This article was published on The Masses before it was a part of the People’s Defense Committee. The editorial board of The Masses will occasionally republish articles from that period based on their practical, theoretical and historical significance.
By the Boriken Liberation Front, Juventud Unida por la Independencia, the Re-Build Collective, Behind Enemy Lines, and the Revolutionary Maoist Coalition
- Opening – Boriken Liberation Front – Comrade Lubangala
- Boriken Liberation Front – Comrade Ophelia
- Juventud Unida por la Independencia (JUPI) – Coco
- Re-Build Collective
- Behind Enemy Lines – Jackie
- Revolutionary Maoist Coalition – Comrade Norman
- Closing – Boriken LIberation Front – Comrade Urraca
Opening – Boriken Liberation Front – Comrade Lubangala
¡VIVA LA REPÚBLICA! ¡ABAJO LOS ASESINOS! (x8)
Today is an extremely important day for all revolutionary Boricuas, for pobre y proletario Boricuas everywhere. The Boricuas of the island, and Boricuas here. This day is especially important, because Puerto Rico, our righteous nation, is still enslaved under the yoke of the capitalista-imperialista U.S. empire, and it is currently being strangled to death under the beast’s weight.
Today marks the day in 1868, when 400-600 freedom fighters, led under Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico (Ramón Emeterio Betances, Segundo Ruis Belvis, Juan Ríus Rivera + Jose Francisco Basora, among other exiled Boricua revolutionaries), would rebel with fierce might and will against the Spaniard colonialists on their sacred island, in the western municipality of Lares, Puerto Rico. Originally meant to occur on the 29th in conjunction with St. Michael festivities, the Spaniard colonial authorities discovered the plan, and the fighters decided to make their fury known early on this day. As the island had only been under colonial occupation for almost 400 years at the time since November 19, 1493 by way of KKKolumbus and his 1,500 parasitic henchmen, along with the system of chattel slavery of Afrikans and attempted full extermination of our ancestral Indigenous Taíno peoples, from Borike’n to Xaymaca, this revolt marked a turning point for the Boricua’s struggle for freedom, independence, and sovereignty, no colonial strings attached. When the freedom fighters achieved short victory by the next morning on the 24th, they formed the Provisional Republic of Puerto Rico, declaring an inevitable end to Spaniard colonialism and the system of Afrikan chattel slavery they needed to maintain its power. They would then march on to nearby San Sebastian to realize the promises of the Puerto Rican NACIÓN, ambushing the colonial parasites with armed will and might again, but were unfortunately crushed under the repressive weight of Spaniard authorities determined to hold their empire intact, no matter of the blood of millions of our Afrikan and Taíno Boricua siblings on their own hands, then and now.
You may be wondering: Esto es sólo una revuelta de hace mucho tiempo, cuando eso no llegó a ninguna parte. ¿Qué tiene esto que ver con mi situación como boricua oprimido hoy? No hay nada más que podamos hacer, y sólo podemos hacer hasta cierto punto para sentirnos un poco de dignidad por nosotros mismos. I’ll explain briefly why: a week ago, September 16th, marked seven years since Hurricane Maria devastated the entire island, under 12o years of U.S. neo-colonial occupation since July 25, 1898. First emerging into the Afro-Taíno countryside municipality of Yabucoa, nearly 5,000 pobre y proletario Boricuas were martirizado, with no care in the whole world by the Anglo-Saxon terrorist establishment of the U.S. and her imperialist armed government. Many Boricuas were gradually forced out from their sacred island and into the belly of the paper beast, giving the U.S. empire more ammunition to steal our ancestral land, destroy thousand-year-old sacred sites, giving away our land to pig Yankees like Hot Pockets, privatize and poison the waters, increase U.S. military presence, worsen racialización, shatter the Boricua people’s collective right to food sovereignty, privatize our electricity, and isolate la gente from their destiny to struggle in the most revolutionary of means against a globalized burgués terrorist system.
