Editors' Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Margaret Power and Andor Skotnes On October 27, 1974, more than 20,000 people jammed Madison Square Garden (see fig. 1). They came to support independence for Puerto Rico and the release of the five Nationalist political prisoners who had been held in US jails since the 1950s. The Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) was the principal organizer of the event, and speakers included a wide range of antiwar, Left, and Puerto Rican leaders. Presenters ranged from Jane Fonda to Angela Davis to Juan Mari Bras, the secretary general of the PSP. The rally took place at a time many Leftists in the United States understood that the Vietnamese would soon win the war in Vietnam. Solidarity with Puerto Rico — a US colony with a sizable percentage of its population in the United States, most of whom were workers and racially diverse — encapsulated some of the main politics of the broad progressive movement: anti- imperialism, working- class struggle, and antiracism. However, in the decades since, activists and scholars alike, including those in the Puerto Rican community, have largely forgotten the prominent position Puerto Rico held for a few years on the US Left’s political agenda. Several factors explain the decline in awareness of and solidarity with Puerto Rico in the years after 1974. One is, of course, the waning and splintering of the US Left that occurred following the 1975 victory of the Vietnamese people, and the relative decline of the broad Black liberation struggle after some partial victories and under the impact of widespread police repression. The women’s movement, too, while remaining vibrant through the late 1970s, experienced an ebb. In the Puerto Rican movement itself the emergence of the FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional), an armed clandestine Puerto Rican organization that carried out armed actions — primarily armed propaganda rather than urban guerrilla warfare — in the Radical History Review Issue 128 (May 2017) doi 10.1215/01636545-3857677 © 2017 by MARHO: The Radical Historians’ Organization, Inc. 1 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/radical-history-review/article-pdf/2017/128/1/468775/RHR128_01Intro_FF.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 2 Radical History Review Figure 1. The poster announcing the Day of National Solidarity with the Independence of Puerto Rico event at Madison Square Garden in New York City, October 27, 1974. Designed by Lorenzo Homar. Courtesy of Susan Homar Damm and Laura Homar Damm Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/radical-history-review/article-pdf/2017/128/1/468775/RHR128_01Intro_FF.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Power and Skotnes | Editors’ Introduction 3 United States had its effects. FALN bombings, the first of which occurred just prior to the huge gathering in Madison Square Garden described above, generated a range of responses, from outright condemnation to enthusiastic approval. But the overall result was the division of proindependence Puerto Rican organizations and the burgeoning US- based solidarity movement. Moreover, revolution and imperial intervention in Central America and advances in national liberation in Africa shifted the attention of the remaining solidarity and anti- imperialist forces away from the Puerto Rican nationalist struggle. Indeed, a kind of amnesia about Puerto Rico and the importance of the Puerto Rican independence movement engulfed the larger Left. Of course, there are also deeper historical and structural factors that con- tinuously undermine support for and popular memory about Puerto Rican struggles and realities. Puerto Rico has been a colony ever since the Spanish overwhelmed the indigenous Taino societies on the island in the 1490s; then in 1898, the United States recolonized it (fig. 2). The 1952 designation of Puerto Rico as a common- wealth, and the subsequent removal of Puerto Rico from the United Nation’s list of non- self- governing territories in 1953, were therefore of great significance and had an impact on a broader scale, both domestically and internationally. As the United States positioned itself as the leader of the “Free World” and the friend of anti- European colonial movements following World War II, it was imperative that it not appear to be a colonial power. To mask its ongoing colonialist control of Puerto Rico, the US government worked with Luis Muñoz Marín and the Popular Democratic Party to transform the island in appearance from a direct US colony to a Free Associated State, which is in reality a constitutional anomaly and anything but free. Puerto Rico had its first Puerto Rican governor appointed in 1947. Then in 1948 Puerto Ricans elected a governor for the first time. As governor, Luis Muñoz Marín worked very closely with the US government to oversee the passage of a new constitution, a process that, the United States proclaimed, signified the end of US colonial rule. And since that time, with the