We join with thousands of people, from Puerto Rico to New York, in protesting the cold-blooded execution of Puerto Rican independence fighter Filiberto Ojeda Ríos by FBI agents. Those responsible for his death should be prosecuted and jailed, from the FBI agents who pulled the trigger to the federal officials who ordered the murderous assault.

The FBI’s claim that its agents fired only in self-defense and that Ojeda died in a shootout was rapidly exposed as a lie. Dozens of heavily armed cops staked out the farmhouse where he lived, refused Ojeda’s offer to turn himself in to a well-known journalist, wounded him in the chest with a single shot, and let him bleed to death until the next day. Adding insult to injury, U.S. officials chose to launch the assault on September 23, the date of the Grito de Lares (Cry of Lares) annual pro-independence celebration.

The killing of Filiberto Ojeda is part of the long history of attacks by the U.S. government on the Puerto Rican independence movement. The FBI has framed up independence fighters from Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos in the 1930s to the Hartford 15 in the 1980s. Federal cops were complicit in the 1978 police executions of two young independentistas at Cerro Maravilla. In recent years it was revealed that the FBI put tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans on its “subversive” lists. Just last year the FBI raided the headquarters of the water workers union in San Juan in the midst of a hard-fought strike.

This brutal history underscores that, despite being labeled a “commonwealth,” Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony. The bulk of that nation’s wealth goes into the coffers of the U.S. billionaire families. The fundamental decisions facing the Puerto Rican people are made not in San Juan but in Washington.

A successful struggle for Puerto Rico’s independence is in the interests not only of the people of that nation but of the vast majority of the U.S. population. Working people in the United States and the Puerto Rican people have common interests and a common enemy—the wealthy U.S. ruling class, its government, and its twin parties, the Democrats and Republicans.

As long as Puerto Rico is under the U.S. colonial boot, the fighting capacity and solidarity of the working-class movement in the United States will be undermined. FBI victimization of independentistas, if not opposed, will embolden attacks by the political police against workers and farmers in the United States.

The police assassination of Filiberto Ojeda was designed to intimidate all those fighting for Puerto Rico’s sovereignty. The result was the opposite, however. The widespread popular outrage and the protests that unfolded are a reminder that the U.S. rulers always underestimate the capacity of the Puerto Rican people to resist and stand up to Washington….

We urge unionists, farmers, students, and all democratic-minded people to join protests to demand prosecution of those responsible for the death of Ojeda.

Free all Puerto Rican political prisoners!

Independence for Puerto Rico!
 
 
Related articles:
FBI agents kill Puerto Rican militant
Protests in U.S., Puerto Rico denounce shooting
Puerto Ricans fought for independence in WW II
Communist Party demanded Nationalists back Washington in imperialist war  
 
 
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