U. S. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Brief of Honorable Tulio Larrinaga, Resident Commissioner from Porto Rico to the United States of America before the Committee on Ways and Means. Washington, D.C.: N.p., 1908.
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LARRÍNAGA, Tulio
1847–1917
Biography
An engineer by training, Tulio Larrínaga, Puerto Rico’s second Resident Commissioner in Congress moved into politics when Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory. Like his predecessor, Federico Degetau, Larrínaga used the Resident Commissioner’s ministerial powers and his own political savvy to encourage and cajole U.S. politicians to reform the island’s civil government. In particular, Larrínaga sought to modify or eliminate aspects of the Foraker Act that infringed on Puerto Ricans’ popular sovereignty and limited the Resident Commissioner’s ability to represent constituents. “Everybody on the floor of this House knows that it is only due to the courtesy of the Committee on Rules … not by any law of Congress, that the Commissioner from Porto Rico is allowed the privilege of the floor,” Larrínaga declared.1
Tulio Larrínaga y Torres Vallejo was born in Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico, on January 15, 1847. He attended the Seminario Conciliar de San Ildefonso in San Juan. Larrínaga studied civil engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, from 1865 to 1868 and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1871. Among Larrínaga’s projects were the preparation of a topographical map of Kings County, New York, and his work for an engineering firm involved in the construction of Grand Central Station in New York City. Returning to Puerto Rico in 1872, Larrínaga served as a municipal architect of San Juan. He also helped found Ateneo Puertorriqueño (the Puerto Rican Arts and Sciences Association) in 1876 and served as the head of the English department in the cultural center. He was a member of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Nation and the insular library commission. In 1879 Larrínaga married Berthy Goyro Saint Victor. The couple raised Tulio, Jr.; Berta; Concepción; and two other children.2
Larrínaga is credited with building the first railroad in Puerto Rico—a short line that ran from San Juan several miles south to Rio Piedras—and with introducing American rolling stock to the island. He served for 10 years as an engineer of the Provincial Deputation, working extensively on the construction of San Juan Harbor and on roads elsewhere on the island. He also directed the works of the 1893 Puerto Rico exposition as a member of its jury. Cayetano Coll y Toste, a prominent historian and writer, observes that Larrínaga’s engineering successes benefited from his ability to maneuver in political circles, reminiscing that he was “able to gain the good will of Unconditional Party leader Pablo Ubarri, who exercised great influence over the island administration.” “One can go far with friends in high places,” he added. Larrínaga first became involved in politics when Puerto Rico achieved autonomy from Spain in 1897, joining the Partido Liberal de Puerto Rico (Liberal Reform Party of Puerto Rico). When Puerto Rico came under American governance in 1898, Larrínaga served as the subsecretary of public works and as assistant secretary of the interior under the autonomous government.3
In 1900, along with Luis Muñoz Rivera and others, Larrínaga founded the Partido Federalista de Puerto Rico (Federal Party of Puerto Rico), which advocated Puerto Rico’s joining the United States as a territory but retaining control of local institutions. (In 1904 Larrínaga would join the Partido de Unión (Union Party), the successor to the Partido Federalista, which promoted local autonomy while reforming political ties between the United States and Puerto Rico.) During the initial debates over the structure of a civil government for Puerto Rico in early 1900, Larrínaga came to Washington with a political delegation advocating for home rule. He testified before the Senate Committee on Pacific Islands and Porto Rico regarding S. 2264, a precursor bill to the Foraker Act. Larrínaga called for free trade between the United States and Puerto Rico, advocated for territorial status, and discussed universal male suffrage.4 When he testified before the House Committee on Insular Affairs, Larrínaga argued that Puerto Ricans “expect the American Government will give them a Territorial form of government; that they will have some Congressional representation of one or two members,” citing Puerto Rico’s voting experience with Spain as a precedent.5 During the deliberations on the Foraker Act, Larrínaga told the Ways and Means Committee, “Puerto Rico needs a civil government even more than free trade. The people want to feel that they have become in a tangible manner attached to the United States and not a mere dependency.”6
