"They are the ones who for the last 42 years have refused to recognize the right of our Cuban brothers and sisters to forge their own destiny, who scarcely a few weeks ago tried to strangle the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, and who allow the Palestinian people to be massacred--all in the name of democracy. They are the ones who through brute force seek to impose their hegemony around the globe."

González, general secretary of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, was part of a broad pro-independence delegation, both from Puerto Rico and from the United States, that forcefully brought their message to the in ternational platform offered by the hearings of the UN Special Committee on Decolonization.

Several speakers thanked Cuba for its role in championing the cause of Puerto Rico’s sovereignty. Cuba, a member of the UN committee, introduced and pressed for a resolution that "reaffirms the inalienable right of the people of Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence." As in the past two years, the 24-member committee adopted the resolution by consensus.

"Despite 100 years of U.S. domination," Rodríguez said in introducing the resolution, "the Puerto Rican people have defied all attempts to impose the English language" and other efforts to crush their identity as a Latin American and Caribbean nation.  
 
Demands U.S. Navy leave Vieques
He noted that for 60 years Puerto Ricans have opposed the use of the island of Vieques, two-thirds of which is occupied by the U.S. Navy, for bombing practice and other war exercises. He added that even after a July 2001 referendum organized by the Puerto Rican government in which Vieques residents voted overwhelmingly for the immediate pullout of the U.S. military from their land, Washington has ignored the will of the majority.

The Cuban representative also argued for points in the resolution that call on the U.S. government to cease immediately its military maneuvers on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques and return the occupied land to the people of that nation, halt the arrests and prosecution of all those protesting the Navy occupation of Vieques, and release all pro-independence political prisoners.

Virtually all the speakers pointed to the fact--recognized worldwide with the notorious exception of the U.S. government--that Puerto Rico is a colony. Most advocated independence. A handful of pro-colonialist speakers argued for making Puerto Rico the 51st U.S. state. And two others defended the existing colonial "commonwealth" setup, known in Spanish as the "Free Associated State," in which the colonial government of Puerto Rico has limited autonomous powers but all its decisions can be overturned by the U.S. Congress, with Washington deciding on all vital military, economic, and political questions.

"Since 1898, the U.S. has taken over Puerto Rico and maintained a colonial regime there," stated Jorge Farinacci, a leader of the Socialist Front of Puerto Rico. Colonial rule, he said, has meant "more than one century of abuse, spoliation, and exploitation of our people and our land" by U.S. corporations and military forces. He noted that in recent years there has been an increase in struggles in Puerto Rico against concrete expressions of imperialist rule, from the 1998 general strike by the union movement to the fight to remove the U.S. Navy from Vieques.

Father Luis Barrios, of the San Romero Church in New York, described how the Puerto Rican independence movement has faced U.S. government repression, such as the use of the thought-control "Gag Act," which was used to jail hundreds of Nationalist Party militants on conspiracy charges in the 1950s. In subsequent decades "the FBI carried out the Cointelpro program and used spying, informers, frame-ups, smears, wiretapping and mail interception, and innumerable other dirty tricks to try to stop the independence movement."  
 
Hypocrisy of U.S. ‘antiterrorist’ drive
Today, Barrios said, "the U.S. government has very arbitrarily identified what others do to it as political terrorism, yet its imperialism, expansionism, and colonialism, which are expressions of political terrorism, is labeled ‘national security’ or ‘defending democratic processes.’"

Edwin Pagán, speaking for New York-based ProLibertad, called on the U.S. government to release all Puerto Rican political prisoners. These include five long-term prisoners--Carlos Alberto Torres, José Solís, Juan Segarra Palmer, Oscar López, and Haydée Beltrán. He reported that another independentista, Antonio Camacho Negrón, had just been released and had returned to the island. However, he added, "university student and activist Pedro Colón Almenas was sentenced to a one-year term with three years’ probation in the federal facility at Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, for allegedly striking an ROTC official at the University of Puerto Rico during an anti-military and pro-Vieques protest that took place in 2001."

Several speakers noted that more than 1,200 people have been prosecuted by U.S. courts for entering Navy-occupied land to protest Washington’s military presence on Vieques.

Last year "I was jailed for stepping on the very land where I grew up as a child," said Ismael Guadalupe, a leader of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, which is spearheading the movement to get the U.S. Navy out of the island. Recently, he noted, another committee spokesperson, Robert Rabin, was sentenced to six months for "trespassing" on Navy-occupied land.

The devastation of this small Puerto Rican island, said Frank Velgara of the Vieques Support Campaign in New York, is a stark example of what colonial rule has meant: an official unemployment rate of 40 percent, as well as contamination of the land and water by the Navy and the accompanying health problems afflicting the local population.

