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<h1 id="reader-title">Time for Puerto Rico to Fly and Be Free</h1>
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<p><em><span class="sep"></span><a
href="http://www.latinorebels.com/2016/04/15/time-for-puerto-rico-to-fly-and-be-free/"
title="9:16 am" rel="bookmark"><time
class="entry-date"
datetime="2016-04-15T09:16:42+00:00">April 15,
2016</time></a><span class="byline"> <span
class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author
vcard"><a class="url fn n"
href="http://www.latinorebels.com/author/hectorluisalamojr/"
title="View all posts by Hector Luis Alamo"
rel="author">Hector Luis Alamo</a><br>
</span></span></em></p>
<p><em><span class="byline"><span class="author vcard"></span></span>“I
suck the blood of your economy, drain your natural
resources, make you a beggar poorer in thanks—make you
defenseless, powerless, homeless, useless, speechless,
foreign, more foreign, so foreign that you’ll lose
touch with families and familiarities so that you’ll
lose control of reality so that you’ll start
hallucinating, wandering with no return address,
nowhere to go, boundless, without a chain to your
collar, worse than a house pet, a stray dog, in the
air, like a bird, spaceless and without wings to fly.”</em><br>
—Giannina Braschi, <em><a target="_blank"
href="http://www.amazon.com/United-States-Banana-Giannina-Braschi/dp/1611090679">United
States of Banana</a></em></p>
<p>I’m not Puerto Rican, not like my father’s parents
were. I wasn’t born <em>over there</em>. I was born in
Chicago, raised in Humboldt Park for a bit, then shipped
out to the suburbs—the diaspora of the Diaspora. I’ve
never been to the island. I don’t know all the words to
<em>La Borinqueña</em>, though I’m much more familiar
with the original (<em>“¡Despierta, borinqueño/ que han
dado la señal!/ ¡Despierta de ese sueño/ que es hora
de luchar!”</em>). I’ve never explored El Morro, never
climbed El Yunque, never heard a coquí’s chirp. I don’t
know what it’s like to be <em>carolinense</em> or <em>ponceño</em>,
to grow up there, go to school there, work there, live
there. I don’t know a lot of things about Puerto Rico,
but I do know what’s arguably the most important fact
there is to know: Puerto Rico isn’t free.</p>
<p>Puerto Rico is a colony. Everyone knows it, and yet
everyone doesn’t know it. Or at least they choose to
forget it. Puerto Ricans are the sleepwalkers of Latin
America.</p>
<p><em>But Puerto Rico has its own government!</em> cry
most people.</p>
<p>Puerto Rico has its own government like a dog has its
own bed (though Puerto Rico’s government has twice as
many fleas).</p>
<p>The people of Puerto Rico are under the ultimate
authority of the U.S. Congress, in which Puerto Ricans
don’t have full representation; the U.S. government <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.latinorebels.com/2016/01/15/barack-obama-king-of-puerto-rico/">made
that callously clear</a> for over a century now.</p>
<p><em>But Puerto Rico has its own constitution! </em></p>
<p>It’s confusing, I know, but the 1952 constitution
didn’t end Congress’s colonial rule over the island.
This has been explained a thousand times by the likes
of <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.amazon.com/Puerto-Rico-Trials-Oldest-Colony/dp/0300076185/ref=la_B001HP3BH6_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452876796&sr=1-1">José
Trías Monge</a>, whose long résumé made him eminently
qualified to sort out the mess: not only was he attorney
general of Puerto Rico before he became chief justice,
as one of the authors of the constitution, he’s one of
the fathers of the so-called “Free Associated State.”
