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June 28, 2017
End the Colonial Status of Puerto
Rico!
Oscar López Rivera Testifies
Before
UN Committee on Decolonization
PDF
Oscar López Rivera is warmly applauded during testimony to the
UN Special Committee
on Decolonization, June 19, 2017.
End
the
Colonial
Status
of
Puerto
Rico!
• Oscar López Rivera Testifies Before UN
Committee on Decolonization
• Spurious Plebiscite on U.S. Statehood
• Crisis and Colonialism in Puerto Rico -
Olga
Sanabria
Dávila
End the Colonial Status of Puerto Rico!
Oscar López Rivera Testifies Before
UN Committee on Decolonization
 Puerto Rican independence
fighter Oscar López Rivera, finally
released from his political imprisonment in U.S. jails after almost 36
years on May
17, continues to wage the battle for the Puerto
Rican people's right to sovereignty and an end to U.S. colonial
exploitation. Following a hero's welcome in Chicago and New York, on
June 19, Oscar addressed the UN Special
Committee on Decolonization. Oscar, in his opening remarks, expressed
his gratitude for all those who have stood by the cause of Puerto
Rico's national liberation and conveyed the
indomitable spirit and dignity of the Puerto Rican people which he
embodies:
"I have spent five decades serving what I believe is
the most just
and noble cause any Puerto Rican citizen can serve. Doing it has been
an act of love and fulfilling my duty as a
citizen. And because I believe that when one serves a just and noble
cause, it is never a sacrifice, even if it means giving one's life
doing it. I say this to let people know that for me,
serving a just and noble cause has been the most liberating experience
I have had, and that in spite of all the horrible things done to me
during the years I spent in prison, I have come
home with my head high, and my honour, my dignity and my spirit
stronger than the day I was sent to prison."
Oscar's presence at the committee would not have come
without his
perseverance and that of his comrades, compatriots and peoples around
the world who fought for decades for the
release of all the Puerto Rican political prisoners and for the just
cause of Puerto Rico's independence. In this regard, Oscar's
presentation is an important achievement for all concerned and
a boost to this important cause.
TML
salutes Oscar López Rivera and the
heroic Puerto Rican
people for their struggle for national liberation, and calls on
Canadians to support this just fight. It is linked to the struggles in
Canada, Quebec and the world over through the fundamental principle
that the
people must be the decision-makers in all matters that affect their
lives. TML
extends best wishes to Oscar during his
tour of the U.S. and in this next phase of his life as he continues to
defend the
rights and dignity of the Puerto Rican people.
Oscar's Presentation to the UN Special Committee
Puerto Rico was occupied by the U.S. as spoil of war in
1898,
after the U.S. prevailed in the Spanish-American War. The Puerto Rican
people's struggle for national liberation,
already well underway, was redirected from Spain to the U.S. The case
for ending Puerto Rico's status as a U.S. colony has been made
repeatedly at the UN Special Committee by Puerto
Ricans and supported by Cuba, Venezuela and other countries, and
affirmed in numerous resolutions by the Committee.
In his presentation to the Committee, Oscar pointed out
that while
there are no more Puerto Rican independence fighters held as political
prisoners in U.S. prisons, there are still many
political prisoners in the U.S., notably Ana Belen Montes, "who chose
to serve a just cause and go to prison rather than to do the dirty work
of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." He
noted the U.S. hypocrisy on this question, that it seeks the freedom of
justly convicted counterrevolutionary criminals in Venezuela, for
example, and refuses to bring to justice "the
terrorists on its payroll who have killed independentistas in Puerto
Rico or to stop practicing the crime of colonialism and allow the
Puerto Rican people to exercise its inalienable right of
self-determination and allow Puerto Rico to be an independent and
sovereign nation."
