Vol. 80/No. 25      July 11, 2016

 
(front page)

‘US colonial exploitation of Puerto Rico has
not changed’

 
UNITED NATIONS — As working people in Puerto Rico are battered by a deepening crisis, and moves by Washington lay bare its denial of Puerto Rican sovereignty, supporters of independence took their fight to the U.N. Special Committee on Decolonization. Almost all of the nearly 60 people who addressed the annual hearing on the status of the island nation demanded freedom for long-time independence fighter Oscar López, including those opposed to the independence movement.

In 1950, Washington claimed that Puerto Rico was becoming a “self-governing territory.” But speaker after speaker at the June 20 hearing stated that, in fact, Puerto Rico has never ceased being a U.S. colony.

“Recent developments leave no room for the illusions, facades and deceits which have prevailed regarding the political status of Puerto Rico,” said Olga Sanabria for the Committee for Puerto Rico at the United Nations. The continued imprisonment of López, she added, symbolizes “the brutal imperial domination the people of Puerto Rico have been subjected to for more than 118 years,” as well as their resistance. (See box on page 6.)

López called from the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, and spoke with members of the U.N. committee during the hearing. The committee chair announced plans to visit him in prison later this year.

His daughter Clarisa López told the committee that her father’s “love for equality, justice and independence for Puerto Rico are intact.”

Many of those testifying referred to two U.S. Supreme Court decisions that highlight the colonial status of Puerto Rico. On June 13 the court ruled that the island’s government is barred from adopting its own bankruptcy laws. The week before the court held that the government of Puerto Rico is not “sovereign” and derives all its power from the U.S. Congress.

Speakers also denounced a federal bill backed by the Democratic and Republican parties and President Barack Obama that would give control of the finances and budget of the island’s colonial government to a seven-member board appointed by the U.S. president, to ensure that Puerto Rico’s $70 billion public debt is paid on the backs of working people.

The bondholders and hedge funds want to “use the debt as a guillotine against the rights of our people,” Pedro Irene Maymí, representing the CPT union federation, told the hearing. “It is unpayable.”

Supporters of the two main colonial parties in Puerto Rico — Gov. Alejandro García Padilla of the ruling Popular Democratic Party, which wants to keep the island as a U.S. “commonwealth,” and Ricardo Rosselló, head of the New Progressive Party, which says it should become the 51st U.S. state — denounced the recent U.S. moves at the hearing.

Both parties have been fighting for the right of the Puerto Rican government to declare bankruptcy and are chafing at Washington’s arrogance. Their goal is little different from that of the fiscal control board, but they want to ensure a greater say in the “restructuring” of Puerto Rico’s debt by the island’s capitalist class.

And both parties have been responsible for layoffs of more than 30,000 government workers, cuts in pensions, closing schools, hikes in taxes paid by working people and other measures undertaken to pay the burgeoning debt.

The Supreme Court decisions and the bill before Congress creating a fiscal board have made it “clear that nothing has changed in the U.S. colonial relation to Puerto Rico,” said Iris Colón Dipini on behalf of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico. “Our crisis is deeply rooted in Puerto Rico’s exploitation as a colony.”

Who owes whom?

Héctor Pesquera, co-chair of the National Hostosiano Independence Movement, noted that after Washington invaded Puerto Rico in 1898 small farmers were forced to sell their land to U.S. agribusiness.

“Then they imposed U.S. citizenship on us to recruit our youth for the First World War. Since then we have been cannon fodder for the invading army,” he said. In addition, the U.S. military “caused billons of dollars of damage to the environment and health of the residents of the islands of Culebra and Vieques,” using them as a bombing range for more than six decades until forced out by mass protests.

Pesquera noted that U.S. companies take billions of dollars of profits out of Puerto Rico every year, while driving small stores and farmers out of business.

“So who owes whom?” he said.

Workers the hardest hit

“Workers have been the hardest hit, we are the ones who have been more harshly weighed down by the consequences” of the crisis, said Irene Maymí. “Hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters have lost their jobs, many have been forced to emigrate, principally to the United States, making up what is now the largest migration in our history.”

“The fight for Puerto Rico’s independence is also in the interests of the vast majority of the people of the United States,” said Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. president. “The people of Puerto Rico and working people in the U.S. have common interests, a common enemy, a common struggle.”

The crisis in Puerto Rico is opening new opportunities, said Manuel Meléndez Lavandero, speaking for A Call to Action on Puerto Rico, based in New York. “Today there is a people that is beginning to look with curiosity at the possibility of an independent Puerto Rico.”

The U.N. Special Committee approved by consensus a resolution presented by Cuban Ambassador Humberto Rivero Rosario calling for the General Assembly to schedule a discussion on the status of Puerto Rico and for the committee to facilitate dialogue between Washington and Puerto Rico on self-determination and independence.

“The people of Puerto Rico continue to be unable to exercise their legitimate right to genuine self-determination,” Rivero said. “Despite U.S. economic, political and social domination, this sister nation has maintained its deep-rooted and unwavering vocation for independence,” a cause always supported by revolutionary Cuba.

The U.N. testimony capped a weekend of activity that began with a meeting to back the fight for independence of more than 200 at the 1199SEIU union hall in New York, organized by A Call to Action on Puerto Rico.

Several of the speakers at the hearing joined a late afternoon protest outside the United Nations calling for freedom for Oscar López as part of an international day of action.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Independence for Puerto Rico is in interest of workers in US’
Who is Oscar López Rivera?
 
 
 
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