With lawyerly precision, Félix Córdova Dávila
persisted in his demands that U.S. authorities
resolve Puerto Rico’s status, challenging them
to live up to their own democratic rhetoric. As a member
of the Partido de Unión (Union Party), which controlled
the island’s politics in the early 20th century, Córdova
Dávila continued the campaign of his predecessor, Luis Muñoz Rivera, to secure greater political freedom for
Puerto Ricans. Córdova Dávila believed that the island
ought to be given complete independence if the United
States failed to grant it statehood in a timely fashion.
His proposals were seriously considered by Congress but
were ultimately turned aside. By the time he retired,
Córdova Dávila had served nearly 15 years in the House—longer than any other Hispanic Member of Congress until
that point. “Under the rulings of the courts of justice we
are neither flesh, fish, nor fowl,” he testified at a committee
hearing late in his career. “We are neither a part nor a
whole. We are nothing; and it seems to me if we are not
allowed to be part of the Union we should be allowed
to be a whole entity with full and complete control of
our internal affairs.”1
Félix Córdova Dávila was born to Lope Córdova and
Concepción Dávila on November 20, 1878, in Vega Baja,
on the north coast of Puerto Rico, about 30 miles west of
San Juan.2 He attended the local public schools in Manati,
a few miles west of his birthplace. At age 20, Córdova
Dávila enrolled at the National University School of Law,
now The George Washington University Law School,
in Washington, D.C. He graduated with bachelor’s and
master’s degrees in law and returned to Puerto Rico, where
he passed the bar in 1903 and established his own practice
in San Juan. In 1904 Córdova Dávila was appointed judge
of the court in Caguas, about 20 miles south of San Juan,
in the island’s interior. That same year he was appointed
judge of the municipal court and was transferred to
Manati, where he served until 1908, when he received
the Unionist nomination for a seat in the Puerto Rican
house of delegates and was reappointed judge in Manati.
He refused both offers, taking a temporary position as
district attorney for the Aguadilla district, near the island’s
northwest tip. Shortly thereafter he was appointed district
court judge in Guayama, in the south (1908–1910); in
Arecibo, in the north (1910–1911); and in San Juan
(1911–1917). In 1906 Córdova Dávila married Mercedes
Diaz. The couple raised three boys: Jorge Luis, Félix, and
Enrique. Jorge Luis Córdova‐Díaz eventually followed his
father’s career trajectory, serving briefly on the supreme
court of Puerto Rico and then as Resident Commissioner
from 1969 to 1973. Mercedes died in early October of
1918, in Washington, D.C., during the influenza pandemic
that swept America and the world; she was 33 years old.3
On July 9, 1919, Córdova Dávila married Patria Martinez
of Mayaguez. Their daughter, Aida, died as a teenager.4
Córdova Dávila first sought elective office in 1917,
when he received the Partido de Unión’s nomination to
run for the vacancy created by the sudden death of Luis
Muñoz Rivera in November 1916. Córdova Dávila was
elected to the House in a scheduled general election on
July 16, 1917; Partido de Unión captured 52 percent
of the vote, outpolling Republicans and Socialists, who
captured 34 and 14 percent of the vote, respectively.5
Under the provisions of the Second Jones Act, also known
as the Organic Act of Puerto Rico—which was signed into
law by President Woodrow Wilson in March 1917 and
which Muñoz Rivera had backed as a first step to rectifying
the Foraker Act—elections for Puerto Rican Resident
Commissioners would occur every four years, beginning in
the 1920 election. Córdova Dávila was re-elected to three
subsequent terms. In 1920 he won 51 percent of the vote,
with Republican and Socialist candidates receiving roughly
26 and 24 percent of the vote, respectively. In 1924 the
Republican Party split; one faction joined the Unionists to
form the Alianza (Alliance), while the faction known as the
Constitutional Historical Party joined the Socialists to form
the Coalición (Coalition). Córdova Dávila was re-elected
on the Alliance ticket with 64 percent of the vote.6 Four
years later, with the same party configuration, in an election
described as “the most hotly contested and closest … held
in the history of the island,” Córdova Dávila secured a third
term, but with just 52 percent of the vote compared with his
opponent’s 48 percent.7
Córdova Dávila took his seat in the House on August
7, 1917, in the middle of the first session of the 65th Congress (1917–1919).8 On July 9, 1918, he received
his first committee assignment, Insular Affairs, the panel
Resident Commissioners were typically assigned to since
it had jurisdiction over all legislation affecting America’s
overseas possessions, including Puerto Rico. From this
panel Córdova Dávila’s predecessor, Luis Muñoz Rivera,
sought to shape the 1917 Organic Act, known as the Jones
Act. During Córdova Dávila’s tenure on the Insular Affairs
Committee, where he served for the rest of his House
career, the panel was headed by Representative Horace Mann Towner of Iowa, who became chair when the
Republicans took control of the House in 1919. Towner
wielded the gavel until 1923, when President Warren G.
