Distinguished Chairman and honored committee members:

I join with others here in celebrating the victory won with the withdrawal of the U.S. Navy from Vieques last month. This is a victory in the fight against U.S. colonial rule over Puerto Rico. It strengthens the hand of working people and the oppressed around the world fighting against exploitation and imperialist domination.

The success of this struggle is testimony to the tenacity and resistance of the Puerto Rican fishermen, workers, students, and others who for more than six decades have fought to get the U.S. military out of their land in Vieques. It demonstrates that it’s possible to stand up to the power of U.S. imperialism and win. And it shows that imperialism today is weaker than ever, not stronger.

The battle over Vieques highlights one fact above all: that Puerto Rico remains a U.S. colony.  
 
We face a common enemy
Workers and farmers in the United States have absolutely no stake in Washington’s colonial domination of Puerto Rico. It is only the tiny handful of billionaire ruling families in this country who benefit from the exploitation of Puerto Rico’s labor, land, and natural resources. The people of Puerto Rico and working people in the United States face a common enemy: those wealthy families and their representatives in Washington, regardless of who may be in the White House.

A successful struggle for independence is in the interests, not only of the people of Puerto Rico, but of the great majority of people in the United States. As long as the Puerto Rican people have the U.S. boot on their necks, labor in this country will not be able to throw the source of exploitation off our backs either.

The U.S. government has used Puerto Rico as a springboard for launching assaults on countries around the world—from its invasion of Grenada in 1983 to the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, to the war of plunder in Iraq this year. And it has used Puerto Rican youth as cannon fodder in all these imperialist wars. The opposition by Puerto Rican youth to the U.S. draft in previous wars and to the use of university campuses by the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) has set an example for young people in the United States.

Today, as the U.S. rulers seize the spoils of occupation in Iraq at the expense of their imperialist rivals in France and Germany, they have accelerated their campaign for “regime change” in Iran, including aggressive “inspections” of nuclear plants, economic sanctions, and, if these fail, possible military strikes on those facilities. Washington has also stepped up its threats against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under the banner of nuclear “nonproliferation.”  
 
‘War on terrorism’ is not new policy
This course of aggression is not a new policy, nor did it begin on September 11, 2001. It is the real face of American imperialism—the same imperialism that entered the world stage a century ago by grabbing Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, and Guam. Today, Washington’s so-called war on terrorism is simply a justification for using military might around the world in an effort to salvage the declining imperialist world order.

This “war on terrorism” is also a cover for the U.S. employers’ assault on workers and farmers at home. Under the banner of “homeland defense”—which began under the Clinton administration with the creation for the first time of a domestic military command—the U.S. rulers are increasingly militarizing the country. They want to get us to accept the regular deployment of heavily armed National Guard troops in the subways; the military and police checkpoints at tunnels and bridges; the interrogations at the airports, including “no-fly” blacklists.

The selective “registration” of immigrants from Middle Eastern and South Asian countries, and the mass deportations that have just been announced—all these are part of the employers’ preparations for cracking down on the broader working-class resistance they know is coming. So is the creation of a U.S. concentration camp in Guantánamo—on land occupied against the will of the Cuban people—where more than 600 men and boys are being jailed indefinitely as “enemy combatants” with no charges and no rights, under subhuman conditions.

In face of the deepening depression in the United States and worldwide, the U.S. employers are driving brutally to speed up production, lay off workers, erode health and safety on the job, drive down wages, and cut social benefits. This has led a growing number of workers and farmers to resist the employer offensive, and to refuse to subordinate their interests to the bosses’ “homeland security” and “national unity” demands. Today, hundreds of meat packers are on strike against Tyson Foods in Wisconsin, fighting attempts to cut their retirement pensions and wages. Some 24,000 General Electric workers across the country have been mobilizing to defend their medical benefits. And in the coalfields, miners have been waging a fight against new government coal dust regulations that will cost the lives of countless miners.  
 
Free Puerto Rican political prisoners
Mr. Chairman,

Some 2.7 million Puerto Ricans are part of the working class in the United States. They face systematic discrimination and second-class status, as do Blacks, Chicanos, and other oppressed nationalities in the country. U.S. colonial rule of Puerto Rico reinforces racist prejudice and every form of reaction in the United States, from attacks on affirmative action, to anti-immigrant terror by la migra, to police brutality, like the recent police killings in New York City of Ousmane Zango, an immigrant from Burkina Faso, and of city worker Alberta Spruill—acts that have sparked protests.

The colonial domination of Puerto Rico gives Washington a freer hand to attack the rights of working people. Today, five Puerto Rican patriots remain locked up in U.S. prisons because of expressing ideas and carrying out actions in support of Puerto Rico’s independence. They are Oscar López, Juan Segarra Palmer, Haydée Beltrán, Carlos Alberto Torres, and Antonio Camacho Negrón, who was rearrested two months ago. Some of them have been jailed for almost a quarter of a century, making them among the longest-held political prisoners in the world. I join with others here to demand: Release them now!

Likewise, we demand the U.S. government free the five framed-up Cuban revolutionaries who are serving draconian sentences of up to a double life term. Their real “crime” was obtaining information on counterrevolutionary groups that, operating from U.S. territory, have a long record of organizing violent attacks against Cuba, with the full knowledge and complicity of Washington. The FBI’s wiretapping of the phones of these five Cubans and the surreptitious searches of their homes, the denial of their right to a fair trial, the use of “conspiracy” charges—these are the same kind of frame-up methods the U.S. government has used against Puerto Rican independence fighters, and which it is pushing to use increasingly against working people in the United States.

The successful struggle to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques—which will not be over until the U.S. government hands control of those lands to the Puerto Rican people—also puts a spotlight on how, in the name of fighting “drug trafficking” and “terrorism,” Washington has been expanding its construction of semisecret bases and its military intervention throughout Latin America: in Colombia, Ecuador, and the Triple Border area of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina.  
 
Example of Cuban Revolution
Mr. Chairman,

The people of Puerto Rico and working people in the United States are often told by our common oppressor in Washington that it’s useless to struggle, that independence will only lead to ruin. But the example of revolutionary Cuba proves that to be a lie.

The workers and farmers of Cuba have shown it is possible to fight and win genuine independence from U.S. domination. The socialist road they have freely chosen is the course that has made it possible to achieve sovereignty and dignity.

The U.S. rulers have never forgiven the Cuban people for having the audacity to establish the first free territory of the Americas and to provide an example to working people everywhere. For 44 years they have carried a relentless drive to overthrow the Cuban Revolution—including a mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs, a threatened invasion and nuclear war in 1962, acts of sabotage, assassination attempts against Cuban leaders, and an economic war that continues to this day.

Through their determination, political consciousness, and organization, Cuban working people have defeated all these attacks and have remained fearless. What has kept Washington from launching any subsequent military assault is its knowledge that, unlike its invasion of Iraq, any assault on Cuba would lead to enormous U.S. casualties and a huge political price.

Cuba has consistently championed Puerto Rico’s fight for independence, setting an example of selfless internationalism. Revolutionary Cuba continues to point to the road forward for Puerto Rico as well as for working people in the United States and worldwide.

The condemnation by this committee of Washington’s colonial rule of Puerto Rico will serve the interests of the vast majority of the people of the United States and those fighting throughout the world for national self-determination and for the future of humanity.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, for the opportunity to present these views before you today.
 
 
Related article:
Pro-independence forces condemn colonial status of Puerto Rico at UN  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home