Federico Degetau y González (December 5, 1862 – February 20, 1914) was a Puerto Rican politician, lawyer, writer, author, and the first Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico to the United States House of Representatives.
Early years[edit]
Degetau was born in 1862 in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico, where he also attended the common schools and the Central College of Ponce.[1]His father was Mathias Degetau, son of a wealthy Hamburg, Germany, family. In Ponce his father Mathias managed the banks of the Overman and Dede House, of which his father, Otto Georg Christian Degetau (Federico’s grandfather), was a partner. Federico’s mother was María Consolación González, daughter of a respected San Juan family. His parents married in 1851.[2]
He completed an academic course at Barcelona, Spain, and was graduated from the law department of the Central University of Madrid. He was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Madrid, Spain. He founded the newspaper La Isla de Puerto Rico to communicate the plight of Puerto Rico to the colonial power.
Political career[edit]
Degetau returned to Puerto Rico, and was one of the four commissioners sent by Puerto Rico under Luis Muñoz Rivera to petition Spain for autonomy in 1895. The petition was denied but a colonial-civil government was imposed by the U.S. Congress three years later as a result of the Spanish–American War. He settled in San Juan, Puerto Rico and continued to practice law.
Degetau was a member of the municipal council of San Juan in 1897, and mayor of San Juan in 1898. He was deputy to the Spanish Cortes Generales of 1898. After the Spanish–American War, he was appointed by the military governor General Guy Vernor Henry as the Secretary of the Interior in the first cabinet formed under American rule in Puerto Rico, in 1899. He was appointed by General Henry’s successor, General George W. Davis, as a member of the Insular Board of Charities.
Resident Commissioner[edit]
Federico Degetau’s former home in Aibonito, now a museum
Degetau became a member of the
Insular Republican Party, which was founded in 1899. He was the first vice president of the municipal council of San Juan in 1899 and 1900, and was president of the Board of Education of San Juan in 1900 and 1901. He was elected as a
Puerto Rican Republican to the Resident Commissioner post in 1900, and reelected in 1902. He served from March 4, 1901 until March 3, 1905, in the
Fifty-sixth,
Fifty-seventh, and
Fifty-eighth Congresses. In a lecture delivered in 1902 to the Columbian University, today George Washington University, Degetau summarized his political ideals on the status of Puerto Rico:
- «The Porto Rican People have clearly understood that by its geographical position, as well as by its history, the Island is, in fact, an integral part of the American Union. For this reason the political parties of the Island inscribed in their respective platforms the unanimous aspiration of the people to become and organized territory, with the certainty of soon being admitted as a State of the American Union.»
- «[…] The American flag can perhaps be lowered in the distant Philippines. It must be maintained in the neighboring Island, with the institutions of liberty and justice that it represents.»[3]
While serving Congress, Degetau was a member of the Committee on Insular Affairs, and submitted a bill to grant United States citizenship to Puerto Rico residents, which failed. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1904, and resumed the practice of law. Before leaving office as Resident Commissioner Degetau gave a Speech to the House of Representatives where, in addition to pleading for United States citizenship for Puerto Ricans, a matter he viewed would be resolved in the courts, he asserted his loyalty to the Constitution:
- «I do not know, Mr. Chairman, I do not know, my friends , in this patriotic relation anything superior, anything higher than the American Constitution. I do not conceive anything more sacred that the oath to support it.»[4]
In 1905, after traveling through Europe where he purchased a collection of paintings, Degetau moved to Puerto Rico and established his residence in the town of Aibonito where he administered a coffee plantation.[5]
United States Supreme Court:Gonzales v. Williams[edit]
In 1902, the United States Treasury Department issued new immigration guidelines that changed the immigration status of all Puerto Ricans. Isabel González, a young, but pregnant, single Puerto Rican woman was traveling aboard the S.S. Philadelphia when the new immigration guidelines took effect and she was detained at Ellis Island as an «alien» and «burden» to the state. She lost her appeals in the Board hearings and took her case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, on August 30 of that year, Federico Degetau, unaware of the Gonzalez situation, wrote to the U. S. Secretary of State in protest of the new rules subjecting Puerto Ricans to immigration laws. His protest was forwarded to the U.S. Treasury Department. Degetau then contacted Le Barbier and Parker, who informed him that they planned to appeal González’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court.[6]
Once Isabel lost her administrative appeal, switching tactics and focusing instead on the «public charge» issue, she decided to argue that all Puerto Ricans were citizens of the United States and as such should not be detained, treated as aliens, or denied entry into the United States.[7]
Plaza Federico Degetau in Ponce