Harding appointed him Governor of Puerto Rico, an office
he held until 1929. Córdova Dávila’s connection to Towner
proved beneficial.
One of Córdova Dávila’s major tasks was to extend to
Puerto Rico certain laws and federal programs that were
already in place in the mainland United States, such as
vocational education, construction of rural post roads, and
programs to improve health care for mothers and infants,
which Towner had championed in the House through the
Sheppard–Towner Act. But Córdova Dávila did not want
to extend all American laws to Puerto Rico. When the
island’s suffragists, inspired by the ratification in 1920 of the
19th Amendment, granting U.S. women the right to vote,
sought to extend the franchise to Puerto Rican women,
Córdova Dávila’s support was tepid. Testifying before the
Senate Committee on Territories and Insular Affairs and
the House Committee on Insular Affairs, he expressed
support for women’s right to vote and his “honest and
sincere conviction” that women’s influence would benefit
electoral politics in Puerto Rico. However, he favored
the institution of a Spanish-literacy qualification without
regard to the sex of the voter, partially because the Partido
de Unión feared that the Partido Socialista (Socialist
Party) would benefit from universal suffrage. Believing
Puerto Rico had the right to legislate its own affairs,
he refused to acquiesce to the demands of the Puerto
Rican Women’s Suffrage Association that he bring the
issue before the U.S. Congress.9 As a committee witness,
he told Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland that the
Puerto Rican legislature should be allowed to determine
voting qualifications without interference from the U.S.
Congress. “To be frank,” he said, “I do not believe you
are qualified to legislate in local matters in Porto Rico.
You do not know Porto Rico. We are better qualified than
you are. So you should let Porto Ricans handle their own
local affairs.”10 In 1928 Puerto Rican voters approved an
amendment that extended the vote to women, along with
an amendment that required all new voters to take a literacy
test. In April 1929 the insular legislature passed a law
granting suffrage to women.11
Like Muñoz Rivera, Córdova Dávila spent the bulk
of his time pursuing the Partido de Unión’s primary goal
of liberalizing Puerto Rico’s system of self-government.
Each Congress he introduced bills to amend the Organic
Act of 1917. These bills sought a greater measure of home
rule, including a civil government with a governor elected
by the people instead of one who was appointed by the
U.S. President, and authority for Puerto Ricans to draft
their own constitution. These bills were usually referred
to committees, where they died. Nevertheless, Córdova
Dávila’s efforts gave voice to Puerto Rican frustrations
with the Jones Act. In February 1919 on the House Floor,
he demanded that the United States clarify whether the
island would ultimately be granted statehood or complete
autonomy. “If you think … we are an insular piece of
ground, with a considerable population, far removed from
any physical relation with the States and Territories; if
you think that on account of our differences in language,
ethnology, and habits we can never form a part of the
American federation; if we can not be a star in that
glorious heaven of blue with its stripes of red and white …
then we must demand that the American people give
us the freedom that is our God-given right,” he told the
House. Following Córdova Dávila’s speech, the Unionist
and Republican Parties in the insular legislature agreed
to press jointly for either statehood or independence and
sent Córdova Dávila a congratulatory message thanking
him “for the splendid and just exposition of our political
situation before the American people.”12
Córdova Dávila’s efforts in the 1920s were hampered by
the Republican administrations’ general disinterest and by
a coincident period of gubernatorial instability in Puerto
Rico. In fact, Córdova Dávila led the effort to recall the
widely unpopular Governor Emmett Montgomery Reily.
The relationship between the governor and the Resident
Commissioner started badly when Reily commanded
Córdova Dávila to ask the Puerto Rican assembly to raise
the salaries of some friends he had inserted into public
office. “Increase the salaries of these offices, do not cut the
appropriations of the governor, and we will get along all
right,” Reily said. When the two men clashed later over
Reily’s removal of the Puerto Rican attorney general who
had been appointed by the previous governor, Córdova
Dávila warned Reily, “You are going to fail. Porto Rico will
welcome an executive, but not a boss.” Reily eventually
denounced Córdova Dávila as a “professional doublecrosser”
and warned President Warren Harding against
meeting personally with him, saying, “Every Puerto Rican
professional politician carries a pistol, and I do not think
you should ever see Córdova unless your Secretary or
someone else is present.”13
On the House Floor, Córdova Dávila repeatedly voiced
Puerto Ricans’ discontent with Reily. When he asked the
House to consider impeaching and recalling Reily, the
governor’s defenders and senior Members demurred, citing
the President’s jurisdiction.14 The House never launched
an inquiry, but Reily’s inartful politics soon proved to be
his undoing, and Washington officials recalled him in early
1923. Horace Towner, the former chairman of the House
Insular Affairs Committee, was named Reily’s successor.
