El Partido Socialista: A New Stage in the Puerto Rican Struggle
NACLA
Introduction The document printed below contains large sections of the General Declaration of the Constituent Assembly of the Partido Socialista Puertorriqueno (PSP -Puerto Rican Socialist...
...Of this labor force (aside from 328,000 unemployed, or 30.5 percent) 676,000 were engaged in non-agricultural jobs...
...The basis of the formidable development of the new independence movement resides in the consolidation of the two political organizations which presently are the pillars of the struggle -- the MPI and PIP...
...The unity of the patriotic forces is inevitable...
...All this is to the detriment of peace, tranquility and territorial integrity of the Puerto Rican people...
...IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE The quality of the revolutionary struggle cannot be raised unless there is present throughout the entire process an intense ideological struggle, in the mind of the public and within the Party...
...Likewise, a central political power and leadership shall be established to preside over the balanced construction of socialism in accord with the fundamental interests of the workers and of the people in general...
...They give wide publicity to our struggle in their media, favor a reciprocal solidarity with our movement, and back our positions in the United Nations and other international forums...
...5) the right of the Puerto Rican people residing in the United States to maintain their identity, cultivate their cultural heritage and utilize their vernacular language in education, work and every type of communication...
...and 3) the rejection of every hegemonic power...
...But only when they find themselves, leaving behind, like a nightmare of a16 fleeting moment of their history, their crisis of identity...
...Until recently it was considered necessary first to change the economic bases of a society in order to initiate the formation of a new man...
...North American intervention in our country has represented one of the worst cases of colonial oppression in the world today...
...The program was based on many colonial-type privileges granted to these North American investors: federal and state tax exemptions...
...Eventually, with extraordinary technological advances in the military field, the Puerto Rican bases of the U.S...
...The great possibilities for opening a forum in which the case of Puerto Rico is expounded internationally through the United Nations, were seen in the debate which occured in the General Assembly this past September, when the majority of the member nations voted against the Yanqui resolution or abstained from voting...
...6. A campaign in relation to the problem of housing, including support of the so-called "squatters" to build homes: rent strikes in housing projects and urban worker dwellings, utility-payment strikes, etc...
...position on the colonial case of Puerto Rico...
...8. Coordination of the work in the search for international solidarity with the independence struggle, especially in relation to the arguing of the colonial case of Puerto Rico in the United Nations...
...The independentista united front is an imminent necessity of the new struggle, because both in the Independence Party and in the Socialist Party exist the irreversible realities of our political development...
...Box 241, Peter Stuyvesant Station, New York City, New York 10009...
...Recognizing that the vanguard of the Puerto Rican working class has to operate in the land of the two million Puerto Rican residents of the United States as well as in national territory, the Party and its national leadership, within their limitations, will give the necessary attention with the objective of organizing and developing its branch in North American territory, where one-third of our national population is at the present time...
...Still worse, the spending of Puerto Rican tourists abroad amounted to $247.7 million, more than that of foreign tourists in Puerto Rico, which amounted to $231 million...
...The net result of this turnabout was manifested in several currents that converged to determine the course of the country in the next quarter century...
...Last year it declined by $5.4 million dollars...
...PPD - Partido Popular Democratico (Popular Democratic Party, 1938...
...The path of development followed by the ProIndependence Movement has advanced by incorporating independentistas of various interests, classes and ideological orientations around the common denominator...
...The gap between national political independence and assimilation is widening...
...V, No...
...hotel firms have established lodgings on many of the best beaches of the metropolitan area and in other parts of the island...
...At this point our policy of unity and alliances with other organizations, as with the work of fomenting and developing new organizations, must be accompanied by a constant ideological struggle...
...In a sports arena, located in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, on the last day of the assembly, November 28, 1971, the Partido Socialista Puertorriqueno was officially proclaimed...
...The Party understands that its political work within the working class is a first and indispensable step for the organization of the workers and their eventual development into a Central Unica de Trabajadores...
...7) It has the largest number of full-time cadres at this time that any patriotic organization has ever had in our history...
...It will also develop an intense educational campaign to eradicate petty bourgeois attitudes among the working classes...
...The growing political polarization of the country, accelerated by the initiative of the PNP with respect to the presidential vote, greatly impedes the PPD from continuing to play its claimed centrist role vis-a-vis the country's political status...
...This is the meaning of the cultural traits that define us, with all the ballast of defects that characterized them, inheriting, in turn the traditional class struggle that our people have endured for centuries...
...According to official figures, 29.2 percent of young people between 16 and 21 years of age were unemployed in June of 1970...
...The MPI, formed in 1959, continued to grow and extend its influence, becoming the strongest socialist independence organization in Puerto Rican history...
...2. The Ruin of Agriculture In the first decades of the century, capitalists from the United States took the best agricultural lands on the island, established sugar plantations, and brought to ruin the coffee growing sector of the country -- which had been the most prosperous of our economy...
...7. A campaign for immediate demands for the Puerto Rican women, requesting: 1) equality of opportunity for men and women...
...In the face of official hostility in Washington, when shock waves were produced by his initial policy of broad structural reforms, Munoz backed down...
...For this reason, more than a reform of the educational system is needed...
...Only a united front, which by its creation reflects the full consciousness of the necessity of unity in diversity, is capable of presenting a program that serves as a common denominator of the clamor and concerns of all independentismo...
...It is assumed, therefore, that it is a slow process, and public opinion can be conditioned to waiting for many years...
...These were: (1) abandonment of independence as a political goal of the party...
...All of this has forced up in a spectacular fashion the public and private debt of Puerto Rico, which in 1970 was thirty times larger than in 1950...
...The Crisis of Identity The political thesis of the MPI says: "The most serious manifestation of Puerto Rico's problem is the crisis of identity which the Puerto Rican debates within himself, When one's own personality is in doubt, one lives in a perplexed and uncertain state...
