Puerto Rico: A People in Struggle Puerto Rico in Focus Location: An archipelago located in the Caribbean Sea; smallest of the four major Antilles. Population: 3.5 million, with 2.5 million living in the US. Major cities: San Juan (Capital City), Ponce, Mayagiiez, Caguas and Carolina. Government: A colonial administration elected every four years under the provisions of the Organic Act (Law 600) of 1950; a governor and bi-camaral legislature. Unable to make any decisions concerning war or peace, immigration or emigration, commercial treaties, international relations, customs, transportation, maritime trade, money or postal system, forestry or National Parks. Most judicial decisions made by a federal court in which English is the medium of communication. Military importance: Puerto Rico is one of the most militarized regions in the world, the US controls over 50,000 acres of Puerto Rico's most arable land for which it pays nothing. Roosevelt Roads Naval Base constitutes 1/7 of our national territory, there are 11 military bases on the island. Sovereignty: AD sovereign powers lie in the US Congress; Puerto Ricans are drafted into the US army and have fought in every war since World War l,yet enjoy no representation. (The highest form of taxation is the blood tax exacted from a nation's youth); the US war of independence was fought over the issue that taxation without representation is tyranny. Puerto Rico: A People in Struggle Declaration to the International Community Regarding the Crime of Genocide Against the Puerto Rican People Since July 25,1898, when the US militarily occupied the autonomous Contents nation of Puerto Rico, US presence on the island has had as its basis the liquidation of the Puerto Rican EDUCATION: national reality. Towards this end, the A Tool for the Destruction of the National Culture 2 US government has redefined every mechanism at its disposal. To facili- FORCED EMIGRATION: tate this barbaric proposition, the US The Dispersion of the Puerto Rican Nation 3 government has transformed the institutions of education and medicine PUBLIC HEALTH: into genocidal tools to be used against A Weapon for the Decimation of the Puerto Rican Nation 4 our people. The destruction of our natural economy, and the develop- A CALL TO CONSCIENCE, A CALL TO ACTION 6-7 ment of a parasitic one, has resulted in a virtual diaspora for the Puerto Rican REPRESSION: nation. This, coupled with the brutal The Physical Destruction of the Independence Movement and naked aggression against those and the Puerto Rican People 8 who have maintained that the enemy of the Puerto Rican people is US im- perialism, must clearly illustrate that a well-orchestrated genocidal plan EDUCATION: against the Puerto Rican people exists. A Tool for the Destruction of the National Culture Article II of the Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, The educational system in are made American and the teach- adopted by the United Nations Gen- Puerto Rico has long been a ers and students are inspired with eral Assembly on December 9,1948 favorite weapon of the colonizer the American spirit.. .the island states that genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy the culture and will become in its sympathies, to destroy, in whole or in part, a na- obscure Puerto Rico's history; views and attitude towards govern- tional, ethnic, racial or religious group: implanting the history of the ment, essentially American. The Killing members of the group; dominating power. The system- Causing serious bodily or mental Puerto Ricans are as yet passive harm to members of the group; atic nature of this plan finds its and plastic.. Their ideals are in our Deliberately inflicting on the group clearest expression in the fol- hands to create and to mold. conditions of life calculated to bring lowing statement by US citizen The disdain for Puerto Rican about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and Victor S. Clark, Commissioner culture and the intention to - Imposing measures intended to of Education of Puerto Rico, in a substitute a bastardized culture prevent births within the group. report to the island's military which would insure tranquility, governor in 1899: If the schools stability and a colonized order Declaration to the International Community Puerto Rico: A People in Struggle on the island became the guid- Civil Air Patrol, Boy Scouts, government also targeted for ing principle of education in Campfire Girls.. .all the curricu- destruction the Institute of Puerto Rico for the next 50 lum content has been designed to Puerto Rican Culture, which years. create in Puerto Ricans a sense of since 1956 had been in the fore- This policy of cultural geno- total identification with the me- front of preserving and enhanc- cide found its most glaring tropolis... ing