Degetau saw in the Isabel González case, the perfect «test case» for challenging the new immigration guidelines because now it would not be about whether immigration inspectors, following guidelines suffused with concepts of race and gender, deemed Isabel Gonzalez and her family desirable, but about settling the status of all the native islanders living in Puerto Rico at the time it was annexed by the United States four years earlier.[6] By February 16, 1903, Frederic René Coudert, Jr., an international-law attorney from New York who launched the Downes v. Bidwell case for clients protesting tariffs levied on goods shipped between Puerto Rico and the United States, joined Paul Fuller, Charles E. LeBarbier and Federico Degetau in the Gonzalez case as collaborators.[6]
The groundbreaking case, which became known as Gonzales v. Williams, was argued in the U.S. Supreme Court on December 4 and 7, 1903 and was presided by Chief Justice Melville Weston Fuller. The case sparked the administrative, legal, and media discussions about the status of Puerto Ricans. It also questioned the issues of immigration and U.S. doctrines in the treatment of U.S. citizens, chiefly women and people of color (dark-skinned). González and her lawyers moved among the legal realms, aided by shared languages of race, gender, and morality, while Williams and his lawyers, focused on what he considered were failed parents, rearing children outside moral, economically self-sufficient homes.[6]
González, who was out on bond, secretly married her fiance and thus became «a citizen of this country through marriage,» and acquired the right to remain stateside. She could have ended her appeal but instead she decided to press her claim that all Puerto Ricans were U.S. citizens.[7]
On January 4, 1904, the Court determined that under the immigration laws González was not an alien, and therefore could not be denied entry into New York. The court, however, declined to declare that she was a U.S. citizen. The question of the citizenship status of the inhabitants of the new island territories remained confusing, ambiguous, and contested. Puerto Ricans, instead, came to be known as something in between: «noncitizen nationals.»[7]
Literary work[edit]
As an author, he wrote El secreto de la domadora in 1885, El fondo del aljibe in 1886, ¡Qué Quijote!, Cuentos para el camino in 1894, Juventud in 1895, and La Injuria in 1893.
Degetau died in Santurce, Puerto Rico, at the age of 51, and was interred in the Cemetery of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
- The people of the municipality of Ponce named the larger of the two squares the city’s central plaza, Plaza Degetau, in his honor.
- Degetau is also honored at Ponce’s Park of Illustrious Ponce Citizens.[8] He is also honored for his contributions to the field of literature.[9] Together with Ramon Marín, Degetau is the only honoree to be honored in more than one field at that park.
- In 1977 the United States Congress passed an Act to designate the new Federal building in San Juan, the «Federico Degetau Federal Building«. Following its enactment, the main building of the federal government in Puerto Rico bears his name.[10]
Aftermath[edit]
Degetau had no children and he wrote a will to establish a foundation whereby his widow and a friend would receive an usufruct in life of half of his property and the other half would be destined to «an institution of culture in this Island of Puerto Rico, as a library, museum». The beneficiaries of the trustees and beneficiaries of the trust soon became engaged in litigation.[11]The failure of the Degetau trust to achieve its objective was caused in part because the U.S. institution known as a «foundation» did not exist in the Puerto Rican civil code.[12] As a result, Degetau’s will was never firmly established, and the corpus was almost completely lost. In 2007, the Municipality of Aibonito attempted to purchase the home of Federico Degetau in order to demolish it and make room for further development. In response, the Puerto Rico Bar Association passed a resolution against the attempted demolition and urged the government to take action.[13] In 2010, the legislature of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico passed a law designating Degetau’s home and farm in Aibonito a historic site and ordered the preservation of the house known as Quinta Rosacruz.[14] The Federico Degetau Trust thus materialized with the help of private and government funding.
-
Rosacruz room at Federico Degetau House and Museum
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- Jump up^ «Don Federico Degetau y González (1862–1914)». Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña 5.17 (1962): 57.
- Jump up^ La Presencia Germanica en Puerto Rico. By Haydee Reichard de Cancio. PREB: Nuestra Trayectoria Historica y Cultural. Retrieved May 24, 2010.
- Jump up^ Degetau, Federico. The Political Status of Porto Rico, Washington, Globe Printing Co., p. 16 1902.
- Jump up^ Degetau Federico, «The Constitution and the Flag in Porto Rico». Speech of Hon. Federico Degetau of Porto Rico in the House of Representatives, Thursday January 19, 1905.. Available at the Mergal Collection of the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico.
- Jump up^ http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/congress/degetau.html
- ^ Jump up to:a b c d Journal of American Ethnic History
- ^ Jump up to:a b c «They say I am not an American …»: The Noncitizen National and the Law of American Empire by Christina Duffy Burnett
- Jump up^ Politics. TravelPonce. Retrieved June 18, 2012.
