Puerto Rico History - 1891 - A Liberal Alliance
In 1887 Baldorioty founded the Partido Autonomista. But that year also saw a crackdown against political dissenters and Baldorioty was accused of publishing seditious propaganda and jailed in El Morro Castle. Autonomist activities were suddenly paralyzed by the introduction of the "compontes," a torture instigated by the enemy and upheld by the despotic Governor, General Palacio Gonzalez. The consequence of such unjust persecution was the near collapse of the new party. Despite his rapid release, his imprisonment affected his health and he died soon after in Ponce in 1889.
A turn of events, however, was in the making; on February 11, 1891, don Luis Munoz Rivera, from the editorial columns of his newspaper, La Democracia, began to publish a series of articles in which he proposed the negotiation of a pact between the Puerto Rican Autonomist and the Spanish Liberal Fusionist Parties led by don Praxedes Mateo Sagasta. The alliance was seen as a means to a double objective: to convert the Autonomist Party into a government party and to fulfill the party's aspirations for the benefit of the country.
Munoz Rivera requested that his colleagues use practical and positive criteria in judging his project, thus indicating his preference for the second part of the age-old alternative between doctrine and empirical policies, between theory and practice, between the policy of principles and that of compromises. He wrote: "We are not bent on fighting useless battles or pursuing the impossible. For those who cherish beautiful ideals, let us inquire whether the ideal is possible, and then make haste to follow its luminous path. If it cannot become a reality, let us limit our desire to the dictates of reason, rather than waste our energies in fruitless combat. We are men of our times, eminently positive in the noble and generous sense of that phrase. Today's world is not one of dreams and mirages. Platonism leads nowhere in our era."
A long and bitter struggle ensued within the party regarding the question of political affiliation, insofar as a group of Munoz' own followers preferred a pact with the Republican Centralist Party of the peninsula. Five years later, however, a sovereign assembly of the Autonomist Party, after hearing reports from a commission sent to Madrid, ratified and approved the pact as proposed by Muñoz Rivera, with a majority of 79 votes in favor, 28 abstentions and 17 against.
With the death of Canovas, the Regent Queen Dona Maria Cristina of Hapsburg entrusted the government in early October 1897 to a cabinet headed by Sagasta, in which don Segismundo Moret Prendergast had the portfolio of Overseas Minister. Contrary to the claim of Sagasta's critics that he promised much while a member of the opposition and delivered little while in power, "once in the government, Sagasta confronted the colonial issue without delay.In accordance with a previous statement that only his party was in a position to modify the Antilles statute without it seeming that the Spanish Government was giving in to humiliating outside influences, he was ready to grant autonomy to the Antilles as soon as he came to power."
Sagasta's original idea was to present the legislation dealing with autonomy to the Cortes when the latter reconvened the following month, given his longstanding conviction that such laws should be approved by Congress. However, the long delay in resolving the situation had caused a poor impression in Washington, according to the thesis that the rights of the colonies, more than a matter of private right, were a question of international law. In addition, Pope Leo XIII had specifically recommended to the Spanish Ambassador to the Vatican that all possible reforms be granted to the Cuban and Puerto Rican Governments.
In the wake of such pressures and reinforced by other influential opinions, Sagasta decided to act immediately, and without waiting for the Cortes, he gave Moret the task of drawing up the laws of reform. These, then were the events which culminated in a cablegram to San Juan on November 9, 1897, announcing that the Council of Ministers had recently given unanimous approval to three decrees for the establishment of an autonomous regime in Puerto Rico.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