This terrorist system is also killing our pobre y proletario siblings en masse in collaboration with other capitalista-imperialista forces in Palestine, Kôngo, Sudan, Kashmir, Ireland, the People’s Republik of New Afrika, Haiti, Hawai’i, Martinique, New Caledonia, the Philippines and all our other oppressed siblings around the world. Their oppression possesses many parallels in common with the Boricua people and the Boricua people’s nación, contrary to the cultural nacionalistas and metafísicos running around in the Boricua barrios on the mainland.
Boricua pride alone will not bring back the 5,000 martyrs of our own killed by the U.S. government in Maria. Boricua pride alone will not revive the hundreds of thousands of our Taíno ancestors murdered by kkkolumbus and his terrorist army, as many also rebelled against their occupation in midst of disease, starvation, and armed murder, and formed maroon communes with our Afrikan familia in means of resistance and survival. Boricua pride alone will not end the anti-Blackness and colorism that still divides the Boricua people and sustains the long history of ongoing racist oppression of our Afrikan siblings, and distracts us from our real enemies: the U.S. empire and their oppressed lap dogs, including the puppet governor of “commonwealth” figures among our people that are also purging our people and land. Boricua pride alone will not bring back the 17 Boricuas massacred by the Puerto Rican Insular pigs with Thompson submachine guns on orders of Yankee terrorist Blanton Winship as La Borinqueña sung her glorious song on that fateful Palm Sunday, 1937. Boricua pride alone is not enough for the tens of thousands of poor y proletario Boricuas kicked out of Lincoln Park, La Clark, by DePaul University and Mayor Daley Sr., whose Irish family across the pond are still colonially occupied by England. It is not enough to dismantle and combat the old culture and violence of machismo, patriarcado, homofobia, transfobia, bifobia, chauvinismo and other forms of gender and sexual violence that is killing our young Boricua boys, girls, youth, and queer and trans siblings in droves worse than even before right now. It won’t stop pig landlords and police from shooting us in our homes for never having enough to simply live. It won’t stop Humboldt Park and our barrios from being aburguesado and overrun by these parásito, burgués forces in the name of Boricua identity and cultura. Do not listen to those fixated on !WEPA!, who wear the clothes declaring pride in being Boricua, the flag as capes, and play the music with ground shaking bass and rhythm, but pay no mind to their other oppressed siblings and their current genocidios while boasting how proud they are of being boricua.
It is time for the Boricua people and the Boricua people’s nación to build and practice a new, vibrant, revolutionary Boricua culture, to possess a gente’s revolutionary ideology that transforms the pobre and proletario Boricuas into a militant, intercommunal, loving, revolutionary gente, fighting and struggling with might and will for our inevitable liberation and sovereignty (with true solidaridad proletaria internacionalista) against the capitalista system, towards a scientific socialist system and Puerto Rican nation where the Puerto Rican people are guided by their revolutionary destiny and collectively control the means in which they live and relate in the land that graces us. To realize the rebellions of our Taíno ancestors under kkkolumbus, the many rebellions of our enslaved Afrikan ancestors in the island and everywhere else Afrikans were kidnapped to, the rebellions brought forth by Betances and his Committee, el Grito de Juyuya in 1950, and the revolutionary actions of Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irvin Flores and Andres Figueroa Cordero on March 1, 1954 in a U.S. terrorist Congress building built off the blood and absolute terror on enslaved Afrikan working people by this murderous establishment.