Speaking to the ongoing crimes of U.S. colonialism in
Puerto Rico, Oscar pointed out:
"What has United States colonialism done to Puerto Rico
and the
Puerto Rican people? Allow me to share with you some of the most
deleterious problems caused by colonialism in
Puerto Rico that I have observed since my arrival in my beloved
homeland. Today there are over five million Puerto Ricans living in the
diaspora, while there are less than three and a half
million living in Puerto Rico. I found a Puerto Rico under the control
of a Fiscal Control Board imposed by the U.S. government [in 2016] that
has the
power to dictate to the colonialists who help
to administer the colony, what to do, especially when dealing with the
payment of the $72-billion debt Puerto Rico owes to the banks and hedge
funds. And I have seen an accelerated
gentrification process constructing condominiums costing one million
dollars or more.
San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 1, 2016. Banner reads "Fiscal Control Board
-- Colonial Slavery."
"Since I am familiar with what gentrification does to
poor people,
I know the luxury condominiums are not being built for them. The poor
people are displaced; once the expensive
housing is built, only the rich and super rich can live there. In
Culebra, Vieques and around the coast of Puerto Rico, where the beaches
are the most beautiful, the construction of luxury
building is already overtaking the landscape. The colonialists who
administer the colony give incentives to the builders and to buyers who
are foreigners, and denies providing incentives to
small businesses and small home owners. On the contrary, the small
businesses and small home owners are taxed to the maximum. So what
gentrification is doing is forcing poor people to
move, and most likely to emigrate to the diaspora. This will cause more
depopulation in Puerto Rico.
"It has been the goal of the U.S. government, since it
invaded and
occupied Puerto Rico, to depopulate it. By 1900 it was already forcing
Puerto Ricans to emigrate to far away places
like Hawaii and the southwestern states on the mainland. After World
War II the United States government started another forced emigration
wave. More of the land that the poor Puerto
Ricans were forced to abandon was used for military bases and for the
construction of luxury hotels to foment a tourist industry. And the
last wave began 17 years ago. More than one
million Puerto Ricans have moved to the diaspora, causing the biggest
brain drain in Puerto Rico's history, because most of the emigrants are
professionals, such as doctors, engineers,
teachers, architects, nurses and other health workers. If the School of
Medicine in Puerto Rico graduates 100 doctors, 85 per cent of them have
to emigrate. There aren't jobs for most
young professionals. Their only option is to emigrate.
"Imagine if such a loss of population were occurring in
your
countries. Any country that loses two-thirds of its population,
including its best-developed human resource, cannot see
itself having a strong economy and good quality of life for its
citizens. And in Puerto Rico we are starting to see the negative
effects of the last wave of emigrants. We are already seeing a
larger aging population that is becoming poorer and poorer and with
less medical and social services available to them. The future for them
looks bleak. And at the same time young people
of reproductive age are leaving Puerto Rico, and more foreigners are
buying the expensive condominiums or living in gated upper class
communities.
"If the displacement and depopulation of Puerto Ricans
is an
alarming problem, what the Fiscal Control Board is making the
colonialist administrators of Puerto Rico do is more
worrisome. For starters, by August 169 schools will be closed. Teachers
will be losing jobs, and communities, especially the poorer ones, will
be losing their schools. Behind the scenes the
colonialists are pushing more and more their privatization plans. They
aren't satisfied that privatization in Puerto Rico has played a major
role in bringing the economy to its worse
conditions in Puerto Rico's history.
"But beside closing 169 schools, it is threatening the
future of
the University of Puerto Rico. The goal of the Fiscal Control Board is
to take away close to half a billion dollars from
the University's budget. At the same time, it is looking for ways to
raise the tuition and to force the University of Puerto Rico to close
some of its eleven campuses and to sell much of its
property, specially land that it has been using for experiments in the
past. What the Fiscal Control Board seems to be doing is trying to
privatize the University system. All the money that
will be taken away from the public education system will be used as
payment to fill the coffers of the Banks and hedge funds. While Puerto
Ricans will be poorer and more destitute, the
colonialists and the banking industry will become richer. Thus Puerto
Rico is being made poorer and poorer and at the same time depopulated
of its native population.
