PARAPSYCHOLOGY IN THE IBERO-AMERICAN WORLD, PUERTO RICO

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: STARGATE
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP96-00792R000700730001-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 4, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 1, 2000
• Sequence Number: 1
• Content Type: OPEN

fro ec For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000700730001-0
The Jou arasyc o ogy Parapsychology in the Ibero-American World 195
minished by increasing communication and collaboration with for-
eign parapsychologists.
Early psychical research in Puerto Rico was strongly influenced
by the nineteenth-century Spiritualist movement that had also
spread to other countries. Mediumistic seances in which raps and
communication with the spirits were common drew attention mostly
from people with a religious interest.
It was perhaps this influence that led Agapito Morales to publish
in 1904 a more critical examination of these phenomena. In his
booklet Breve Tratado de Hipnotismo, Magnetismo, Espiritismo y Suges-
toterapia, Morales contended that all those occurrences could take
place without assuming the action of spirit agencies. He interpreted
possession as being autosuggestion and attributed paranormal phe-
nomena to our own psychic faculties. He considered that all of the
experiments made until today demonstrate that there is an invisible
force in our being that is capable, for instance, of playing a guitar,
lifting a table, or lifting our own bodies. According to him this force
is under our control. He also believed that mediumistic communi-
cation could be explained by means of telepathy between the me-
dium and the sitter.
Another major influence in the formation of a more empirical
and critical approach to parapsychology was the work of Francisco
Ponte, a dentist who became president of the Puerto Rican Feder-
ation of Spiritists. Ponte visited Europe in 1912 to familiarize him-
self with the work of several Spiritualistic centers, as well as psychi-
cal research centers. He had had the opportunity to participate in
mediumistic seances in Italy with famous mediums such as Lucia
Sordi and Eusapia Palladino. During these seances he witnessed
manifestations of apparent telekinesis and materializations (Alva-
rado, 1987; Ponte, 1914).
Later Ponte returned to Puerto Rico and tried to reproduce the
same phenomena with local mediums. He reported some of his find-
ings on materializations of body parts during seances to Walter
Franklin Prince, then Research Officer of the ASPR. Ponte's work
was important because of the critical and empirical approach he
brought to his research on seance phenomena (Alvarado, 1979a).
"This section on Puerto Rican parapsychology partly summarizes information
contained in an article by Alvarado (1979a).
The theoretical ideas of Ralph U. Sierra are also interesting.
Sierra, who was interested in the psychology of ESP, believed that
to develop telepathy it was necessary to develop first an internal
state of tranquility so that the electrical activity of the brain did not
interfere with the telepathic process (Sierra, 1966).
Some of the most important developments, however, took place
during the last two centuries. At the educational level, it is impor-
tant to note the work of Celinda Madera who, during the 1970s,
offered a series of courses and lectures at different campuses of the
University of Puerto Rico. Madera's courses focused on the human-
istic and transpersonal aspects of psi. She herself had received train-
ing at Duke University's Parapsychology Laboratory (Alvarado,
1979a).
In 1914, Nestor A. Rodriguez Escudero, a lawyer, published a
series of essays about parapsychology and Spiritualism in his book
Los Caminos de Dios. He discussed a great variety of paranormal phe-
nomena. His main objective was to show that parapsychology dem-
onstrates the spiritual aspect of man (Rodriguez Escudero, 1974).
Another development in 1977 was the creation of the Instituto
de Investigaciones Psicofisicas at the University of Puerto Rico, May-
aguez campus. Founded to conduct investigations in parapsychology
and related areas, the Institute carried out studies of various param-
eters of Kirlian photography and of the effects of hypnosis on ESP.
However, these research investigations were never made available
for publication. During this period Alfonso Martinez Taboas began
to publish a newsletter Explorando lo Paranormal, a semipopular mag-
azine later edited by Carlos Alvarado starting in 1976.
Martinez Taboas and Carlos Alvarado wrote articles on parapsy-
chology in Spanish for the Spanish journal Psi Comunicacion; they
also published in other journals. Their articles covered a wide range
of topics. Among these, Alvarado wrote on experimental studies of
OBEs (1976), historical precedents of the so-called psychic discov-
eries behind the Iron Curtain (1978), the use of historical knowl-
edge (1979b), and on J. B. Rhine (1980). Martinez Taboas published
a review of the problem of repeatability in parapsychology (1979),
critiques of psychological and physiological concepts of poltergeist
research (1977, 1980, 1984; Martinez Taboas & Alvarado, 1981),
and a discussion of the concept of parsimony applied to parapsy-
chology (1983).
The work of Martinez Taboas and Alvarado has been very im-
portant in the effort to bridge the language barrier between the
Spanish researcher and the non-Spanish-speaking researcher. This
Approved For Release 2001/03/07 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000700730001-0
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