Margaret M. Power, Solidarity Across the Americas: The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and Anti-imperialism

Reviewed By Edgardo Meléndez

Solidarity Across the Americas: The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party and Anti-Imperialism
by Margaret M. Power
The University of North Carolina Press
February 2023, 308 pp.

Although the history of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party (PRNP) and its charismatic leader Pedro Albizu Campos has been extensively studied in Puerto Rico, the scholarship in English is limited. This may be a consequence of the hostile relations between the PRNP and the United States. In 1936, Albizu Campos and seven other Nationalists were sentenced to federal prison on sedition charges in a trial that was condemned by American civil rights advocates. Albizu Campos was released in 1943 and remained in New York City, where he received medical care and had the support of Congressman Vito Marcantonio and the USA Communist Party. Albizu Campos returned to Puerto Rico in 1947 and reorganized the party, which had entered a period of weakness after 1936. On October 30, 1950, the Nationalists carried out an attempted uprising in Puerto Rico that was suppressed by the local government with the use of the National Guard. On November 1, two Nationalists tried to assassinate President Harry Truman at Blair House; a policeman and a Nationalist died in the encounter. On March 1, 1954, four Nationalists opened fire inside the Capitol demanding the independence of Puerto Rico; four members of the House of Representatives were wounded, none died.

Margaret M. Power’s Solidarity Across the Americas, adds very little to the history of the PRNP and Albizu Campos in Puerto Rico. The book’s main contribution instead lies in its extensive research on the PRNP’s relations in Latin America and the United States in support of Puerto Rico’s independence and the release of Albizu Campos and other imprisoned Nationalists at different periods of time. The primary material on the personalities, movements, and political parties in Latin America and particularly in the United States presents an important addition, addressing issues that have not been studied or have been examined in a very limited fashion.

Power thus achieves her goal of moving the analysis of PRNP away from Albizu Campos, who has dominated the literature in Puerto Rico — at least in part, since he is often foregrounded in much of her book, too. She begins her review of the PRNP with Albizu Campos’s rise to the leadership of the party and ends the book shortly after his death in 1965.

After being elected vice president of PRNP in 1926, Albizu Campos traveled throughout Latin America seeking support for Puerto Rican independence. Power meticulously reviews this journey, which began in 1927 and ended in 1930. The Nationalist visited the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, and Peru, where his wife, the Peruvian Laura Meneses, was living with their three children. On this trip, he met with countless political, social, and cultural figures from the region who for many years later supported Puerto Rico’s independence and Albizu Campos’s release from imprisonment by the federal government in 1936 and the Puerto Rican government in 1950 and 1954.

Albizu Campos’s election as president in 1930 radically changed the party’s nature and program. PRNP now presented a more combative and aggressive position towards the United States and its colonial regime in Puerto Rico, along with a detailed program for the economic and political transformation of the country and the promotion of patriotic symbols and events. During this period, PRNP established ties with the labor movement during the sugar workers strike in 1934 and later with the Puerto Rican Communist Party, a relationship made possible by the Comintern’s Popular Front policy of supporting anti-fascist movements in the world. The US implemented various policies to address the economic, social, and political crisis of the Great Depression, transferring New Deal programs to Puerto Rico while taking a more confrontational position towards the PRNP, particularly after the appointment of two US military officers to the posts of governor (Blanton Winship) and police chief (Francis Riggs).

For Power, Puerto Rico’s colonial status greatly undermines the honesty of America’s “Good Neighbor” policy towards Latin American countries in the 1930s. She recounts the PRNP’s continued efforts to obtain support for its cause into the 1940s and argues that it was crucial in getting important sectors in several Latin American countries to challenge US policy towards the region. The international campaign included the demand for the release of Albizu Campos and the other imprisoned Nationalists.

