Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico | |
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President | Vacant |
Founded | September 17, 1922 |
Headquarters | San Juan, Puerto Rico |
Paramilitary wing | Cadets of the Republic |
Women's wing | Daughters of Freedom |
Ideology | |
Regional affiliation | Foro de São Paulo |
Colors | Black, white |
Party flag | |
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Notable past presidents *José Coll y Cuchí *Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos |
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Puerto Rican Nationalist Party |
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The Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico (Spanish: Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico, PNPR) is a Puerto Rican political party founded on September 17, 1922, in San Juan, Puerto Rico.[2] Its primary goal is to work for Puerto Rico's independence. The Party's selection in 1930 of Pedro Albizu Campos as its president brought a radical change to the organization and its tactics.
In the 1930s, intimidation, repression and persecution of Party members by the government, then headed by a U.S. president-appointed governor, led to the assassination of two government officials, the attempted assassination of a federal judge in Puerto Rico, and the Rio Piedras and Ponce massacres. Under the leadership of Albizu Campos, the party abandoned the electoral process in favor of direct armed conflict as means to gain independence from the United States.
By the late 1940s, a more US-friendly party, the Partido Popular Democrático (PPD), had gained an overwhelming number of seats in the legislature and, in 1948, it passed Ley de la Mordaza (Gag Law), which attempted to suppress the Nationalist Party and similar opposition. The Puerto Rican police arrested many Nationalist Party members under this law, some of whom were sentenced to lengthy prison terms. With a new political status pending for Puerto Rico as a Commonwealth, Albizu Campos ordered armed uprisings in several Puerto Rican towns to occur on October 30, 1950. In a related effort, two Nationalists also attempted to assassinate US President Harry S. Truman on November 1, 1950, in an effort to call international attention to issues related to Puerto Rico's political status, but the attempt failed. The last major armed event by the Nationalists occurred in 1954 at the US House of Representatives when four party members shot and wounded five Congressmen.
After Albizu Campos's death in 1965, the party dissolved into factions and members joined other parties, but some continue to follow the party's ideals in one form or another, often informally or ad hoc, to this day.[3]