- Jump up^ Literature. TravelPonce. Retrieved June 18, 2012.
- Jump up^ Public Law 95-325, July 1978, 92 Stat. 397.
- Jump up^ Sánchez González v. Registrador, 106 D.P.R. 361 (1977).
- Jump up^ Luis F. Sánchez Vilella, «El Fideicomiso Puertorriqueño V: Las vicisitudes del Fideicomiso de Don Federico Degetau». Revista Jurídica del Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico, Vol. 38, No. 2; May 1977.
- Jump up^ Colegio de Abogados de Puerto Rico, Resolución, August 4, 2007.
- Jump up^ Law No. 102 of 2010.
External links[edit]
http://www.enciclopediapr.org/esp/article.cfm?ref=10051702
Federico Degetau y González
1862-1914
Born in Ponce in 1862, Degetau studied in Spain; he earned a degree in civil and canon law at the Central University of Madrid in 1888. Shortly before graduation, he founded the newspaper La isla de Puerto Rico dedicated to his ideas of reforming the Spanish colonial regime. After his return to Puerto Rico, he became an active member of Muñoz Rivera‘s Autonomist Party; in 1895 he went back to Spain to argue for political autonomy for the island. After Spain granted autonomy to Puerto Rico in 1898, he represented the island in the Spanish Cortes.
He returned to Puerto Rico in 1898 and was named Secretary of the Interior in the first cabinet formed under U.S. rule. The following year he was named to the Insular Board of Charities. Degetau was elected Resident Commissioner to the U.S. Congress in 1900 and again in 1902. He authored a bill to make Puerto Ricans citizens of the United States, but it was defeated. After he stepped down from his post in 1905, he travelled to Europe and amassed a substantial art collection.
Upon his return to Puerto Rico, he lived in Aibonito as the administrator of a coffee plantation. He also devoted his energies to the founding of the Pan American University in Puerto Rico to which he donated his art collection. His literary works include El secreto de la domadora (1886); Que Quijote!, Cuentos para el camino (1894), Juventud (1895); La Injuria (1893).
For additional information about Federico, see the publication Hispanic Americans in Congress.
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1882.
Federico Degetau y González (1862-1914).
Nacido en Ponce (Puerto Rico) el 5 de diciembre de 1862 y fallecido en Santurce (Puerto Rico) el 20 de enero de 1914.
Abogado y escritor que destacó, principalmente, en el cultivo del cuento y del ensayo educativo y moralista. Fue, a su vez, un destacado líder político que militó primero en las filas del Partido Autonomista y luego en las del Republicano. Durante el gobierno autonómico fue diputado a Cortes y, más tarde, tras el cambio de soberanía, fue el primer Comisionado Residente de Puerto Rico en Washington D.C.
Perdió a su padre a corta edad tranladándose con su madre a España. Hizo estudios superiores en las Universidades de Granada, Salamanca, Valladolid y finalmente se doctoró en Derecho Civil y Canónico en la Universidad Central de Madrid en 1887. Se colegió en España, donde comenzó a practicar la abogacía.
Durante sus años estudiantiles, participó de la vida intelectual española. Conoció y tertulió con Francisco Giner de los Ríos, filósofo y pedagogo español, quien lo inició en el estudio del krausismo. Participó de las tertulias del Instituto de Libre Enseñanza, el cual se fundó siguiendo, también, la filosofía pedagógica krausiana. Durante esta época ingresó a la Academia de Ciencias Antropológicas de Madrid, en la cual presidió la sección de ciencias morales y políticas. También, fue miembro de la Academia Española de Jurisprudencia y Legislación.
Tomó parte activa en la política, en las filas del Partido Liberal Reformista, e ingresó en varias academias y círculos científicos. En ese mismo año de 1887, su inclinación al periodismo le movió a fundar en Madrid el Periódico La Isla de Puerto Rico, en el que, junto a Labra y Cortón, combatió enérgicamente el gobierno tiránico que sufría la Isla defendiendo los intereses de su tierra natal contra el gobierno despótico del general Romualdo Palacios. Al desarrollarse los sucesos de los compontes en Puerto Rico, Degetau usó sus buenos oficios y relaciones para convencer al Ministro de Ultramar de que en Puerto Rico no existían conspiraciones contra España, respondiendo personalmente por la lealtad de Baldorioty de Castro y otros autonomistas. Con esto ayudó a salvar de las prisiones de El Morro a los políticos encarcelados. También sirvió a Puerto Rico cuando la Comisión del Partido Autonomista fue a Madrid para recabar del Gobierno central una fórmula política para impedir que Puerto Rico se uniera a la idea separatista de Cuba. Degetau los ayudó en todo y puso su pluma y su palabra al servicio de la causa autonomista.
