give the valedictorian speech at his graduation ceremony. However, animus towards his mixed racial heritage led to his professors delaying two of his final exams in order to keep Albizu Campos from graduating on time. During his time at Harvard University he became involved in the Irish struggle for independence. — Wikipedia
In 1917, the U.S. Congress passed the Jones Act, which granted a form of second-class citizenship to most people born in Puerto Rico. Within weeks, it passed a second law making Puerto Ricans eligible for the military draft. In the months that followed, some 20,000 Puerto Rican men were conscripted for service during World War I. The Jones Act did not grant Puerto Ricans the same rights as most other U.S. citizens. Then as now, they did not have any voting representatives in Congress, and could not vote in presidential elections. This injustice—as well as his own experience in the U.S. military—Âinspired the work of Pedro Albizu Campos. After serving as an officer in the Army during the war, he graduated from Harvard Law School and returned to Puerto Rico to practice law. He took up activism against the U.S.-owned sugar industry, leading union strikes on plantations and representing workers in lawsuits. He joined the new, pro-independence Nationalist Party and was elected its vice president in 1924 and its president in 1930. — Jaquira DĂaz (Let Puerto Rico Be Free, The Atlantic)
[In 1934] he led an island-wide agricultural strike that raised the sugar cane workers’ wages from 45 cents to $1.50 per 12-hour day. The U.S. responded by appointing a new governor, Gen. Blanton Winship, who militarized the entire Insular Police force. The officers underwent Tommy gun training and were outfitted with submachine guns, tear gas, riot gear, and high-powered rifles and carbines. These policemen and the FBI started following Albizu Campos all over the island. They watched his home, intercepted his mail, interrogated his neighbors, and arrested members of his Nationalist Party. — Nelson Denis (War Against All Puerto Ricans)
“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 (addressing the UN General Assembly Dec. 11, 1964)
<aside> 👇🏽 What Wikipedia says
</aside>
Quote here…
<aside> đź’ˇ Useful links
</aside>