...We will nourish our socialist ideology as much from the extraordinarily rich theory and practice represented in the great social revolutions of this century...
...6. Tourism Through the development of the so-called "tourist industry," other sectors of big North American capital exploit the unmatched natural beauty of our country and the labor of our hotel workers...
...LONG LIVE FREE, INDEPENDENT AND SOCIALIST PUERTO RICO LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM ' Trujillo Alto, Puerto Rico November 21, 1971 Translated by Elice Higgenbotham...
...As a principal target of cultural penetration, they have considerable potential, especially in the patriotic struggle...
...3) initiation of the policy of "industrial promotion," based on the extension of great privileges to North American capitalists so that they could establish themselves on the island...
...The united front can take charge of the principal massive campaigns of our struggle, guaranteeing their widening, deepening and their multiplication...
...We understand by socialist democracy the broadest participation of the working people at all levels of work and decision-making...
...The island has been converted into a military and economic fortress of the United States in the Caribbean...
...We buy goods and services abroad in the amount of $2,556.6 million and sell in the amount of $1,729.3 million...
...The 7000 people gathered there gave evidence of the increasing vitality of the independence movement...
...It will take into account: 1) the indissoluble ties which link all Puerto Ricans there and here...
...10) It has a number of commercial enterprises it can rely on which are building a solid base for financing the party's activities without having to depend on subsidies or gifts...
...The satisfactory resolution of the indicated contradictions, gives ground for hope that the party will evolve toward positions continually more revolutionary...
...The Party will base its program, organization, theoretical analyses and practice in Marxist-Leninist science, applying it independently to the particular conditions of our country...
...But without an electoral front, even when the two basic independence parties are in contradiction with respect to the 1972 elections, we shall do everything in our power to assist in the solidification, partial or total, of the united front for independence...
...They will be the center of a rich and profound formative activity, to build them up as constructors of communism and to forge in them the new man in the classless society...
...Secondly, Puerto Rico, a victim simultaneously of direct U.S...
...It is obvious that North American imperialism has no desire to cease its intervention in Puerto Rico...
...Christians and other religious people of advanced and revolutionary ideas, both clergy and laity, will be able to participate fully and with equal opportunity at all levels in the effort of the working people to establish a new social order, as well as in the revolutionary process toward the achievement of independence and the seizure of power by the workers...
...3) socialization of child-care and the creation of child-care centers, kindergartens and institutions for child services, which relieve the problems of the working woman by caring for her children and maternity leave for all women in all jobs...
...There remain only a few territories scattered through Africa, Asia and Latin America which still live under direct colonial rule...
...The role of women in the struggle, their particular problems in the present and future society and the vices in the man-woman relationship in our culture, must be the object of continual and broad discussion in training sessions as well as in the Party's organs of dissemination...
...and 7) the right of Puerto Ricans living in the United...
...The procedure includes not only the approval of two thirds of Congress, but also the ratification by three-fourths of the legislatures of the fifty states of that nation...
...On the contrary, participation together with patriotic forces in a broad electoral front could overflow in a significant'rise in the level of the struggle in these moments, for the following reasons: 1) it would consolidate the unity of action of the two independentista parties, from the base, in the electoral campaign, making viable in practice the fusing of the united revolutionary front which we have proposed above...
...Two factors make the PNP vacillate in forcing a petition for statehood: first, they know -- and this has been confirmed by the latest polls -- that statehood is the aspiration of only a minority of the Puerto Rican people, and second, that there is not the least possibility that the United States Congress would approve it...
...At the same time, it permits the political parties which compose it to concentrate on their own long-term objectives with greater effectiveness...
...The PIP is a reality we have to count on...
...Nor has either the PSP or the PIP, separately, the organizational capacity to confront the imperatives of an electoral campaign...
...Neither the Socialist Party nor the Independence Party, nor any other, has the programmatic flexibility to stay enclosed within itself or to attract electorally the great patriotic mass of the country...
...The foreigners converted a large part of the peasantry into agricultural proletariat to do the semi-slave work of cultivating, harvesting and transporting sugar cane...
...North American investors obtained in 1970 the sum of $596 million (official figures) as profits from their investments in Puerto Rico...
...In the face of the vanguard example set by the MPI, and influenced by the most advanced currents in national and international politics, the PIP has discarded rigid slogans of the old independentismo to begin experimenting in the ideological as well as the tactical and organizational levels, with progressive ideas that can push forward the revolutionary development of the party...
...3. Military Fortress In the years prior to the Second World War, the U.S...
...It will align itself either with the annexationist forces to support the measure or with the independence forces to combat it...
...marines and their allies...
...Both groupings represent nationally the interests of the same class and an unconditional alliance with Yanqui imperialism with only slight variations in emphasis...
...They are also a wellspring of resources for the workers' struggle...
...Many governments, parties and movements from all parts of the world have joined Revolutionary Cuba in consistent solidarity with our struggle...
...Of all workers in the United States this stratum is one of the most victimized by exploitation, discrimination and oppression...
...These achievements have made it possible to reach a stage of independence upsurge in which we now find ourselves...
...In the political thesis of the MPI (1969), we warned that "while it is feasible to act with independence within the regime, and to the degree to which it is possible and useful, we shall struggle within the current legal framework...
...foundation of the Estado Libre Asociado, supposedly a conciliatory formula in the interests of the government of the United States and the Puerto Rican people...
...As a result of the tourist policy of the government and the hotel firms, San Juan has been converted into a copy of pre-revolutionary Havana...
...At the same time, we warn that to the degree to which this action at the legal level becomes increasingly restrictive, the clandestine struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico will continue to develop, broaden and deepen...
...This signified the physical destruction of entire communities, for example Vieques, Culebra and Aguadilla...
...The Declaration describes the development of the movement, analyses the Puerto Rican reality and explains the program of the PSP for revolutionary social change...