"In spite of the fact that the future of Puerto Rico
looks very
bleak, many Puerto Ricans believe this is the best moment to wage an
effective decolonizing process. We know that the
majority of Puerto Ricans love Puerto Rico, our national identity, our
culture, our language, and our origins. We see the potential that
Puerto Rico has to become a strong nation and an
asset to the economy of Caribbean and Latin American countries. We have
the human resources and the other basic resources to transform Puerto
Rico into the [Garden of Eden] it has the
potential of being.
"Because this is such a moment, we are asking this
Committee to
take the issue of the decolonization of Puerto Rico to the General
Assembly and ask it to fulfill its responsibilities to
bring to an end the colonization of Puerto Rico by the U.S. government.
"Colonialism is a crime against all of humanity. If the
U.S.
government is the nation of laws it claims to be, then it behooves it
to decolonize Puerto Rico by adhering to the tenets of
international law that prohibit the crime of colonialism.
"I hope you will do whatever you can to bring to an end
the
colonial status of Puerto Rico, to help us make Puerto Rico the nation
it has the potential of being, and to be part of the
community of nations."
Also on June 19, Cuba's Deputy Permanent Representative
to the UN, Ana Silvia Rodríguez, tabled a draft resolution at
the Committee in support of Puerto Rico's right to self-determination.
This resolution, co-sponsored by Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua,
Ecuador, Russia and Syria, was passed by consensus and is the 36th such
resolution adopted by that body.
Oscar López Rivera receives a warm welcome from students and
teachers at the
Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School in Chicago, June 13, 2017.
Spurious Plebiscite on U.S. Statehood
On June 11, another so-called non-binding plebiscite
was held in Puerto
Rico on
whether it should seek the status of a U.S. state, continue its current
status as an unincorporated territory
(commonwealth status), or seek independence. This is the fifth such
plebiscite since 1967. When the results of this phony plebiscite are
given, what is not mentioned is the high level of abstentionism and
that the people of Puerto Rico are fed up with repeated attempts to
give the decisions of the colonialists legitimacy. According to
self-serving results, an estimated 97 per cent of votes cast were in
favour of the statehood option; 1.3 per cent of
votes were for the commonwealth option, while 1.2 per cent of votes
cast were for independence.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The website
Latino Rebels
points out, "According to Puerto Rico's official electoral commission,
just 23 per cent of Puerto Ricans voted. In a
place known for high voter turnouts (50-80 per cent), the official 23
per cent number is low. Really low. [...] This was the smallest number
of statehood votes since 1967. In 2012, around
834,000 Puerto Ricans voted for statehood. In 1998, the statehood
number was around 728,000 votes. In 1993, around 788,000 voted for
statehood. In 1967, the number was around
274,000. At the same time, this was the worst vote ever for the
commonwealth choice. Boycott or no boycott, this is a fact: around
6,800 people voted for the current status. That is last
place."
A report from TeleSUR points out that "Independence
groups, along
with three political parties, called for a boycott of the ballot as a
protest against the government spending U.S.$7.5
million on the election in the middle of a budget crisis that has
forced the island to take on harsh austerity measures, making its
colonial status more acute as the country can not solve the
crisis without U.S. approval.
"Critics also pointed out that the U.S. Department of
Justice has not supported the plebiscite."
What is clear from these results and the participation
in prior
plebiscites is that the call to boycott the plebiscite, from
pro-independence forces and other parties that back the current
commonwealth status, is what prevailed, and that the supposed result of
97 per cent of the people in favour of statehood has no legitimacy
whatsoever.
A spokesperson for Governor Ricardo Rosselló
said that he
will now push
Congress to recognize the result as support for statehood.
Rosselló and others refer to this as pursuing the
"Tennessee Plan," where a U.S. territory unilaterally declares itself a
state and then sends a delegation to Washington, DC to win
congressional approval, as Tennessee did in 1796. Despite
the fact that Puerto Rico's economic crisis is fundamentally linked to
its status as a U.S. colony, Rosselló and others believe that a
change
in status would help resolve Puerto Rico's
U.S.$123 billion debt (a figure that includes U.S.$50 billion in
pension debt) and allow it to become a "diplomatic centre and a
business centre of the Americas."
