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By Isabel Guzzardo If the legacy of slavery shapes every facet of contemporary Caribbean society, tourism is one aspect where it is especially stark; tourism forms part of a racialized capitalist structure that maintains working-class Caribbean people serving foreigners, through the low-wage exploitation of their labor, both sexual and otherwise. In Puerto Rico, the violence of a visitor economy is being felt in new, devastating ways. In 2019, Laws 20 and 22 were consolidated as Act 60, called the Puerto Rico Incentive Codes. This policy lures foreigners to settle in Puerto Rico by offering 100% tax exemption on capital gains, […]
By Brianna Alvarado Ramos For more than two years, the United States government has used the armed forces of its Zionist settler colony, “Israel,” to carry out a brutal genocide in Palestine. As protests erupted across the world to visibly resist the ongoing genocide, Puerto Rico answered the call. As a colony since 1493, we understand the reality of having no control over your land and daily life. We have been held by the unrelenting grip of US colonial rule for more than 127 years. Forced displacement, sterilization, bombings, arrests, and assassinations are some of the overlapping features of colonial […]
This article is lightly edited from its original format, “In the Line of Fire: Occupied Puerto Rico and the U.S. War on Venezuela,” published by the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective in The Pen is My Machete, Vol. 1, Issue 3. In recent weeks, Puerto Rico has once again become a forward operating base for imperialist war games in the Caribbean. Off the southern coast, U.S. Navy sailors and Marines practice amphibious landings while a fleet of F-35 fighter jets, P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft, and MQ-9 reaper drones are deployed to one or more U.S. military installations occupying more than 78,000 acres […]
September 23 marks the birth of the Puerto Rican nation, the death of a national hero, and a time for reflection and rejuvenation for the protracted struggle ahead. The roots of our nation are in Lares. The definition of our nationality was forged by the determination to expel colonial power from our land. In the days and months preceding the 23rd of September, 1868, a conspiracy was born. A conspiracy fully aware of its driving forces: national liberation and class struggle. A conspiracy to expel the institution of slavery from the archipelago. To banish the plantation system and give life […]
In response to the escalation of hostile rhetoric and the positioning of U.S. armed forces to attack the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Diaspora Pa’lante Collective (DPC) urges all progressive forces of the region to mobilize in defense of Venezuelan sovereignty and self-determination. DPC stands unequivocally opposed to the impositions of imperialism on the peoples and nations of Our Americas, and reiterates that our region must be respected as a Zone of Peace. Yankee imperialism dares to project itself as the arbiter of justice in the Western Hemisphere, threatening to depose Venezuela’s democratically-elected president under the pretext of neutralizing state-sanctioned […]
July 25, 1898: General Nelson A. Miles led more than 15,000 U.S. troops in the invasion and ongoing occupation of Puerto Rico. 127 years later, the archipelago remains shackled to the United States, a colony struggling for its liberation. How will history record the legacy of the United States in Puerto Rico? 127 years of dispossession, plunder, displacement, and genocide.Of military occupation, environmental devastation, and class struggle.Of sterilization, forced migration, and assimilation.Of independence criminalized, repressed, and denied. While the unbroken thread of our revolutionary tradition reflects the pride and dignity of our nation: 127 years of opposition, steadfastness, and resistance.Of […]
Esencia is a massive $2 billion colonial development project aiming to seize over 2,000 acres of land, spanning three miles of beaches in Punta Melones, Cabo Rojo, by 2028. The United States has long justified its imperial presence in Puerto Rico under the guise of “progress” and “development.” With the complicity of a local government that prioritizes U.S. interests, policies like Act 60—which grants foreign investors the ability to evade local and federal taxes—serve Puerto Rico on a silver platter to wealthy developers, speculators, and those eager to claim and exploit a slice of “paradise.” While Puerto Ricans face life-threatening […]