...The political power to be established in the Socialist Republic of Puerto Rico does not necessarily have to be a single party at the start...
...4) the appropriateness of granting the autonomy essential for effective organizing to the PSP regional organization in the United States, permitting it to enter into alliances which the concrete objectives of the struggle there require...
...colonialism and indirect neo-colonialism, has been extremely isolated from its Latin American sister nations (a situation strangely and in many aspects comparable to that of contemporary Cuba...
...STRATEGY AND TACTICS...
...Within the fundamental objective mentioned above, the achievement of national independence -- regardless of the structural limitations -- will not only be an essential landmark toward the fulfillment of our socialist goal, but also the achievement of a concrete aspiration, since independence is indispensable to guarantee the survival of the Puerto Rican nationality...
...134,300 were employed in manufacturing, 78,000 in construction, 79,000 in commerce, 39,000 in transportation, communication and public utilities, and 204,000 in services...
...Although the MPI, in the immediate past, and the Socialist Party have had the international work almost exclusively to themselves, there is no doubt that coordination on a unified level would increase their efficiency and impact...
...The very escalation of anti-independentista repression by the regime obliges the consolidation of unity.22 THE WORKERS' SOLE CENTRAL FEDERATION If on the political plane the united front is the response to the imminent necessity for unity of action among patriotic people, the Central Unica de Trabajadores is the unavoidable objective for the development of unity in the working class and among workers in general...
...If that united front is not concretized within a reasonable time that would permit its effective organization toward the goals of successful electoral participation in 1972, the Socialist Party will abstain from participating in the elections of 1972...
...The united front will leave aside the long and short-term objectives and forms of struggle about which there exist discrepancies between the two parties...
...Youth will constitute a fundamental pillar of the new society...
...This struggle will forge a new man to make the Socialist Revolution, which in turn will create the Totality of the New Man...
...As a direct result of the trade monopoly which the United States enjoys in regard to Puerto Rico, the balance of trade of our country shows a rising deficit...
...Several factors resulting from the class roots of the PPD led the party after the middle of the 1940's to a change of direction with respect to its program...
...6) the specific contribution which Puerto Rican immigrants in the United States can make to the struggle for independence and socialism in our homeland...
...None of the preceeding could be achieved with electoral participation by any of the independentista parties separately...
...On the other hand, the two basic organizations, the PSP and the PIP, have considerably reduced the abyss created by their ideological, tactical and organizational contradictions...
...The tendency of the abstainers is obviously toward a position favorable to our demand for independence...
...4) demanding that women not be used as propaganda in advertising to promote capitalist consumption...
...The difference amounts to $1,235 millions -- 25.1 percent higher than that recorded in the previous year...
...VII...
...3) It has the largest number of publications of any patriotic organization in our history...
...The independentista united front will continue in force as an objective in the new struggle, regardless of whether the formation of an electoral front for the 1972 elections is possible...
...Congress, which constitutes an intolerable strait-jacket for the workers movement...
...Our nationality is the fighting ground of our working class...
...Nonetheless, starting from the Marxist tactical principle that "good things may be drawn out of bad things," whenever circumstances are favorable and the orientation is correct, we declare for the present that the party will decide, in relation to each election, plebiscite, referendum or consultation that is realized in Puerto Rico, what will be its positions, depending upon how we understand who will best serve the cause of independence and socialism...
...They eliminated agriculture for national consumption...
...Geological experts indicate that the entire Cordillera Central stretching from east to west across the middle of the island is situated over a bed of copper...
...It will be appropriated toward greater investments for development and for the resolution of the social problems of the people, according to a realistic and balanced order of priorities...
...2) strategic, tactical, organizational, and ideological independence of all national movements and parties within the vast camp of the anti-imperialist struggle...
...This policy has substantially transformed Puerto Rican reality...
...27-31.17 the vote on Puerto Rico, we already had the support of other governments which had abstained the previous day...
...4) paralysis of the application of the 1941 Land Law through which destruction of the sugar plantation sys-15 tem had been sought...
...The union leadership imported by the so-called international unions and the Puerto Rican leaders of such organizations -- with notable exceptions betray the most authentic interests of Puerto Rican workers by limiting their action to simple trade-union and economic struggles, eliminating any participation of their organizations in the independence struggles of social demands and unification by the National Workers Movement...
...For us, socialism is the political-economic system through which the working class, in alliance with all exploited classes, exercises power by means of the dictatorship of the proletariat, destroys the bourgeoisie and obtains complete control of the productive apparatus in order to organize and develop the economic growth of the country and redistribute the wealth on the basis of "to each according to his work...
...8) For the first time in the hundred-year history of independentismo, it has begun worker and union organizing which is already bearing fruit in the incorporation of hundreds of workers to MPI militancy...
...But this should not be confused with ultra-centralism...
...Thus, we must work toward combatting and eradicating these ideas...
...This wealth, along with the arable lands and other riches are the great reserve of natural resources upon which the Puerto Rican people rely for their future economic development...
...Led by Luis Munoz Marin, it supports assimilation with the United States through continuation of Puerto Rico's current Commonwealth status...
...The Party now, and the Socialist Republic of the future, will guarantee equality to women in the assumption of tasks and responsibilities in the revolutionary process and in the edification of the socialist society...
...9. Finances: Public and Private Debt North American finance capital has dumped itself on Puerto Rico, not only in direct investments, but also in the financing of construction (mortgages), government and corporate bonds, insurance, long and short term loans, etc...
...4) It maintains the most cohesive militance, the most intense programs of political education and the most diverse activity achieved by any political organization in our history...
...The surplus which workers create by their productive efforts will not increase the wealth of a few...
...Its patriotic residues are easily eclipsed by its class interests...
...5. A campaign against the high cost of living, including boycott, actions of civil disobedience to dramatize the problem, publicity about the causes of the continual rise of prices, protest against governmental decisions which facilitate the rise in the cost of living, etc...
