The colonized and oppressed people of Puerto Rico are deepening the crisis of imperialism by intensifying their resistance to U.S. colonialism.
Puerto Ricans shut down superstore, Walmart, on September 1, 2016 to protest the economic chokehold the corporation has on the island.
Five hundred Puerto Ricans protested in San Juan to demand independence on Jun 18, 2016. The demonstration was led by the Puerto Rican Independence Movement.
Puerto Ricans led by Se Acabaron Las Promesas (Promises Are Over) demonstrated at the Condado Plaza Hotel in San Juan, blocking the capitalist gangsters who were there to attend the first PROMESA Conference on August 31, 2016.
The PROMESA (Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act) is a program which the U.S. imposed on the people of the island.
Economic chains
U.S. imperialist president Barack Hussein Obama appointed seven colonial politicians, known as the fiscal control board, to oversee Puerto Rico’s finances for the next five years.
Puerto Rico is $73 billion in debt to different banking thugs such as Swiss bank UBS.
They defaulted on millions July 1, 2016. Their status as a U.S. colony prevents them from declaring bankruptcy
Obama’s fiscal control board has already lowered the minimum wage in Puerto Rico to $4.25 an hour for people under 25.
The Puerto Rican working class people know that colonialism is our enemy. They also understand that capitalism fuels colonialism and the conference had to be disrupted.
Activist Gabriel Diaz Rivera told DemocracyNow.org “We have been here since 6:00 a.m. blocking the entrances to the Condado Plaza Hotel. This is the second warning they’ve given that they will remove us in order to protect the conference for the rich, who have been making our lives precarious and making the lives of working people of this country precarious, as well. And we will stand firm here, blocking the entrances, because this conference is not acceptable. We are convinced that the fiscal control board is not acceptable, and we are not going to accept it.”
Puerto Rico’s history of oppression and resistance
Christopher Columbus set foot on Puerto Rico in 1493 and since then, the island has been under foreign occupation.
Spain colonized the island and nearly wiped out the Indigenous people during the 1500s. They also imported enslaved Africans for free labor.
Slavery wasn’t abolished on the island until 1873 and today, many people of Puerto Rico are Africans or have African ancestry.
Spain lost its domination of Puerto Rico to the U.S. in the Spanish-American war of 1898. The island remains a U.S. colony today.
The U.S. exploited the island for its capitalist interests throughout the 20th century.
Companies like The United Fruit Company owned millions of acres of land in Puerto Rico at one point.
The people of Puerto Rico resisted U.S. colonialism from the time they were placed under U.S. control.
Organizations such as Boricua Liberation Army and the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party have all led Movements to gain independence from the imperialist U.S.
The U.N. Decolonization Committee declared that Puerto Rico was no longer colonized in 1962. This is a blatant lie.
Colonialism is the foreign domination of a people at the social, political and economic expense of the dominated peoples. This is exactly what exists in Puerto Rico.
The island has a poverty rate of roughly 45 percent, according to the 2010 census. This is one of the direct effect of U.S. colonialism.
The African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) stands in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico in their struggle to be free from colonial domination.
It is clear to the APSP that U.S. colonialism stands in the way of the freedom and self-determination of our brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico, just like it does for our people in the U.S.
Join an African revolutionary organization that is on the right side of the question.
Join the APSP!
Uhuru!
Build the African Socialist International in Puerto Rico!
