Albizu Campos, Pedro (1893-1965), was a Puerto Rican lawyer and politician. As president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, he worked for the cause of Puerto Rican independence.
Pedro Campos was born on June 29, 1893, in Ponce, Puerto Rico. He later adopted his father’s surname, Albizu. After high school, he attended the University of Vermont in Burlington. He later transferred to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His studies were interrupted by World War I (1914-1917), in which he served as an officer in the U.S. Army. After the war, he returned to Harvard to study law. He received many offers to work in the mainland United States but returned to Puerto Rico in 1921.
Albizu Campos passed up several profitable opportunities, instead opening a private law firm working with the poor, primarily sugar workers. From 1927 to 1929, he traveled to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela to gather support for Puerto Rican independence. He was elected president of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in 1930 and held the position until his death.
In Puerto Rico, Albizu Campos spoke out against U.S. imperialism. Imperialism is the policy by which one country forcefully controls another country or territory. In 1936, two nationalists assassinated Puerto Rico’s chief of police. Albizu Campos was convicted of sedition (stirring up discontent against the government) in the wake of the attack and was sentenced to a prison in Atlanta, Georgia.
Albizu Campos returned to Puerto Rico in 1947. In 1950, he led a revolt for Puerto Rican independence. The police and national guard quickly put down the revolt and arrested Albizu Campos along with more than 1,000 nationalists. While in prison in San Juan, Albizu Campos claimed that the United States targeted him with beams of high-energy radiation to degrade his health.
In 1953, the governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, pardoned Albizu Campos. Then, on March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire upon the United States House of Representatives, injuring five members of Congress. Muñoz Marín and others claimed that Albizu Campos had ordered the attack and arrested him again. Albizu Campos’s health continued to decline in prison, and he suffered a stroke in 1956 that rendered him unable to speak. Muñoz Marín again pardoned him in 1964. Albizu Campos died on April 21, 1965, four months after his final release from prison.
