Santiago Iglesias

Santiago Iglesias Pantín ( born February 22, 1872 in La Coruna, 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 common schools and then completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter. He then went to Cuba, where he joined the labor and trade union movement. He was 1889-1896 secretary of the local Workingmen Trades Circle. He later moved to Puerto Rico where he at different times published three labor papers 1898-1925. Because of its commitment to the labor movement, he was strongly attacked by their opponents and at times imprisoned. In 1901 he was commissioned by Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, with the establishment of subsidiary organizations of this union in Cuba and Puerto Rico. In 1915, he founded the Partido Socialista in Puerto Rico. Between 1917 and 1933, Iglesias was sitting in the Senate of Puerto Rico. From 1925 to 1933 he was secretary of the Pan - American Federation of Labor. In 1908, he competed unsuccessfully for even the position of the Congress delegates from Puerto Rico. He was a member of the Coalition, in which his Socialist Party had risen.

In the congressional elections of 1932, Iglesias was elected as a non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, where he became the successor of José Lorenzo Pesquera on March 4, 1933. After a re-election in 1936 he was able to exercise this office until his death on December 5, 1939. During this time he was a member of the Committee on Labour, the Committee on Agriculture and the Committee on insular affairs. He successfully lobbied to ensure that some aspects of the New Deal program of the federal government were realized under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Puerto Rico. In 1936 he was wounded in an assassination attempt.

With his wife Justa Pastora Bocanegra he had eleven children.