[News] Fanon’s Knife and Puerto Rico

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/29/fanons-knife-and-puerto-rico/


  Fanon’s Knife and Puerto Rico

by José Tirado <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/meq3nawa/> - 
September 29, 2017
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    Colonialism only loosens its hold when the knife is at its throat.

    –Frantz Fanon

There are many reasons to oppose colonialism. And there are many images 
which seer into the mind the utterly destructive nature of colonialism. 
My own favorite example is a horrific picture from the “Belgian” Congo 
of a despondent Congolese man on the sunny porch of some Euro-style home 
looking with total forlornness at the severed hands and feet of his 
children. As was policy at the time, they probably did not work hard 
enough for the rapacious chocolatiers and paid the price with their 
limbs. Only one word emerged from my lips the first time I saw that 
picture: revolution. This is what the word was meant for. No human 
relationship that so devalues a child’s life (and by extension, their 
parents’ and their entire culture) deserves to stand. It must be 
destroyed forever. Fanon’s knife needs to be drawn on occasion.

Some might say the recent Puerto Rico crisis is nowhere near the 
alarming brutality of those times. Regularly counseled patience and 
indoctrinated to believe the US ultimately has its interests at heart, 
too many Puertoricans have abandoned their own dignity to apologize for 
the relationships´ many failures. There are now more Puertoricans on the 
mainland (4.9 million) than living on the island (3.5) and PR has more 
people than 21 US states. So one would think the news of Hurricane Maria 
would be regular, the media coverage vigorous, and the convoys of aid 
immediate. No such luck. 1.5 million people now lack potable water. 
Since last week. The pictures of devastation are sobering. And as of 
last night (the 26^th ), the first reported deaths due to generators 
failing (there still is no electricity) have been relayed. This is an 
enormous crisis. There are many who suspect that there is no surprise 
here. That the slow starvation of Puertoricans out of their homes, over 
to the US where they will then “assilmilate” and call themselves 
“Americans” proudly while the vultures buy and chop up the island into 
manageable pieces for their rich cronies, has been the goal for years 
and is de facto the plan. There will be plenty of quislings to help 
them, too. If we needed any more proof (we really don´t) of the US 
attitude and intentions to PR, it´s here today.

But what are the options? A bit of historical context might illuminate 
the problem a bit.

When the US took over Puerto Rico in 1898, Puertoricans fed themselves. 
Their economy was primarily agricultural. Around 40% of the land was 
given over to coffee, 32% for growing food for local consumption, 15% to 
sugar and 1% for tobacco. Over 90% of the farms and agricultural 
resources were owned by local Puertoricans. Within a few years, US 
tariffs required that Puertorican coffee had to be sent to the US before 
it could be sold in Europe. The 1899 hurricane and the adoption of US 
currency on the island was the death knell of Puertorican coffee 
production. US companies then began buying up land and soon sugar became 
the dominant crop, production increasing by an incredible 1200% by 1929 
with 80% owned by US sugar companies. In the years between 1899-1929, 
unemployment went from 17% – 36% with ¼ to a third of workers unemployed 
most of the year. Eventually local food production collapsed and export 
dominated agricultural production became the norm. By 1940, 80% “of all 
farmland was owned by large corporations or landlords with 500 acres or 
more.” (Perez, 1976, pp. 6-7). Thus, during the Great Depression and up 
to the Second World War, Puertoricans were dirt poor, dependent upon the 
largess of the US for food and other resources amid a remarkable set of 
political machinations which mandated English, actually banned Spanish, 
and in open correspondence its overlords regarded locals as  “mongrels” 
and “cannibals” whose “race mixing” as unsettling.

Growing during this time were a class of “pitiyanquis” (little Yankees), 
the “quislings” of PR who managed to ingratiate themselves to the US and 
benefit as minor officials in the local government, whose positions were 
always at the mercy of their obsequisness to their colonial masters. 
They morphed into the pro-statehood and pro-commonwealth parties who 
couldn´t imagine living without their connection to the US and whose 
descendants remain dominant in PR politics to this day. It is a classic 
colonial mindset Fanon would have recognized. And deplored.

