Cancel Miranda was one of the five independence fighters who spent more than a quarter-century in U.S. prisons following armed protests they carried out in Washington against U.S. colonial rule. Released in 1979 through an international defense campaign, he is today one of the best-known leaders of the Puerto Rican independence movement.

The translation is by the Militant.

BY RAFAEL CANCEL MIRANDA  
I want to thank you for the invitation to take part in the world festival in Algeria. It would have been a great honor and joy for me to have been able to attend. I want to extend my greetings to the people of Algeria, who carried out such a heroic struggle for their national liberation, a struggle that was victorious and that served as an example to other peoples.

I also send my greetings to those attending this festival. You are the hope that we can have a better world. By fighting today, you sow the seeds of our own future. It's necessary, as we know, to struggle against the globalization of oppression and exploitation. You have the power to win. The very existence of all humanity hangs on the outcome of this struggle.

The international mafia disguised in the clothes of big businessmen is willing to put our very existence up for sale. I understand you because I too, when I was young, along with other Puerto Rican youth, undertook this struggle for the national liberation of my Puerto Rican nation. Although I spent 28 years of my youth in the prisons of the empire, I do not regret having fought for the independence of Puerto Rico.

On May 12, 1898, the U.S. Navy shelled San Juan, our capital city, killing 100 Puerto Rican men and women, and destroying buildings and cathedrals. On July 25 of that year they invaded. Since then we have been a militarily occupied country, a colony of the U.S. Anglo-Saxon imperialist power. And since then we have resisted and fought for our national liberation. The imperialists have carried out massacres against us, such as on March 21, 1937, when they murdered people in cold blood. I know that massacre because my parents survived that brutal attack in which they killed 21 and wounded 200 people, including women and children.

They have carried out other massacres. On October 30, 1950, there was an insurrection for the national liberation of Puerto Rico, during which many were killed and many more imprisoned--among them Pedro Albizu Campos, who is for us what Ben Bella and other Algerian patriots have been for Algeria.

Besides controlling our lives socio-politically, economically, and militarily, they use our youth as cannon fodder for their imperialist wars. They used us against our brothers and sisters in Korea, in Vietnam, in the Dominican Republic, in Panama, in Haiti. In one of those wars they wanted to use me against the Korean people. I refused to go, so they removed me from high school and sent me to jail in Tallahassee, Florida.

On March 1, 1954, together with Lolita Lebrón, Andrés Figueroa Cordero, and Irving Flores Rodríguez, I went to Washington and we fired shots in the U.S. Congress, which holds all power over the Puerto Rican people. In this way we drew the attention of the world to our colonial situation. For that action we spent many years in U.S. prisons, until the struggle of many people--including, perhaps, the parents of many of you--forced U.S. imperialism to free us unconditionally. That was a victory, thanks to your parents. It was also a victory because we imposed conditions on the jailers, not them on us.  
 
'U.S. Navy out of Vieques'
Today, many Puerto Rican men and women are being abused by the forces of the U.S. Navy--and by the U.S. imperialist courts imposed on Puerto Rico--for defending the right to life, peace, and justice for the Puerto Rican people of Vieques. Right now there are many people locked up--among them many university students and young workers--in the U.S. prisons on Puerto Rican territory.

In recent days, the people of Vieques voted overwhelmingly to stop the bombing of Vieques and to get the Yankee Navy out of Vieques now. The "democratic" response by this Navy and the U.S. government is that they continue to bomb us at this very moment. Apparently they respect so-called democracy only when they can control it.

I want those of you at this festival to know that at this very moment there are people carrying out civil disobedience inside the firing range of the U.S. Navy, defending the right of the Puerto Rican people of Vieques to live in peace and justice. Since I believe, like Fidel Castro, that we must globalize international solidarity, I ask you, as comrades, to extend your solidarity with the struggle in Vieques--which is the struggle of all--in whatever form you think necessary. Vieques is where they train the criminal forces of war that could attack any of your countries at any moment.

I send you warm revolutionary greetings.

Thank you and pa'lante [Forward]

Your comrade,
Rafael Cancel Miranda
 
 
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