BY SETH GALINSKY

LARES, Puerto Rico - Thousands of people gathered here under a scorching sun September 23 to commemorate the 1868 armed uprising against Spanish colonial rule known as Grito de Lares.

Although the 1868 rebellion was crushed by Spain, independence supporters have turned the date into an annual event to rally opposition to U.S. domination of the island, which replaced the Spanish colonizers. This year, independence leaders called for a new campaign to win freedom for the colony.

Puerto Rico has no voting representative in the U.S. Congress, but U.S. laws apply here. While Spanish is the first language of the overwhelming majority, English is used by all U.S. courts on the island.

Javier Ramos Rosa, 20, said he came to the event "because it's correct. It is our right to have full independence. But they have not allowed us that."

Junior high and high school students, government workers, and some factory workers skipped work or school to attend.

Three events were held at the main plaza in Lares. The largest event was organized by the National Hostosiano Conference, a coalition that includes the main pro-independence groups with the exception of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP). The Nationalist Party held an event in the morning, and the PIP later in the day.

"Take back the bases and give us back the imprisoned patriots," proclaimed a large banner next to the speaker's platform at the Hostosiano Conference rally.

The U.S. Navy has its most important Caribbean naval base in Puerto Rico -Roosevelt Roads Naval Station - which is one of the largest in the world. The base, which includes facilities on the main island, occupies two-thirds of the island of Vieques - much of which it uses for live ammunition practice.

While Washington proclaims the right to exercise its military might on the island, 15 Puerto Ricans active in the fight for independence are being held in U.S. prisons under extremely harsh sentences. Two of them are accused of involvement in the 1983 Wells Fargo holdup in Hartford, Connecticut, carried out by the Macheteros, who used the money to buy toys for children and finance their political activities. The other 13 were arrested in the Chicago area, accused of membership in the Armed Forces of National Liberation and convicted of seditious conspiracy.

A headache for imperialism
Noel Colón, president of the Hostosiano Conference, told the crowd, "We need to deepen unity of all the anticolonial forces that, in spite of their differences, agree on the necessity of an immediate and complete decolonization."

Colón noted that the United Nations Commission on Decolonization is expected to issue a report within the next two years that will include a recommendation on the status of Puerto Rico. Also, Colón said, 1998 is the 100-year anniversary of the U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico.

The independence movement, he said, has "created a headache for imperialism." He pointed to the 100,000-strong Nación en Marcha (The Nation Marching) event last July protesting the meeting of U.S. governors in Fajardo, opposition to continued U.S. military occupation of Vieques, and "solidarity with the Cuban revolution."

Juan Mari Bra's, a longtime leader of the independence fight, read a declaration "From Lares to the World" that had been approved unanimously by the Hostosiano Congress.

The fight for independence "cannot be postponed anymore," he said. "We are calling for active solidarity with our cause. There is no other way to help us except by getting out from under this suffocating colonialism."

Mari Bra's and Colón projected an international campaign to get governments and organizations around the world to attend the next hearings of the UN Commission to back independence and to mobilize people in Puerto Rico. "This could be our last opportunity to present our case to the United Nations," Colón said.

At the beginning of the program, the organizers played a tape recording from Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, who is being sought by U.S. authorities for his involvement in the Wells Fargo robbery in Hartford. Ojeda Ríos criticized the Hostosiano conference for allying with the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), which supports the status quo, in organizing the Nación en Marcha. He joined Hostosiano criticism of the PIP for backing the Young bill in the U.S. Congress, named for its sponsor, U.S. representative Dan Young, Republican from Alaska.

Debate on plebiscite bill
The bill calls for a plebiscite organized by the U.S. government to determine the status of Puerto Rico. Currently Puerto Rico is called a Free Associated State or commonwealth. The Young bill calls for a series of plebiscites to decide the future status of Puerto Rico: statehood, independence, or some form of the status quo.

The Puerto Rican Independence Party is backing the Young bill, claiming that there has been a shift in the U.S. Congress and that many congresspeople now recognize that Puerto Rico is a colony. The bill is also pushed by the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP), led by Puerto Rico governor Pedro Rosselló.

In the week after the Grito de Lares, Rule Committee Chairman Gerald Solomon, (R- NY) succeeded in adding a clause that if Puerto Rico becomes a state, it must first adopt English as its official language, including requiring public school instruction in English. This clause effectively killed the bill. Such a requirement is so immensely unpopular in Puerto Rico that pro-statehood Resident Commissioner Carlos Romero Barceló was forced to ask for its withdrawal.