But if you don’t believe him, then you have to
believe Nicole Saharsky, the Obama administration lawyer
who <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/15-108_5436.pdf">corrected
Justices Sotomayor and Breyer</a> on the nature of
Puerto Rican self-government—which, as it turns out, is
little more than that of a teenager who still receives
an allowance.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Justice Sotomayor</strong>: Before 1952,
Congress could veto Puerto Rico’s laws. It has
relinquished that right.</p>
<p><strong>Ms. Saharsky</strong>: I don’t think that
that’s right, and … it’s just not consistent with the
Territory Clause of the Constitution. …</p>
<p><strong>Justice Breyer</strong>: It’s
very interesting what you’re saying. Remember, though,
one of the provisions of the Puerto Rico Constitution,
which Congress approved and said it was a republican
form of government, is that criminal actions shall be
conducted in the name and by the authority of the
people of Puerto Rico. Now, that sounds like a
delegation of authority as to source, to go back to
the Spanish system if they want. Now, if I take your
view, then I guess you have to say – and it has
considerable implication – that that doesn’t matter
because Congress can take back what they gave. Now, is
that the position of the government or the executive
branch? Because that has tremendous implication. …</p>
<p><strong>Ms. Saharsky</strong>: Well, two responses to
that question. The first, I think, is the first part
of your question: this statement in the Puerto
Rico Constitution that the authority to prosecute
comes from the people of Puerto Rico and that it’s in
the name of the people of Puerto Rico. That’s been
true since 1900. That was in the 1900 Organic Act;
that was true in 1917. Puerto Rico is not claiming
that it was a sovereign then. So I would not rely on
that. But the second and, obviously, more
weighty question you raised is the question of could
Congress revise the arrangements it has with Puerto
Rico? And we think the answer is yes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A colony, by definition, cannot be said to have proper
control of its economy and finances, and it’s no
different with Puerto Rico, an island which has to
import and export all of its goods on U.S.-built,
U.S.-owned and U.S.-operated ships. In the beginning,
following the invasion at Guánica, Puerto Rico was
almost exclusively the realm of sugar barons. <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.latinorebels.com/2015/03/03/the-man-who-stole-puerto-rico/">Charles
Herbert Allen</a>, a Massachusetts politician and
former prison commissioner, became the first civilian
governor of Puerto Rico in 1900, and for the next 16
months dedicated his efforts to transforming the island
into cash cow by cutting expenditures, raising taxes on
the people and giving concessions to the sugar monopoly.
Education and social services were slashed and the
overall plight of the people went ignored by the
colonial government since, as Albizu Campos put it, “the
Yankees wanted the birdcage without the birds.”</p>
<p>The pilfering of Puerto Rico was abetted by an
11-member Executive Council, six of whom were North
Americans. All six were department heads —including
treasurer, the attorney general and the secretary of
education— while the five Puerto Ricans played only
token roles on the council. Upon resigning, Governor
Allen became a Wall Street financier for the infamous
House of Morgan and, by 1913, was president of the
American Sugar Refining Company, controlling 98 percent
of the U.S. sugar refining industry. By 1930, the “Sugar
Trust” owned a quarter of all arable land in Puerto
Rico, as well as its postal service, most of
the railroads and the <em>puerto rico</em> of San Juan.</p>
<p>Sugar’s dominance combined with the other various
monopolies placed Puerto Rico’s economy on a precipice,
and when the price of sugar dropped at the start of the
Great Depression, the Jenga tower came crashing down.
The tower <a target="_blank"
href="http://legacy.usfsm.edu/academics/cas/capstone/2009-2010/history/robles%20-%20hardships%20in%20the%20land%20of%20enchantment.pdf?from=404">had
never been very towering</a> to begin with, as a
number of hurricanes struck the island in the
three decades preceding Black Tuesday, causing severe
losses in terms of property, crops, infrastructure, and
that <em>other</em> asset—human lives.</p>
<p>The collapse of the sugar market and the lead-up to
World War II brought industrialization and urbanization,
and later, Operation Bootstrap. A lack of jobs was
interpreted by the elite as a population problem,
requiring the <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2172875?origin=crossref&loginSuccess=true&loggedin=true&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">forced
sterilization</a> of at least a third of all Puerto
Rican women of childbearing age by 1965. This coincided
with a mass exodus from the island, with as many as
75,000 Puerto Ricans fleeing their homeland in 1953,
when the island’s population was a little over two
million. The loss of so much human potential has
amounted to a second robbery committed against Puerto
Rico, one which has been more devastating than the
economic theft. First they emptied Puerto Rico’s wallet,
then they siphoned off its soul.</p>
<p>The year 1953 is doubly significant as it’s the same
year in which the U.S. government affirmed to the United
Nations that, due to its newly granted constitution,
Puerto Rico was now self-governing and no longer a
colonial possession. This was a lie, as Ms. Saharsky
explained before the Supreme Court earlier this year.