Larrínaga began his elective career as a member of the insular house of delegates for the district of Arecibo in 1902.7 In 1904 he won election as Resident Commissioner to the 59th Congress (1905–1907); he served a total of three terms, winning by a comfortable margin each time. His opponent in 1904 was Republican Mateo Fajardo Cardona. Larrínaga’s Union Party polled 62 percent against the Republicans’ 38 percent. Larrínaga was re-elected to the 60th Congress (1907–1909), again by 62 percent, against Republican candidate Ledo Francisco Paria Capo. Two years later, he polled 64 percent of the vote against Republican Roberto Todd and Socialist Santiago Iglesias, a future Resident Commissioner.8 Larrínaga interpreted his party’s electoral domination as proof of Puerto Ricans’ displeasure with the provisions of the Foraker Act, particularly the appointed executive council, which often undermined acts of the popularly elected insular house of delegates—which Unionists had consistently pressured Congress to revise or repeal. Such electoral results, he noted, show “very clearly that our people are more determined … to stop the encroaching tendency of that upper house or executive council.”9
During his tenure in the House, Larrínaga served on the Committee on Insular Affairs, created to oversee civil government and infrastructure issues pertaining to the United States’ territories overseas, including the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico.10 Unlike his predecessor, Federico Degetau, who was hamstrung by his lack of floor and speaking privileges, Larrínaga enjoyed these privileges from the outset of his congressional career and was well versed in advocating for Puerto Rican interests in Washington. During his first term, in the 59th Congress, Larrínaga submitted six bills and two petitions. Three of the bills dealt with reforming the structure of the civil government as defined by the Foraker Act. He also submitted a bill to amend the law limiting the number of Puerto Ricans who were admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a bill to expand improvements to San Juan Harbor.11 Additionally, Larrínaga appealed to President Theodore Roosevelt “for a greater measure of self-government” for Puerto Rico. “The people of Porto Rico were being treated as if they were not capable of self-government,” Larrínaga told Roosevelt, and the acts of the house of delegates “were practically annulled by the executive council.”12
In an editorial about self-rule in Puerto Rico, Larrínaga criticized the Washington Post for describing council members of San Juan municipalities as “self-styled” politicians. “Those representatives have been selected by the most genuine representation of the people of Porto Rico, for the members of the municipal council … are elected directly by the vote of the people, as well as the house of delegates,” Larrínaga countered. He described his election as a mandate to liberalize American rule on the island by reforming the Foraker Act. “The people of Porto Rico sent me here to Washington by the largest vote ever cast in the country to tell Congress and the American people that we wished to elect our senate as we elect the members of the house of delegates, so that we could make our own laws and manage our own local affairs,” Larrínaga wrote.13 In the press and on the House Floor, Larrínaga took exceptional offense to the executive council, first, because he objected to the council’s selection by the President of the United States instead of by popular vote; and second, because he objected to the council’s extraordinary power to alter measures approved by the popularly elected house of delegates. In a floor speech, Larrínaga stressed that for “many years we have been putting up with all the encroachment of our masters in that executive council … we have cooperated with our local government to the verge of humiliation; but the time has come … when we are no longer disposed to allow them to go beyond the limits fixed by the organic act … for the genuine representation of the people in the lower house.”14 During the second session of the 61st Congress (1909–1911), chairman of the House Committee on Insular Affairs Marlin Olmsted of Pennsylvania submitted H.R. 23000 on Larrínaga’s behalf, a bill designed to replace the Foraker Act with a more generous system of Puerto Rican self-government. Whereas the Foraker Act was a “temporary act” that became permanent, the new bill would provide a permanent government for the island. House debates on the bill demonstrated Larrínaga’s more forceful tack, emphasizing the shortcomings and anti-democratic tendencies of the Foraker Act while appealing for greater self-sovereignty on the island. Larrínaga compared his bill to the Constitution of the United States. When asked “whether I preferred the present organic act of Porto Rico to this bill now before the House … with the provision [in this bill] giving us collective citizenship … my answer … is I do,” he said. Larrínaga noted that Chairman Olmsted believed “that the upper house under the present Foraker Act hindered the lower house from enacting any legislation whatsoever.” Larrinaga continued, “He had the honesty to say … what the Porto Ricans have been saying and protesting against every day for the last ten years; that you have not given to the people of Porto Rico any power whatsoever to enact their own laws.”15 After extensive debate, the bill passed the House on June 15, 1910, and was referred to the Senate Committee on Pacific Islands and Porto Rico, where it died.16