In the face of the ongoing neo-liberal assault on
Puerto Rico being directed from the U.S., to champion further
annexation by the U.S. as a way to resolve Puerto Rico's debt or other
problems is not a "solution" favoured by the Puerto Rican people. The
results of the June 11 plebiscite and Puerto Ricans' abstention in fact
demonstrate just this. It will not divert the people from fulfilling
the historical necessity to win their independence from U.S. colonial
rule.
Crisis and Colonialism in Puerto Rico
- Olga Sanabria Dávila -
May Day 2017 march in San Juan, Puerto Rico, opposes U.S. Fiscal
Control Board.
Throughout the 1960s, the Free Associated State of
Puerto Rico was touted as the Showcase of Progress and Democracy in the
Caribbean as a result of its accelerated
industrialization, the development of its infrastructure, education and
health systems and a constitutional system of government.
However, for a while now, many United States and
international news outlets and economic reviews are writing about
Puerto Rico's astronomical public debt, its junk-bond status, the
overall economic crisis and the United States' Fiscal Control Board
that
has been imposed on the elected government of Puerto Rico with the
mandate of putting into order Puerto Rico's
public finances. The U.S. Congress' PROMESA law legislated appointment
of the Board.
 At present, Puerto
Rico's debt is estimated at U.S.$69 billion -- up from U.S.$32
billion in 2006, one year after the beginning of a recession in
Puerto Rico that is expected to
persist for years.
Beyond the junk bond status of Puerto Rico bonds, its
unemployment is estimated at between 13 and 14 per cent, it suffers a
44.9 per cent poverty rate, and its economy has for
decades depended on U.S. investment, low wages, tax exemption for
foreign corporations, and dependence on U.S. federal funds.
Population and other demographic data are also
indicators of a showcase gone sour. The new wave of Puerto Rican
migration to the United States has been continuous and has
overcome the massive 500,000 peak of the migration of the '40s and
'50s.
The present population of 5.1 million in the United States includes the
present migration, 30 per cent professional
-- especially medical doctors and specialists -- while an aging
population of less than 3.5 million remains in Puerto Rico.
The constitutional system of government established in
Puerto Rico in 1952 with the founding of the Free Associated State was
a misrepresentation and also a failure as it left intact the
backdrop for the present crisis which is the colonial status of Puerto
Rico. In fact, recent statements by the U.S. executive, judicial and
legislative branches have made clear that Puerto
Rican sovereignty is under the plenary powers of the United States'
Congress, while its autonomy in fiscal affairs, was quashed by the
PROMESA law and appointment of the Fiscal Control
Board.
United States' congressional laws govern over Puerto
Rico in international relations and commerce, monetary issues,
migration and immigration, maritime traffic (with U.S. Maritime
Law applied to Puerto Rico), customs, labor relations and trade union
organization, border patrol, airspace and transportation,
communications, defense, and now the fiscal arena besides
many other areas.
It should also be emphasized that the mission of the
Fiscal Control Board is to ensure that Puerto Rico pay its public debt
and balance its budget. Its plan is to oblige the government of
Puerto Rico to:
- Cut back the budget of the 11-campus University of
Puerto Rico by $450 million;
- Cut back the health budget by $2 billion
500 thousand;
- Cut back the general government budget by
$17 billion to $20 billion;
- Cut back the workday of government workers
by 20 per cent if the treasury does not have on hand $500 million by
June 30, 2017;
- Eliminate the Christmas bonus
of government workers;
- Cut back their vacation benefits;
- Reduce the
number of government agencies from 131 to 35;
- Privatize Workmen's
Compensation, national parks and vacation
centers, and several highways, ports and airports
- Increase the costs
of some services and car registration, property taxes and other taxes,
fines, tolls, permits, urban transportation, by $1
billion;
- Cut back teachers' workday and that of school cafeteria
workers if the treasury does not have on hand $200 million by April 30,
2017;
- Privatize public entities.
