[News] The Puerto Rican Revolution Will Not Have Corporate Sponsors

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.enclavemag.com/puerto-rican-revolution-will-not-corporate-sponsors/ 



  The Puerto Rican Revolution Will Not Have Corporate Sponsors

by Hector Luis Alamo - May 25, 2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The only thing shocking about all the corporate sponsors pulling their 
support for the 60th annual National Puerto Rican Day Parade 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/23/nyregion/more-corporate-sponsors-abandon-puerto-rican-day-parade.html> 
is that people are actually shocked.

These Wall Street patrons — Goya, AT&T, JetBlue, Coca-Cola, 
Constellation Brands (makers of Corona, Modelo and an ocean of wine), 
the Yankees, the /Daily News/ 
<http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/news-parade-article-1.3193480> and 
their ilk — were never /really/ backing the pride of the Puerto Rican 
people so much as hoping to get some of their dollars.

But then again, that’s the history of Puerto Rico in a nutshell. A 
/yanqui/ yearning for Puerto Rican pesos lies at the root of the $74 
billion bond debt — plus another $50 billion in pension funds 
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-03/puerto-rico-governor-wants-board-to-file-bankruptcy-like-case> 
— which the island has no way of paying back.

It’s why the new governor, Ricky Rosselló, will close 184 schools 
<http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-puerto-rico-bankruptcy-20170505-story.html> 
across /la isla del desencanto/, and why anyone with the means is 
abandoning ship like first-class passengers on the /Titanic/, leaving 
Puerto Rico’s lower classes to contend with the rising water.

It’s why the newly released Oscar López Rivera 
<http://www.enclavemag.com/bad-puerto-rican/> has spent more time in 
federal prison — 36 years — than I’ve been a Puerto Rican.

The announcement earlier this month that López Rivera would lead the 
procession down New York’s Fifth Avenue this year as the first “National 
Freedom Hero 
<http://observer.com/2017/05/oscar-lopez-rivera-puerto-rico-nationalist-honor-rican-parade-mark-viverito/>” 
designated by the parade’s board is what sparked the firestorm now 
swirling around the upcoming event on June 11.

That there’s arguably no living Puerto Rican more deserving of the title 
“National Freedom Hero” than López Rivera is lost on the likes of Bronx 
state Senator Ruben Diaz, who called the current controversy a “mess … 
created by the board of directors of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade.”

“Instead of naming Oscar López Rivera a National Puerto Rican hero and 
joining elected officials together to do this, the Board of the National 
Puerto Rican Day Parade should be concentrating better on bringing 
attention to the fiscal situation in Puerto Rico,” Diaz wrote on the New 
York State Senate’s website 
<https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/articles/ruben-diaz/weird-things-are-happening-new-yorks-political-environment>.

On Monday NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill 
<http://nypost.com/2017/05/22/nypd-commissioner-refuses-to-march-in-puerto-rican-day-parade/> 
joined the NYPD Hispanic Society, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, 
the FDNY Hispanic Society and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association 
<http://nypost.com/2017/05/23/another-big-time-sponsor-pulls-out-of-puerto-rican-day-parade/> 
in boycotting this year’s Puerto Rican Day Parade, referring to López 
Rivera as a “terrorist.”

“[Oscar López Rivera] is a convicted felon, plain and simple, and one 
who has not apologized or repented for his cowardly attacks,” said Jake 
Lemonda, president of the fire officers union.

For his part, state Senator Diaz at least admits that, while “many 
accuse Oscar López Rivera of being involved in terrorist acts where 
people lost lives … [he] was never found guilty of killing anyone, and 
always maintained his innocence in any criminal act.”

For my part, I do believe Oscar, as a member of the Puerto Rican 
/Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional/, had something to do with the 
bombings attributed to the clandestine revolutionary group in the 1970s 
and ’80s. Whether he himself made the bombs or set the fuses, and 
whether that should make him /persona non grata/ in New York, San Juan 
or anywhere else, is up for debate.

But at the heart of Oscar’s involvement with the FALN is a commitment to 
seeing Puerto Rico — as well as all the colonized and oppressed peoples 
of the world — freed from under Lady Liberty’s sandal by any means 
necessary, including armed struggle, which is the right of all colonized 
peoples as outlined by the Declaration of Independence and the 1960 
UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and 
Peoples <http://www.un.org/en/decolonization/declaration.shtml>.

By refusing to participate in the parade and directing funds toward 
programs benefiting the Puerto Rican community, as most of the 
corporations and unions have decided to do, Goya, Coca-Cola and the rest 
are making a political statement that, while they’re more than willing 
to help a few Puerto Rican kids pay for college, they 
won’t endorse Puerto Rico’s right to decide for itself its own political 
and economic future.

The corporate boycott of this year’s parade only reaffirms the rationale 
stated by the FALN in its very first communiqué 
<http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/puertorico/PR-Peoples-War.pdf>, 
dated October 1974, in which the group announces its presence and 
declares war on the “Yanki corporations in New York City … responsible 
for the murderous policies of the Yanki government in Puerto Rico, Latin 
America, and against workers, peasants and indios throughout the world.”

Coca-Cola, particularly, is one to talk of terrorism. The company has 
been accused by human rights organizations and union leaders 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/world/union-says-coca-cola-in-colombia-uses-thugs.html> 
of hiring members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a 
right-wing paramilitary group, to kill and intimidate workers in South 
America.

So it would seem that these corporations aren’t opposed to terrorism per 
se, merely terrorism in the service of human rights — which gives a 
sinister, Orwellian feel to the lyrics “I’d like to teach the world to 
sing in perfect harmony.”

This year’s boycott isn’t about the acts Oscar López Rivera may or may 
not have committed, but about why he did them. The corporate sponsors 
have pulled their support because this year’s parade will be led by a 
man who has declared himself a lifelong enemy of U.S. imperialism 
and global corporate interests.

Looks like the parade’s board of directors created a real problem for 
itself by naming López Rivera its inaugural National Freedom Hero this 
year — namely, finding an equally suitable candidate for next year.

/Featured image: Oscar López Rivera during his trial for seditious 
conspiracy, c. 1981 (Chicago Tribune)/

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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