Santiago Iglesias

Santiago Iglesias

Santiago Iglesias Pantín (born February 22, 1872 in La Coruña , Spain , †  December 5, 1939 in Washington, DC ) was a Puerto Rican politician . Between 1933 and 1939 he represented Puerto Rico as a delegate ( Resident Commissioner ) in the House of Representatives of the United States .

Career

Santiago Iglesias attended the public schools in his home country and then completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter. He then went to Cuba , where he joined the labor and trade union movement. Between 1889 and 1896 he was secretary of the local Workingmen Trades Circle . He later moved to Puerto Rico, where he published three workers' newspapers at different times between 1898 and 1925. Because of his advocacy of the labor movement, he was severely hostile by their opponents and temporarily imprisoned. In 1901 he was appointed by Samuel Gompers , President of the American Federation of Labor , to set up the union's subsidiaries in Cuba and Puerto Rico. In 1915 he founded the Partido Socialista in Puerto Rico. Iglesias served in the Puerto Rico Senate between 1917 and 1933 . From 1925 to 1933 he was also secretary of the Pan-American Federation of Labor . In 1908 he applied unsuccessfully for the position of Congress Delegate from Puerto Rico. He was a member of the Coalición , in which his Socialist Party was absorbed.

In the congressional election of 1932 Iglesias was elected as a non-voting delegate to the US House of Representatives in Washington, where he succeeded José Lorenzo Pesquera on March 4, 1933 . After re-election in 1936, he was able to exercise this mandate until his death on December 5, 1939. During this time he was a member of the Labor Committee, the Agriculture Committee and the Committee on Island Affairs. He successfully worked to ensure that some points of the New Deal program of the federal government under President Franklin D. Roosevelt were also implemented in Puerto Rico. In 1936 he was wounded in an assassination attempt.

He and his wife Justa Pastora Bocanegra had eleven children.

Web links

• Santiago Iglesias in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)