Róger Calero, speaking for the Socialist Workers Party, stated, "Independence is in the interests of the vast majority of people in the United States. A successful struggle for the freedom of Puerto Rico will deal powerful blows to our common exploiters and oppressors--the tiny class of billionaire families that rules the United States."

He hailed the "workers, fishermen, and youth in Puerto Rico who are fighting to remove the U.S. Navy from Vieques, and who refuse to subordinate this struggle to the war drive that the imperialist rulers are carrying out under the banner of ‘fighting terrorism.’"

Calero pointed out that Washington today "is expanding the number of its military garrisons around the world," including in Afghanistan where it has imposed a virtual colonial regime on the people of that country. He added that the home front of this war on working people can be seen in the detention of hundreds of Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants as well as probes to expand the powers of the FBI, whose ultimate target is the unions, Black rights organizations, and others fighting the assault by the employers and their government. These same kind of methods have been used to harass the Puerto Rican independence movement.

Héctor Pesquera of the Hostos National Congress pointed out that one consequence of U.S. colonial rule is the efforts to impose the death penalty, which is prohibited by the Puerto Rican constitution. U.S. courts on the island have decreed the death sentence in 11 cases so far. Federal judges have acted on the basis that U.S. laws supersede the Puerto Rican constitution.

Julio Muriente of the New Independence Movement (NMIP) referred to the debate on a move initiated by the ruling Popular Democratic Party (PPD) to call for a "constitutional assembly" that could lead to a popular vote and to eventual negotiations with the U.S. government on resolving Puerto Rico’s colonial status. The move is supported by the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) but opposed by other pro-independence groups who argue that Washington will never negotiate independence except as the result of a mass popular struggle.  
 
Trial of 42 protesters in New York
The UN hearings on Puerto Rico were surrounded by a number of events sponsored by pro-independence forces in New York. The preceding week, picket lines were held daily outside a municipal court to support 42 people who were on trial for charges stemming from civil disobedience actions organized last year in front of the United Nations building to protest U.S. war exercises on Vieques. In the end the judge issued $60 fines against 32 protesters and dismissed charges against the rest. Vieques activists considered the mild sentences a victory given the threat of jail terms.

The evening of June 10, ProLibertad and the Vieques Support Campaign sponsored a forum attended by about 70 people to evaluate the success of the pro-independence delegation at that day’s UN hearing. The speakers panel was made up of all those attending who had testified at the UN. They included González, Guadalupe, Muriente, Farinacci, Velgara, Pagán, Calero, and Vanessa Ramos of the American Association of Jurists.

Ismael Guadalupe, a longtime fighter for independence and for the end of Washington’s military presence on Vieques, explained that on the eve of the referendum on Vieques, pro-Navy forces had organized a red-baiting campaign that "went as far as claiming that a vote against [the Navy] would be a vote for Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. In spite of that, two-thirds of Vieques voted for the Navy leaving Vieques immediately." Guadalupe added that he replied publicly to the slanders by declaring, "We’re proud of Cuba’s support for our struggle. For years, when Vieques enjoyed no international solidarity, when we were being ignored, Cuba was with us."

Several of the speakers described the experiences of the independence movement in responding to the pressures of the U.S.-led war drive and chauvinist propaganda campaign after September 11. Guadalupe reported that the U.S. military became extremely aggressive with anti-Navy protesters. Soldiers pointed guns at protesters near the U.S. base and U.S. officials argued that now was not the time for Washington to give up its use of Vieques for military maneuvers. U.S. courts have also issued harsher prison sentences for protesters.

The war drive did have a dampening effect on protests at first, Guadalupe remarked. In face of Navy provocations, he said, the pro-Vieques organizations decided to call a several-week moratorium on civil disobedience actions on Navy-held land for security reasons. "But we found different ways to keep fighting. We organized a successful work stoppage on Vieques, for example.

Jorge Farinacci of the Socialist Front stated, "The ruling party [PPD] panicked and backed away from their demand" for the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. Navy from Vieques. He added that for the independence movement, "Yes, it was difficult in the first few weeks. But protests did continue. And today we have more volunteers who have signed up for protest actions on Navy-occupied territory than we had before."

A member of the New Independence Movement, speaking from the audience, reported on a number of social struggles that have taken place recently on the island. Three Teamster strikes are currently under way. Protests have also erupted over water service, a perpetual problem in Puerto Rico, where on occasion the main cities have been left without water for days or weeks. In a continuation of this discussion, a forum was held the following day on U.S. foreign policy and Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Palestine. The three speakers were Puerto Rican Nationalist Party leader Cristina Meneses; Luis Miranda, director of Casa de las Américas; and Gilma Camargo, a supporter of the fight for Palestinian self-determination and attorney for a Palestinian activist currently imprisoned in New Jersey because of his political activities.
 
 
Related articles:
Puerto Rico’s fight for independence: stakes for working people  
 
 
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