Puerto Rico History - 1810 - Struggle for Independence
Just as the Spanish War of Independence gave rise to the birth of the Liberal Party at the turn of the 19th century, resulting in the eventual success of the autonomous movement, so too did a momentous event in the New World determine the appearance of a new party which would serve as the vehicle for the political aspirations of another part of insular society.
The rampant unrest which pervaded Spain in early 1810 following the dissolution of the Supreme Council had a strong impact on different parts of Spain's colonial empire. In Venezuela the partisans of independence did not hesitate to take advantage of the situation. The municipality of Caracas became a revolutionary junta ; Spanish functionaries were deposed from office. On the 19th of the following April, 3 days after the election of Power Giral as representative to the Cortes, Venezuela was proclaimed independent from Spain. The first news of the above events to arrive in Puerto Rico came via the Spanish military in Venezuela, giving official details of the situation and requesting assistance for the Spanish cause. Shortly thereafter, a more concrete expression of the revolt arrived in San Juan : on the one hand came Spanish soldiers, officials, and the ex-Governor don Toribio Montes, who had been banished by the insurrectionists, and on the other, three members of the revolutionary junta in Caracas, who were immediately incarcerated in El Morro by the Spanish authorities.
Meanwhile, in response to a number of urgent petitions, the Governor of the island, Brigadier Melendez Bruna, hastened to send a military expedition to Venezuela, composed of the freighter Cornelia, two brigs, a sloop-of-war, three schooners, and a thousand men with the objective of taking Cumanit. The Venezuelan revolutionaries did not lose time. Anxious to include the island in the movement towards independence as well as to forestall the strategic advantage which the island's geographical position could offer the metropolis, the Venezuelans immediately sought to gain Puerto Rican support.
Special envoys were given the mission of gaining the sympathy of influential persons and arousing the island to fight for independence. Meanwhile, the councils of Caracas, and later of Cartagena and Coro, were urging San Juan to join the insurrection against Spanish control. The municipality of San Juan, having recently sworn loyalty to the King, Fernando VII, flatly refused the demands of the Venezuelan revolutionaries.
With the election of Power, the island had, in effect, declared its support for reform of the colonial system. Nevertheless, the ardent Venezuelan propaganda caught fire in some Puerto Rican souls, crystallizing a sector of separatist tendencies. Given the so-called doctrine of illegal parties, however, the separatists unlike the liberals were not recognized as a juridical entity. The separatists chose to seek the inalienable and inviolable natural rights of man, not within the structure of the Spanish Government, as did the liberals, but rather in a separate and independent state. If, in fact, the people are the source of power, it is up to them to determine their own government.
The criterion that every colony was destined to prosper and prepare itself for an independent existence had been maintained by such thinkers as Bentham, Mill, and Turgot. For the separatists, then, the island of Puerto Rico had become a social, economic, and cultural unity, a nation justified in seeking a sovereign political unity. Unlike the liberals, however, the separatists did not indicate any proposals as regards a specific legal system for the society such details were to be worked out after the establishment of the new state.
Meanwhile, their tactic was to utilize the revolutionary way as the only means, under the existing circumstances, of making their aspirations a concrete reality. The fact that the island had become a base of Spanish operations against the revolutionary movement of the continent, however, severely hampered their activities. Despite such drawbacks, the separatists in 1822, 1838, 1868, and 1897 defied Spanish authority. Less fortunate than the liberals, they were unable to dislodge Spain from the island of Puerto Rico.
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