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The Unemployed Council of San Germán, Puerto Rico, Writes to President Franklin Roosevelt for Assistance

Background: Throughout the Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady, received millions of letters from civilians from across the United States and its territories. Acting on behalf of their families or as representatives of community organizations, Americans wrote seeking assistance or sharing opinions about new government relief programs. In Puerto Rico, New Deal programs were administered through the Puerto Rico Emergency Relief Administration (PRERA). This new agency was set up to distribute emergency rations and coordinate activities related to health, education, housing and slum clearance, labor and the economy. Part of the sprawling new government bureaucracy established during the Depression, the PRERA came to represent the New Deal and Roosevelt’s administration for many Puerto Ricans. Writing in English to a president fifteen hundred miles away, the authors of this letter were leaders of the Consejo de Desempleados, an unaffiliated workers organization that emerged in Puerto Rico during the early years of the Depression.

San Germán, P. R.
24 de april /35.

Hon. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
White House
Washington, D. C.

Sir:

The subscribers below almost all of them having a High School Instruction, with some degree in Commercial Education, we want to know if the P.R.E.R.A. in this island is only for the privileged persons who have some political influence.

We  must tell you that there are not opportunity for the workers people here in your good administration carry on in the whole island.

We wish also to call your attention to the fact that there are a great numbers of [unemployed people]  with a good education who can do some efficiently works, while many persons has not a good preparation and are employed in the P.R.E.R.A., doing a poor work. Many of the [employed] have money to live in a good social condition, while others without work have not anything to eat and with a great numbers of family.

We urge you to recommend to the proper authorities the poor situation of our workers in this island, and to find a good solution to get out the trouble.

We thank you for the opportunity you have given to us in your administration of the nation, and we beg that you use in this case your personal influence toward the prompt solution of this poor situation of the workers of our island.


Very respectfully yours,

Leonides Rodrigyez
“The Protectress Union Workers”
San Germán, P. R.

Josue M. Colón
Secretario General
Consejo de Desempleados
San Germán, P. R.

Juan SáezCorales
Secretario de Agitación y propaganda
Consejo de Desempleados

José A. Santana
Secretario Financiero

Source: Leonides Rodrigyez et al. to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 24 April 1935, Federal Emergency Relief Administration Files, National Archives, Washington, D.C.