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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 The resident commissioner of Puerto Rico () is a non-voting member of the United States House of Representatives elected by the voters of the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico every four years, the only member of the House of Representatives ...
to the
United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together they ...
.


Early years

Degetau was born in 1862 in the city of
Ponce, Puerto Rico Ponce (, , , ) is both a city and a municipality on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government. Ponce, Puerto Rico's most populated city outside the San Juan metropolitan area, was founded on 12 August 1 ...
, where he also attended the common schools and the Central College of Ponce. His father was Mathias Degetau, son of a wealthy
Hamburg Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...
family. In Ponce, 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 San Juan, Spanish for Saint John, may refer to: Places Argentina * San Juan Province, Argentina * San Juan, Argentina, the capital of that province * San Juan, Salta, a village in Iruya, Salta Province * San Juan (Buenos Aires Underground), ...
family. His parents married in 1851. Degetau completed an academic course at
Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...
, Spain, and was graduated from the law department of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He was admitted to the
bar Bar or BAR may refer to: Food and drink * Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages * Candy bar * Chocolate bar Science and technology * Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment * Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud * Bar ( ...
and commenced practice in
Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
, Spain. He founded the newspaper ''La Isla de Puerto Rico'' to communicate the plight of Puerto Rico to the colonial power.


Political career

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. Eventually, the petition was accepted by Práxedes Mateo Sagasta's government. He settled in
San Juan, Puerto Rico San Juan (, , ; Spanish for "Saint John") is the capital city and most populous municipality in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2020 census, it is the 57th-largest city under the ...
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 The Cortes Generales (; en, Spanish Parliament, lit=General Courts) are the bicameral legislative chambers of Spain, consisting of the Congress of Deputies (the lower house), and the Senate (the upper house). The Congress of Deputies m ...
of 1898. After the
Spanish–American War , partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence , image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = (clock ...
, 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

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.
While serving Congress, Degetau was a member of the Committee on Insular Affairs, and submitted a
bill Bill(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States) * Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature * Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer * Bill, a bird or animal's beak Pla ...
to grant United States
citizenship Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and ...
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:


United States Supreme Court: ''Gonzales v. Williams''

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 Aibonito () is a small mountain town and municipality in Puerto Rico located in the Sierra de Cayey mountain range, north of Salinas; south of Barranquitas and Comerío; east of Coamo; and west of Cidra, and Cayey. Aibonito is spread over 8 '' ...
where he managed a coffee plantation. In 1902, the
United States Treasury Department The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and ...
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.Journal of American Ethnic History
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. 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. 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. The groundbreaking case, which became known as ''
Gonzales v. Williams Gonzales may refer to: Places * Gonzales, California, U.S. * Gonzales, Louisiana, U.S. * Gonzales, Texas, U.S. * Gonzales County, Texas Other uses * Battle of Gonzales, 1835 * Gonzales (horse) (1977 – after 1996), an American-bred Thoroughbred ...
'', 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. González, who was out on bond, secretly married her fiancé 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. 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."


Literary work

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.


Death

Degetau died in Santurce, Puerto Rico, at the age of 51, and was interred in the
Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery __NOTOC__ The Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery is a colonial-era cemetery located in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. It is the final resting place of many of Puerto Rico's most prominent natives and residents. Construction began in 1863 under ...
in
San Juan, Puerto Rico San Juan (, , ; Spanish for "Saint John") is the capital city and most populous municipality in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2020 census, it is the 57th-largest city under the ...
.


Honors

* The people of the municipality of Ponce named the larger of the two squares the city's central plaza,
Plaza Degetau Plaza Degetau, formally Plaza Federico Degetau, is the larger of two plazas at Plaza Las Delicias, the main city Town square, square in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico, Ponce, Puerto Rico. The other plaza is named Plaza Muñoz Rivera and is locat ...
, in his honor. * Degetau is also honored at Ponce's Park of Illustrious Ponce Citizens. He is also honored for his contributions to the field of literature. Together with Ramón Marín, Degetau is the only honoree to be honored in more than one field at that park. * In 1914, three years after the 1911 opening of the College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts in Mayagüez, the building called ''Edificio del Colegio de Agricultura'' ("College of Agriculture Hall") was renamed ''Edificio Degetau'' ("Degetau Hall") in 1914 in honor of Degetau who had just died. Four years later, Degetau Hall was destroyed by the Puerto Rico earthquake of 1918 with only the building's main entrance
portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cul ...
surviving. This ruin was renamed ''Pórtico Degetau'' ("Degetau Gate"), the name that perdures to this day (2021). Degetau Gate was chosen as official symbol for the school, and perdured after the school's name was changed to its current name (2021), University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. * 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.


Aftermath

Degetau had no children and he wrote a will to establish a foundation whereby his widow and a friend would receive an
usufruct Usufruct () is a limited real right (or ''in rem'' right) found in civil-law and mixed jurisdictions that unites the two property interests of ''usus'' and ''fructus'': * ''Usus'' (''use'') is the right to use or enjoy a thing possessed, direct ...
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. 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. As a result, Degetau's will was never firmly established, and the corpus was almost completely lost. In 2004, the Municipality of Aibonito attempted to demolish the home of Federico Degetau in order to make room for further development. In response, the Patronato del Archivo Histórico of Aibonito and other organization in the community including the Puerto Rico Bar Association passed a resolution against the attempted demolition in the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, and urged the government to take action. In 2010, the legislature of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico passed a law designating Degetau's home and farm in
Aibonito Aibonito () is a small mountain town and municipality in Puerto Rico located in the Sierra de Cayey mountain range, north of Salinas; south of Barranquitas and Comerío; east of Coamo; and west of Cidra, and Cayey. Aibonito is spread over 8 '' ...
a historic site and ordered the preservation of the house known as Quinta Rosacruz.Law No. 102 of 2010. The Federico Degetau Trust thus materialized with the help of private and government funding. File: Rosacruz room at Federico Degetau House and Museum.jpg, Rosacruz room at Federico Degetau House and Museum


See also

* List of Puerto Ricans * German immigration to Puerto Rico *
List of Hispanic Americans in the United States Congress This is a list of Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States Congress, Hispanic and Latino Americans who have served in the United States Congress. Persons included are identified as having a lineage from Spain or Latin America, a definiti ...


References

* Patronato del Archivo Histórico de Aibonito, Archives


External links




Federico Degetau from the Library of Congress
{{DEFAULTSORT:Degetau, Federico 1862 births 1914 deaths 19th-century American politicians Burials at Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery Puerto Rican people of German descent Puerto Rican writers Republican Party (Puerto Rico) politicians Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Puerto Rico Resident Commissioners of Puerto Rico Politicians from Ponce Writers from Ponce