Approved by Congress, which maintained control over the
island, the constitution wrapped Puerto Rico in the
terms “Commonwealth” and “Free Associated State,” though
these were merely euphemisms disguising the same old
colonialism. There’s nothing “common” about the wealth
generated in Puerto Rico, and to describe Puerto Ricans
as “free” in any sense is an abuse of the word and the
people. The political status of Puerto Rico is pregnant
with such pretenses: <em>citizenship</em>, <em>self-government</em>,
<em>elections</em>, <em>governor</em>, <em>democracy</em>.</p>
<p>Even the term <em>Puerto Rican</em> is a misnomer,
since everything and everybody on, under and around the
island belongs to the United States. Nothing in Puerto
Rico is Puerto Rican.</p>
<p>Washington’s Bootstrap program failed to lift Puerto
Ricans out of poverty. Manufacturing, which had replaced
agriculture as Puerto Rico’s main economic sector,
failed to live up to the hype, causing another wave of
job losses. But instead of strengthening the social
safety net and retooling the economy of Puerto Rico so
that it benefited the people of Puerto Rico instead of
the profiteers, the U.S. government did the exact
opposite, applying even more “free”-market reforms to
attract outside investors. The elimination of corporate
taxes and others —except those applying to the vast
majority of the population— signaled a renovation of the
Wall Street playground that was and is Puerto Rico. In
this way, the colonizers looked to ensure that, if
anyone were taken care of in Puerto Rico, it would
be the business elites.</p>
<p>Despite what most people would have you believe, Puerto
Ricans pay taxes—a lot, actually. In 2009, three years
into the island’s depression, the U.S. Treasury
Department filched more than <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/09db05co.xls">$3.7
billion</a> from Puerto Rico’s taxpayers. Puerto
Ricans pay into Social Security and Medicare,
while receiving only a fraction of what they would
were Puerto Rico a state. At 11.5 percent, Puerto Rico
also has the highest sales tax in the United States.
Imposing obscenely high taxes on a people who then
aren’t provided the services to which their taxes
entitle them amounts to yet another, double-robbery: not
to mention the fact that, since Congress has the power
of taxation and is the supreme authority in Puerto Rico,
the people of Puerto Rico are being taxed without
representation.</p>
<p>In the midst of the current crises, there’s a tendency
to place most, if not all of the blame on the Puerto
Rican people and the Puerto Rican government. But,
again, there is no such thing as a <em>Puerto Rican</em>
government. Alejandro García Padilla is the colonial
governor of Puerto Rico much as John Winthrop was
governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: elected by his
fellow citizens, but answering to a higher, unelected
power across the sea.</p>
<p>Critics claim the insular government precipitated the
collapse of Puerto Rico through corruption and general
mismanagement, but keep in mind that the governors and
legislators of Puerto Rico work under the auspices of
the U.S. government. The insular government can do
nothing of which the federal government disapproves, and
the only thing the feds sanction is the draining of
Puerto Rico’s resources. Puerto Rico’s politicians are
merely colonial overseers, a cadre of accomplices,
bagmen, taskmasters and getaway drivers whose sole
function is to make sure the decades-long plunder
continues unabated. They administer the anticoagulant
that <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/23/politicians-puerto-ricans-debt-crisis-at-fault">allows Wall
Street’s bloodsuckers to have their fill</a>.</p>
<p>Enter Congress’s <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.latinorebels.com/2016/04/13/the-federal-oversight-board-for-puerto-rico-a-blatant-act-of-colonialism/">proposed
oversight board</a>. Just hours before it <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/puerto-rican-pride-swells-under-capitol-dome-borinqueneers-n555676">honored
Puerto Rico’s famed 65th Infantry Regiment</a>, the
U.S. House dishonored the Borinqueneers and their people
by introducing the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management,
and Economic Stability Act, otherwise known as PROMESA
