First Published: Obreros En Marcha, Vol. 3, No. 9, October 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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In September, our organization hosted a visit to New York City by leading representatives of the Popular Socialist Movement (MSP). Their purpose in coming to New York was to present and discuss with progressive and revolutionary forces in the city the MSP’s analysis of the present situation in Puerto Rico and their conception of the strategy and tactics to develop for this stage of the struggle. The representatives from the MSP met with various solidarity groups, political organizations, lawyers, etc.
On September 23, in commemoration of the 1868 uprising for independence in Puerto Rico, El Comite-MINP invited its friends and comrades in the struggle to a forum where the MSP presented its positions and answered questions from the audience. (A few copies of their presentation are still available in English).
Following, OEM publishes the first part of an interview we held with comrades from the MSP. This first part deals basically with their characterization of U.S. imperialism’s plans for Puerto Rico and the repressive situation on the island. The second will focus on the concrete work that progressive forces must take up at this time.
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OEM: What is imperialism’s present strategy for Puerto Rico? Is Statehood imperialism’s principal option, as some forces on the island are saying?
MSP: We understand that North American imperialism is debating different alternatives to the problem of Puerto Rico’s status at this time. We believe that this is due to the economic and social crisis that is jolting the Commonwealth, which at present is in definite economic and social bankruptcy. Right after ex-President Gerald Ford’s statements concerning statehood (in early 1977), different sectors in Puerto Rico stated that the U.S. has opted for statehood as a strategy for Puerto Rico.
We believe that this assertion lacks a basis because up to this moment these comrades have not been able to demonstrate which social or economic forces within North American imperialism are pushing the strategy for statehood. It has only been established that there are some political circles, members of the State Department, Congressmen, etc. who are pushing for this. Marxists understand that each occurrence of social change is determined by economic causes and that these politicians respond to concrete economic interests. It seems to us that in order to affirm that statehood is imperialism’s present strategy for Puerto Rico, one would have to point out those economic forces those sectors of imperialism that are actually pushing for statehood. It seems to us that the fundamental weakness of this thesis is rooted in not being able to identify those sectors. It is a thesis that lacks a historical materialist analysis of the problem of the present imperialist strategy for Puerto Rico.
Our position concerning the present imperialist strategy for Puerto Rico is that, among the alternatives that imperialism is debating at this moment, it leans towards the Commonwealth. Although in bankruptcy, the Commonwealth continues to serve the economic interests of North American imperialism in Puerto Rico. The imperialists know that the Commonwealth will not last forever, and, in this context, they look for new alternatives of colonial or neo-colonial domination. In this sense, we believe that certain concrete sectors of imperialism who support that alternative can be identified. These are the sectors of finance capital, such as the pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, bondholders, financiers, and the banks that profit from the exploitation of the island. These sectors would continue to benefit greatly from some type of modified colonial domination or of some neocolonial domination. For these sectors, statehood would mean great economic losses, if not their ruin. We think that these sectors are found directly or indirectly behind positions that propose some type of colonial modification, or rather the Commonwealth consolidated within the constitutional framework of the U.S., the free association or associated republic governed, perhaps, by the Puerto Rican Independence Party.
However, we do not want to underestimate the danger that statehood represents for Puerto Rico. We see this danger because in Puerto Rico, the party that presently administers the colony adheres to a strategy of annexation. The New Progressive Party (PNP) has developed a profound ideological offensive in the heart of the Puerto Rican working class pushing the supposed benefits of statehood. As a result, the working masses, who find themselves in a profound economic crisis, tend to identify statehood with an economic guarantee and security for the working masses. This is why Governor Romero Barcelo has posed that statehood is for the poor and this is the strategy that guides him. In this message to the people, statehood means more food stamps, more federal transfers, more social security, more medicare, etc. In the process of identifying statehood with economic and material security for the impoverished masses, the PNP assumes an ideological offensive that contains a very dangerous feature for our struggle because it definitely is winning over, or is in the process of winning over, significant sectors of the people to statehood conceptions. This is a real danger, the danger of propaganda and the concrete ideological offensive that is being waged on the people. Utilizing and manipulating the ideology of colonial dependency that our people have with respect to the transfers, funds, and federal programs, Romero Barcelo has mounted all of his strategy.
We cannot negate that Barcelo and his party have been able to establish different levels of relations with political circles in Washington, fundamentally with sectors close to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. These political circles would be useful, at a given moment, to negotiate in favor of statehood, if the PNP, through its ideological offensive, obtains the overwhelming support of the people towards statehood. Within this context we believe that statehood is then converted into an objective that must be fought politically in Puerto Rico, combatting it from a class perspective, demonstrating to the people that statehood is not the alternative to their economic problems, but that independence and socialism are the only real alternatives to the serious social and economic problems.
