Puerto Rico History - Autonomists
A radical change took place which marked the beginning of a new evolutionary phase in the course of Puerto Rican liberalism. On March 4, 1823, the deputy of PuertoRico, Dr. don Jose Marfa Quinones, with Cuban support, presented for the consideration of the Cortes a bill relating to the economic and political government of the overseas provinces. The basis of this bill was, naturally, the Constitution of 1812, the suitability of which was unquestioned except in the area as with which the project itself dealt.
Of greater significance, however, was the fact that this bill represented an attempt by the overseas provinces to amend the Spanish Constitution. In reality, what it proposed was a new Constitution, for if the original remained unchanged with reference to the political organization which assured the island's inhabitants their individual rights, such was not the case with respect to the administrative order.
Basically, the bill was concerned with the governorship, the town governments, and the provincial assembly. According to its terms, the Governor had the power to assure public tranquility; to protect individuals and property; to execute the laws, decrees, and orders of the Cortes and of the government ; to preside, with a vote, over the provincial assembly and, with no voting privileges, over the municipal governments ; to resolve the problems and questions relating to the municipalities whenever the provincial assembly was not in session; to suspend employment and salary payments to all public servants, except for the judgeships ; to impose fines up to 500 pesos as a penalty for disobedience to his authority; to give final approval to municipal budgets ; and to propose to the national government whatever amount it deemed necessary for the development of agriculture, industry, commerce, and other aspects of island affairs.
In addition, he was empowered to appoint a secretary as well as those official assistants considered necessary for the proper dispatch of public business. However, the number and salaries of these employees were to be determined by the national government, based on a proposal made by the Governor and the provincial assembly, whose consultation he also needed in order to appoint interim judges or to suspend any law, decree, or order of the national government.
The townships, for their part, enjoyed a large measure of independence in the management of local affairs, under close supervision of the provincial assembly. The latter, which was the central organ of the bill, was authorized to revise the accounts of the townships; to supervise public works; to impose fines on those townships which had neglected their obligations; to take the census and prepare local statistics; and to regulate welfare and religious organizations.
Other responsibilities included the organization of the militia; the sale, exchange, or transfer of municipal properties; the parceling out of uncultivated public lands in the creation of small privately owned holdings; overseeing the use of funds for municipal elections; the presentation of a list from which to select interim judges; acceptance or rejection of the suspension of any law, decree, or provision or of any official which had been decreed by the Governor; proposal of funds for the construction of public works; drawing up of the budget for the province and for the assembly itself; the promotion of public education ; representing the King and Cortes; and, finally, the formulation of certain responsibilities for the Governor.
Just as the decree of the Supreme Council of 22 January 1809, had marked the transition from a colonial system of an administrative nature to that assimilation, so the Quinones-Varela proposal marked the transition from a system of assimilation to one of autonomy. "In this proposal," according to don Jose Marfa Chacóny Calvo, "a basic principle in the concept of autonomy was established : the fundamental difference between Cuba (and Puerto Rico) with respect to the metropolis as well as the consequences of that difference."
The authors themselves defined the aims of the proposal in clear and categorical terms. "It is undeniable," they asserted, "that nature herself, having caused the separation of the two hemispheres, has hindered the fortune of those inhabitants (of the Antilles) and created obstacles to a political union ; such barriers can be removed only by entrusting the implementation of the laws to those who, whether through birth or adoption, have identified their welfare with that of the country."
The intellectual antecedents of this proposal are to be found in a variety of settings: Montesquieu's theory, for example, that laws should originate in the country where they are to be enacted, thus relating to the topography, the climate, and the society; the proposal presented before the Continental Congress of 1773 by Joseph Calloway, establishing an imperial relationship with England while preserving specific political and administrative powers to the North American Colonies; the plan of don Antonio Naririo of Bogotal for the organization of the continental Hispano-American colonies into autonomous entities under the Spanish flag.
Other sources were in Hegel's political philosophy ; in the ideas of self-government put forward by Brougham and others in England. Other examples are furnished by jurisdiction enjoyed by the Province of Viscaya and extended to the other Basque Provinces in 1792; the proposal of constitutional law of 1783 for the Antilles drawn up by the Count of Aranda, whose essential formula could be summarized as political association and autonomous administration ; in the autonomous state created in Haiti in 1790; in the Constitution of 1800 drawn up by Napoleon, according to which the colonies would be governed by special laws adapted to their particular conditions; in the proposal of 1810 for Cuban autonomy by don Francisco Arango Parreno; in that submitted in 1820 for the consideration of the Duke of Frias by don Francisco Antonio Geo, based on the theory that, through the attraction and concentration of Hispanic Americans to the metropolis, a strong federal empire would be created on the same principle as that on which the universe is built ; and finally, the proposal put before the Spanish Cortes in 1821 by the Mexican deputy don Francisco Fagoaga to divide the Spanish-American colonies into three autonomous provinces.
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