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 preservation, defense, and survival.
Of dancing, singing, praying, and conspiring.
Of struggle.
We face today, as a nation divided, a critical juncture on our long march to independence.
Washington wields La Junta and its weapon of austerity to compel the repayment of a nearly $80B debt for which we bear no responsibility. Across the archipelago, more than 670 public schools have been closed; 40% of families, including more than half of all children, live without reliable access to affordable, nutritious food; and since 2009, more than 8,000 doctors have fled the country, a byproduct of privatization and disinvestment ravaging our nation’s hospitals and clinics.
Following the privatization of the archipelago’s energy system, frequent outages threaten the safe storage of food and proper servicing of medical equipment for all who live at the mercy of a damaged and unreliable electrical grid owned and operated by LUMA Energy, a North American consortium unaccountable to the Puerto Rican people. The worsening impacts of climate change promise to aggravate each of these crises tenfold.
To the north, the United States confronts an uncertain future, desperately counteracting its declining leverage over the global majority. In every corner of the world, the empire faces formidable and unprecedented challenges to its legitimacy and hegemonic power. The correlation of political, economic, and social forces, both international and domestic, have provoked an existential crisis for the U.S.-led world system.
In this period of turbulence and global transformation, Puerto Ricans everywhere must challenge and overcome Americanism, fully and completely:
We are a people bearing no allegiance to the ambitions of the European-American colonial tradition. We share not one ounce of support for the genocidal atrocities mounting in Palestine at the hands of zionism and imperialism. The bipartisan agenda to terrorize and disappear thousands in the name of “immigration enforcement” is not our agenda to champion, but to decisively defeat. Our destiny as a people and nation is inseparable from that of all oppressed people struggling tirelessly for peace and a brighter future; let us not give into confusion and bind ourselves to the embattled U.S. empire.
For Puerto Ricans in the diaspora, the advantage of our position must be weaponized to weaken the United States from within, providing space for our struggle in the archipelago to develop, strengthen, and advance.
We accept this responsibility without hesitation, to educate and equip ourselves to assume our role in the defense of our people. We do so out of love and a sense of duty to secure peace for our children and the lands upon which our ancestors and descendants depend, until victory and return.
For Land, Independence, and Socialism!
¡Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre y Socialista!
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