 Recently, Nobel laureate
Steven Steiglitz stated that measures to be taken are more severe than
those imposed on Greece during its debt crisis, and that these will
only make the
situation worse. Several Puerto Rican economists have predicted that
these measures will cause the economy to shrink by 8-10 per cent, thus
the sacrifices the program entails will not
improve the economy or the lives of the Puerto Rican people, but rather
worsen conditions. Calls for an independent audit of Puerto Rico's
public debt have gone unheeded.
In terms of its environmental protection and policy,
ecological balance, climate change and global warming, Puerto Rico is
also
subordinate to outside United States' agencies, interests,
policies, and power. This is very dangerous for the Puerto Rican
population as Puerto Rico is a small island country in the Caribbean.
Furthermore, part of the measures for stimulating economic
development in Puerto Rico includes a fast-track for permits for
infrastructure and other construction projects. This will include
fast-track environmental impact studies thus undermining
environmental protection.
In the present situation of fiscal and economic crisis,
the Puerto Rican legislature adopted a bankruptcy law which would have
made it possible for public corporations on the island to
declare bankruptcy and thus be enabled to restructure their debt. (The
debt of just one Puerto Rican public corporation -- the Electric Power
Authority -- is estimated at U.S.$9 billion.) In a lawsuit by a
creditors, this legislation was overruled
by the United States' extra-territorial Federal Court which operates in
Puerto Rico. This was followed by a call from former
Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner in Washington, DC, Pedro Pierluisi,
calling for U.S. federal bankruptcy law to be made
applicable to Puerto Rico, that went unheeded. A broad
movement in Puerto Rico attempting to have Puerto Rico exempted from
the application of U.S. maritime law has also gone unheeded.
In this situation, the people of Puerto Rico have
already begun to mobilize. University of Puerto Rico students in eight
of
the campuses have declared an indefinite strike and are expected
to be joined by students in remaining campuses, while university
non-teaching staff have also declared a strike. Trade unions recently
came together for a massive march against the Fiscal
Control Board's plans under a multisector coalition.
Student strikes take place at several University of Puerto Rico
campuses from March 28 to June 7, 2017, to oppose a massive
U.S.$450-million neo-liberal funding cut to the university, to make the
people pay for
a debt they did not incur. Banner reads "Why don't the guilty pay?"
The United States' president and Congress have
maintained a hands-off position regarding Puerto Rico's debt
crisis. This has deprived Puerto Rico of a rescue package and the tools
necessary for confronting this crisis. The answers include that the
United States must be forced to assume its great responsibility for the
crisis in Puerto Rico, and to put an end to its
colonial relationship with the United States.
However, as noted in a number of the editorials
appearing in Puerto Rico major daily newspapers, El Nuevo
Día and El Vocero, responses by the three branches
of
the United States' government have been non-committal and even
indifferent (except for appointment of the Fiscal Control Board with
the purpose of forcing Puerto Rico to pay its
debt).
Many spokespersons in Puerto Rico have stated that the
Puerto Rican community in the United States has a determining role
because more than half of the Puerto Rican population is
presently living in the United States where they participate in
politics and form public opinion regarding Puerto Rico and other
issues. When Puerto Rico was not a problem it was "swept
under the rug." However, now that Puerto Rico is an issue, the Puerto
Rican diaspora in the United States can and is already exerting
pressure in favor of just solutions to the present
crisis.
The power relationship and political subordination of
Puerto Rico to the United States points to the need for solidarity
including regarding the need to end the colonial status which the
United States has maintained over Puerto Rico since its invasion of the
Island in 1898, almost one hundred and nineteen years ago.
 Colonialism is an
historical anachronism that has long been declared contrary to
international law and human rights. The United Nations has repeatedly
stated the right of the people of
Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence in conformity with
international law, in particular Resolution 1514(XV) of the United
Nations General Assembly (1960), which is
considered the Magna Carta of Decolonization.
