Erasmo Vando

Puerto Rican-born playwright, journalist, and activist

• Born: June 2, 1896
• Birthplace: Ponce, Puerto Rico
• Died: October 31, 1988
• Place of death: Santurce, Puerto Rico

Vando was a founder of Spanish-language theater in New York City, a journalist for newspapers in New York and Puerto Rico, a poet, a founder and president of the Association of Puerto Rican Writers and Journalists, and a founder of the political party Movimiento Pro Independencia (MPI).

Early Life

Erasmo Vando Rodriguez (eh-RAHS-moh VAHN-doh) was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, on June 2, 1896, to Erasmo Vando Hurtado and Alberta Rodriguez. He was the youngest of nine children.

In 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the United States invaded Ponce. Vando’s first memory was of his ailing father wielding a sword to protect his family against American soldiers who had invaded his home. This traumatic incident helped inform his political views, and at an early age he became a fervent proponent of Puerto Rican independence.

When Vando was six years old, his mother was hospitalized and he was sent to live with his maternal aunt and her husband, Alfredo Garnier, who worked as a barber for the army. The family accompanied him from base to base, necessitating Vando’s enrollment in various schools. He refused to pledge allegiance to the American flag during school assemblies and in 1912 was expelled from the Central High School of Santurce. Nonetheless, he received his high school diploma.

In his early twenties, Vando opened a grocery store and a restaurant. When both failed to produce an income, he joined a brigade of Puerto Rican workers heading to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Upon arrival, they were segregated by race. Vando, outraged, organized a protest and wrote a letter to President Woodrow Wilson demanding change. The end of World War I eleven days later, terminated their contract, leaving the matter of segregation to be resolved decades later.

Life’s Work

Arriving in New York City in 1919, Vando encountered unemployment and misery. He wrote an open letter to Luis Muñoz Marín, president of the Puerto Rican Senate, lamenting the plight of the forgotten Puerto Ricans abroad. He eventually found work at the Henry Heide Candy Company, where he remained for twenty-three years, enhancing the company’s flavor base with tropical fruits. This gainful employment straddled the Depression, and he was able to help his less-fortunate compatriots. One popular anecdote has him giving his overcoat to a friend in need and never wearing one again.

Vando became a founder of Spanish-language theater in New York City, contributing as a director, playwright, and actor. He directed the Compañia Teatrál Puertorriqueña and in 1929 produced poet and dramatist Gonzalo O’Neill’s Bajo una sola bandera, a play that advocated the independence of Puerto Rico and helped unite the dissident sociopolitical factions of the Puerto Rican community. In producing plays by writers such as Luis Lloréns Torres and Manuel Méndez Ballester, he was instrumental in the establishment of a Puerto Rican national theater. His own plays included De Puerto Rico al metropolitan o el Caruso Criollo (1928), in the teatro bufo tradition (a form of Cuban comic theater), and the undated works Madre Mía, El Mago, and Chateau Margaux. Some plays were staged as fund-raisers to benefit the various political clubs.

While in New York, Vando married three times: to Mercedes García; then to Vieques-born Anita Vélez Rieckehoff, with whom he had a daughter; and finally to Emelí Vélez Soto, with whom he had three children.

Vando was a small man with a booming voice that served him well on the stage as well as on the soapbox. A persuasive public speaker, he was able to rally huge crowds. As a founder and president of the Juventud Nacionalista Puertorriqueña (Puerto Rican Nationalist Youth), he organized marches, protests, and rallies throughout the city. He helped found the Association for the Independence of Puerto Rico; was president of the Puerto Rican Brotherhood of America, which in 1929 claimed more than 6,000 members; and was active in other clubs, including the Committee for Puerto Rican Political Prisoners, the Spanish Workers Center, Chilean Workers Club, and the Cuban Club. In addition, he was a founder of the Association of Puerto Rican Writers and Journalists. His columns appeared in La Voz, Gráfico, and other Spanish-language newspapers in the city.

In 1945, Vando and Emelí returned to Ponce, where he worked as a journalist for El Día, a local paper, and El Mundo, the largest national paper. They joined the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (Puerto Rican Independence Party, or PIP), on whose behalf Vando wrote and broadcasted radio shows. Despite various leadership roles within the party, he left it in 1959 to help found the Movimiento Pro Independencia (MPI), which became the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) in 1971. Through his involvement in the PSP, he became a delegate to the United Nations Decolonization Committee. Because of his political activities, Vando was kept under surveillance for forty-five years by the Bureau of Special Investigations of the Department of Justice of Puerto Rico.

Vando continued to write plays: Amor en el batey: Melodrama de costumbres Puertorriquenas, was produced in Ponce in 1950. He also appeared in the first Puerto Rican film, Tres vidas en el recuerdo (1957). Writing poetry remained a lifelong activity. Many of his poems were published in periodicals and newspapers under the pen name Dovan Amores, an anagram of his name. His book of poems, Amores, was published posthumously in 1996. Vando died on October 31, 1988, at the age of ninety-two.

Significance

Vando was an advocate for Puerto Ricans in New York City during the first half of the twentieth century. Through his work as an activist, playwright, director, producer, actor, journalist, and poet, he made significant contributions to the cultural, social, and political life of the Puerto Rican diaspora. He was a founder of Spanish-language theater in New York City, a founder of several political parties that championed the cause of Puerto Rican independence, and he chronicled the struggles of his people and the plight of his homeland in his plays, newspaper columns, and poetry.

Bibliography

Bates, Juandrea. “‘In Fraternity We Will Once Again Be Men’: Remaking Puerto Rican Migrant Masculinity in Early Twentieth Century New York.” Austin: University of Texas, 2008. Quoting Vando in the title, the author explores the interactions of masculinity, poverty, racism, and socialism.

Kanellos, Nicolás. A History of Hispanic Theatre in the United States: Origins to 1940. Austin: University of Texas,1990. An in-depth history of Spanish-language theater from the mid-nineteenth century to the onset of World War II.

Vando, Erasmo. Erasmo Vando Papers. Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, City University of New York. Vando’s archives (letters, writings, flyers, programs, photographs, and publications) are a vital resource for an understanding of the Puerto Rican community in New York from 1919-1945.