cy - 194° The Journal of Parapsebplogved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000700790964!4) in the Ibero-American World 195 minished by increasing communication and collaboration with for- eign parapsychologists. Puerto Rico’® Early psychical research in Puerto Rico was strongly influenced by the nineteenth-century Spiritualist movement that had also spread to other countries. Mediumistic séances 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, Esfnritismo 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 séances in Italy with famous mediums such as Lucia Sordi and Eusapia Palladino. During these séances 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 séances to Waiter 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 séance phenomena (Alvarado, 1979a). © This section on Puerto Rican parapsychology partly summarizes information contained in an article by Alvarado (1979a). i 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 1974, 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- agiiez 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 Comunicacién; 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 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000700750001-8
i 196 The Journal of Parapsychology is particularly true of Alvarado’s book reviews (1984a, 1985) and his discussion of language-barrier problems in parapsychology (1989a). Moreover, Alvarado, a former research assistant at the Division of Parapsychology (now the Division of Personality Studies) at the Uni- versity of Virginia, has maintained a constant flow of information on parapsychological activities in Latin America to research centers in the United States for the last eight years. In addition, among the Ibero-American parapsychologists, he is the one who has published most extensively in the English-language journals and the only one ever to be elected a member of the Board of Directors of the Para- psychological Association. Mexico Mexico has been kno@] _ mushroom or peyotl, a pi an altered state of conscio for a long time as the land of the sacred as Maria Sabina and Dofia Pad@ita have been gttensively investi- gated by Stanley Krippner and ~ parapsychologists (Krippner & Villoldo, 1986). Although Mexico has been a md a parapsychologists from foreign countrijg@psychical research has not flourished there as it has in other coyffies such as Argentina and ern border of the United States ag American cultural influence in gn more parapsychological search centers than an}¥y here else in the world, very little is kng countries such as pazil. For example, the writings omM@uevedo are well known in }#s in generally comes from p Early ef c frame- work in co began in 1919 with the isolated efforts ouch re- searcher i echer, the firg® exico Page echer was a very well-known and respected physician in the i Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00792R000700750001-8 Parapsychology in the [bero-American World 197 Mexican medical community as well as in political circles. In the course of his \reer he delivered speechps before two presidents of Mexico, Diaz aM Obregén (Allison, 194B)."* A respected Wyember of the medigfl profession, Pagenstecher said he had been materialist for forgf years when he had his first encounter with the Mgranormal. It wg#during a hypnosis treatment of one of his patients\vho had insogfnia that he discovered the re- markable psychical gift@of Maria R@fes de Zierold. Pagenstecher be- gan a series of psychonitggric expeg#ments with her in 1919. The re- sults were so striking thay he br PF oht them to the attention of the Mexican medical society, hiclf Fappointed a commission to verify them. Pagenstecher also d fF to write to the ASPR and send some ofthe results he had@@ptained. The results induced Walter Franklin Prince, Research & icer of the ASPR, to go to Mexico to investigate the case. After geeMes of experimental sittings with Zier- old, Prince was so impres ai wit the results that he decided to pub- lish them in the Journal Bf the AMPR in 1920 (Pagenstecher, 1920). Prince later published gMfother pa\ger in which he discussed the ex- periments in which hgfparticipatet (Prince, 1921b). Moreover, the ASPR published a m@Mograph by PQgenstecher entitled Past Events Seership: A Study of Pg Schometry (Pagermecher, 1922). According to Wi fiam Roll (1967),¥Pagenstecher contributed to two major areas ing Pxapsychology: (He was], as fale fas I know the first inve&igator to use hypnosis as a means to cultiate ESP in a gifted subject... @Pagenstecher's studies were also, I believ@the first to indicate that the Qparapsychological) associa- tion of objeg may be governed by the same gws that govern the (psy- chological) @sociation of ideas. (p. 238) Pagenst@fher showed great courage in unddgtaking these exper- iments. H@feopardized his professional standingas well as his med- ical practfe by trying to substantiate the claims fd Zierold’s psychic abilities #f he Medical Commission appointed to irf(estigate the case was sk@tical of the reported phenomena. Fortunat@y, however, the Comn@§sion’s leading experts obtained successful reQults in the ex- perimffhts in which they participated (Gomezharpe de Trevifo, 1990). "' Obregén was a revolutionary military leader, later President of Mexico. Waiter Franklin Prince (1921a) relates an interesting psychic experience witnessed by Ob- regén, about a precognitive dream Obregén's brother had about the death of their mother. Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : cia. RDP96-00792R000700750001-8