Vol. 78/No. 26      July 21, 2014

Supporters of the fight to free López held an all-day picket outside. The day before, several hundred marched in San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, demanding independence and López’s freedom.

The hearings take place as the economic squeeze on working people in the U.S. colony grips tighter. On June 25, thousands of electrical workers, water workers and other public employees marched on the Department of Labor in San Juan to protest a new “fiscal emergency law” that aims to gut union contracts and slash wages and benefits. With these measures, the colonial government seeks to assure holders of Puerto Rican bonds, overwhelmingly big capitalists in the U.S., that they will be paid in full and on time.

The decolonization committee heard testimony by 47 speakers from Puerto Rico and the U.S., where today more than half of Puerto Ricans live.

For the 32nd year in a row it approved a resolution demanding U.S. recognition of Puerto Rico’s right to self-determination and independence. The resolution, introduced by Cuban Ambassador Rodolfo Reyes, also called for the release of López, who has been imprisoned for 33 years for his pro-independence actions.

Puerto Rico has been a U.S. colony since 1898, when the island was invaded by U.S. troops in the war over Spain’s colonial possessions, which also included Cuba, the Philippines and Guam.

Almost every speaker condemned the degrading effects of colonial rule. A few petitioners, while critical of the conditions imposed on the island, advocated making it the 51st U.S. state or maintaining its “commonwealth” status — reflecting the competing positions of Puerto Rico’s two leading capitalist parties, the New Progressive Party and the Popular Democratic Party.

The majority of speakers supported independence.

“Our country was robbed from us, first by Spain, then by the United States. We were passed from hand to hand,” stated José Nieves, a carpenter’s helper from San Juan representing the League for Our Taíno Land. “They didn’t consult us. We weren’t recognized as the owners of our country.” He added that for more than a century “Puerto Ricans have always fought for our freedom and we have resisted imperialism.”

Most speakers called for the release of Oscar López. Ana López of the New York Coordinator to Free Oscar López Rivera read a statement he had prepared for the hearings.

Others calling for his release included Ana Irma Rivera of the Lawyers Guild of Puerto Rico, Wilma Reverón of the Hostos National Independence Movement, Eduardo Villanueva of the Puerto Rico Human Rights Committee, Juan Dalmau of the Puerto Rican Independence Party, Ben Ramos of the ProLibertad Freedom Campaign, and the National Lawyers Guild’s Jan Susler, who is López’s attorney.

Many speakers addressed the conditions working people face in Puerto Rico.

Forty-six percent of the island’s population have incomes below the official poverty level, said María de Lourdes Guzmán of the United Sovereignty Movement of Puerto Rico.

Some 15 percent are officially unemployed and the actual figure is higher, said Sonia Santiago of Mothers Against War, and many young people enlist in the military as the only way to find a job. Those who need treatment find out that Veterans Administration health care on the island is even worse than in the United States. “There’s one hospital for 200,000 veterans,” she said.

Ana Cristina Cabán of the National Union of Students in Puerto Rico pointed out that 30,000 graduates leave each year to look for jobs in the United States.

Evelyn Román of the Puerto Rican Coalition Against the Death Penalty noted that Puerto Rico abolished the death penalty in 1929 and wrote that ban into its 1952 constitution. In an example of the reality of colonial rule, however, U.S. federal courts on the island have heard seven capital cases since the adoption of the 1994 Federal Death Penalty Act. In an expression of popular sentiment Puerto Rican juries rejected death sentences in each case, Román said.

“Winning the fight for Puerto Rico’s independence is in the interests of the vast majority of people in the United States,” said Martín Koppel, speaking for the Socialist Workers Party, which has championed that struggle since the party’s founding eight decades ago.

“We have common interests and a common enemy — the U.S. government and the propertied ruling class it defends,” he said. As long as U.S. imperialism rules Puerto Rico, “it weakens the ability of workers in the United States to fight for our interests.”

In discussions with fellow workers, we find receptivity to the fight for the release of Oscar López and of the Cuban Five, Koppel said. That’s because “millions have had firsthand experience with the cops, courts, prisons and frame-ups of the U.S. capitalist justice system.”

After the resolution was adopted by the committee, Oscar León, Cuba’s alternate permanent representative to the U.N., outlined the common history of “unbreakable” struggle of Puerto Rico and Cuba for independence and against imperialist rule.

Today, he said, the people of Cuba and Puerto Rico “share heroes — men of the stature of Oscar López Rivera and of the Five Heroes of the Cuban Republic.”
 
 
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