The PIP event was a campaign rally for the party's candidates for governor, the Puerto Rican senate, mayoral races, and resident commissioner, Puerto Ricós nonvoting representatives to the U.S. Congress.

The main groups in the independence fight view the PIP's activities around the plebiscite bill as a mistake at best. The New Puerto Rican Independence Movement (NMIP), which belongs to the Hostosiano Conference, cited both the PIP's support to the Young bill and its refusal to join the Nación en Marcha demonstration as reasons to withdraw its previous support to PIP candidates this year. The PIP organized its own event during the U.S. governors' meeting in Fajardo, which drew more than 25,000.

"The Young bill is meant to strengthen the annexationists," noted Julio Muriente, president of the NMIP, in an interview. "The big problem is that it is a unilateral decolonization carried out by the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Congress acts as judge, jury, and witness." But the U.S. government has no right to deny independence to Puerto Rico, to place conditions on how independence is carried out, or to annex the island, the independence activist stressed.

In a column in Claridad, a pro-independence weekly, Muriente said that while the NMIP was not going to endorse candidates, it understood why many independence supporters would end up voting for the Popular Democratic Party. The PPD opposes statehood and independence, arguing that currently Puerto Rico has the best of both worlds, the right to U.S. citizenship and travel to the United States, while maintaining its own culture and traditions. The PPD joined the Nation in March after Governor Rosselló stated that Puerto Rico is not a nation.

A hot topic in the press here, which was also discussed at Lares, is the upcoming phasing out of Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code. This is a U.S. law that exempts U.S. corporations in Puerto Rico that meet certain conditions from paying taxes. Tax exemptions have been in effect for 75 years, put in place as part of U.S. president Harry Truman's Operation Bootstrap.

Since 1970, when further tax exemptions were implemented, 2,000 factories have opened on the island, employing 130,000 workers who do everything from manufacturing computer diskettes to packing Star-Kist tuna.

The largest beneficiary has been the pharmaceutical industry. One half of prescription drugs consumed in the United States are produced in Puerto Rico. In 1995 alone $6 billion dollars in medicines were exported from the island, 25 percent of its gross domestic product.

Washington hopes to collect $7 billion over the next decade by removing the exemption. Some people fear that without the exemption many factories will close and new investment will be slowed.

Unemployment in this country of 3.7 million inhabitants is officially at 14 percent, almost triple the rate in the United States, although lower than in much of Latin America. Average per capita income is $7,500, half of the average in Mississippi, the poorest U.S. state, but higher than all of Latin America, except Argentina. About a third of the residents of the island collect food stamps.

Governor Rosselló backed the elimination of Section 936, which is to be phased out by the year 2006. He argues that by giving up the subsidy, he can convince the U.S. government that Puerto Rico can accept the responsibilities of being the 51st state, without special aid.

The main problem, Muriente said, is that "the U.S. put the exemptions in place and now they take them away" in another unilateral action.

Discussion on independence
While pro-independence sentiment in Puerto Rico is in a minority, it has a big impact on politics. Many of those who say they are opposed are often attracted to the independentistas at the same time. At the Grito de Lares celebration two students told this reporter they were against independence.

"We're not ready for it," said Noemí Ramírez, 22. "The free market gives us a lot of things. Without the United States we would starve to death. Besides, Puerto Ricans don't like to work."

But Ramirez and her classmate Francesca San Miguel, 21, came to the Grito de Lares celebration this year because "we like to listen to their speeches."

Abismael Gonzalez, 31, works at a U.S.-owned pharmaceutical plant. "Every country has the right to be independent," he said, noting that where he works most people are for maintaining the status quo. "What happens is the government tries to make people afraid." Gonzalez is not worried about the suspension of Section 936. "What we need is to make our own economy."

Elsa Tirado, 20, a student at the University of Puerto Rico, disagrees with those who say Puerto Rico couldn't survive if it were independent.

"If the people are united we can't be broken," she said. "But since we're divided they pass right over us."

"We have plenty of land to farm. The problem is that we've been raised under the colonial system."

Tirado lives in Vieques. "There are parts of Vieques that I've only seen once, from up on a hill, because the U.S. Navy occupies it. It was the most beautiful spot and the most destroyed. The U.S. must leave."  
 
 
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