In January 1906, Larrínaga submitted to the House a memorial petition from the municipal councils of 52 towns in Puerto Rico. The petition requested that voters continue to be permitted to elect the members of the house of delegates by popular vote and that the presidentially appointed executive council be replaced with an insular senate of 14 members also elected by popular vote. As for the directors of the island’s six principal administrative departments, who were selected by the President, the petition asked that they “be appointed by the governor of Porto Rico with the advice and consent of the insular senate.” The petition was submitted to the Committee on Insular Affairs, and no further action was taken.17 In 1907 Larrínaga and the house of delegates lobbied President Theodore Roosevelt, unsuccessfully, to select a native Puerto Rican to serve as secretary of Puerto Rico to administer the insular government’s executive-branch duties.18
On November 21, 1906, President Roosevelt visited Puerto Rico en route from a visit to the Panama Canal. He was greeted by a number of political dignitaries, including Larrínaga. During his visit, Roosevelt promised to “continue to use every effort to secure citizenship for Porto Ricans. I am confident that this will come in the end,” he continued. “My efforts will be unceasing to help you along the path of true self-government, which must have for its basis union, order, liberty, justice, and honor.” When Roosevelt returned to the United States, he vigorously lobbied Congress to grant full citizenship to Puerto Ricans, including an appeal in his sixth Annual Message to Congress.19 Five days after submitting the Annual Message, Roosevelt delivered a special message to Congress praising the natural beauty of the island and the effectiveness of its government and reiterating his belief in the “desirability of conferring full American citizenship upon the people of Porto Rico.” “I cannot see how any harm can possibly result from it, and it seems to me a matter of right and justice to the people of Porto Rico,” Roosevelt insisted. “They are loyal, they are glad to be under our flag, they are making rapid progress along the path of orderly liberty.” In the New York Times, Larrínaga noted, “Mr. Roosevelt’s visit had a healthful influence on the political feeling of the country. There was a sentiment of discouragement prevailing on the island. The people thought they were forgotten, but this feeling has now dissipated.”20
To supplement such public statements, Larrínaga quietly pressured Roosevelt and Insular Affairs Committee chairman Henry Cooper of Wisconsin to move legislation. Seizing the momentum generated by Roosevelt’s visit to the island, Cooper introduced H.R. 17661, a bill to grant full citizenship to Puerto Ricans. As Larrínaga rounded up the support from other Members, he commented, “The present relation we bear to the United States is ridiculous.… When I went to Europe recently I could say I was a member of the House, yet had to admit I was not an American citizen.” Larrínaga noted that “Spaniards and other foreigners may come to the island, and after a short time become naturalized as American citizens, but the people of Porto Rico, who have lived all their lives there, must remain without citizenship.” When Cooper brought the bill to the House Floor, James Beauchamp (Champ) Clark of Missouri, a future Speaker of the House, objected to debating the bill on the grounds that it “ought to be considered in a full House.” Cooper attempted to schedule a debate for unanimous consent in the next week, but Clark objected again. This resistance effectively killed the bill.21
During his second term in the 60th Congress (1907–1909), Larrínaga honed his forceful criticisms of the Foraker Act, tying Puerto Rican dissatisfaction to anti-American sentiment. During a debate about the disapproval of certain laws of the Territory of New Mexico, Larrínaga criticized the Foraker Act as a “leaden block that closed the sepulcher where the liberties and rights of a million freemen are buried.… Instead of … self-government … you will find … the executive is mixed with the legislative, and officers that are appointed by the Executive go down there to make the laws for a people whose customs they do not know; for a people whose faces they have never seen before … and for a people whose laws and language they do not know.” Larrínaga also discussed the economic policies in the act that crippled Puerto Rico’s economy and “ruined the country, because no provision was made to protect our main industry, the industry of the poor man, the coffee industry.” Larrínaga dismissed U.S. statesmen, including House Speaker Joe Cannon, who claimed credit for enhancing Puerto Rico’s economy and political standing. “I hear every day in the political campaign here, ‘We have made Porto Rico prosperous.’ I wish you had,” he declared. “Then no discontent would exist, and perhaps I could be looked upon by my countrymen with more kind regard. I wish you had made Porto Rico happy, but you have not, Mr. Speaker.”22