...THE INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA World solidarity with Puerto Rico's fight for independence -- which remains a key factor in our liberation strategy -- has shown a marked increase during recent years...
...Deposits of copper, gold, molybdenum, nickel, iron, manganese, petroleum and several kinds of marble are already known...
...That class receives the brunt of the restrictive measures taken supposedly for the control of inflation...
...The present Declaration, which comes out of the November 1971 assembly, includes the Party program and its position on various crucial issues, such as the united front, electoral participation and armed struggle...
...Naturally, the usefulness and efficiency of the international forum will be much greater as the struggle on our own soil intensifies...
...13 industry -- chemicals, oil and petrochemicals...
...But it should not be understood in a simplistic manner...
...In 1968, 78 percent of retail sales, 65 percent of housing construction, over 60 percent of bank transactions, over 90 percent of insurance premiums, almost all the means of communication, almost the totality of domestic and foreign transportation, the vast majority of the recreational facilities and other service companies were controlled by foreigners...
...North American firms have invaded retail commerce and the principal services displacing light and medium national industry...
...It is one of the many means we must employ, linked to adetermined and bold action of the independence force, to give our call for sovereignty international publicity...
...Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, no rights or attributes of any kind will be recognized for the bourgeoisie as a class, but in the degree to which its members are incorporated as workers in the socialist society, they will participate equally with the workers in the entire democratic process...
...But under conditions of prolongued foreign domination, even its very existence is questioned...
...armed forces have been converted into arsenals of thermonuclear weapons, all types of lethal arms, as well as centers of war maneuvers for the U.S...
...The PNP has proposed holding a referendum on the issue of the presidential vote...
...5) anti-worker policy that first appeared with the division of the General Confederation of Workers, decreed by the PPD leadership in the congress of 1945...
...It has limited itself, with its majority power in the Puerto Rican Senate, to postponing the referendum until the end of 1973...
...Now, as pointed out in the first part of this declaration, the independence movement has advanced to a stage of expansion and includes two political organizations in full development who can be the solid base of unified activity...
...they also receive higher wages, at the worker level, for the same jobs...
...There is the rich historical heritage of the revolutionary struggle for independence in Latin America -- of which we are a part -- and our own liberation effort of more than a century...
...The total amount of North American investment in our country, amounting to more than six billion dollars, represents half the total Yanqui investment in the rest of Latin America...
...FOUR ORGANIZING GOALS In synthesis, we have indicated that the cardinal points of the organizational strategy of the struggle for independence and socialism in Puerto Rico are 1) the consolidation of the vanguard, 2) the development of national unity, 3) the organization of the Central Unica de Trabajadores, and 4) international solidarity with all exploited peoples and with the socialist camp...
...In 1971 became the PSP...
...It must be consolidated at the very foundations...
...THE UNITED FRONT In order to carry out the second cardinal point of our organizing strategy for the new struggle [for independence], we are seeking the creation on the political plane of a united front of the Puerto Rican patriotic forces and, on the plane of organized labor, of the Central Unica de Trabajadores [the Workers' Sole Confederation...
...Proper work realized during the next year, united with the accelerated change in the balance of forces in the United Nations, could produce a decisive boost in support of our struggle in the world body in the immediate future...
...This has lead it to incorrect attitudes on important questions, which places it, on occasions, in opposition to the Pro-Independence Movement (MPI...
...The advance which the independence movement has experienced permits it to visualize the united front now as a multiplying agent of revolutionary support and an instrument to attract large sectors of the population to revolutionary militancy...
...The united front must include, not only the Socialist Party and the Independence Party, but a large number of unaffiliated independentistas who are in the country, and the various small groups and minor political organizations...
...We must consider that the formation of the electoral front must be realized inside a short time in order to make possible the organizational effort demanded by an electoral campaign...
...These investors concentrate loans and financing in the consumer sector and drastically limit loans for production controlled by Puerto Ricans...
...Introduction The document printed below contains large sections of the General Declaration of the Constituent Assembly of the Partido Socialista Puertorriqueno (PSP -Puerto Rican Socialist Party), formerly the Movimiento Pro-Independencia (MPI -- Pro-Independence Movement...
...But in balance, the development achieved by the PIP is one of the most hopeful signs of the independentista push of the present...
...These amount to less than two percent of the territory of the globe...
...We affirm the principle of proletarian internationalism and the necessity of mutual solidarity among the revolutionary and anti-imperialist governments, peoples, parties and organizations of the world...
...Once the frame of socialist legality is established, this shall guarantee the participation of workers in the state apparatus through voting in free periodic elections...
...The granting of franchises to operate gambling casinos in these hotels permits them to accumulate fabulous profits...
...This campaign can take as a point of departure the imminent negotiation by the government of the concession to exploit the copper mines in UtuadoAdjuntas and Lares to two North American companies...
...After intensely exploiting the sugar plantations, the same large North American corporations that held these lands chose to destroy the industry to speculate in the land for more lucrative profits...
...5. Heavy Industry: The Petrochemical Era Later began the installation of heavy, automated *More widely known as "Operation Bootstrap...
...These earnings appear on the books as operating expenses and as part of the Puerto Rican payroll, but they are in fact additional profits free from federal tax...
...it would facilitate the incorporation in the militant independentismo of those peripheral sectors...
...II...
...Juan Mari Bras, Secretary-General of the Party, in the speech with which he closed the assembly, expressed the major theme of the Declaration -- that one cannot be a Puerto Rican socialist without being an independentista and one cannot be an independentista without being a socialist...
...wells, and then to export the refined gasoline to the North American market...
...2] the right, also inalienable, of the Puerto Rican people to the complete recovery of its entire patrimony, which has been alienated by persons, governments, or whatever other foreign influence...