The time for revolutionary class struggle to make a free, liberated, sovereign, socialista Puerto Rican nation and people a reality is NOW. Ningún enemigo, ningún metafísico, ningún perro corredor, ningún títere, ningún colonizador, ninguna elección burguesa y ningún tigre de papel nos detendrán. Boricuas are at war, that is the reality. Make that known NOW. Elections on the island on the island and in the belly of the beast is coming up, but as I just stated, it will NEVER liberate the Boricua people and our homeland and stop the capitalista system in its tracks, for good. Without this realization, our revolutionary struggle of might and will with a people’s revolutionary ideology will never become possible, we will continue the U.S.’s vicious path of existence and destruction, and lose shamefully. The capitalista-imperialista gringos and puppets can steal and destroy as much land as they can, kill as many of us as they can, poison our environment, and brainwash as many of us as they can. But they can NEVER forget that the Boricua and oppressed people will make their 417-year-old terrorist playhouse crumble to pieces. The young and vibrant Boricua people and the pobre y proletario wretched masses of the world of today, led by the spirit of Betances, Lebron, Agüeybaná II, Campos, Belvis, Ture, Newton, Assata, Hatuey, George Jackson, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P., Miss Major, Harriet, Nzinga, L’Ouverture, Marielle Franco, and much more, will win victorious, and many generations of us to come. We guide ourselves in the form of the glorious words of young Nacionalista cadet martyr Bolívar Márquez during the Ponce Massacre of 1937 as he dragged himself to the wall of Hospital Metropolitano Dr. Pila and wrote, in his blood, as he ascended to his martyrdom,
!VIVA LA REPÚBLICA! !ABAJO LOS ASESINOS! (x8)
BLOOD IN MY EYE!
Boriken Liberation Front – Comrade Ophelia
Como Boricuas en la diáspora, la mayoría de nosotros conocemos bien la realidad colonial de Puerto Rico. Incluso muchos de nosotros estamos aquí por culpa del desplazamiento, de las malas condiciones de vida que se llevan en Puerto Rico, o de la falta de luz sostenible y confiable. ¡Ya nos estamos dando cuento de que con esto no podemos más! Abajo ya la colonia, Puerto Rico se merece algo mejor. Y con esta lucha que hoy en día llevamos desde la diáspora y que también se lleva en la isla, continuamos una línea rebelde de nuestro país, que se ha habido llevado desde la concepción principal de Puerto Rico como colonia española en 1508. Hoy en día estamos aquí para honrar dos momentos importantes de esa historia, el Grito de Lares de 1868, y también el asesinato de nuestro camarada y maestro, Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, quien falleció este mismo día en 2005. Entonces, la cuestión para nosotros es doble, primero, ¿cuál es el significado histórico de estos eventos? Y segundo, ¿qué importancia tienen hoy en día para Puerto Rico?
La cuestión de Filiberto se la voy a dejar a mis camaradas, pero con el Grito de Lares, la importancia para hoy, en mi opinión, se puede ubicar en el pensamiento del arquitecto del Grito, Ramon Emeterio Betances, conocido por muchos como el padre de la patria puertorriqueña. Nacido en 1827 en Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, Ramon llevaba una vida bien única para esa época, llevando sangre dominicana y puertorriqueña de una familia racialmente mixta, se fue de la isla borincana a los 10 años a Francia, donde estudiaba y creció. Mientras su padre buscaba forma de cambiar el registro de la familia a blanca, Ramon rechazó la recualificación, llamándola una hipocresía. En Francia, estudiaba la medicina, convirtiéndose en doctor y cuando finalmente regresó a Puerto Rico en 1856, empezó a dar servicio medical gratis a los pobres del campo, y ahí iba creciendo su consciencia política. Inspirado por las revoluciones francesa y haitiana, empezó a llevar a cabo acciones políticas abolicionistas y republicanas en Puerto Rico. Como persona de la organización Sociedades Abolicionistas Secretas y liberador de esclavos, la reina española exilió a Ramon varias veces en los cincuenta y sesenta. En exilio, Ramon se fue conociendo las otras islas antillanas y sus historias. Lo mas importante fue su exilio a la Republica Dominicana, donde conoció al general Gregorio Luperón, quien estaba luchando para la independencia de la Republica Dominicana. De esas experiencias con Luperón y también por otras islas caribeñas como Saint Thomas y Curacao, y también un rato en Nueva York. Betances empezó a pensar en un nuevo futuro para los caribeños, una federación antillana. Compartiendo esa idea con algunos revolucionarios antillanos de esa época, como el ya mencionado Luperón, el pan antillanismo se convirtió en una idea integral para el Grito de Lares de 1868. Entonces, históricamente, cuando vemos al Grito de Lares como puertorriqueños hoy, muchas veces se entiende y se estudia solamente en el contexto de la liberación nacional puertorriqueña, buscando sus causas por dentro de las costas de la isla borincana. Pero, cuando uno realmente estudia la ideología detrás del Grito, se puede ver instantáneamente la influencia que se lleva de las luchas de los otros países, de las rebeliones de esclavos en Cuba, de la lucha por una Republica Dominicana soberana, de la Revolución Haitiana y muchos más. Y no solo influencia ideológica, pero también apoyo material, como armas y soldados. Es por eso que el Grito de Lares se sitúa principalmente en la tele araña que es la lucha caribeña.