Like his predecessor Degetau, Larrínaga counted among his major legislative interests the retention of the Puerto Rico regiment of the U.S. volunteer infantry from the U.S. Army. The regiment comprised two battalions of volunteer infantry that were authorized by Congress in 1899 and 1900. Introduced on Larrínaga’s behalf by Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs John Hull of Iowa, H.R. 18618 provided for the establishment of the Puerto Rico Provisional Regiment as a full infantry regiment in the U.S. Army. The House passed the bill with a small majority, but three times Larrínaga then attempted to persuade his colleagues to concur with the Senate’s amendments; eventually the House passed the revised bill and President Roosevelt signed it into law on May 27, 1908.23
To promote his constituents’ livelihoods, Larrínaga tried to shield Puerto Rican export markets from exorbitant tariffs.24 In 1907 he corresponded with President Roosevelt, Secretary of State Elihu Root, and various subordinates about the negotiations for French tariffs that would adversely affect Puerto Rico’s ailing coffee industry. The French, in a commercial agreement with the United States, proposed a “maximum tariff of 300 francs per 100 kilograms of coffee imported into the French markets,” Larrínaga wrote. “This [tariff rate] would mean the closing of those markets to our main staple. We depend wholly today on France and Cuba for the disposal of four-fifths of our coffee crop, and you can well imagine, Mr. President, what a terrible blow the closing of those markets would be to the island,” he continued.25 Larrínaga also appealed to Root, writing the tariff issue is “a question of life and death to our coffee-planters. As long as our coffees do not receive protection at our home markets, we shall have to depend upon foreign markets for their sale … to preserve the existence of our plantations.”26 Root informed Larrínaga that the 1908 Commercial Agreement between the United States and France “provided for the application of the minimum rate … in return for certain specified concessions in favor of products of the United States, including Porto Rico” and would take effect in February 1908. In the final agreement, products such as coffee were imported “at the rates of the minimum tariff or at the lowest rates” applicable, though such concessions could be revoked by the French president if additional tariffs were added.27 Larrínaga’s lobbying efforts probably saved the Puerto Rican coffee industry. His interest in foreign affairs received a boost when President Roosevelt selected him as a U.S. delegate to the Pan-American Conference in Rio de Janeiro. He also represented the United States at interparliamentary conferences, in Berlin in 1908 and in Brussels in 1910.28
Larrínaga secured appropriations and used his experience as an engineer to promote infrastructure projects in Puerto Rico. He had extensive experience with the construction of San Juan Harbor during his tenure as chief engineer for the project, and later, in 1908, he corresponded with Secretary of the Interior James R. Garfield about improvements. After securing a $657,000 appropriation for the dredging of San Juan Harbor, Larrínaga stressed to Garfield that the project should begin immediately, despite the protests of Governor Regis H. Post. Congress’s approval to fund the project was “in accordance with specific plans prepared by the War Department, and we cannot expend a single dollar out of that appropriation for any other part of the work than that fixed in those plans,” Larrínaga reminded Secretary Garfield.29
Larrínaga retired at the end of the 61st Congress and returned to his engineering career. He remained politically active by serving on the territorial executive council. On April 28, 1917, he died of heart trouble in Santurce, a suburb of San Juan.30
Footnotes
1Congressional Record, House, 61st Cong., 1st sess. (31 March 1909): 672.
2“Tulio Larrínaga,” in Federico Ribes Tovar, ed., 100 Biografías de puertorriqueños ilustres (New York: Plus Ultra Educational Publishers, Inc., 1973): 195–197; Clarence Russell Williams, “Larrínaga, Tulio,” Dictionary of American Biography, 6 (New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 1933): 8–9 (hereinafter referred to as DAB); Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910: Population Schedule, Santurce, Puerto Rico, Roll T624_1778, page 32B, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., http://search.ancestrylibrary.com (accessed 11 January 2012); National Archives and Records Administration; U.S. Passport Applications, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Philippines, 1907–1925; ARC Identifier 1244181/MLR Number A1_542; Box 4340; vol. 29, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., http://search.ancestrylibrary.com (accessed 11 January 2012). Two of the Larrínaga children are neither listed in the Thirteenth Census nor in U.S. passport records.
3Ronald I. Perusse, The United States and Puerto Rico: The Struggle for Equality (Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger, 1990): 5–6; Williams, “Larrínaga, Tulio,” DAB; “Supo captarse la buena voluntad del cacique máximo incondicional, don Pablo Ubarri, que ejercía gran influencia en la adminstración insular.… Y el que a buen árbol se arrima, buena sombra le cae encima.” Cayetano Coll y Toste, “Tulio Larrinaga,” in Puertorriqueños ilustres. (Barcelona: Ediciones Rumbos, 1963): 300. Translated as “Tulio Larrinaga,” by Translations International, Inc. (September 2010).