...V. The revolutionary power, when confronting resistance to change on the part of imperialism and the defeated bourgeoisie, and, in accord with the magnitude and nature of such resistance, shall take the measures necessary for the supression of counterrevolution...
...First of all, with so great a part of the Puerto Rican people being forced by economic conditions to live outside of the country, the PSP finds it essential to incorporate this dispersed sector into the struggle...
...We will not take part in the power disputes within the socialist camp and the so-called Third World...
...But foreign control is not limited only to the manufacturing sector...
...The issues are, on the one hand, the survival or extinction of the Puerto Rican nationality, and on the other, the continued liberation or enslavement of the Puerto Rican working classes -- who constitute for all practical purposes, almost all our people...
...and the opportunity for Yanqui executives, professionals, and administrators to suck out additional earnings...
...At its height, the volume of tourist business was $250 million...
...It is this combination of extraordinary accomplishments that has mobilized during the last 10 years the new independence struggle...
...The process of proletarianization of the workers has been accelerated...
...Led by Luis A. Ferre, the current Governor of Puerto Rico, it advocates eventual statehood.12 Unfortunately, we do not have enough space to print the entire Declaration...
...At the same time, the party collaborates as much as it can with the leadership and the base of the labor movement, organizing toward the objective of developing its unity of action in campaigns in favor of worker interests...
...The ultimate definition offered by Pedro Albizu Campos is becoming more concrete: "O yanquis o puertorriquenos...
...As a consequence, nearly two million Puerto Ricans are presently concentrated in the ghettos of New York and other North American cities and in the agricultural labor camps of various states...
...In the end, the destiny of Puerto Rico will be decided by the Puerto Ricans...
...Put to a vote was a motion of the United States that the theme entitled "The Colonial Case of Puerto Rico," submitted by Cuba, not be included on the agenda of the General Assembly...
...Nor will there be administrative control over artistic activity, intellectual work and cultural life in general, provided they are not counterrevolutionary...
...The balance of payments shows a deficit still more unfavorable for our economy...
...Puerto Rico has billions of dollars in mineral wealth buried in its subsoil, especially in the Cordillera Central...
...This gave rise to the development of a light industry in textiles, leather goods (especially shoes), electronic products, automobile parts, medicines and food products -- all, or nearly all, the property of foreign businesses...
...The traffic in professional gamblers, prostitutes, drugs and all types of vices has completely transformed the social physiognomy of important sectors of the capital, like El Condado and Old San Juan...
...The gap between intellectual and manual labor will be gradually closed...
...It is to be expected that the case of Puerto Rico will come up again, that the nucleus of proponents will grow, that the debate will become more profound, and that the number of votes in favor will dramatically increase...
...We would appreciate it if any of our readers who are working in these areas would write us and contribute to this project...
...At grave risk to the very lives of Puerto Ricans, our country has been converted into a military fortress of the United States...
...4) it would insert independentismo into the center of the public debate which precedes the elections, with sufficient organizing and agitating force to compete advantageously with the colonial parties and advance the political education of the great masses of the people...
...The rich copper reserves of the country are particularly significant...
...Thus, the MPI has established a series of achievements without precedent in the history of the independence struggle, which are: 1) It is the independence organization with the longest uninterrupted activity in all national history...
...6) Oct., 1971, pp...
...The planning of the economy will be established in order to utilize and develop fully the productive forces of the society...
...This thesis must take in both the particular problems of this group and the problems and aspirations it shares with the rest of the Puerto Rican nation and with the different marginal sectors and exploited classes in North American society...
...At the height of a period of rapid growth which began in the mid-1960's, the Movement felt the need for the creation of a Marxist-Leninist party of the working class...
...PROGRAM, STRATEGY AND TACTICS Program It is in virtue of the foregoing conclusion that the Pro-Independence Movement of Puerto Rico, in this Eighth National Assembly, and through nearly thirteen years of ideological, organizational and practical development resolves to constitute itself as the Puerto Rican Socialist Party [PSP] as an unequivocal sign of its firm determination to continue its rapid development toward the goal of completely fulfilling its function as the vanguard of the working class, of all working people, and of the people of Puerto Rico in their struggle for independence, liberation and socialism...
...The real wage of a Puerto Rican worker comes down to this...
...The united front must be based upon the variety of short-term objectives and forms of struggle which converge in the aspiration to achieve national independence and over which there are no contradictions among parties and the groups which compose it...
...3) the need to define objectives, strategy and tactics for Puerto Rican emigrants in the United States in terms of social change there...
...The present objective situation of the working class, described in the first part of this declaration and in the appendix, is the base upon which the labor policy of our party will have to develop...
...This was concretized in the partial victory of the PPD in the elections of 1940...
...States to job opportunities, equal living and working conditions, educational policies and access to culture in their own language -- in all these things equality with respect to the other members of North American society or of the communities in which they live...
...In a few years the island was transformed at the whim of the new masters into a typical colonial factory...
...The Pro-Independence Movement has proposed to the Independence Party the necessity of forming this electoral front now, in order to take advantage of the historical juncture which has been presented to independentismo...
...Unemployment will disappear, and wages and social benefits will be a fundamental object of economic planning...
...The working class is hit the hardest by the rising costs of living...
...Differentiation between man and woman in revolutionary tasks not only proceeds from a conception completely alien to socialist ideology, but impedes the development of the struggle for independence and socialism...
...The necessary mechanisms must be built for the promotion of increasing participation by women in the revolutionary struggle and in the construction of socialism in the future...
...The Independence Party (PIP) has undergone a positive renovation during the last years which has converted it into an agile, modern and fully-developed organization...
...That is why we must combat that leadership in the name of progress, of our workers and of their consolidation into a central organization...
...The problem of electoral participation or abstention is tactical and is not involved in the same questions of principle...
...Its combative and innovative spirit, its critical attitude, its great readiness for sacrifice and struggle will be fruitfully promoted...