Commitment to grassroots democracy is totally
consistent with support for the decolonization of Puerto Rico as
colonialism is also totally contrary to democracy. For a country
ruled
by another, democracy is non-existent, even if there are elections
every
four years to elect local authorities as in Puerto Rico where at
present elected local officials have lost their limited
power to the U.S. appointed Fiscal Control Board.
United States' control over vital areas of Puerto Rican
life and the presence of of the Fiscal Control Board point to the need
for support of its decolonization has to be supported. This is
a matter of principle precisely because colonialism is contrary to
human rights, contrary to self-determination and contrary to democracy.
Puerto Ricans are a separate people from the people of
the United States. Before the United States' invasion of Puerto Rico in
1898, the nationhood of the Puerto Rican people had been
forged for more than 400 years during which our culture and national
identity became clear and distinct from that of any other people in the
world.
The plebiscites, referendums and the like carried out
in Puerto Rico are not the solutions precisely because they have not
been free exercises of the will of the Puerto Rican people.
They have taken place in the context of colonial rule, military
occupation, repression and persecution of the independence forces,
economic dependence, and colonial legislation and U.S.
Congressional legislation. Thus, their results cannot be said to
reflect the true will of the Puerto Rican people. For these reasons,
they have not been an exercise of self-determination.
While the United States has maintained that it will
accept the will and decision of the Puerto Rican people regarding
Puerto Rico's status,
it has obstructed the process by maintaining that the issue is its
internal matter and not recognizing the role of the United Nations.
But Puerto Rican pro-independence forces and even some
supporting other options have recognized that the United Nations has a
role to play, and have continually resorted to United
Nations Resolution 1514(XV). They recognize that in order for an
expression of the will of Puerto Rico's people regarding its future
relation to the United States to be a free exercise, it
must take place under international law because otherwise the
determining factor in any exercise will be the power relationship of
the United States' domination over Puerto Rico.
 Demonstration in New York, September 30, 2016.
The present situation of fiscal and economic crisis is
increasingly billed as a political crisis which will force attention
towards Puerto Rico's colonial status and the need to resolve it if the
fiscal and
economic situation are to be addressed. Regardless of preferences for
the options for Puerto Rico's status, at present there is in Puerto
Rico an overall sentiment
that the present situation and the colonial status must
be resolved. Cleavages along which Puerto Rico's main political parties
are divided delineate several options but according to the rhetoric of
leaders of the pro-statehood party and most
leaders of the Free Associated State party, the country must move away
from colonial status.
The vibrant social movements active today in Puerto
Rico regarding women's rights, civil rights, community empowerment, the
environment, youth, sports, culture, labor, cooperative
and local economic endeavors, and many other areas, constantly
encounter colonial status as an impediment to their objectives.
 These movements and the
pro-independence movement overlap in many scenarios. Along with the
efforts of Puerto Ricans in the United States and solidarity from the
people of the
United States and our Latin American and Caribbean region and other
countries, these are the basis for the future possibility independence
and democracy in Puerto Rico.
A true exercise of self-determination with a level
playing field for all options, including independence, must abide by
international decolonization law. Despite this reality, important
pro-independence and pro-sovereignty sectors have joined forces and
decided to participate in a plebiscite legislated by the present
pro-annexationist government of Puerto Rico where, if the
process overcomes a number of obstacles it faces, the two options to be
presented are 1) statehood and 2) independence/free association. If
this plebiscite, scheduled for June 11, 2017, takes
place there may be surprises regarding the strength of the vote for the
second option of independence/free association.
In any case the struggle against the U.S. Fiscal
Control Board now governing Puerto Rico and the struggle against
colonialism and independence must continue, and solidarity with
Puerto Rico must be stepped up.
Olga Sanabria Dávila
is
President of the Committee for Puerto Rico at the United Nations
(COPRONU).
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