¿Entonces, como nos puede ayudar este análisis entender mejor la situación puertorriqueña hoy? Pues nos enseña como la lucha caribeña siempre los caribeños la hemos llevado juntos, y que siempre la llevaremos así, juntos. Aunque muchas veces se dice, que Puerto Rico y Cuba no tienen nada que ver, que Haití y Puerto Rico no tienen nada que ver, etc., con el ejemplo del Grito podemos entender mejor una parte de nuestra historia compartida. Aunque enfrentan problemas diferentes, en Cuba con el embargo, en Haití con la pobreza y hambruna, en Puerto Rico con el desplazamiento, etc., estos problemas tienen la misma causa. El imperialismo estadounidense. Como en la época del Grito la colonización europea era la causa de pobreza, esclavitud, extracción de recursos, hoy el imperialismo estadounidense es la causa de miseria, hambruna, desplazamiento y mas en nuestra región. Entonces, como lesión del Grito y de nuestros revolucionarios pasados, podemos entender nuestras situaciones como naciones distintas como situaciones compartidas, mejor dicho, situaciones que solo se resuelvan juntos.
Por eso, espero que al fin lleven todos ustedes estas palabras de Ramon Emeterio Betances que les reparto en conclusión:
“Las Antillas atraviesan hoy por un momento que jamás han atravesado en la historia: se les plantea ahora la cuestión de ser o no ser. (…) ¡Unámonos! ¡Amémonos! Formemos todos un solo pueblo; un pueblo de verdaderos masones, y entonces podremos elevar un templo sobre bases tan sólidas, que todas las fuerzas de la raza sajona y de la española reunida no podrán sacudirlo; templo que dedicaremos a la Independencia, y en cuyo frontispicio grabaremos esta inscripción imperecedera como la Patria, que nos dictan a la vez nuestra ambición y nuestro corazón; la más generosa inteligencia y el más egoísta instinto de conservación: ‘Las Antillas para los antillanos.’”
Juventud Unida por la Independencia (JUPI) – Coco
My name is Coco and i’m the National Secretary General of Juventud Unida por la Independencia or JUPI. We are a youth and student org working toward an anti-imperialist and socialist Puerto Rico. A Puerto Rico that is FREE from the chokehold that is the deathly grip of the united states. I want to express my gratitude to Boriken Liberation Front for inviting us to speak today about a day in Puerto Rican history that holds so much significance for those dedicated to the sovereignty of the Puerto Rican people.
El Grito de Lares was more than just an uprising. It is more than just an historical date marking the efforts of our ancestors toward freedom and liberation. it was a glimpse at the promise of an organized people! it was the potential of our strength as our predecessors fought against feudalism and political repression. it is also a day that commemorates the merciless murder of filiberto ojeda ríos who confounded the macheteros and las fuerzas armadas de liberación nacional puertorriqueña. Filiberto led groups of people toward the independence and liberation of our people only to be assasinated by the FBI the very same day of el Grito de lares nearly 150 years prior. september 23rd, 1868 and september 23rd 2005 are days that will forever live in the hearts of puerto ricans who share the desire for self autonomy and the well being of our land, our resources, and our communities.