...4. The campaign of beaches for the people, which at this moment is being renovated in San Juan by virtue of the project of the government for delivering to a foreign business a large part of the land of the beach of Escambron, eliminating the Sixto Escobar Park and the Olympic swimming pool there and limiting public use of that beach...
...It is now moving toward a revolutionary vanguard, complete with a defined ideology for scientific socialism, from which flow some methods of discipline, work and organizational forms in accordance with the great challenge which they have before them...
...VIII...
...9) Its organization has been extended to various cities in the United States where there are large concentrations of Puerto Ricans, being the only Puerto Rican political party which organizes both residents of the island and those of North America, which, as is known, constitute one third of the national population...
...The present colonial government of Puerto Rico had planned to accelerate the tourist business...
...PSP - Partido Socialista Puertorriqueno (Puerto Rican Socialist Party, 1971...
...PNP - Partido Nuevo Progresista (New Progressive Party, 1967...
...The external debt of Puerto Rico is perhaps the highest in the world relative to the volume of our economy...
...Nor do we accept tutelage nor recognize hegemonic centers which would dictate guidelines to our party...
...These capitalists obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in profits through the exploitation of the sugar industry...
...The internal contradiction in the New Progressive Party, recognized by its own leadership, raises difficulties for the advancement of the statehood cause...
...it has been their capacity to move from a low political level toward a patriotic vanguard that was consolidating itself organizationally while it triumphed ideologically...
...and (6...
...Today the number is reduced to 85,000 of whom only about 70,000 have jobs...
...4] the right of the workers and the rest of the patriotic people of Puerto Rico to utilize all the forms of struggle within reach, including revolutionary violence in the face of the repressive violence of the system, in order to achieve the fundamental rights previously enumerated...
...The workers movement is divided, with a great part of them dominated by bureaucrats without class consciousness and submitting to a union colonialism linked to the worst currents of the U.S.labor movement...
...2) It publishes the newspaper with the largest circulation and impact that independentismo has ever had and which is one of the most influential, on the Latin American as well as the North American left...
...We are open to enriching our doctrine by making use of all currents of revolutionary thought and practice throughout the world, but we will sift these in light of the specific realities of Puerto Rico, as we sovereignly understand them...
...Restricted from contaminating in North American communities, these industries have converted this country into a center of contamination which menaces the ecological balance and the quality of life...
...Its exploitation must be efficiently and carefully planned and carried out with the strictest preventive measures to avoid contamination of the air, water, plant and animal life, to preserve the ecological balance of the island in view of its small geographic _''e...
...The result of the vote was 56 in favor of the North American motion, 27 against, 35 abstentions and nine absences...
...The Puerto Rican Socialist Party considers necessary the preparation of all fighters for independence and socialism, which will allow them to strike rapidly and efficiently in open and clandestine struggle, on the legal and illegal levels, and to respond to the repressive violence of the regime with revolutionary violence to the degree which conditions and circumstances require...
...Both parties also must take into consideration that there are many thousands of unaffiliated independentistas who are not going to suddenly join either the PSP or the PIP...
...Among these were the lack of a solid ideology, the contagion of opportunism represented by a large number of the traditional politicians of the period who joined the leadership of the party, and the cowardly retreat of its most important leader, Luis Munoz Marin...
...Armed struggle has contributed to the deepening of the will of the Puerto Rican people to struggle and to raising the quality of the mass struggle...
...The PIP has rejected the concrete propositions for unity proposed by the MPI...
...Through imperialist control of the communications media our people, besides being exploited directly for profits, are victimized by the creation of a consumer mentality and the psychological imposition of colonial ideology, greatly facilitating the colonial exploitation...
...ELEVEN PROGRAMMATIC PRINCIPLES The following principles will serve as a guide in the programmatic formulations of the Party's Thesis: I. Our fundamental objective is the transformation of the existing colonial-capitalist structure in Puerto Rico into a Socialist and Democratic Republic of the Puerto Rican workers...
...After the family, nationality is what gives man a sense of belonging...
...The Party gives priority to international work contributing to revolutionary and anti-imperialist unity throughout the world and especially in Latin America...
...Contrary to the plans of the government, the volume of tourism has gone down in the last two years...
...In 1940 there was a total of 230,000 agricultural workers...
...It is totally dependent on big North American capital, which it must serve unconditionally...
...To get the full text of the Declaration in Spanish or English and an Appendix on the Economy of Puerto Rico, send $.25 to MPI, P.O...
...in the entire world, and the second largest in the American hemisphere...
...The very development of events during the last three years has proved the truth of that affirmation...
...In 1966 Yanqui capital controlled 77 percent of manufacturing assets in Puerto Rico...
...3] the right of Puerto Rican workers to progressive socialization of all the means of production, whether they be in foreign or national hands, and to the construction of a socialist society where ultimately there are neither exploiters nor exploited...
...Deflecting the statehood cause towards the issue of the presidential vote, they took refuge in the alternative but longer route where confrontation with reality is not so imminent...
...For this reason we announce the slogan, "United front or no vote," conscious that if no united front occurs, the correct alternative for revolutionary independentismo is abstention...
...including dividends from direct investments, interest on bonds and loans,14 insurance premiums, and commissions...
...This signified the first rupture in the socio-economic structure of the island...
...Puerto Rican society has been progressively polarized in economic terms: on the one hand are the intermediary bourgeoisie and related sectors, and, on the other, the great mass of Puerto Rican workers...
...Of the wage-earning workers, one fourth are employed in the manufacturing industries...
...Now the admission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations enhances the accelerating change of this balance of forces in relation to our case...
...Some years ago, joint actions were regarded as a necessary, if undesirable, recourse to hide a little bit the weakness and ineffectiveness of the various tiny groups which made up the independence movement...
