Communiqué from La Voz de Vieques on behalf of a people in struggle
The general silence was strange in the face of the thinly veiled simulation exercises for a military occupation to crush the potential popular insurgency as a result of the fall of the colony.
No one doubts that the colonial farce imposed on Puerto Ricans, to which Muñoz Marín lent himself, is drying up at its roots. Nor does one have to be a political genius to foresee that the social upheavals provoked by the prolonged colonial crisis offer an extraordinary opportunity to the workers. The instinct to struggle will surely take hold of the masses of workers. They will have within their grasp the opportunity to control the country and shape the process of decolonization such that it results in the fruits, long yearned for, of freedom founded upon an eradication of economic exploitation and social inequality.
From this reality emerges the application of the measures now being practiced in the US by the political and military elites to control and suppress social explosions such as that which took place recently in Ferguson, Missouri.
The control of domestic security in the United States, especially when this translates into direct military action against its own citizens, is something that will be criticized by the rest of the world, which exposes the hypocrisy of the imperial elite. While they claim to impose capitalist democracy on Venezuelans and Cubans, they impose military tyranny upon their own. However, at the end of the day the US can present these actions as a domestic issue.
The case of Puerto Rico is different. The military occupation of our country, just when the colonial collapse is transformed into the direct action of Puerto Ricans to finally become masters of our destiny contains all of the elements of an international crime that violates all of the precepts of the self determination of nations.
The Puerto Ricans of the main island do not know what it means to live directly under the boots of a foreign military. Soon after the 1898 invasion, foreign troops were housed on military bases. Since then, the attempt has been made to create the illusion of civilian authority — although it remained colonial in its content — on all matters in Puerto Rico.
Viequenses, on the contrary, know very well what it means to be subjected every day, at all hours, to the armed despotism of a foreign military. They attempted to dictate to us when and where to fish as well as what parts of our island we could enjoy. And whenever they wanted, they fell on our communities in an orgy of abuses and insults that very often ended up in the death of one of our compatriots.
We also know what it means to organize resistance, as well as how cowardly the uniformed abusers are when a people, committed to struggle, confronts them and even gives them a taste of their own medicine.
For these reasons, we join the call of the Communist Party of Puerto Rico to collective resistance, to mobilize the people in order to transform these war exercises against the people into our own popular exercises against military occupation.
The people of Vieques will be present wherever resistance to military aggression against any Puerto Rican is ignited. We also join in the call to all persons of conscience in the United States, our Latin American brothers, and all women and men throughout the world committed to the right of nations to freedom to offer support in these moments in which the destiny of our homeland is being forged.
Translation by Carlos Borrero.