We are not submissive playthings that exist for the sole entertainment and neglect of our colonizers. Puerto Rico is not an amusement park for our coworkers and bosses to serve as tourists when THEY are searching for peace and self preservation. from spain to the fucking united states. those who have forcefully invaded our homes, killed and displaced our people, used our land for political and military gain, and have STOLEN our resources. you are not welcome. you have NEVER been welcome.
To this day, the people of Puerto Rico suffer from displacement, poverty, unfair and unsafe working conditions, political repression, and a lack of accessibility for our basic survival needs. In the last decade, half a million people have left Puerto Rico, first after la JUNTA fiscal control board cut services in a scramble to try and pay back our supposed “debt” to wealthy investors. and then again in response to the catastrophe of Hurricane Maria after we were denied aid and were left to rebuild our own homes and care for ourselves. This forced migration has primarily impacted our youth who continue to leave in droves in search of opportunities that are not given to them in Puerto Rico. Between the years 2010 and 2019, nearly 250,000 fewer children attend K-12 public schools in Puerto Rico, a decline of 45 percent. It has been 7 years since Hurricane Maria hit destroying our power grid. after adopting a new operator for our power grid known as the incompetent and irresponsible LUMA, Puerto Ricans experience outages regularly with an average of 10,525 in the month of July alone, some days reaching the 100 thousands. the only way to better our material conditions is to rid ourselves of our colonizers, reclaim our land, and strengthen our communal power. We know that the youth are the lifeblood for any revolutionary peoples movement which is why we seek to build a national cohesive struggle of this sector in fighting back against this colonialism.
We must continue to resist the imperialist hand that digs into the rich soil of boriken with its poisonous claws. we MUST learn about our history such as the importance of today. we MUST learn more about how our colonizers continue to kill our people exploiting and destroying our resources. we MUST stay informed about how our colonizers CONTINUE to displace us both in the archipelago and in the diaspora. we MUST continue to analyze the ways in which the revolutionary attitudes and momentum of our people continues to build as reflected in the upcoming elections in Puerto Rico. We invite all to join the national watch party of the upcoming debates so we can stay up to date on what these elections and the changing landscape of politics in Puerto Rico mean. I urge you to stay plugged in by following and/or joining organizations such as Boriken Liberation Front. Such as Juventud Unida por la Independencia. There’s so much to be done.
The leader of the Grito de Lares uprising and one of Puerto Rico’s most profound historical independence leaders, Ramon Emeterio Betances so often said, “Nadie puede dar lo que no tiene.” No one can give us what they themselves do not have. ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!
Re-Build Collective
We greet you with the words of “Free The Land!” Free the land is the revolutionary greeting we say within the New Afrikan independence movement. We say it because it reminds us of our goal; of what we are fighting for.
We are not fighting for racial equality, we are not fighting for integration into empire, we are not fighting for more black billionaires and presidents. We are fighting to free the land!
The land we speak of is not only what we identify as our national territory but is also a reference to Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Mexico, and all colonized land shackled by U.S. and Western imperialism. Thus, we recognize the interconnected nature of all revolutionary nationalist struggles! Which is why we are here today.
The Re-Build Collective holds the Puerto Rican struggle for independence in high esteem. There has always existed a strong historical connection between New Afrikan and Boriken revolutionaries. The Black Panthers worked with the Young Lords. The Black Liberation Army and Republic of New Afrika worked with the Puerto Rican FALN. Lolita LeBron shared a prison cell with Assata Shakur. Here in Chicago, Fred Hampton and Cha Cha Jiminez organized the street together as close comrades. Thus, we are here today in the spirit of this tradition of radical solidarity; one that we wish to carry forth.
So in this age of neo-colonialism, it is important that our movements struggle for clarity! Clarity around our national identities, purpose & direction. If we do this correctly, then our nations will achieve victory without a doubt!
HASTA SIEMPRE!
FORWARD TOWARD INDEPENDENCE IN PUERTO RICO & NEW AFRIKA!!!
RE-BUILD TO FREE THE LAND!
Behind Enemy Lines – Jackie
My name is Jackie and I’m with Behind Enemy Lines Chicago.