Puerto Rican art, literature example in the abolition of Realizing that in order to de- and culture. The government Spanish as the language of stroy the Puerto Rican national mandated a halt in all funding instruction and the attempt to reality, it is necessary to first for this independent cultural substitute English as the lan- destroy all centers of cultural center and its absorption into a guage of education, commerce and intellectual resistance, the single government agency of and the courts. The colonial US government directed the arts, recreation and sports. program also revolved around colonial apparatus to destroy This scheme for the destruc- the promotion of US cultural two pillars of Puerto Rican tion of Puerto Rico's culture de- activities, especially the celebra- national consciousness. In the signed by the US imperialists tion of holidays traditional to 1970s, as a result of the 1971 and their colonial counterparts the US, but with no basis within student strike in which students was a central goal in this period, our reality and culture. • seized the university and built in order to exercise hegemony The US acknowledged its barricades all around San Juan, over every aspect of Puerto failure to eradicate the Spanish the government divided the Rican life. They understand that language, on the island, University of Puerto Rico into 9 the flower of Puerto Rico's lib- through administrative reforms scattered campuses to liquidate eration lies within the seed of in 1948, which restored the use the base of student resistance to Puerto Rico's culture. of Spanish in the schools. But to colonialism in San Juan. The this day, education has as its basis the inculcation of the colonizers7 view of Puerto Rico. FORCED EMIGRATION: History books continue to The Dispersion of the Puerto Rican Nation present this distorted image of the country: references to na- tional heroes and patriots are One of the most devastating with a population density of 62 omitted, the "smallness" of impacts of the US' efforts to inhabitants per square mile—to Puerto Rico is emphasized; liquidate the Puerto Rican the barrios of New York—with "history" begins with the inva- national reality has been the 617 people per square mile. This sion of 1898, and "success" is forced dispersal or emigration supposed concern for the equated with values, standards of over two-fifths of the Puerto crowding of the Puerto Rican and norms. Rican people into the urban population did not prevent the Dr. Aida Negron de Mon- centers of the colonizing power. US from taking over 13% of tilla, Puerto Rican educator, Under the pretext that Puerto Rico's arable land for summed up this education for Puerto Rico was too "over- military bases. It became clear Americanization in 1972: The crowded" to sustain its own that the migration was not in 'careful' selection of reading population, the government fact based on any concern for material.. .the promotion of secon- promoted emigration of Puerto the welfare of the Puerto Rican dary-level student organizations— Ricans from their homeland— people, but on US interests. Declaration to the International Community Puerto Rico: A People in Struggle thousands of Cuban exiles and the Mainland: An Uncertain Puerto Ricans in the US North Americans were being future, Puerto Ricans are the (1986-census data) implanted into the island's "poorest of the poor." They 2.5 million; mostly in New population to serve as a have the lowest educational York, New Jersey, Pennsylva- counter-revolutionary force. attainment of any group; the nia and Illinois. As if casting out two-fifths highest drug addiction rate; the • 45.3% of Puerto Ricans in of the population were not highest incidence of mental ill- central cities lived in poverty, enough, the colonial govern- ness, the highest alcoholism compared to 313% of Blacks, ment's total lack of concern for rate; and Puerto Rican women and 11.4% of whites; the emigrated population con- have the highest rate of sterili- • Among children, 59.2% of tinued to manifest itself in the zation of any group in the US. Puerto Ricans lived in pov- infra-human conditions in This is the legacy of colonial- erty; which our people were forced ism for Puerto Ricans in the US • Nearly 89% of Puerto Rican to exist. In cities across the US, who are truly living statehood. children in single parent fami- our people lived in housing A situation which will be exac- lies headed by women lived in unfit for human habitation, erbated as a consequence of poverty; while on the agri-business major demographic changes en- • Nearly 80% of Puerto Rican plantations of the Atlantic visioned as a result of the 2020 youth drop out of school; and seaboard, Puerto Ricans toiled Plan. A plan which calls for the • Puerto Ricans have an unem- in a semi-feudal state.