Power takes a close look at the relationship Albizu Campos and the PRNP established with New York’s anti-imperialist organizations in these decades. Nationalist fervor in the city increased with the arrival of Albizu Campos and other imprisoned Nationalists after their release in 1943. Hundreds of Nationalists resided in New York, many of whom migrated from Puerto Rico in the 1930s. They had consistent support from Marcantonio, who defended Albizu Campos in the 1936 trial and was the Congressman for “El Barrio,” an important Puerto Rican settlement in East Harlem. The Nationalists also established links with the CPUSA, cemented by the Popular Front and the personal friendship Albizu Campos and the CPUSA president Earl Browder developed while serving their prison terms in Atlanta.

Another novel aspect of Power’s book lies in her research on the relations between the PRNP and the US pacifist movement in the 1940s and later. She focuses particularly on the Harlem Ashram, created in 1940, claiming the solidarity emerged from a meeting between its members and Albizu Campos. Differences between supporting Puerto Rico’s self-determination in general terms or complete independence led to a division in the organization and the creation of the American League for Puerto Rico’s Independence. This group was central in the solidarity campaign for independence and the campaign for the Nationalists’ release from prison in the 1950s and 1960s. The League and the PRNP were instrumental in forcing discussion of the question at the United Nations, a debate that persists at the institution to this day.

In 1952, Congress approved the Constitution of the Estado Libre Asociado or Commonwealth, later ratified by a majority of Puerto Ricans. This represented a victory for the governing Popular Democratic Party and for the United States Government, which convinced the United Nations that the Commonwealth had ended colonialism in Puerto Rico and that Puerto Ricans had exercised their right to self-determination. Faced with this situation, the PRNP increased its international work in support of independence, particularly in Latin America. Hoping to draw attention to Puerto Rico’s enduring colonial condition in the United States and overseas, the PNPR carried out armed attacks in Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, in 1950 and 1954. . As a result of these acts, the Nationalist leadership was imprisoned and the party's base was highly repressed by the US and Puerto Rican governments. This led to the weakening and decline of the PRNP in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly after the death of Albizu Campos in 1965.

Five Nationalists were imprisoned in the United States charged for the armed acts in Washington, D.C.: Oscar Collazo for the failed attempt against Truman in 1950; and Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andrés Figuera Cordero, and Irvin Flores for the shooting in Congress in 1954 Power details the extensive and protracted campaign in the United States and in Latin America for the release of the Nationalists imprisoned in Puerto Rico and the United States. She arguing that this effort was relatively successful since international pressure, particularly in Latin America, made Truman commute Collazo's death sentence to life imprisonment days before his execution. Governor Luis Muñoz Marín commuted Albizu Campos's sentence in 1965 months before he died of health complications (Power claims that he was tortured in prison). Collazo and the other Nationalists were released in 1979 when President Carter commuted their sentences.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the PRNP maintained its campaign in Latin America in support of the release of imprisoned Nationalists and the independence of Puerto Rico. American pacifists also continued to support these same goals during this period. But as Power carefully examines, this movement suffered internal divisions due to their differences over the PRNP's use of violence in favor of their cause.

Solidarity Across the Americas makes a valuable contribution to the literature on Puerto Rican nationalism by focusing on the PRNP's efforts in Latin America and the United States for Puerto Rican independence and the release of Nationalist prisoners from the 1930s to the 1960s. I think Power could have made a comparison between the campaigns for the liberation of the PRNP prisoners and the push from the 1980s onwards for the release of the so-called Puerto Rican political prisoners in the United States (members of the Macheteros and the Armed Forces of National Liberation-FALN). Power has written about the latter, arguing that the efforts in the United States and internationally played an important role in getting Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to commute the sentences of these prisoners.

Edgardo Meléndez is a retired professor from the University of Puerto Rico and Hunter College. He has published multiple books and academic articles on Puerto Rican politics in Puerto Rico and the United States, Puerto Rican migration and migration policy, and US citizenship in Puerto Rico. His most recent book is Sponsored Migration: The State and Puerto Rican Postwar Migration to the United States (Ohio State University Press, 2017).