http://themilitant.com/2017/8125/812505.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 25 July 10, 2017
(front page)
Opponents of US colonial rule in Puerto Rico speak out at the UN
AP/Danica Coto
May 1 union march in San Juan, protesting U.S.-imposed fiscal control
board. Speakers at U.N. hearing said board’s dictatorial powers show
Puerto Rico is colony of U.S. imperialism.
BY SETH GALINSKY
UNITED NATIONS — At this year’s hearing of the UN Special Committee on
Decolonization, supporters of the fight against U.S. colonial rule over
Puerto Rico spoke out against Washington’s increasing exploitation of
the island’s people and the plunder of its resources to pay the regime’s
$74 billion debt to wealthy bondholders.
Participants welcomed longtime independence fighter Oscar López to the
June 19 hearing. López was released from U.S. custody May 17 after
nearly 36 years in jail for his actions opposing U.S. domination. Puerto
Rico has been a U.S. colony since 1898, when Washington wrested control
of the country from Spain.
The hearing took place as the U.S.-imposed Financial Oversight and
Management Board — known in Puerto Rico as the Junta — continues to push
the government there to make deeper and deeper cuts in public employee
wages, pensions, health care and other services.
On May 1, tens of thousands of workers and unionists marched in San Juan
and held a one-day strike to protest the Junta’s demands, in the largest
labor action in some two decades.
López, the first speaker, was given 20 minutes, instead of the usual
five, to address the committee. Puerto Rico has a “right to be an
independent and sovereign nation,” he said.
“Everything the fiscal control board is doing is criminal,” López said,
and its only purpose “is to squeeze every cent out of the pockets of
every Puerto Rican on the island, and, if they could, of those in the
diaspora,” to pay the debt.
López also denounced Washington’s pressures and threats against
Venezuela. He called for an end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba and its
occupation of Cuba’s territory of Guantánamo.
Speakers from a wide variety of groups and views from both Puerto Rico
and the United States described the deep economic and social crisis on
the island today and how U.S. colonial rule makes it worse.
“I come from an island of 3.5 million inhabitants, where 45 percent of
its people live below the poverty level, where the unemployment rate is
above 12 percent, where last year 99.5 percent of its population drank
contaminated water, where the school drop-out rate is above 40 percent,
where they are trying to close 170 public schools,” noted Joselyn Santos
Valderrama, a leader of the Hostos Youth and students at the
Inter-American University in Arecibo. “We need a radical change of course.”
Santos said students at the University of Puerto Rico went on strike for
two months in response to government demands for drastic cuts in
university funding.
The debt is the empire’s
“The debt is not ours. It’s the empire’s,” said Gerardo Lugo Segarra,
speaking for the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico. “It’s the United
States that owes Puerto Rico for subjecting it to more than a century of
exploitation, of experiments and of deaths.”
The U.S. fiscal board’s actions have become so unpopular that even the
two main bourgeois parties that take turns running the colonial regime —
the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) and the New Progressive Party (PNP) —
have complained. At the hearing, Puerto Rico Secretary of State Luis
Rivera Marín, representing the pro-statehood PNP administration,
complained that the “undemocratic Junta has powers over the elected
government. If this is not colonialism, then international law does not
exist.”
At the same time, Rivera acknowledged that the Puerto Rican government
“is working hard to meet the requirements and demands of this Junta.”
Rivera defended the June 11 non-binding plebiscite pushed through by
Gov. Ricardo Rosselló despite a call for a boycott by virtually every
other political party and trade unions on the island. He admitted that
the wording of the plebiscite had been changed to meet the dictates of
the U.S. Justice Department.
Even though only 500,000 people voted, barely 23 percent of those
eligible, Rivera said the vote — 97 percent for statehood — was the
“unequivocal choice of our people.” This is the fifth non-binding
plebiscite since 1967 and the turnout this time was the lowest ever.
María de Lourdes Santiago, vice president of the Puerto Rican
Independence Party, called the plebiscite a “farce,” noting that
statehood would not be independence but “the annexation of Puerto Rico
to the United States.”
Joselyn Velázquez from the Socialist Front pointed to the May Day
protests, saying, “If the demands of the people are not met, the world
should not doubt that our people will continue to struggle.”
In addition to representatives of organizations that back the fight for
independence, there were also speakers from the Federation of Teachers
of Puerto Rico, the New York State Nurses Association and the
Professional Social Workers Guild of Puerto Rico.
Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York,
who visited Puerto Rico last month to welcome Oscar López at his release
from U.S. custody and to support the struggles of working people and
youth there, told the hearing that “a successful struggle for Puerto
Rico’s independence from Washington’s domination is also in the interest
of working people in the United States.”
Building the fight by working people in Puerto Rico to take political
power out of the hands of Washington and their capitalist allies on the
island, Hart said, is the road to independence. He pointed to Cuba’s
socialist revolution as an example for working people in Puerto Rico,
the U.S. and around the world. (Hart’s statement is printed on this page.)
The U.N. committee approved a resolution initiated by the government of
revolutionary Cuba, reaffirming “the inalienable right of the people of
Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence.”
“Cuba will continue defending the legitimate right of the people of
Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence,” Cuban Ambassador
Ana Silvia Rodríguez said, “and will be at their side until final victory.”
Related articles:
NY Puerto Rican Parade welcomes Oscar López
‘Fight for workers power is road to independence’
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home