4“Tulio Larrínaga,” in Federico Ribes Tovar, ed., 100 Biografías de puertorriqueños ilustres: 197; Hearing before the Senate Committee on Pacific Islands and Porto Rico, Industrial and Other Conditions of the Island of Puerto Rico, and the Form of Government Which Should Be Adopted for It, 56th Cong., 1st sess. (5 February 1900): 176–182.
5R. B. Horton, ed., House Committee on Insular Affairs, Committee Reports, Hearings, and Acts of Congress Corresponding Thereto, 56th Cong., 1st and 2nd sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904): 337. Larrínaga, who testified on March 12, 1900, also discussed the condition of the railroads, literacy and education of Puerto Ricans with regard to suffrage and the coffee and sugar markets.
6“Puerto Rico Is Able to Support Itself,” 22 March 1900, New York Times: 5.
7Fernando Bayron Toro, Elecciones y partidos políticos de Puerto Rico, 1809–2000 (Mayagüez, PR: Editorial Isla, 2003): 121.
8Toro, Elecciones y partidos políticos de Puerto Rico, 1809–2000: 125–132; Larrínaga’s opponents are listed in “Candidatos Republicanos en Ponce,” 20 September 1904, La correspondencia: 4; “Ellos y nosotros,” 29 September 1906, El aguila: 1; “Candidaturas: Relación de los candidates presentados al gobierno,” 19 October 1908, La democracia: 1.
9Congressional Record, House, 60th Cong., 2nd sess., (26 January 1909): 1451. Larrínaga noted, “In 1904, the Union party, the one more strenuously opposed to the Foraker Act, carried the elections by an overwhelming majority; in 1906 we carried the whole island, electing every member to the lower house; in 1908 we swept the island from one end to the other.”
10David T. Canon, Garrison Nelson, and Charles Stewart III, eds., Committees in the U.S. Congress, 1789 to 1946, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2002): 617; National Archives and Records Administration, Guide to the Records of the United States House of Representatives at the National Archives: 1789–1989, Bicentennial ed., 100th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 100-245 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1989): 195–196.
11Congressional Record, Index, 59th Cong., 1st sess., 534.
12“Complaint from Porto Rico,” 30 May 1905, Washington Post: 6. For a similar proposal, see “Porto Ricans Dissatisfied,” 19 January 1906, Washington Post: A1.
13Tulio Larrínaga, “Appeal for Porto Rico,” 7 August 1905, Washington Post: 5; the editorial that Larrínaga responded to is “Home Rule in Porto Rico,” 1 August 1905, Washington Post: 6. For another rebuttal of a Washington Post editorial that casts Puerto Rico in a negative light, see Tulio Larrínaga, “The Porto Rican Election,” 13 March 1906, Washington Post: A1.
14Congressional Record, House, 60th Cong., 2nd sess. (26 January 1909): 1451. For a detailed critique of an appropriations amendment to the Foraker Act by Larrínaga, see Congressional Record, House, 61st Cong., 1st sess. (24 May 1909): 2340–2346.
15Congressional Record, House, 61st Cong., 2nd sess. (1 June 1910): 7240.
16Congressional Record, Index, 61st Cong., 2nd sess.: 298.
17Congressional Record, House, 59th Cong., 1st sess. (16 January 1906): 1168; “Porto Rico Wants Change,” 16 January 1906, Washington Post: 5; “Porto Rico’s Governor Tells Island’s Needs,” 5 December 1906, New York Times: 7; Congressional Record, Index, 59th Cong., 1st sess.: 530.
18“Want Native as Secretary,” 9 March 1907, The Sun (Baltimore, Md.): 11; Senate Committee on Pacific Islands and Porto Rico, Annual Report of the Governor of Porto Rico for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1907, 60th Cong., 1st sess., 1907, S. Doc. 92: 7. Incoming governor Regis H. Post discussed the appointment of a Puerto Rican secretary with Roosevelt. Post opposed the appointment because of his perception that Puerto Rico could not govern itself, so Roosevelt appointed William F. Willoughby to the position on April 18, 1907. See also “Gov. Post Sees President,” 31 March 1907, New York Times: 5.
19“President’s Pledge to Porto Ricans,” 22 November 1906, New York Times, 2; “Presidente en Ponce,” 21 November 1906, La correspondencia: 1; Theodore Roosevelt, “Sixth Annual Message,” 3 December 1906, in John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws?pid=29547 (accessed 22 February 2011).