...THE ARMED STRUGGLE In the objective reality of today, revolutionary violence and the existing cases of armed struggle constitute present and irreversible factors of the independence struggle, which represent a contribution of its expansion and development...
...ELEVEN ASPECTS OF COLONIAL EXPLOITATION 1. International Traffic in Workers The policy of exporting unskilled workers from the island to the United States, in order to meet the industrial, service and agricultural.labor needs of a technologically developed society, approximates closely the international slave trade practiced by the European empires from the 16th to the 19th centuries...
...Control of the Communications Media The press, radio and television are today the most useful means that imperialism possesses in Puerto Rico to permanently establish its exploitation...
...But no revolution in education is possible without a revolution in the society...
...The government does not forsee any development of ihternal tourism...
...Everything that has been indicated in the two political theses of the MPI (previously cited) about the colonial, innocuous, retarded character of the electoral system in force is completely correct...
...The PSP does not cultivate illusions that, on a patriotic level, it has a monopoly on the independence struggle in Puerto Rico...
...The teachings embodied in the revolutionary work of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Bolivar, Marti, Betances, Hostos, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Ernesto (Che) Guevara, Fidel Castro, Camilo Torres, Fanon, Sandino and Albizu Campos are fused as the broad theoretical framework of Puerto Rican socialism, in the context of historical materialism...
...The day after See NACLA Newsletter (Vol...
...They forget that nationalities, having lost their territorial base, outlive even the empires that have decreed the diaspora...
...The geographical dispersion of a substantial part of our people throughout North American territory and the displacement of rural people toward the capital and other Puerto Rican cities are direct results of the genocidal policies of North American imperialism since it intervened in our country in 1898 by force of arms...
...The New Progressive Party is the conjunction of forces of the old Republican Party -- assimilationist, ultra-conservative and always a minority -- with the emerging forces of the intermediary bourgeoisie and with the bureaucracy developed with the aid of the Popular Democratic Party...
...Therefore the Popular Party lost the election of 1968 to the New Progressive Party...
...They refer to its geographical existence, as if the determining factor of nations were geography...
...However, these measures will not be unnecessarily prolonged and in no case will violations of the democracy of the working masses be tolerated...
...These benefitted not only from tax exemption and low wages, but also from the exemption which permits them to import foreign petroleum, cheaper than oil produced in U.S...
...Stephanie Rugoff Socialist Declaration of Puerto Rico (Outline for a Program of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party -- Pro-Independence Movement) APPROVED BY THE EIGHTH ASSEMBLY OF THE PRO-INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT Puerto Rico is a Latin American nation of four and a half million people of whom 2,700,000 live on the island and the rest (more than a third) are concentrated in New York City and other places in the United States...
...This work will be carried out directly with Puerto Rican workers in factories, shops, offices, farms and communities, as much in the United States as here, and indirectly, by means of student work through the FEPI, in high schools where thousands of future workers are studying...
...Nor should PIP cultivate illusions that it can disregard the definite vanguard role of the Socialist Party in the present and future struggle...
...THE CLASS STRUCTURE * * * * The investment of North American capital in Puerto Rico has been of such magnitude that there is no comparison with any other country in the world...
...The classic colonial system...
...A revolution from the most elemental level up through the university is required...
...2qual pay for equal work among men and women...
...III...
...We are ready to arrive at the necessary agreements with the Independence Party and the other patriotic forces at any moment they agree to establish the bases of the unified effort in terms of these objectives, whichever of them, and in terms of any additions, which they wish to suggest.21 THE ELECTORAL FRONT The Socialist Party considers that colonial elections are not the means of achieving either independence or the liberation of Puerto Rico...
...Apart from the 30.4 percent of permanently unemployed (1970 figure), in 1969, 299,885 persons worked ocassionally, which gives a figure of 35.2 percent partially unemployed...
...free access for their products to the North American market...
...Puerto Rico is the fifth largest market of the U.S...
...8. Monopoly o he Market Simultaneously with the process of exploiting the land and the labor force of the Puerto Rican working class, the large North American producers have been consolidating in Puerto Rico a growing export market for all their agricultural and industrial production...
...3. The campaign for equal pay for equal work for Puerto Rican workers and against all anti-worker legislation in force in the country, especially the TaftHartley Law of the U.S...
...This thesis still is fundamentally correct...
...But this will not signify a state or party monopoly over all the life of the society...
...All this is the result of the forced placement of our country within the tariff system and the coastal shipping regulations of the United States...
...At the beginning of his incumbency as the Governor, Luis A. Ferre indicated that his government proposed to develop "the tourist industry" until it reached a volume of $2 billion annually during the next decade...
...We, as Puerto Rican socialists, declare that the preservation, full development, and complete independence of the nation are in complete accord with socialist ideology...
...Composed of all sectors of the population -but primarily workers and high school and college students -- old people, young people, women and children first listened to and sang revolutionary songs to typical Puerto Rican music, then enthusiastically welcomed the new Party and its program and with shouts of "Unidad, Unidad" strongly urged the formation of the united front...
...The Puerto Rican Socialist Party will not discriminate against anyone because of his religious ideas...
...It must of necessity define itself as a Latin American nation...
...The activity of these two political organizations is partially complemented by a series of organizations and activities on a joint basis which are emerging spontaneously, as an eloquent indication of the clamor for unity...
...The illusory third alternatives continue to disappear...
...However, the United Nations does have a usefulness as a forum for debate, as a great sounding board for the struggle of the peoples...
...The Socialist Republic to which we aspire will guarantee the pre-eminent power of the working class and the broadest democracy for all workers...
...The destruction of our nationality is the definitive triumph of the imperialist bourgeoisie over our working mass, and furthermore, the fatal social dislocation of that working mass...
...The interchange of merchandise between the United States and the island is carried on exclusively in ships of North American merchant lines, augmenting still further the margin of profits for Yanqui capital and the cost of living for the consuming public of Puerto Rico...