(as in, “I promise this won’t sting too much”). The act
would create a federal oversight board that would
effectively usurp whatever responsibilities Congress has
delegated to San Juan. The board —whose seven members
would be appointed by the president and leaders in
Congress, and of which only one member would either have
residency or a business headquartered on the island—
would be in charge of Puerto Rico’s economy and
finances. Governor García Padilla, nominally the head of
government in Puerto Rico, would be an eighth,
non-voting observer on the board (just as Resident
Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi is a non-voting member in
the House).</p>
<p>The board’s primary goal will be to pay back Puerto
Rico’s debt—or, more accurately, the debt created in
Puerto Rico by the U.S. government. Any law or action
taken by the <em>Puerto Rican</em> government that
conflicted with the board’s mandate would be
automatically scrapped. Mainly the board will function
as example for the Puerto Rican people on how to
effectively and efficiently govern, since, as one House
speaker candidly averred, “the people of Porto Rico have
not the slightest conception of self-government.” (I
omit the specifics of who uttered this and when on
purpose; such details are trivial.)</p>
<p>This is what colonialism looks like. A distant
power subjugates an entire society, passes laws that
increase corporate profits made on the backs of the
people in the form of public debt, and when the people
collapse under such a heavy load, the distant
power makes the people pay for the load before they
can even attempt to stand. Thus, the birds are forced to
pay for their cage.</p>
<p>I may not be a real Puerto Rican in the eyes of many
islanders, but I’m thankful every day I’m not in their
shoes. As a black Latino living in the United States,
perhaps I’m no freer than them, but at least I can
pretend. The Puerto Rican people are afforded no such
illusions, however. They feel the yoke constantly around
their necks and the lash of the whip on their backs;
their chains are unadorned and cold. Where as actual
U.S. citizens follow federal elections anxiously, to
a Puerto Rican, which party controls which branch of
government in Washington is of little importance (as
well it should be for U.S. voters, but I digress). Such
matters being beyond their control, Puerto Ricans no
more worry about who will be the next president than
whether the sun will rise in the morning. In fact, there
is no morning for a Puerto Rican—only night.</p>
<p>And yet, the people of Puerto Rico continue to delude
themselves by believing their precious little island
might one day be the 51st state, or that becoming a
state is something they should wish for, or that somehow
they can make their oppression more tolerable in the
interim by modifying the current status. That many
slaves cling to their own shackles is a sad feature of
the master-slave relationship, as the master’s
justification for his authority leads the slave to
justify his own enslavement. This is what Malcolm X
described when he distinguished between a “Field Negro”
and a “House Negro:” the first runs away from
his master, while the second runs toward him; the first
relies on himself, the second relies on his captor. For
over a century, the U.S. master class has treated the
people of Puerto Rico as the help, and implemented
policies meant to foster an entire society of House
Negroes. <em>How will Puerto Rico succeed without the
United States?</em> it’s often asked. <em>What will
Puerto Ricans do with independence?</em> The answer is
simple: whatever they decide.</p>
<p>Still, if history shows us anything, it’s that the U.S.
government doesn’t free its slaves without a fight.
Puerto Rican Nationalists were beaten, imprisoned and
killed for simply mentioning independence, and their
leader, Albizu Campos, was tortured to death. Owning a
Puerto Rican flag or humming a patriotic tune was made a
treasonable offense in 1948. The towns of Jayuya and
Utuado were bombed two years later. Oscar López Rivera
and other leaders of the FALN were imprisoned for
launching an armed struggle for liberation. In September
23, 2005, the anniversary of the <em>Grito de Lares</em>,
the “Responsable General” of the Macheteros was killed
by a hail of FBI bullets at his home in Hormigueros—just
another dead terrorist in the eyes of the U.S.