exception of the 1960s and 1970s when the Puerto Rican independence movement resurged in popularity, it appears that many if not most people in the United States — and many on the island — have accepted the lie that Puerto Rico is no longer a US colony. A colleague of ours recently remarked that the recurring historical amnesia of people in the United States about its colonies — especially about Puerto Rico — reminded him of the recurring amnesia of the English about its colony in the north of Ireland, and about colonial Irish history in general. Indeed, when we proposed this thematic RHR issue on “Puerto Rico: A US Colony in a Postcolonial World,” some colleagues worried that the topic was not large or significant enough by itself, that we should somehow shift our focus to a region, to broad transnational questions, to more global concerns. Of course, as the English always rediscover the importance of Ire- land when troubles break out, many in the United States are jolted back into awareness of the importance of Puerto Rico when crisis erupts. And now is just such a time. With the Puerto Rican debt disaster wreaking havoc on the island, with the threat Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/radical-history-review/article-pdf/2017/128/1/468775/RHR128_01Intro_FF.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 4 Radical History Review Figure 2. A stereograph produced in 1900 depicting the First Battle of San Juan, on May 12, 1898, the first major action of US forces in Puerto Rico in 1898. Fort San Cristobal can be seen in the background. This was an initial step toward the US colonization of Puerto Rico. Library of Congress of insolvency and co- collateral damage on the mainland looming, concern about the Puerto Rico situation is spreading in the mass media, governmental bodies, political campaigns, educational institutions, personal conversations, and especially in the progressive movement. And activists and scholars, who are the descendants of or who were among those who rallied in Madison Square Garden nearly forty- three years ago are being dramatically reminded that the island is a US colony. However, while the general increase in conversation about Puerto Rico is a definite improvement over the prevailing historical amnesia, there are grave prob- lems with much that is being said. Too often discussions of Puerto Rico in crisis rely on shallow, racialized, implicitly colonialized stereotypes that blame the victims and reinforce oppressive ignorance rather than producing new understandings. Of course historical amnesia is always about more than forgetting. It’s also about never really knowing, about ignoring, about simply accepting many of the “commonsense” illusions that infuse the dominant culture. It’s about not seeing the importance of a particular history or reality, or not understanding the point of caring about it. The problem is not just that the facts discussed about the current situation are often wrong, but that so little is known in large sectors of the US population about the history of Puerto Rico as a nation, as a Spanish- then- US colony, and as a key aspect of an imperialized globe. Little is known about Puerto Rico as a military test site and staging ground for the projection of US power into the hemisphere.1 Or how the United States has used Puerto Rico, its Spanish- speaking colony, to further its imperialist ventures in Latin America.2 Or how the United States has touted Puerto Rico as the mythical capitalist success story in contrast to the alleged economic fail- ure of socialist Cuba, and by extension to all the struggling former colonies around the world not under US tutelage. And little is known about the Puerto Rican people, Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/radical-history-review/article-pdf/2017/128/1/468775/RHR128_01Intro_FF.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Power and Skotnes | Editors’ Introduction 5 either on the island or in the diaspora — their culture, their diversities, and their divisions. Or about why more Puerto Ricans currently live in the United States than in Puerto Rico. In other words, historical amnesia about Puerto Rico has to do with the absence of contextual understanding that can give meaning to “facts.” One quick way to gauge the lack of knowledge about Puerto Rico is to ask students or acquaintances whether or not Puerto Ricans need a visa to come to the United States (they do not, they are US citizens), or whether, as US citizens, Puerto Ricans who live in Puerto Rico can vote in federal elections (they cannot). Such questions can open a discussion about what citizenship and the lack of voting rights say about the historical and current reality of US colonial control over Puerto Rico. This issue of Radical History Review is based on the premise, for reasons alluded to above, that the history of Puerto Rico is important, not just to Puerto Ricans on both the island and the mainland, but to all in the United States, and especially to those of us who are progressives.

Load more