Pedro Albizu Campos Quotes

no army is a charitable institution, armies are established to kill, and this is in the charge of the U.S. Army.

The armed forces of the United States have a privilege here. They can't be tried by any judicial authority, not even the so-called Federal Court of the United States. A U.S. Marine can kill anyone in the streets of San Juan and he cannot be tried by the District Court of San Juan or by the Federal Court, no, he has to be tried by a U.S. Navy court-martial...and why this privilege? Because killers need immunity. When one hires somebody else to kill, the first thing is to guarantee to him that he won't lose his skin, in any case. Well, are the armed forces here to defend Puerto Ricans? To kill Puerto Ricans!! That's the only government here, the rest are scoundrels, and all that crowd of bootlickers say that this is a democracy-the yanquis laugh at them.

We stand today, docile and defenseless, because, since 1868, our political and economic power has been systematically stripped away by the United States for its own political and economic gain. We stand as a nation forced not only to demand our liberty, but to demand reparations for having our political and economic liberty taken away. We stand as a nation surrounded by industry, but with little of it belonging to our people. The business development in Puerto Rico since the United States intervention should have made the island one of the most prosperous islands in the world, but that is not the case.

Military intervention is the most brutal and abusive act that can be committed against a nation and a people. We demanded then, as we do today, the retreat of United States armed forces from Puerto Rico in order to embrace the liberty we held all too briefly in 1868.

It makes me laugh when the yanquis talk about a police state in other governments. There's no police state like the yanqui system.

the mobilization in Puerto Rico for Korea has taken 8,000 men, and it is a vile act of the U.S. government to pretend to mobilize by force the Puerto Rican nation so that it can pick up a front for the U.S. in Korea.

The founders of our republic in 1868 held that our nation and its people would be sovereign-never belonging to another nation or people. This idea is not original, but is the basis of universal civilization, of international law. It is the basis of the family of free nations.

Today PIP members are caught in the trap of the century, their sons mobilized for the draft-the PIP members quiet, the Populares quiet, the Statehooders quiet, everybody is quiet but the Nationalist Party.

...Within international rights Puerto Rico was a sovereign nation on the date in which the Treaty of Paris was drawn up, and Spain could neither give away Puerto Rico nor could the US annex it, nor the entire world disown it. This sovereignty is irrevocable and when the United States, through its cannons, forced the Spanish plenipotentiaries to sign the so-called cession of Puerto Rico it was committing a typical North American stick-up. And this co-action against the Spanish had no part of the Spanish American war, it was never a belligerent against the US or anyone else, and here the Yanquis have been at war for 52 years against the Puerto Rican nation, and have never acquired the right of anything in PR, nor is there any legal government in PR, and this is uncontestable, one would have to knock to pieces all the international rights of the world, all political rights, to validate the invasion of the US in PR and the present military occupation of our national territory.

If registrations were good for Puerto Rico, the yanquis would never have inscriptions and elections here, nor would we ever have them. Registrations in Puerto Rico and elections are the trap to make Puerto Ricans keep turning the millstone.

these pretended defenders of freedom of every nation of the world except Puerto Rico are mere bandits in the current history of mankind.

one would have to knock to pieces all the international rights of the world, all the political rights of the world, to validate the invasion of the U.S. in Puerto Rico and the present military occupation of our national territory.

the United States, a badly called state, not that, because in the Senate of the United States, although they claim to represent brown and black peoples, no black can enter nor anyone suspect of having a black grandfather.