f
194
195
The Journal of ParapfymtSgfed For Release 2003/09/10
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)^g0^g)
,
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 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 stances
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).
i0 This section on Puerto Rican parapsychology
partly summarizes information
contained in an article by Alvarado (1979a).
in the Ibero-American World
The
theoredcal
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 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 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
8c 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
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