Palestinian writer and revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani once said, “‘Imperialism has laid its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the heart in the Middle East, its arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wherever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the world revolution.”
The imperialists have always treated Latin America as their backyard, overthrowing governments as they please, looting wealth and resources.
Since US imperialists “purchased” Puerto Rico from Spain, more than 100 years ago, they have time and time again plundered the archipelago, torturing and murdering its revolutionaries, carrying out grotesque medical experiments on its people, including the mass forced sterilization of women, and even for a time banned flying the Puerto Rican flag.
To this day Puerto Ricans suffer under the multiple crises caused by capitalism-imperialism:
* the ecological destruction made worse by climate change,
* the wrecking of the economy furthered by Obama’s fiscal goons,
* and the lack of any sovereignty or ability to determine their own destiny.
These crises force Puerto Ricans to migrate, especially here to the US, where they they face unstable and expensive housing, struggle to find decent work, and are hunted down and brutalized by the pigs.
It was the children of Puerto Rican migrants in the late 1960’s who built the Young Lords, an organization whose legacy we still study in Behind Enemy Lines.
We know that we can only build the struggle against US imperialism by being as fucking crazy as the Young Lords. People thought the Young Lords were out of their mind for shutting down East Harlem with trash, or when they occupied a church, or took over a hospital. But it’s precisely that kind of boldness that inspires other people to stand up to US imperialism.
Too many people are out here thinking that they’re serious about changing the world, and they’re really about saying the right words and playing it safe. While this government is carrying out a genocide, selling bombs to Israel that they use to incinerate families in Lebanon, continuing to occupy Puerto Rico, it’s time to be dangerous.
That’s what Grito de Lares represents: the brave people, the dangerous people, daring to put it all on the line to throw the imperialists out of Puerto Rico. And even though they didn’t win, they were able to inspire revolutionaries to this day. From Puerto Rico to Palestine we are fighting an interconnected struggle, toward liberation of a colonized peoples.
A month ago now, the genocide-supporting Democratic party came to Chicago to hold their convention, and were welcomed with open arms by Mayor Brandon Johnson and Governor JB Pritzker. They came to play their political games and nominate current Vice President Killer Kamala Harris as their presidential candidate. The same Kamala who firmly stands with Israel, who met with Netanyahu at the White House, and who dedicated herself to ensuring the US “always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”
As this genocidaire is running for presidential office, against another fascist presidential candidate, the world around us is suffering at the hands of the US war machine. The entire 4 years Genocide Joe Biden and Killer Kamala Harris have been in office, the US military has been proving itself to already fulfilling that “goal”. When people rise up, we have to get their backs.
People in Chicago—too few people, but some of us—threw down against the DNC when those criminals came to town this August. And we’re dealing with a bunch of people who caught charges for that. So we invite everyone here to join the campaign to drop all charges against everyone arrested during the DNC. And we invite everyone to take our pledge, that you won’t vote for any candidate that supports the genocide in Gaza or Israeli apartheid, that should be an easy one: no votes for genocide!
But we know the same thing that the comrades who launched the Grito de Lares uprising knew- it’s not the rulers that determine history, it’s the masses of people. And they only way we’re going to bring down this empire is to go to the people and bring them into struggle against imperialism. So let’s fucking do it. Libertad o Muerto! Vive Puerto Rico Libre! Dare to struggle, dare to win!
Revolutionary Maoist Coalition – Comrade Norman
Today, through celebration and speeches, we remember and take inspiration from the founding, through armed struggle, of the First Puerto Rican republic which proved not only the possibility but the historic necessity of independence and self determination for the Puerto Rican people. The struggle of the Puerto Rican people has always been a struggle for independence and self determination from the feudal, slaver, and imperialist parasites that have treated the land and it’s people as spoils of war and a source of profit.
This situation, which has prevailed since 1492, has been broken only in brief moments, each of which give us a powerful optimism but also profound lessons for developing our own armed struggle for the same goals.