Muy interesado en los problemas de la instrucción pública, Degetau fue uno de los primeros propagadores en España y Puerto Rico de las ideas de Froebel, el educador alemán que creó los «Kindergarten» o Jardines de Infancia para párvulos en las escuelas públicas.
Cuando regresó a Puerto Rico, Degetau se convirtió en activista del Partido Autonomista bajo el liderazgo de Luis Muñoz Rivera. Se encontraba entre los cuatro comisionados del partido que viajaron a España en 1895 para pedir la autonomía política de la Isla. El Gobierno español denegó tal petición, pero tres años más tarde se le concedió el carácter autonómico.
En 1896, los miembros de la directiva del partido eligieron a Degetau, José Gómez Brioso, Rosendo Matienzo Cintrón y Luis Muñoz Rivera para que formasen una comisión que se trasladaría a Madrid para concertar una alianza con Partido Liberal Fusionista, colectividad política española, liderada por Práxedes Mateo Sagasta. La comisión forjó una unión con este partido, el cual era de inclinación monárquica. Degetau, de ideales republicanos, objetó esta unión. Al regreso de los comisionados a Puerto Rico, se celebró una asamblea en la cual se ratificó el pacto. A consecuencia de esto, Degetau y los autonomistas republicanos, abandonaron el partido y fundaron el Partido Autonomista Ortodoxo o Puro, bajo la dirección de José Celso Barbosa.
En 1897, se creó un gobierno autonómico en Puerto Rico, después de que Sagasta subiera al poder en España. Al siguiente año, Degetau resultó electo como diputado a Cortes, por lo que se trasladó a España. Último representante de la Isla de Puerto Rico en España hasta la Guerra Hispanoamericana en el 1898.
Se encontraba en España en 1898 cuando estalló la guerra hispanoamericana y Estados Unidos invadió Puerto Rico. Rápidamente volvió a su país y fue elegido Secretario de Interior por el primer gabinete formado bajo la constitución americana. Al año siguiente se le nombró miembro de la Junta Insular de Beneficencia; ambos cargos le fueron concedidos por la comandancia general de las fuerzas americanas en la Isla. Se convirtió más tarde en miembro de Partido Republicano Insular de Puerto Rico, que fue creado en 1899.
En el año 1900 al implantarse el gobierno civil, los Autónomos Ortodoxos constituyen el Partido Republicano y fue candidato para Comisionado Residente en Washington cargo que desempeñó por 4 años representando a Puerto Rico en la Cámara de Representantes de Estados Unidos. En ese ínterin propuso la extensión de la ciudadanía de EE.UU.y la estabilidad como solución final al status político de Puerto Rico. También trabajó para conseguir suficientes partidas económicas para el gobierno civil y la construcción de edificios públicos en la Isla. En este periodo fue presidente de la Junta de Educación de San Juan.
En 1905 termina sus funciones como Comisionado, viaja por Francia y se retira a vivir a Aibonito, administrando una hacienda cafetalera junto a su esposa dona Ana Moreno en la “La Quinta Rosa Cruz”. Durante su retiro en Aibonito muchos de sus amigos, Luís Muñoz Rivera, Manuel Fernández Juncos y otros, le visitaron y compartieron sus inquietudes en torno a la educación, la literatura, la política y otras de orden espiritual.
Tras pasar un tiempo en la Junta Sindical de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, trabajó para la creación de la Universidad Panamericana en la Isla, a la que donó toda su colección de arte.
Muere en Santurce como resultado de una operación de hernia a los 52 años el 20 de enero de 1914. Con la muerte de Degetau su esposa doña Ana Moreno se trasladó a España con su hijo Fernando Pignet y Moreno.
Como escritor, Degetau incursionó en varios géneros literarios, pero destacó, particularmente, en el cuento y la novela corta. Su legado literario, que, por lo general tenía fines políticos o pedagógicos, incluye unas 100 obras, entre las que figuran el cuento “¡Qué Quijote!”(1883); las novelas cortas: El fondo del aljibe(1886), El secreto de la domadora(1886) y Juventud(1895), Cuentos para el camino(1894); y La Injuria(1893) y los ensayos: “Al escritor puertorriqueño” (1895) y «El A. B. C. del sistema Froebel” (1896), en donde propaga las ideas del kindergarten del pedagogo Froebel, entre otros. Póstumamente, fue publicada su obra titulada Cuentos pedagógicos y literarios (1925).
