Jose de diego
José de Diego Martínez (April 16, 1866 – July 16, 1918), was a Puerto Rican poet, journalist, essayist, politician, and lawyer. He was a defender of the Spanish language and Puerto Rican culture. They called him "The Knight of the Race" and "The American Lion". He is a firm defender of the political autonomy of Puerto Rico in union with Spain and after the independence of Puerto Rico from the United States and for this reason he is considered the & # 34; Father of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement & # 34;.
Biography
Son of Felipe de Diego, an officer in the Spanish Army, born in Asturias, Spain, and Elisa Martínez Muñiz, a native Puerto Rican; he was born in Aguadilla on April 16, 1866.
After completing his first studies in Mayagüez, he continued them at the Polytechnic College of Logroño (see Discussion), Spain. He began his Law degree at the University of Barcelona. His first verses were published in the peninsula: he wrote for the bocho satirical publications in San Martín, Semana Cómica and El Progreso ; as well as in Las Dominicales del Libre Pensamiento and Verán Ustedes!. He also published in Puerto Rican media such as El Buscapié and El Palenque de la Juventud .
In 1885 he published in Barcelona the collection of sonnets Los grandes infames and in 1887 in Mayagüez his work Sor Ana. The publication of political and anti-religious poems in El Progreso in Madrid earned him jail. Released the following year, he returned to Puerto Rico, where he met the young Carmen Echevarría, inspiration for My Weddings and A Laura . He obtained a law degree in Havana, Cuba, and in 1893 settled to practice his profession in Arecibo.
There he founded, in 1894, an Autonomist Committee and the newspaper La República, promoting the administrative autonomy of Puerto Rico. In his journal, he signed his articles with the pseudonym The American Lion . In 1895 he was appointed prosecutor of the Court of First Instance. In 1897, he supported the decision of Luis Muñoz Rivera and Rosendo Matienzo Cintrón to merge the Autonomist Party with the Spanish Fusionist Liberal Party, given the commitment of its leader Práxedes Mateo Sagasta to grant Puerto Rico administrative autonomy, and its inhabitants the same political rights as the peninsulars enjoyed. Granted the autonomous government, José de Diego was appointed Undersecretary of Grace, Justice and the Interior, and in 1898 he was appointed magistrate in the Royal Territorial Court of Puerto Rico.
After the cession to the United States, as a result of the Spanish-American War and the Treaty of Paris, he was appointed prosecutor and president of the Audiencia of Mayagüez and, created a civil government by the Foraker Law, in 1900 he was appointed member of the Executive Council, and from 1903 integrated the Chamber of Delegates. In 1904 he was a co-founder of the Union Party, created to promote autonomy and eventual independence. He presided over the movement between 1914 and 1916, the year in which he resigned the independence claim.
In 1916 he traveled to Spain and visited Cádiz, Huelva, Seville and Barcelona, where he arranged for the publication of his works. In Madrid he became seriously ill and after recovering in Mallorca he returned to Puerto Rico.Granted US citizenship by the Jones Act (1917), De Diego was elected to the House of Representatives.In April of that year he suffered the amputation of his left leg. On September 21, he presented the Joint Resolution of the House of Representatives demanding a plebiscite to determine the political future of Puerto Rico.Suffering from gangrene, in 1918 he traveled to New York in search of treatment. He died in that city on July 16, 1918.
He was a permanent defender of his country's culture: he advocated maintaining teaching in Spanish, presided over the Puerto Rican Athenaeum and the Society of Writers and Artists, was a founding member of the Antillean Academy of Language (1916) and supported the creation of the College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts of Mayagüez (1911).
In addition to his journalistic contributions, he published several essays, such as Notes on Delinquency and Penalty (1901), The Puerto Rican Problem (1913) and New campaigns (1916), and poetic works: Pomarrosas (1904), Jovillos (1916), Cantos de rebeldía (1916) and Cantos de pitirre (1950) which, although modernist in nature, included elements of romanticism and pre-modernism.