OEM: How do you evaluate the present repressive situation in Puerto Rico?
MSP: It seems to us that in Puerto Rico we live in a period of an increase in the state’s repression against progressive forces. This is obvious in the latest incidents, particularly from the time that Romero Barcelo assumed control of the Commonwealth. From the violence that the state implemented to destroy the UTIER strike; the imprisonment of the trade union leader, Radames Acosta, for supposedly violating the Taft-Hartley act; the assassination of the Teamster delegate Juan Rafael Caballero; the arrest of Teamster organizer, Comrade Miguel Cabrera, and the intent to fabricate a criminal case against him, accusing him of having participated in the execution of the boss’ lawyer, Alan Randall; the ambush and assassination of two young Puerto Rican independentistas on July 23rd–these all serve as evidence to the escalated repression. Subsequent to this most recent execution, 8 independentista comrades were arrested, having been accused of being linked to the two youths assassinated in Cerro Maravilla. In addition, at that same time, Comrade Edgardo Alvelo Burgos, member of the Popular Socialist Movement, was arrested, having been accused of illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun, of materials to make explosives and of two cars. The press treated his arrest as an arrest of a presumed terrorist, intending to link the comrade and our organization with terrorist actions which have been developing in Puerto Rico.
What we have described responds to the need for the colonial regime to provide an element of stability in Puerto Rico that guarantees any scheme that imperialism advances in terms of status. In order to create this stability, the target of the government’s repressive actions is, on the one hand, the advanced sectors of the organized workers’ movement and, on the other, the Puerto Rican left. The cannons have been lined up against these sectors in the last few months, in the last few years. And what we see today is not an isolated fact, but a systematic campaign that began under the administration of Hernandez Colon. In these moments, under the direction of Romero Barcelo, this campaign is reaching higher and more brutal levels. It is important to emphasize that it is not a repression that began with the government of Barcelo, but that in fact it began with previous colonial administrations and at this time has intensified. It is part of a process that has as its premise–independently of the status option that North American imperialism chooses–that the only way to guarantee bourgeois domination on the island is to exercise organized repression against the workers’ movement and the left.
Independently of the status alternative imperialism opts for, what is imperialism’s only course of economic development in Puerto today is the exploitation of non-replaceable natural resources. The exploitation of these resources represents a very high investment of capital. The imperialists know that exploitation will generate large movements of opposition and resistance on the part of the Puerto Rican people. We say that it is the only alternative that remains, because the problem of the Commonwealth is not only a political problem. It is one of a structural, crisis of the economic system of capitalism in Puerto Rico. When U.S. imperialism decides upon political options to solve their problems, they will understand (and they understand it as such at this time) that they have only one road to take in terms of economic development. In order to implement that economic development, they will rely upon repression. This is why we wish to clearly express that with respect to repression, the option that imperialism chooses does not matter. The fundamental problem that will present itself in Puerto Rico’s reality will be the increase of repression against the workers’ movement and the left in order to guarantee the political stability of the regime and, above all, to guarantee the exploitation of the non-replaceable natural resources that exist in Puerto Rico.
OEM: In describing the repressive situation in Puerto Rico, you have used the phrase “police state.” Can you briefly elaborate on that characterization?
MSP: We have indicated that, in Puerto Rico, conditions are such the state will eventually convert itself into a police state. This means that there are developing material and psychological conditions of preparation by the state, as well as preparation in the state of mind of the masses towards the conversion of Puerto Rico into a police state. A police state is a state which, while preserving all of the elements of bourgeois legality, parliamentarianism, the court system, etc., begins to intensify its repression converting this into a form of fundamental domination by systematically directing it against the workers movement and the left: torture; assassination; the disappearance of people who are opposed to the government; the violation of human rights; selective repression carried out by illegal organisms of the PNP, paramilitary organisms of the Cuban “gusanos” in Puerto Rico, together with daily harassment by the police against progressive elements, would be commonplace occurrences in Puerto Rico. It would be a regime that would combine formal elements of a bourgeois democracy with a repressive apparatus. The levels of sophisticated technology achieved by a regime such as this, would allow it to easily suppress any mass movement.
We want to make it clear with this characterization that Puerto Rico is moving toward a regime in which repression is qualitatively increasing against the progressive sectors of society and that this increase in repression is, today, manifested in the development and consolidation of the repressive apparatus of the state, which would function within a framework of apparent formal democracy. It is based on this contradiction–between the external appearances of democracy on the one hand, and on the other, a situation developing where repression becomes the fundamental mechanism of domination by the ruling classes–that we characterize Puerto Rico today as moving toward a police state.
(to be continued)