government. More terrorism has been committed against
the Puerto Rican people, however, than by them.</p>
<p><img moz-reader-center="true" alt="oscarwall"
src="cid:part15.08030401.01090104@freedomarchives.org"
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-26523"
height="407" width="650"></p>
<p>Puerto Rican independence is no longer an option.</p>
<p>It’s the only option.</p>
<p>And if the U.S. government won’t grant Puerto Ricans
the basic political, economic and social liberties that
are the birthright of all human beings, if the Puerto
Rican people aren’t allowed to govern themselves from
the bottom to the top, if Congress insists on tightening
the colonial chains by imposing an oversight board that
dilutes the little self-government Puerto Rico pretends
to have, then the people of Puerto Rico must do whatever
is in their power to secure their liberation and
establish a true democracy in their homeland. Theirs too
is the right to insurrection, the right to overthrow
unresponsive government, as outlined by the <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.un.org/en/decolonization/declaration.shtml">UN Declaration
on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries
and Peoples</a>, and the U.S. Declaration of
Independence nearly two centuries earlier, which states
unequivocally (absorb the words in bold, please):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness —
That to secure these Rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, <strong>deriving their just
Powers from the Consent of the Governed</strong>,
that whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these Ends, <strong>it is the Right of
the People to alter or to abolish it</strong>, and
to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on
such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such
Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness [emphasis mine].</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The right to insurrection is a founding principle of
the United States. Many a patriot has faced the
executioner for exercising this right, from Nathan Hale
to John Brown—who, on the morning of his hanging, <a
target="_blank"
href="http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/john-brown.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/">wrote</a>
that he was “now quite certain that the crimes of this
guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson and Douglass were early
champions of Brown and his sanguinary campaign, and they
certainly weren’t the last to consider Brown an American
hero. Likewise, though the U.S. government has labeled
Don Pedro, Lebrón, López Rivera and Ojeda Ríos as
violent criminals, their names have long been committed
to the Puerto Rican pantheon.</p>
<p>Now, after over a century of polemics, the time for
talk is dead. While the pen may be mightier than the
machete, it’s completely useless as a defensive weapon.
An army of writers and debaters can easily be mowed down
by a few well-armed Marines. The people of Puerto Rico
are at war, one which they’ve tried to dismiss, but one
which has been waged against them nonetheless.
They’ve been invaded, robbed, extorted and silenced.
They are a caged <em>iguaca</em> that has forgotten how
to sing or fly—starved, plucked, rattled. But fly
they must, or risk becoming helpless penguins, or
worse: dodos.</p>
<p>The people of Puerto Rico are entitled to no more and
no less than what is owed to all people—namely, the <a
target="_blank"
href="http://opil.ouplaw.com/view/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e873">right
to self-determination</a>, to live under a government
of the Puerto Rican people, by the Puerto Rican people
and for the Puerto Rican people. It is the same right
being fought for from Chiapas to Kurdistan. It is the
right demanded by the people of Barcelona, Bilboa,
Glasgow, Gaza, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Hong Kong, Bajo Aguán,
Bluefields, Araucanía, São Paulo, Pu`uhonua O Waimanalo
and Lakotah. It’s why citizens have gathered and marched
in Seattle, Los Angeles, Houston, Ferguson, Chicago,
Baltimore and New York City, why the U.S. public is
currently consumed by a contentious election season.
Because people everywhere understand that, if you have
no say in the governing of the society in which you
live, if you aren’t an actor but are instead being acted
upon, if you’re not a subject but are treated as an
object, then you aren’t free.</p>
<p>You are a slave.</p>
<p><img moz-reader-center="true" alt="bandera de lares"
src="cid:part19.06000501.02080406@freedomarchives.org"
class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-18344"
height="391" width="555"></p>
<p>I may not know much about Puerto Rico, but I know what
its people must do.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p><em><strong>Hector Luis Alamo</strong> is a
Chicago-based writer and journalist. You can connect
with him <a target="_blank"
href="http://twitter.com/HectorLuisAlamo">@HectorLuisAlamo</a>.</em></p>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
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San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
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