The JounJWm&otW  ReleaSe  2001/03/07  :   C|A.RDP96-00792R000700730001-0 
SJ  j   •„  Parapsychology  in  the  Ibero-American  World 
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minished  by  increasing  communication  and  collaboration  with  for- 
eign parapsychologists. 
Puerto  Rico10 
Early  psychical  research  in  Puerto  Rico  was  strongly  influenced 
by  the  nineteenth-century  Spiritualist  movement  that  had  also 
spread  to  other  countries.  Mediumistic  stances  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  stances  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  stance  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  19/4,  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  Psicoflsicas  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  T*aboas  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 
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