Vol. 79/No. 24 July 13, 2015
Numerous recent actions have called on the U.S. government to release López. Marches took place May 29 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and May 30 in New York, marking 34 years since the independence fighter was arrested and framed on charges that included “seditious conspiracy.” On June 14 some 2,000 people took part in a pro-independence march in San Juan. The same day, thousands of spectators cheered the “Free Oscar López” contingent in the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York.
The decolonization committee approved a resolution demanding that the U.S. government recognize Puerto Rico’s right to independence, and that it immediately free López. Puerto Rico, under Washington’s boot since U.S. troops invaded it in 1898, is the world’s largest remaining colony.
As in previous years, the resolution was introduced by Cuba. It was co-sponsored by the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Syria and Russia. The representative of Iran, speaking on behalf of the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement, made a statement in favor of the resolution, as did the Ecuadoran representative in the name of the 33 members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
Juan Dalmau, general secretary of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), applauded the opening of U.S.-Cuba talks on re-establishing diplomatic ties and the fact that after more than half a century of U.S.-engineered exclusion from the Organization of American States, Cuba participated in the April OAS meeting in Panama. There and at the January CELAC summit in Costa Rica, Cuban President Raúl Castro championed Puerto Rico’s right to independence and condemned U.S. threats against the Venezuelan government.
“The victories won by Cuba … by Puerto Rico in advancing its liberation effort at CELAC and by Venezuela in rejecting imperial threats are three victories for the right to national self-determination,” Dalmau said. The U.S. imperialist rulers, he added, “who for so long tried to isolate [Cuba], have found themselves isolated and discredited.”
Many speakers at the hearing called on U.S. President Barack Obama to free Oscar López, including Mark Anthony Bimbela of the Puerto Rico Lawyers Guild, Ana López of the New York Coordinator to Free Oscar López, and José Ortiz, representing Puerto Rican legislator Charlie Hernández of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD). Jan Susler of the National Lawyers Guild, who is López’s attorney, noted the growing support for the defense campaign, including from the Communications Workers of America union at its last convention.
Capitalist crisis devastates workers
Numerous participants pointed to the economic crisis devastating the Puerto Rican people. While workers are being hit by high unemployment and cutbacks in social programs in order to pay the wealthy capitalist bondholders, “profits for the multinational companies in Puerto Rico surpass $75 billion a year,” said Manuel Rivera of Puerto Ricans United in Action. As thousands leave in search of better conditions, there are today more Puerto Ricans living in the United States — 4.5 million — than the 3.7 million on the island, he said.To pay the bondholders on Puerto Rico’s $70 billion debt, the colonial government has cut 30,000 government employee jobs, imposed an 11.5 percent sales tax, hiked utility rates, and slashed public services, including the closure of 100 schools, with another 98 on the chopping block, said Ismael Muller of the Socialist Front.
While official unemployment figures range between 15 and 35 percent, Puerto Rico’s labor force participation rate — a truer measure of joblessness — is barely 40 percent, reported Julio Muriente of the Hostos National Independence Movement (MINH).
“In a country where Puerto Ricans are not the ones who rule, how can we have a foreign debt? We say — it’s not our debt,” said Gerardo Lugo Segarra, vice president of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico.
Chris Hoeppner, representing the Socialist Workers Party, pointed to the victories in the release of the Cuban Five and “of the Cuban people over U.S. imperialism’s efforts for 56 years to destroy their socialist revolution,” a revolution that is an example for working people everywhere. The Puerto Rican people’s struggles are strengthened by these victories, he said.
He added that they are also reinforced “by the broadening resistance among working people in the United States to the assaults by the bosses on our rights and standard of living.” Hoeppner, a worker at Walmart in Philadelphia, pointed to fights by fast-food workers, airport contract workers and others to raise wages and win a union, as well as the ongoing battles against police brutality and racist attacks.
Natasha Bannan of LatinoJustice highlighted the U.S. government’s continuing refusal to carry out a thorough decontamination on Vieques to remove hazardous material left from decades of U.S. Navy occupation of the island, which has led to persistently high levels of cancer and other diseases among residents.
In addition to the pro-independence speakers, a few spoke in favor of one of the two main capitalist parties: the PPD, which proposes “improving” Puerto Rico’s current status as a U.S. “commonwealth,” or the New Progressive Party (PNP), which calls for it to become the 51st U.S. state. Both rail against Puerto Rico’s colonial status, but each advocates pleading with Washington for a modified colonial setup.
At the end of the hearing, Cuban Deputy Ambassador Oscar León took the floor and reiterated Cuba and Puerto Rico’s shared history of anti-imperialist struggle. Today, he said, “The Cuban Five are free, maintaining the dignity of having resisted unbelievable pressure to give in and renounce their ideas. So will Oscar come out of prison, with the dignity and honor of the unbreakable hero that he is.”
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