Vol. 71/No. 26      July 2, 2007

BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS  
UNITED NATIONS, June 14—I join with others here today calling on Washington to immediately release all Puerto Rican independence fighters locked up in U.S. prisons. They are among the longest-held political prisoners in the world. Like the Cuban Five—revolutionaries railroaded by Washington and convicted on frame-up charges that include “conspiracy to commit espionage”—their real crime is fighting for their country’s sovereignty. I say free Oscar López Rivera, Carlos Alberto Torres, Haydée Beltrán Torres, and José Pérez González. Free them unconditionally, now! And free the Cuban Five!

Others before me have demonstrated that Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony. They have explained why independence is a necessity for the people of Puerto Rico, if they are to freely determine their own future.

I’d like to add that a successful fight for Puerto Rico’s independence is in the interests of the vast majority of the people of the United States too. Workers, farmers, and other exploited producers have absolutely no interest in the colonial rule of Puerto Rico by the U.S. government.

As long as Puerto Rico remains a U.S. colony, the fighting capacity and solidarity of the working-class movement in this country is weakened.

Capitalist politicians here always talk about “We Americans.” But there is not one America. There are two Americas. That of the bosses, a tiny minority, and that of working people, the vast majority. Working people in the U.S. have no common interests with the owners of General Motors, Boeing, Cargill, ExxonMobil, Pfizer, Merck, Chase, Coca-Cola, or Wal-Mart—or their political representatives in Washington, the Democrats and Republicans—that do profit from the colonial domination of Puerto Rico. Instead we have everything in common with fellow working people around the world—from China to Mexico and Puerto Rico.

The U.S. government has used Puerto Rico as a springboard for launching assaults on countries around the world—from its invasion of Grenada in 1983 to the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The latter is one of the many theaters of Washington’s “war on terrorism,” which include Afghanistan, Iran, and Korea. This war targets any government that doesn’t bow to U.S. dictates. It is a war ultimately aimed at the livelihoods and rights of working people—as shown by the abuse, torture, and violation of elementary human rights of prisoners held by the U.S. government at the Guantánamo naval base, on territory held forcibly by Washington against the wishes of the Cuban people. This “war on terrorism” is against the interests of the vast majority of the people of the United States and the world. The U.S. government continues to use Puerto Rican youth as cannon fodder in its imperialist wars. The successful 60-year-long struggle by the Puerto Rican people to get the U.S. Navy out of Vieques helped educate millions about these realities.

Puerto Rico’s colonial domination reinforces systematic discrimination, racist prejudice, and cop brutality faced by 2.7 million Puerto Ricans here, along with Blacks and other oppressed nationalities. As long as Puerto Rico is a U.S. colony, Puerto Ricans will be subjected to second-class status in the United States.

The ongoing incarceration of the four Puerto Rican independentistas, like the unjust imprisonment of the Cuban Five, is another case of turning the victim into the criminal. The U.S. government is trying to do the same against the undocumented immigrants here, estimated at 12 million today. These workers have become a growing and weighty section of the U.S. working class. They are drawn into the United States from Mexico, and other countries plundered by imperialism, in order to provide a pool of superexploited labor to satisfy the bosses’ profit greed. But millions have marched, going on the first nationwide political strike in U.S. history on May 1 last year and turning out half a million strong on May Day this year, to demand legalization of all the undocumented. Their banner, “We are workers, not criminals!” mirrors the demands of Puerto Rican independence fighters. Hundreds of thousands of working people in the United States leading struggles for legalization and against raids and deportations are the biggest obstacle to Washington’s plunder of the world’s land and labor, and thus the most important aid to the Puerto Rican peoples’ freedom struggle.

In face of a capitalist economic depression most of humanity faces—including unceasing assaults on the wages, job safety, and living conditions of a majority of the people of this country—the U.S. rulers, who live off the labor and resources of millions around the world, have the gall to tell the Puerto Rican people they have no choice but to depend on Washington, that independence would bring them only ruin.

But the living, fighting example the workers and farmers of Cuba and their revolutionary leadership have set proves that it is possible to fight and win genuine independence from U.S. imperialism. It takes a socialist revolution to do so. The Cuban Revolution points the way forward for working people around the world, including in the United States.

The condemnation by this committee of Washington’s colonial rule of Puerto Rico will serve the interests of the overwhelming majority of the people of the United States and those fighting everywhere for the right to self-determination and against oppression—from Kurdistan to Palestine to Western Sahara and Kosova.

Thank you Ms. Chairwoman, and members of the committee, for the opportunity to present these views before you today.
 
 
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UN committee backs Puerto Rico’s right to self-determination  
 
 
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