DÁVILA, Félix Córdova

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

Filson Historical Society

• House Committee - Insular Affairs