In a brief tribute to Towner on the House Floor, Córdova
Dávila read a cable from the president of the Puerto Rican
senate expressing the islanders’ “great enthusiasm” for
his appointment.15 Towner continued to have a working
relationship with Córdova Dávila, and he appointed many
members of the Partido de Unión to advisory positions and
other prominent posts.16
In late 1923, with Towner ensconced as governor,
Córdova Dávila mounted a campaign for an even more
ambitious overhaul of the Jones Act. Among the chief
reforms he sought were the popular election of a Puerto
Rican governor empowered to appoint a cabinet and
directors for the island’s departments; legislative powers
for local issues vested solely in the Puerto Rican legislature,
that is, without being subject to veto by the U.S. President
or to revision by the U.S. Congress; and the extension to
Puerto Rico of “measures of a national character that tend
to promote education, agriculture, and other sources of
knowledge or wealth” in the same proportion they were
provided to American states. Overarching all these proposals
was the request that “Congress, as well as the President
of the United States, declare their intentions as regards
the final status of the island of Puerto Rico.” On January
11, 1924, Córdova Dávila assured his colleagues that he
spoke not of a “complaint,” but of the islanders’ “cherished
dream.” “We have no grievances, but we have aspirations—the fond hope of all people to control their own affairs,”
he said on the House Floor. “Experience has taught us that
unnecessary delay in the recognition of the rights of any
people has always been a cause of unrest and dissatisfaction.
On the other hand, the granting of more liberal laws and
the establishment of justice by the great powers in their
overseas territories has always removed misgivings and
prejudices and created a spirit of everlasting gratitude in
the bosoms of the people favored by such concessions.”17
Horace Mann Towner traveled with the delegation
to support the reform in meetings with the President
and before congressional panels. On January 24, 1924,
the delegation—Towner, Puerto Rican senate president
Antonio R. Barceló, speaker of the house Miguel Guerra,
and insular senators and representatives from the Unionist,
Republican, and Socialist Parties—met with President
Calvin Coolidge at the White House to press for the popular
election of the Puerto Rican governor. On January 26,
1924, with the delegation watching from the House Gallery,
Córdova Dávila spoke about the memorial passed by the
Puerto Rican legislature that had been presented to President
Coolidge. The President’s response was noncommittal and
patronizing: “My suggestion is that you cooperate, one
with the other, and attempt to harmonize your difficulties, if
any arise, and all work together for the common welfare.…
The only way to prepare for something better to-morrow is
to do well the duties that come to us to-day.”18
Several days later, on February 2, Córdova Dávila
introduced H.R. 6583, a measure that proposed self-government
and an elective governor. As a member of
the delegation, Towner testified on behalf of the bill. All
the insular politicians considered the fact that Puerto
Ricans were by law American citizens and that many had
served the Allied cause in the First World War as evidence
of their readiness for greater autonomy.19 Appearing
before the Senate Committee on Territories and Insular
Possessions in early March, Córdova Dávila argued that
Puerto Ricans’ patriotism and loyalty proved their fitness
for greater self-rule.20 He closed by invoking the benefits
of a more liberal approach to Puerto Rico, particularly
since West Indian, Latin American, and South American
nations monitored U.S. policy. “Even the whole world is
watching the policy of the United States in connection
with Porto Rico and the Latin American countries to
determine how the experiment will succeed of establishing
a perfect understanding between the two great families
inhabiting the Western Hemisphere, the Anglo-Saxon and
the Latin,” Córdova Dávila noted. “If you are to succeed
in destroying the misgivings and the prejudices that have
so long existed against you and in their stead developing
a sincere, permanent, and fraternal union, which the
geographical position of your republican neighbors in
Central and South America renders so desirable, then the
foundations for the success of such a policy must be laid
in Porto Rico.”21 Within six weeks, the House Committee
on Insular Affairs reported the bill favorably for the
consideration of the whole House, but for reasons that
remain unclear the bill never came up for consideration.22
Meanwhile, a similar bill backed by Senator William King
of Utah worked its way to approval in the Senate. S. 2448
was similar to the Córdova Dávila measure, although
the first gubernatorial election would be pushed back to
1932. After the Coolidge administration signaled its
support for the bill’s passage, proponents grew hopeful
when the Senate version was to be taken up in the House
on the unanimous-consent calendar. But when the bill
was called up in early June 1924, Representative Guinn Williams of Texas, an influential Democrat on the Insular
Affairs Committee, objected, and it was referred back to
the committee, from which it failed to emerge before the
congressional term ended several days later.23
In 1928 Córdova Dávila pushed once again for a bill to
allow the popular election of a governor. Momentum for
the effort built because Governor Towner again endorsed
the reform. Moreover, Representative Fiorello LaGuardia
introduced his own bill to provide for the direct election of
the governor, differing from Córdova Dávila’s bill in that
it granted universal suffrage to Puerto Ricans. LaGuardia
testified before the House Insular Affairs Committee. “I
do not know of an instance in the history of human liberty
where we have the happy coincidence that the appointed
governor sent to an island possession is inclined to agree
not only with the right but the desirability of an elective
governor for the island,” he said.24 Córdova Dávila, arguing
on that same day before the committee for his own version
of the bill, noted the “unrest and dissatisfaction” and the
“constant agitation” about the question of the governor’s
direct election as well as the status issue. Statehood, he said,
would be “acceptable,” but only “with our customs, with
our traditions, with our language, and with everything,
that is part of our existence.”25 In a familiar refrain, he
attacked the Supreme Court’s Insular Cases, which he said
had placed the status of Puerto Rico in a “very peculiar”
light. “It is hard for me to understand how Porto Rico can
be foreign to the United States in a domestic sense and
not foreign in an international sense,” Córdova Dávila
told the committee. While Puerto Rican courts had ruled
that in conferring citizenship, the Jones Act had indeed
incorporated the island into the United States, the U.S.