But once upon a time there was resistance. The first was the 
independence strand within the Puerto Rico Union Party which also had 
statehood and local autonomy trends within it. After the 1917 Jones Act 
was passed, the Union Party broke into factions of which the Nationalist 
Party (formed in 1922) took the banner of full independence. The 
Socialist Party had left and right wing trends which eventually also 
ended up splitting into a Liberal Party (the left trend, fully in favor 
of independence) and a SP which joined forces with the Republican Party 
(founded in 1899 and assimilationist). It was the charismatic Pedro 
Albizu Campos who led the Nationalist Party into challenging the corrupt 
alliance of the SP and the Republicans and forcefully advocating for 
independence. However, years of suppression by the dominant US-backed 
local government leading to massacres, imprisonment, repression of 
Nationalist speakers, and finally COINTELPRO disruption of ANY 
independent movement all led to a conclusion many Puertoricans quickly 
absorbed: advocating for independence can lead to brutal suppression or 
even death.  Joining up with the US, keeping one´s head low and 
subserviently accepting US domination of all aspects of life can lead to 
safety within the confines of a colonial relationship. To this day, this 
sentiment prevails, with emotional support for independentistas high but 
practical political support always going to the deferred parties of the 
status quo. No matter how many referenda are held, Puertoricans back 
down, fearing being cast adrift without help. Just like they are now.

As of this week, 80% of Puerto Rico´s agricultural sector has been 
destroyed. It´s electric grid is dead. Potable water is scarce and, 
already laboring under the crushing neo-liberal regime of debt repayment 
(aka squeezing blood from a plantain) with a US-appointed fiscal control 
board fully committed to the Greecification of PR, prospects for the 
average Puertorican look awful. As if it wasn´t bad enough. Schools have 
closed, unemployment is already 12%, there is a 46% poverty rate and, 
with a median income of less than $20,000, Puertoricans have an income 
rate LOWER than the poorest US state, Mississippi. Puerto Rico is a 
broken colony, with a broken people whose imaginations seem to have 
died. Statehooders will cry and beg their masters asserting that 
liberation is “too risky” and they´ll continue to drink off the rapidly 
drying teat of colonial milk cows who will be buying up more land and 
pushing out more people, year after year. But this is unsustainable.

So, is the US just waiting for all the people in Puerto Rico to just 
leave or die so they can buy up all the land for rich people to play in 
their newly concrete fortified hotels 9 months a year? I don´t know, but 
it sure appears that way from where I and many other Puertoricans I have 
spoken with stand. And remember, the hurricane season is not over, and 
the storms are getting bigger. If this doesn´t wake us up, what will?

Nevertheless, for the immediate future some things are changing, even as 
I write this (perhaps this Administration is getting beaned over the 
head enough to finally respond): apparently Sen. McCain has said a 
repeal of the Jones Act is long overdue and the USNS Comfort has just 
been sent.

But the long-term future of Puerto Rico looks bleak, in fact, very bleak 
unless Puertoricans unite to claim their unique identity and reclaim 
their island. It is time that a vibrant, revolutionary movement arise to 
demand what was stolen years ago: our independence and with it, our 
self-respect. We cannot continue to be beggars in our own land crying 
for help when disaster strikes while the land is bought from under our 
feet and the resources privatized.

Time to end the colonial relationship once and for all. /¡Viva Puerto 
Rico libre!/

/. /

/*José M. Tirado* is a Puertorican poet, Buddhist priest and political 
writer living in Hafnarfjorður, Iceland, known for its elves, “hidden 
people” and lava fields. His articles and poetry have been featured in 
CounterPunch, Cyrano´s Journal, The Galway Review, Dissident Voice, La 
Respuesta, Op-Ed News, among others. He can be reached at 
tirado.jm at gmail.com <mailto:tirado.jm at gmail.com>./

-- 
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863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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