There Is No Peace: 60 Years Since End of World War II

BY MARTÍN KOPPEL 
Last week’s article described the resistance to U.S. imperialism that Puerto Rican independence fighters waged during World War II. Rejecting calls to subordinate their struggle to “unity” with the Allied imperialist powers against the Axis imperialist bloc, the independentistas stood up to frame-ups and persecution by “democratic” Washington. The Nationalist Party, led by Pedro Albizu Campos, led a campaign against the U.S.-imposed draft. Dozens of Puerto Ricans were jailed for refusing to be cannon fodder in the army of their colonial oppressors.

Puerto Rican independence fighters pressed their battle despite charges by pro-imperialist spokespeople that they were “sabotaging” the fight against fascism. Albizu Campos and his supporters were smeared as pro-Mussolini “blackshirts” (the Cadets of the Republic, the Nationalist Party’s military section, wore black shirts and white pants).

The independentistas also had to face opposition by the Communist Party both in the United States and Puerto Rico. The Stalinists, following Moscow’s “Popular Front” line of supporting the U.S. imperialist government in the war, urged Puerto Ricans to subordinate the anticolonial struggle to the war effort.

In a 1944 book, the general secretary of the Communist Party USA, Earl Browder, warned, “Among some circles of Puerto Rican life today, there is clearly evident the rise of an intransigent and unreasoning hostility toward the United States,” which, he added, “leads similarly toward tolerance and even the embracing of fascism. I have personally had to face serious symptoms of this development in my efforts to co-operate with Puerto Rican nationalist groups.”

As part of that “cooperation,” the CPUSA had financed the launching in 1943 of a weekly Spanish-language newspaper in New York, Pueblos Hispanos (Hispanic Peoples), edited by Juan Antonio Corretjer, a Nationalist Party leader who had also been recruited to the Communist Party. Pueblos Hispanos campaigned for support to the U.S. government “in the common struggle to smash Nazi-fascism.” It pleaded with Washington to grant Puerto Rico independence in order to convince Puerto Ricans to back the imperialist war.

An article in the March 20, 1943, issue by Consuelo Lee Tapia, Corretjer’s wife, stated, “If we Puerto Ricans do not hold grudges and are willing to enter the war as allies of the power that has enslaved us, if we ask only to receive the justice promised to the entire world in this war of liberation against Axis slavery, it is proof that the Puerto Rican people know their duty and are willing to forget the past, recognizing that not fighting against the Axis would help enslave other peoples.” Pueblos Hispanos also ran articles praising Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista as an ally of Washington and denouncing the United Mine Workers union in the United States for breaking the no-strike pledge imposed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, “our commander-in-chief.”

The Puerto Rican Stalinists urged young Puerto Ricans to follow the example of Puerto Rican CP leader César Andreu Iglesias, who joined the U.S. Army in 1943 and served for three years. Another prominent CP member, Bernardo Vega, volunteered his services to Washington and served in the Postal Division of the Office of Censorship.

On the island, the Puerto Rican Communist Party ardently backed the imperialist war. The newspaper of the CP-led General Workers Federation (CGT), which ran photos of Joseph Stalin on its cover, called on sugar workers in February 1944 not to go on strike at a time “when our nation is waging a life-and-death struggle for the survival of democracy” and instead to support “our democratic government.” It also published statements by Roosevelt appointee Rexford Tugwell, “the colony’s best governor,” arguing that “Puerto Rico and the United States are indissolubly linked.”  
 
CP ends support to Nationalists
The CPUSA tried to convince the Nationalist Party to back Washington, arguing that a U.S. victory would lead to Puerto Rico’s independence after the war. “Albizu Campos, on the other hand, viewed U.S. imperialism as the principal enemy,” writes Marisa Rosado in her well-documented biography of Albizu, Las llamas de la aurora (The flames of dawn).

Unable to sway the independence fighters, Rosado explains, the U.S. Communist Party “withdrew all the economic support it had been offering the Nationalist Party.”

In his article “Pedro Albizu Campos: Strategies of Struggle and Strategic Struggles,” historian Carlos Rodríguez-Fraticelli noted, “This precipitated a crisis and a division within the ranks of the Junta of the Nationalist Party in New York. Corretjer, who supported the political line of the CPUSA, left the Nationalist Party” along with others influenced by the Stalinists (Puerto Rican History and Politics, Winter 1991-92).

As Rosado details in her book, the Albizu Campos leadership decided in November 1943 to expel Corretjer, Clemente Soto Vélez, and other Stalinists from the Nationalist Party’s leadership bodies.

This split led to the existence of two newspapers oriented to the pro-independence Puerto Rican community in New York—one advocating unconditional opposition to U.S. imperialism and the other one calling for support to Washington during the war.

“The [Nationalist] Junta published its magazine Puerto Rico, which appeared monthly,” while the CP-backed group “published the weekly Pueblos Hispanos, whose editor was the poet Corretjer,” wrote Oscar Collazo in his book Memorias de un patriota encarcelado (Memories of a jailed patriot).

Collazo was then the president of the New York section of the Nationalist Party. He later became one of the five Nationalist heroes who spent a quarter century in U.S. prisons for their actions in defense of Puerto Rico’s independence.

After the end of World War II, in December 1947, Albizu Campos was able to return to Puerto Rico. Receiving a tumultuous welcome on the docks of San Juan by thousands of working people and youth, he launched a new campaign of pro-independence activities on the island. And, in a break from the Popular Democratic Party of Luis Muñoz Marín, the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) was founded and began running candidates in the island’s elections.

The Nationalist Party held a minority position during World War II. During the Korean War in 1950-53, however, opposition to the U.S. draft exploded in Puerto Rico, with 100,000 youth refusing to be inducted into the imperialist army. During Washington’s assault on Vietnam, resistance to the draft in Puerto Rico became so massive that courts on the island were reluctant to prosecute youth for refusing the draft. Hundreds were arrested but only one was ever convicted.

Edwin Feliciano Grafals, a member of the Pro-Independence University Federation (FUPI), was given a one-year sentence in 1969 for draft evasion. In the midst of sustained antiwar protests, the judge later commuted the sentence to one hour. Feliciano pressed his appeal and the charge was dropped altogether in 1970.
 
 
Previous article in the series:
Puerto Ricans fought for independence in WW II
Nationalist Party refused to fight for U.S. imperialism, members were jailed by FDR
Previous articles in the series (.pdf format)
 
 
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FBI agents kill Puerto Rican militant
Protests in U.S., Puerto Rico denounce shooting
Prosecute FBI cops who killed Ojeda  
 
 
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