Supreme Court had reversed these judgments in cases
such as Balzac v. Porto Rico. “The fathers of this country
never dreamed of an empire with possessions foreign to
the United States in a domestic sense, belonging to but
not forming part of the Union,” Córdova Dávila lectured
the committee members. “You have to face this problem
with courage, intelligence, and statesmanship. You cannot
escape the responsibilities assumed by this country when
the American flag was raised in Porto Rico. You can not
be democratic at home and autocratic abroad. You can not
have democracy within the continental limits of the United
States and an empire in the so-called insular possessions.
You have to be consistent with your principles. If not,
you should discontinue the teachings of American ideals
in Porto Rico, as it is unfair and cruel to instill in the
minds of the Porto Ricans the principles of democracy
and the liberal institutions of this country and deny them
at the same time a decent status in the establishment of a
government based upon these principles.”26
Córdova Dávila had been saying these things for a
decade, and his frustration was palpable. His attempts
at political reform faltered largely because of systemic
impediments. He faced a largely indifferent, Republican-controlled
House and a string of GOP executives who had
no particular interest in liberalizing Puerto Rican politics,
either because they were averse to further embroiling the
United States in overseas affairs or because they feared that
destabilizing the status quo would undermine business
and strategic interests.27 Moreover, without a vote to trade
on the House Floor, he had little leverage with voting
Representatives, who had their own legislative agendas
and constituencies to tend to. During a 1928 committee
hearing on suffrage, Córdova Dávila told the chairman
of the Insular Affairs Committee that while a handful of
Members, including Representatives Charles Underhill of
Massachusetts, Ralph Gilbert of Kentucky, and Frederick Dallinger of Massachusetts, took an interest in the
problems of Puerto Rico, most Members did not. “I do
not mean to seriously reflect on you gentlemen, and I am
not blaming you for that,” Córdova Dávila told Chairman
Edgar Kiess of Pennsylvania. “You have big problems,
national and international, and you have to pay attention
to your other duties. You have a congressional district
to serve and you have no time to spare for consideration
of the important and intricate problems of Porto Rico.
It is unquestionable that we are more qualified than you
to handle our own affairs. At all events, the right to the
control of our affairs is inherently and necessarily ours.”28
On April 4, 1932, Córdova Dávila submitted a letter
of resignation to the Speaker to accept an appointment
as associate justice of the supreme court of Puerto
Rico.29 He formally resigned his seat on April 11 and
departed for Puerto Rico. One of his colleagues, Resident
Commissioner Camilo Osias of the Philippines, said
the Puerto Rican judge “endeared himself by his genial
nature and gentlemanly qualities. He served his people
efficiently and faithfully.”30 Republican Joseph Hooper of
Michigan described Córdova Dávila as “a distinguished
man, distinguished in his profession as a lawyer, in his love
of service to literature, and in the arduous work which he
performed here on behalf of his beloved island.”31 A month
after Córdova Dávila left office, the House approved the
Senate version of a measure he had authored, changing
the island’s official name from “Porto Rico” to “Puerto
Rico” to do “justice to the history, language, and traditions
of the island.”32 He served on the court for about five years
and was the voice of caution and compromise in May
1936 when the island was rattled by a wave of school
strikes and shutdowns. “Anarchy and demagogy never
provided a foundation for a happy and prosperous people,”
he noted.33 Poor health forced Córdova Dávila to resign his
post.34 He died December 3, 1938, in Condado, Puerto
Rico, and was interred in Fournier Cemetery in San Juan.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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