José de Diego

Puerto Rican-born politician, writer, and lawyer

• Born: April 16, 1868
• Birthplace: Aguadilla, Puerto Rico
• Died: July 16, 1918
• Place of death: New York, New York

A principal figure in the Puerto Rican independence movement, Diego served as undersecretary of the departments of justice and the interior, president of the criminal court in Mayagüez, associate justice of the Puerto Rican supreme court, and a member of the Chamber of Representatives. He is remembered as a great statesman and poet.

Early Life

José Toribio de Diego y Martínez (dee-AY-goh) was born to Felipe de Diego and Elisa Martínez in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and received his primary education in Mayagüez. At the age of eleven, he began composing poetic verse.

Diego began his secondary education at the Polytechnical Institute in Logroño, Spain, and joined the Progressive Republican Committee. During these years, he contributed verse and essays, many of which criticized the monarchy, to various publications, including Comic Madrid, The Riojan, Progress, Sunday Discourses on Free Thought, and The Comic Week. In 1885, Diego published a collection of poems titled The Highly Despicable, which reflect his religious confusion and political anxieties. Imprisoned several times from 1885 to 1886, he could not complete his secondary studies in Spain. Under a general amnesty in 1886, he was released and returned to Puerto Rico.

Upon his return, Diego met Carmen Echevarría Acevedo, with whom he fell in love. In 1887, he joined the Autonomist Party, published the poem “Sor Ana,” a vitriolic attack on religion, and returned to Spain to study law at the University of Barcelona. He discontinued his relationship with Echevarría in 1888 and composed his anguished and embittered poem “A Laura.” Plagued by illness, Diego returned to Puerto Rico in 1889, where he continued the study of law on his own. He eventually went to the University of Havana, where he was awarded a licentiate (1891) and doctorate (1892) in law. In 1892, he returned to Puerto Rico and married Petra Lucila de la Torre, but they divorced in 1896.

Life’s Work

After Puerto Rico was granted political autonomy, Diego was named undersecretary of justice and the interior by the autonomous government and served as a member of the Chamber of Representatives. After Puerto Rico became an American protectorate in 1898, Diego was named an associate justice of the supreme court. In 1899, he became the president of the criminal court in Mayagüez and participated in the Constitutive Assembly of the new Federal Party. Serving as the representative from Mayagüez to the Chamber of Deputies from 1902 to 1917, Diego published the first complete edition of Pomarrosas: Poesías in 1904.

American officials advocated closer ties with Puerto Rico and proposed to grant American citizenship. Diego and Luis Muñoz Rivera formed the new Union of Puerto Rico Party to challenge increasing American control, with Diego presenting independence as a viable solution. In 1907, he was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies, a position he would keep until his death. In Ciudadanía a de los Puertorriqueños (1913; Citizenship of Puerto Ricans), Diego argued for the establishment of a “Republic of Puerto Rico,” which he advocated as president of the Union Party from 1914 to 1916.

Diego opposed the use of English, and, in 1915, founded the José de Diego Institute to foment the study of the law and Spanish culture. The next year, he published more literary works: a second edition of Pomarrosas; a collection of poems he had written in his childhood, Jovillos; a collection of poetry with a political bent, Cantos de rebeldia (Songs of Rebellion); and a collection of political essays, Nuevas campañas (New Campaigns). He also was elected president of the Antillean Academy of Language and returned to Spain to deliver speeches in major cities. Diego fell gravely ill and had a leg amputated in 1917. He was moved to New York City for treatment but died on July 16, 1918. His last collection of poems, Cantos de pitirre (Songs of the Kingbird), was published posthumously in 1950.

Significance

One of the most influential figures of Puerto Rican history, Diego was an illustrious jurist, legislator, orator, and defender of the democratic process who led his people from the oppression of the dying Spanish empire to limited self-determination under the hegemony of the United States. Diego’s tireless struggle for Puerto Rican political and cultural independence inspired his impassioned defense of the Spanish language and the traditional Hispanic culture of Puerto Rico, and culminated in his election as the president of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño (Puerto Rican Athenaeum), the island’s most illustrious cultural body. Responsible for drafting countless laws and working to establish lasting political structures that would bring justice and social stability, Diego embodies the Puerto Rican search for identity and the commonweal. Perhaps more lasting are his many poetic works and essays, which are stylistic masterpieces of the Spanish language that also capture the deepest of human emotions.

Bibliography

Bejel, Emilio. “Poetry.” In A History of Literature in the Caribbean, edited by A. James Arnold. Amsterdam, Pa.: J. Benjamins, 1994-2001. Discusses Diego’s work in the context of Latin American poetry and literature of the period.

Picó, Fernando. History of Puerto Rico: A Panorama of Its People. Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 2006. Picó explains the ways in which Diego was instrumental in the construction of the new Puerto Rican political order through his interactions with American military and civilian authorities.

Wagenheim, Kal, and Olga Jiménez de Wagenheim. The Puerto Ricans: A Documentary History. Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 2008. Although treated indirectly, Diego’s central role in Puerto Rican politics and government under the United States is here chronicled in primary documents.