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dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a id="reader-domain" class="domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/05/trumps-cronies-are-trying-to-kill-the-puerto-rican-day-parade/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/05/trumps-cronies-are-trying-to-kill-the-puerto-rican-day-parade/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">Trump’s Cronies are Trying to Kill the
Puerto Rican Day Parade</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/reuben-morris/"
rel="nofollow">Reuben Morris</a> - June 5, 2017<br>
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<p><span>The 60</span><span>th</span><span> annual
National Puerto Rican Day parade is scheduled in New
York City for June 11, 2017. The annual celebration
of music, dance, and cultural solidarity has always
had a special place in the hearts of New York’s
Boricua community. It’s a festival where culture and
politics weave the joy and melancholy of Puerto Rican
history and reality into a joyous, yet complex,
tapestry, deeply resonant with the many voices of the
people who make it happen. </span></p>
<p><span>Alongside the salsa and the many contingents of
musicians and dancers that make it so much fun, the
Parade has also committed to an ongoing campaign to
raise awareness of the grave humanitarian and economic
crisis facing Puerto Rico. This year that campaign
focuses on the centennial of the Jones Act – which
established US citizenship for all Puerto Ricans, and
remains to this day a central pivot of modern Puerto
Rican history. The legacy of the Jones Act is the
unique brand of neo-colonialism that it fostered on
the island. On the one hand, it offered the
ideological prospect of equal status and opportunity.
But that prospect has always been undercut by the
reality of Puerto Rico’s subordination within the US
capitalist system. </span></p>
<p><span>The centennial of the Jones Act and its
paradoxical legacy serendipitously coincide with the
release of Oscar López Rivera, one-time leader of the
Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), a
Marxist-Leninist organization whose members declared
themselves combatants against the US colonization of
Puerto Rico. In the 1970s, the FALN set off more than
120 bombs in US cities, causing millions in property
damage, injuring dozens, and killing five. Although
no evidence ever linked him directly to any of the
bombings, in 1981 Lopez Rivera was convicted of
seditious conspiracy (conspiring with others to
overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the US
Government), weapons possession and transporting
stolen vehicles across state lines. He was sentenced
to 55 years (plus 15 more, subsequently, for an
attempt to escape). </span></p>
<p><span>In the waning days of his presidency, President
Obama commuted that sentence.</span></p>
<p><span>The Parade has been advocating for Lopez Rivera’s
release for years. In celebration of the occasion it
invited him to march in the 2017 Parade as a “Prócer
de la Libertad” (Defender of Freedom). </span></p>
<p><span>And shortly thereafter a smear campaign
coordinated by Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center
set out to kill the Parade. To date that campaign has
resulted in the withdrawal of a number of Parade
sponsors, amid an increasingly outrageous cascade of
lies about the Parade, those who support it, and Lopez
Rivera. </span></p>
<p><span>MRC is a conservative advocacy group funded by
organizations and individuals with deep connections to
the Trump administration, as well as to the hedge
funds and creditors who stand to gain the most from
Puerto Rico’s misery. Despite styling itself a media
“watchdog,” ever vigilant for left-wing bias, it is,
in fact, a highly tendentious sponsor of
anti-immigrant bias and climate change denial, among
other right-wing positions. MRC is linked to and
actively supports vulture hedge funds and bondholders
that have lobbied Congress to prevent Puerto Rico from
declaring bankruptcy or writing off unsustainable
debt. Those lobbying efforts resulted in the
establishment of the Fiscal Oversight and Management
Board, which recently launched proceedings that many
observers fear will inevitably result in big pay-outs
to vulture funds and a crippling austerity regime for
the island’s 3.4 million residents.</span></p>
<p><span>MRC is supported by substantial funding from the
Mercer Family Foundation; Rebekah Mercer is an MRC
Board member. Mercer and her father, Robert Mercer,
are Donald Trump mega-donors, credited with having
introduced Trump to Steve Bannon. Between 2008 and
2012, the Mercer Family Foundation contributed
$7,494,000 to MRC. Through the family hedge fund,
Renaissance Technologies, the Mercers are invested in
Popular Inc. (d/b/a Banco Popular in Puerto Rico and
the Virgin Islands and as Popular Community Bank in
the United States). As a bondholder, BPOP is heavily
exposed to the Puerto Rican fiscal crisis, and its
investors stand to benefit significantly from any
resolution that results in a settlement with
bondholders (as opposed to a bankruptcy proceeding
that might favor, for example, pensioners over
bondholders). Not surprisingly, Robert Mercer
contributed $2.5 million to a Koch Brothers entity
that aggressively lobbied Congress against allowing
Puerto Rico to restructure its debts. </span></p>
<p><span>MRC’s board of trustees also includes Betsy
DeVos’ father, Richard M. DeVos (whose foundation
contributed $2.1 million to MRC between 1998-2010);
William Walton (an advisor to Trump’s transition
team); and Paul Isaac, a principal of hedge fund
Arbiter Partners (and author of a 2016 letter to the
Financial Times arguing against Puerto Rico’s right to
file bankruptcy). </span></p>
<p><span>MRC’s hit-job on this year’s Parade has been led
by Ken Oliver-Mendez, and by Jorge Bonilla.
Oliver-Mendez previously worked for Puerto Rico
Governor Luis Fortuño (who now works for the law firm
Steptoe & Johnson, a law firm prominently
represented on the creditor side of the debt crisis).
Bonilla is a onetime Republican candidate for
Congress in Florida’s ninth district and a writer for
MRC’s “Newsbusters” blog. Since President Obama
announced the commutation of Lopez Rivera’s sentence,
Bonilla has posted 14 articles attacking Rivera. </span></p>
<p><span>To all appearances, right-wing Puerto Rican
political operatives have made a deep miscalculation
in attacking the Parade. Whatever they may think
about Lopez Rivera’s radical anti-colonialist politics
– and opinions vary – the vast majority of Boricuas
supported his release. (The man served his time – 36
years in a federal penitentiary, 12 of those in
solitary.) Puerto Rican New York will be out in force
on June 12 and they will make that point clearly.
Meanwhile, on the island, a status referendum is
scheduled (for June 11), which Puerto Rican statehood
advocates hope will result in renewed impetus to their
drive for statehood. Oliver-Mendez and Bonilla are
both aggressively pro-statehood, and evidently hope
that by attacking Lopez Rivera, they will increase
turnout and support in favor of their position in the
referendum. But in doing so they have aligned
themselves with a group of xenophobes and right-wing
extremists in US politics who, in no conceivable
universe, will ever support Puerto Rican statehood (a
lock to create a 51</span><span>st</span><span> state
that would be a safe seat for two new Democratic
Senators). So, in their campaign to promote
statehood, they will have alienated most Puerto Ricans
and done nothing ultimately to advance their cause in
the US, where their natural allies occupy the left
side of the political spectrum. </span></p>
<p><span>So: bad faith gives rise to strange bedfellows.
Resist both – on June 11, come out, dance, support
the Parade. </span></p>
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