Millions across the United States are gathering to celebrate a world-historic event: the birth of a settler colony which stands today as a mighty global empire. From its inception, this fledgling colony emerged onto the world stage as a prison house of nations: genocidal conquest and the dispossession of the continent’s original peoples secured the land base necessary for a new society to be erected atop the ashes of the old. This process of permanent war to repress the capacity of indigenous nations to reclaim their historic territory and national sovereignty remains a foundational pillar of U.S. dominance in the 21st century. Before long, the United States of America surpassed the empires of Europe to become the world’s preeminent military-industrial superpower, enabled not by the superiority of its values and principles, but by a global campaign of pillage, piracy, and plunder financed by the fruits of enslaved African labor harvested over the course of nearly three centuries. 

As America celebrates its 250th year as a beacon of democracy, its occupation and colonization of Puerto Rico endures for 128 years and counting. Seized by North American imperialism following four centuries of Spanish rule, the social, political, and ecological effects of U.S. occupation have deprived Puerto Ricans of our right to live with dignity, to remain on our land, to determine our destiny in a society of our own making.

Puerto Rico’s status as a possession of the United States, to be used and abused however Washington sees fit, is a daily betrayal of America’s purported founding principles: acting at home and abroad not as a guardian of human freedom, but as a tyrannical force preventing the achievement of peace and collective prosperity for the global majority.

While some may revel in celebration, the Fourth of July is a reminder of our existence as a captured people determined to be free; a day in which all people of conscience are called to expose the United States for its leading role in the litany of crimes committed in Palestine and Lebanon: genocide, starvation, land theft, torture, and imprisonment; to denounce the suffocation of Cuba, the bombing of Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, the ongoing war on the Islamic Republic of Iran, the murders of more than two hundred civilians in the waters of the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, the consolidation of fascism and militarized repression within its own claimed borders…

Who can deny that our last and best hope relies on our commitment to walking the path of resistance, the path of an independent people advancing toward socialism? The challenges before us demand a novel approach, a distinctly Puerto Rican path responding to our own needs as a people. Through the power of organization, dedication, and sacrifice, the future we deserve will be obtained within our lifetime. Then, and only then, will we have etched into the book of history a day worthy of celebrating the joys of liberty and independence.

Que viva Puerto Rico libre y socialista!

Make Puerto Rico a Zone of Peace!