We Maoists, including us euro-American Maoists and our New Afrikan and Chicane comrades share a common cause with Puerto Rico. This is the struggle of socialism and the goal of communism. That is, the realization through struggle of freedom from all oppression: national, patriarchal, and economic. We take the struggles for national liberation as our focus and starting point in developing a revolutionary strategy. Why? Because with the development of imperialism as a world system our fate as a global humanity has become tied together. More than that, it is the principal struggle which guides the decay of imperialism today. The oppressed nations of the world make up the vast majority of the population and the most vigorous and revolutionary force. We are followers and students of this revolutionary force. This is why we base ourselves in the work of Mao Zedong, who proved the path of national liberation through peoples war in practice. Under his leadership,, using the tactics he developed, the Communist Party and People’s Liberation Army were able to make use of the most decisive force which is the people. Atomic bombs and advanced weapons may seem powerful but the masses of people, whose main tool is organization, can defeat any enemy if they apply the ideology of the international working class to their specific situation, most crucially by developing a Communist Party which has as its central goal the seizure of political power through armed struggle, through peoples war.
Do we Maoists seek to impose socialism on the struggles for national liberation? No. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels tell us “the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must… first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.”
To accuse those who support freedom of self-determination, i. e., freedom to secede, of encouraging separatism, is as foolish and hypocritical as those who think advocating freedom of divorce encourages the destruction of family ties. Just as in bourgeois society the defenders of privilege and corruption, on which bourgeois marriage rests, oppose freedom of divorce, so, in the capitalist state, repudiation of the right to self-determination, i. e., the right of nations to secede, means nothing more than defence of the privileges of the dominant nation and police methods of administration, to the detriment of democratic methods.”
What does this mean today? It means that the only path to the liberation of all humanity from national, gender and economic oppression is the path of linking the individual national independence struggles. Independence for the oppressed nations culminates in the possibility of socialism because their independence requires the destruction of imperialism and as such will have a profound effect on the world system.
We can clearly say “Our path of struggle is the path of the Grito de Lares, it is the path of armed struggle for the national liberation for Puerto Rico, of all oppressed nations. Our guarantee of victory is the daily decay of imperialism and the daily growth of the revolutionary masses. What we seek is to apply the lessons of history, to educate ourselves and our comrades on the path to victory and to one day hold high the red banner alongside the flags nations freely associated.”
Closing – Boriken LIberation Front – Comrade Urraca
Thank you all for coming out. My name is Urraca I’m with the Boriken Liberation Front. As we rally today i want to bring attention to our own our home, Humboldt Park.
The leader of the Macheteros, also worked with another group called the Fuerzas Armadas Nationalista de Liberación, otherwise known as FALN. FALN is well known in our community. Some of us had family, partners, school teachers that were drawn to the call of liberation and struggled with FALN. Some of us even have loved ones who have faced prison time for fighting for their homeland, towards freedom, drawn to the call to stand by the side of the people of the world.
FALN were known to retaliate against the pigs when the pigs would brutalize the residents of Humboldt park. FALN stood by the people and through a courageous fight did what they knew needed to be done to liberate Puerto Rico.
We honor them as we think about the resistance in Palestine. Boricuas are not passive bystanders when injustices are being carried out. We have a vested interest in the Palestinian resistance winning their righteous struggle. We have seen the cost of what must be paid for freedom but as Filiberto Ojeda Ríos says, “Quien lucha por su libertad,
se la merece.”
We honor Filiberto today. The United States assassinated one of our bravest heroes, one of our martyrs on one of Borikens most sacred days. And we will never forget. We will not forgive. We will continue to fight.
We also honor the original Young Lords, as today in 1968 they would make the transition from street tribe, from gang, to revolutionary organization.
We have a duty to continue this struggle which is why we hope to make this a tradition, where we return to celebrate Grito de Lares and get updated as a community as to where the state of the movement to free Puerto Rico is.
In 1868 the call was liberated o muerte, and in 2024 the call remains the same!
LIBERTAD O MUERTE!
The Masses 