First Published: Daily World, January 3, 1972.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Following is a statement from the Puerto Rican Communist Party analyzing and expressing its position on the recent transformation of the Movement for Independence (MPI) to the Socialist Party (PSP).
During the last 12 years, the MPI had been the largest movement for independence in Puerto Rico. Since its foundation the PCP has played an important role in the MPI development, politically and organizationally.
As a mass movement, the MPI was a multi-class organization, and persons holding different ideological beliefs were allowed to participate in all its activities.
The Movement for Independence (MPI) was founded on Nov. 22, 1959, after political reverses suffered by the Puerto Rican Independentist Party (PIP), which had emerged as the second principal party, after defeating the Republican Party, the party of the assimilationists who promote statehood.
This movement was founded with a broad sense of libertarian struggle, and with the postulate in its theses that “every citizen without distinction of race, political or religious belief may belong to the Movement for Independence without a greater requisite than to desire the independence of his country and to be disposed to contribute, according to his capacity for its prompt realization.”
In face of this declaration, which did not envisage any sectarianism, the Communist Party offered its disinterested cooperation in order to strengthen the struggle for independence.
Our Party’s bodies worked in different organizational levels of the MPI, from its National Committee to missions and propaganda work, pickets and marches.
Years later, an MPI assembly acted on the question of double membership, deciding that one person could not be a member of the MPI and at the same time belong to another organization. The only organization that was independent of the MPI and had not assimilated with it was the Communist Party. It was against it that such a decision was directed. Our comrades were then deprived of some positions of minor importance.
Nevertheless, the Communist Party has always tried to maintain cordial relations with the MPI as well as with all the other patriotic groups which also struggle for the same common cause of national liberation and against the imperialist enemy.
The former MPI started small, it developed and gained strength among students and intellectuals. Its membership of revolutionary youth made it rise to the place of largest independence organization. Many of its youth drank at the Marxist-Leninist fountain of the Communist Party of Puerto Rico.
Some came to be members of the party, but repudiated it afterwards. Our Marxist-Leninist literature which is distributed everywhere, and later the renovating influence of the Cuban revolution, helped to create among the youth new desires of struggle and for knowledge of the brilliant doctrine of Marx, Engels and Lenin.
Since its beginning, the MPI pronounced itself in favor of electoral boycott. It declared in its theses that elections “have always been, and nothing else can be expected from them under colonial conditions, a mere political carnival.”
As the struggle advanced, various concepts have been modified, and finally the MPI has transformed itself into a political party.
In a well-attended assembly in the city of Bayamon on Nov. 28 it was announced that the MPI had approved in meetings of its delegations, that that organization be transformed into the Socialist Party of Puerto Rico, following a Marxist-Leninist line.
The Communist Party of Puerto Rico fraternally and sincerely greets the advent of the Socialist Party of Puerto Rico, and expects that our two organizations will always maintain the good relations that have existed during 12 years. At least, this will be the attitude of the Communist Party of Puerto Rico in our struggle against the common enemy of the working class, which is the same enemy of independence of the fatherland and of peace in the world: Yankee imperialism and its exploiting monopolies.
The only difference between MPI and the Socialist Party is the change of name, which the political conditions developing in the country have obliged its leadership to assume together with other more advanced steps. The existence of a Marxist-Leninist party and a socialist party also Marxist-Leninist is nothing new. They exist in different countries.
In Puerto Rico we also have other organizations which call themselves Marxist-Leninist although each of them struggles in different forms and interprets Marxism also in a different way.
The Puerto Rican Communist Party will follow its path and the line it has pursued in spite of the great obstacles it has to confront. We will never change our ideological principles of proletarian internationalism, nor our relations with the other communist and worker parties of the world.
Our Party stands firm, proudly raising high its emblem of the red flag with the hammer and machete, which symbolize the unity of workers and peasants and the star which symbolizes the struggle for the liberation of the fatherland.
Unity in the struggle of all progressive and anti-imperialist forces has always been our principal aim. We will not rest one moment until we see our fatherland free from colonial slavery and our proletariat free from economic enslavement.