20“Porto Rico’s Governor Tells Island’s Needs,” 5 December 1906, New York Times: 7; Theodore Roosevelt, “Special Message,” 11 December 1906, in Woolley and Peters, The American Presidency Project http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws?pid=69671 (accessed 22 February 2011).
21Congressional Record, House, 59th Cong., 2nd sess. (7 December 1906): 172–173; “Citizenship for Porto Rico,” 7 December 1906, Washington Post: 4.
22Congressional Record, House, 60th Cong., 1st sess. (9 May 1908): 6027–6028.
23Gilberto N. Villahermosa, Honor and Fidelity: The 65th Infantry in Korea, 1950–1953 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 2009): 1–4; Congressional Record, House, 60th Cong., 1st sess. (8 May 1908): 5955–5962; Congressional Record, House, 60th Cong., 1st sess. (23 May 1908): 6841, 6868; Congressional Record, House, 60th Cong., 1st sess. (25 May 1908): 6905; Congressional Record, Index, 60th Cong., 1st sess.: 701; An Act Fixing the Status of the Porto Rico Provisional Regiment of Infantry, P.L. 60-142, 35 Stat. 392.
24César J. Ayala and Rafael Bernabe, Puerto Rico in the American Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007): 33–38, 45–47.
25Letter from Tulio Larrínaga to Theodore Roosevelt, 7 May 1907, Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M862, Roll 478), National Archives at College Park, MD (NACP).
26Letter from Tulio Larrínaga to Elihu Root, 7 June 1907, Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, NACP.
27Letter from Elihu Root to Tulio Larrínaga, 28 January 1908, Numerical and Minor Files of the Department of State, 1906–1910, NACP; “Additional Commercial Agreement, Signed at Washington, January 28, 1908,” in U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States with the Annual Message of the President Transmitted to Congress December 8, 1908 (Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein & Co., Inc., 2008; reprint of 1912 edition): 329.
28“Tulio Larrinaga,” in Tovar, ed., 100 Biografías de puertorriqueños ilustres: 195–197; Williams, “Larrinaga, Tulio,” DAB. For an overview of the conference, see A. Curtis Wilgus, “The Third International American Conference at Rio de Janeiro, 1906,” Hispanic American Historical Review 12, no. 4 (November 1932): 420–456.
29Letter from Tulio Larrínaga to James R. Garfield, 8 March 1908, Territories: Porto Rico: Improvement of San Juan Harbor, File 9-8-31, Classified Files, 1907–1951, Office of Territories, Record Group 126, NACP. Larrínaga also dissuaded the Secretary from seeking to change the work plans because “obtaining authorization for change in the program already laid out … would, therefore, imply new legislation by Congress; and even admitting that the Administration would favor such legislation … such a course of procedure would probably take more time than is necessary for the completion of the first part of the work.”
30“Tulio Larrinaga Dead,” 30 April 1917, The Times (San Juan): 1; For Spanish-language obituaries, see “Tulio Larrinaga,” 30 April 1917, El tiempo: 1; “Entierro de Sr. Larrínaga,” 30 April 1917, La correspondencia: 1; “Don Tulio Larrínaga,” 30 April 1917, La correspondencia: 1. There is some disagreement about when Larrínaga served on the executive council and for how long, but all these articles indicate that he served on the executive council at some point after his congressional service. Larrínaga’s Biographical Directory entry indicates that he served only in 1911; the DAB says, “President Wilson appointed him a member of the Executive Council,” but does not mention the year. The first edition of Hispanic Americans in Congress indicates that Larrínaga served from 1913 to 1917. See Williams, “Larrínaga, Tulio” DAB; “Tulio Larrinaga” in Carmen E. Enciso and Tracy North, eds., Hispanic Americans in Congress, 1822–1995 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1995): 67–68; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, “Tulio Larrínaga,” http://bioguide.congress.gov.
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Haverford College
Haverford College Library Special Collection
Haverford, PA
Papers:
In the Smiley family papers, 1885-1983, 55 linear feet (ca. 22,600 items).
Subjects include Tulio Larringa.
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Bibliography / Further Reading
Larrinaga, Tulio. Civil Government for Puerto Rico. Washington: N.p., 1910.
"Tulio Larrínaga" in Hispanic Americans in Congress, 1822-2012. Prepared under the direction of the Committee on House Administration by the Office of the Historian and the Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Washington: Government Printing Office, 2013.
Committee Assignments
- House Committee - Insular Affairs