INVESTIGATION OF POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN PUERTO RICO FRIDAY, JUNE 11, 1943 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON INSULAR AFFAIRS, San Juan, P. R. The subcommittee met at 10 a. m. at the Condado Hotel, Hon. C. Jasper Bell (chairman) presiding. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please come to order. I believe our first witness this morning is Mr. Velarde. SWORN STATEMENT OF JOSE ACOSTA VELARDE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LAND AUTHORITY The CHAIRMAN. State your name, Mr. Velarde, to the reporter, and your address. Mr. VELARDE. My name is Jose Acosta Velarde. The CHAIRMAN. Do you hold any office under the insular government? Mr. VELARDE. Yes; I am executive director of the land authority. The CHAIRMAN. Is that an elective or appointive office? Mr. VELARDE. That is appointive. The CHAIRMAN. By whom, and when were you appointed? Mr. VELARDE. I was appointed about the 23d of January 1942, by Governor Tugwell, and confirmed by the Senate of Puerto Rico. The CHAIRMAN. Will you give the committee a short biography of yourself? Mr. VELARDE. Well, I graduated in 1910 from high school in Ponce. Then I went to Pennsylvania State College. I stayed there for a year, when I decided to go to Louisiana to study sugar manufacturing in the Louisiana State University. I stayed there for nearly 2 years, when I had to leave on account of financial difficulties. I came to work in a sugar factory. I worked consecutively for 30 years in the sugar business, in the sugar factories. I was at the sugar factories when I was appointed for this position. I have always been very keen on these matters of land tenure in Puerto Rico, concerning our life problem, I might say, and I suppose that was the only reason why they appointed me. The CHAIRMAN. In what capacity were you working in the sugar factories? Mr. VELARDE. I was superintendent of fabrication at Central San Vicente and also at Central Carmen. 691 I was superintendent of fabrication for those two factories, superintending chemist, we might rather say. The CHAIRMAN. How long had you been superintending chemist at those two places? Mr. VELARDE. Fourteen years. The CHAIRMAN. Now, will you go ahead and tell the committee what you have done and what you plan to do as executive director of the land authority? Mr. VELARDE. I will ask permission of the committee to say something regarding Mr. Roig's statement the other day about the methods employed by the land authority in buying land. Well, we make appraisals. The division of appraisals of the land authority appraises the land. Then we make an offer. After we appraised Mr. Roig's land, the two farms, Fermina and Comuna, we made an offer for both. I thought that we might possibly come to an agreement on one of the farms, so I said afterward we would buy Comuna, and we agreed to buy Fermina. The CHAIRMAN. How many acres in Fermina? Roig asked, $60 an acre. We bought it for the price Mr. The CHAIRMAN. What kind of land was that? Mr. VELARDE. Well, it was not very rich land, but it was very good land. The CHAIRMAN. Sugar land? Mr. VELARDE. There had been some sugar in that some time ago, but there was no sugar planted in it. The yields of sugarcane on that are not so good, and, of course, under restrictions, people generally plant their best land and the lands which are not so good are left out. They planted some other things. The CHAIRMAN. What had this land been planted in recently? Mr. VELARDE. Some had been planted, or had been leased to small farmers, we might say, and they were being planted in food crops. The CHAIRMAN. Now, what kind of food crops? Mr: VELARDE. Yams and such things as that. The CHAIRMAN. Was it level land or hilly land? Mr. VELARDE. Hilly land; the farm we bought. The CHAIRMAN. And you paid how much for it? Mr. VELARDE. Fifteen-thousand-and-some-odd dollars. So we finally agreed to buy this land. The appraisal showed $52 and he asked $60, and I finally gave $60. When the deeds were assigned, I started negotiations for the other farm. I had offered him once $34,000 for both. I have here all the correspondence with Mr. Roig, which might disprove his judgment of our methods. There has been so much correspondence back and forth on this matter. I am looking for the letter where I offered $34,000 for both farms. The CHAIRMAN. For both farms? Mr. VELARDE. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. How much would that be an acre? Mr. VELARDE. Just excuse me. We paid for Fermina $15,840, and I had offered him thirty-one. The CHAIRMAN. How many acres in Fermina? 240? |