...Thus, the PNP has once again followed the path opened for it by Munoz Marin -- the presidential vote -- to delay for a considerable time the confrontation with the Congress of the United States that the request for statehood would mean...
...Displacement of Puerto Ricans by Foreigners More than one hundred thousand foreigners, principally North Americans and Cubans, have established themselves in Puerto Rico and have displaced Puerto Ricans from the most lucrative positions and from the ones with the greatest decision-making power in commerce, industry and the professions...
...Without pretending to exhaust the enumeration of the immediate possibilities of unified action, and understanding that these points should be still further concretized, we suggest the following basic program for the independentista united front: 1. The struggle against North American militarism and all its manifestations in Puerto Rico: obligatory military service, naval, air, and military bases, ROTC, para-military institutions such as the Civil Air Patrol and others...
...Activities related to the formation of public opinion, such as radio, press, television and advertising are controlled by foreign elements -principally Cubans -- with a clear fascist and antidemocratic orientation, who discriminate systematically against Puerto Ricans...
...A united front cannot be created by a simple agreement among the leadership of the organizations...
...Four Basic Rights We do hereby declare and proclaim before the people of Puerto Rico and the entire world: 1] the inalienable right of our country to independence and full sovereignty...
...The road toward colonial autonomy has been completely wiped out...
...3) it would permit independentismo to convert itself into a decisive electoral force which dramatically augments the electoral support of the independentista position, weakens the conciliatory and compromising positions of the Popular Party, and accelerates the extinction of that force which curbs polarization, and would unmask the PNP before the public in all the nakedness of its assimilationist, reactionary and fascistic positions...
...The Puerto Rican Socialist Party declares that it is disposed to re-open conversations with the Independence Party immediately, and consider whatever alternative positions which this group has, to facilitate the formation of an electoral front in which all independentistas can converge who do not have objections in principle to participating in the elections...
...2. The struggle to impede the delivering of the mineral patrimony of Puerto Rico to North American capitalists...
...Only one fifth of the workers of the country are organized into unions...
...To reverse this trend, the government proposes to increase its traitorous efforts, dislodging entire communities, and to give their land to the tourist business...
...This will be achieved by promoting the integral and harmonious development of the man through application of the principle of making every worker an intellectual and every intellectual a worker...
...The features of the Puerto Rican style of socialism, and especially during the period of revolutionary transition before the establishment of socialist legality, will depend fundamentally upon the peculiar characteristics of our national reality, and in particular on18 the route followed toward the seizure of power and the composition of the political forces which achieve the victory and the formation of revolutionary power...
...This did not include 635,000 employed in "domestic tasks...
...This presents a serious obstacle to the Party's task of awakening revolutionary consciousness among the ranks of Puerto Rican workers...
...2) it would serve as an organizing instrument to give impetus to the enormous number of people who are drawing closer to the independentista position and are inactive in both the PSP and the PIP...
...low wages (less than a third of what would be paid in the United States...
...The PNP represents a class which in its present stage of development sees itself obliged to favor integration with the United States, although it still retains a little patriotic nostalgia which leads them to revive tired old slogans like "peasant statehood" and the "preservation of the Puerto Rican nationality within the great American nation...
...7. Exploitation of Minerals At present, two North American mining companies, Kennecott Copper Company and American Metals Climax, are seeking concessions to exploit the rich deposits of copper in the municipalities of Utuado, Adjuntas and Lares...
...4. The Industrialization Program In the mid-forties the so-called "industrialization program" was initiated.* Many Yanqui industrial enterprises established themselves on the island and built plants for those phases of production which are laborintensive...
...The present socio-economic structure presents one of the most dramatic national problems of the contemporary world...
...The bureaucracy and intermediary bourgeoisie -by not properly being a bourgeoisie -- has no control over the means of production...
...The Popular Party had, nonetheless, an authentic popular origin...
...By June of 1970 there was in Puerto Rico a labor force of 1,074,000...
...Education has to start with an understanding of this serious problem of identity...
...In order to approve the extension to Puerto Ricans of the right to vote for President and Vice President of the United States, it is necessary to amend the North American Constitution...
...The electoral front would accelerate the formation of a united front...
...On the other hand, the use of this primitive colonial system itself constitutes the Achilles heel of imperialist domination in our country...
...The ideological debate in the Party will be guaranteed through the correct application of the principles of democratic centralism and by criticism and selfcriticism...
...Its foundation, first program and first electoral campaign (1940) responded to the clamor of the exploited masses who had a decisive awakening amid the tribulations that kept the country in turmoil during the 1930's, and in the heat generated by the patriotic effort of the Nationalist Party...
...Grew out of the MPI...
...Its penetration into Puerto Rico stretches across all sectors of the economy...
...As we indicate in our political thesis, "...one can not look at the United Nations as a substitute or short cut for the long, difficult, and hard road of the amplification and radicalization of our fight on the international level...
...Today's dispossessed, those on the margin inhabiting the urban slum belts or enduring inhuman conditions in the rural areas will have work, access to education and culture in general, opportunities to improve their skills and participate fully with all Puerto Ricans in the life of our society...
...It inconceivable that a capitalist enterprise would e these precautions...
...And nothing is more conducive to this consolidation than an ever greater unity of action among the independentistas...
...Only concerted action by both parties in a united front has the capacity to accelerate the incorporation of this great independentista periphery in the patriotic struggle...
...The Declaration begins by stating two basic points of the Party's position: "Puerto Rico is a Latin American nation of four and a half million people of whom 2,700,000 live on the island and the rest (more than a third) are concentrated in New York City and other places in the United States...
...The Party must not be content just to clarify its position on women and put it into practice internally...
...THE INDEPENDENCE UPSURGE...
...6) It has developed as an auxiliary organization the FEPI, which is the most powerful independentista organization on the high school level in the entire history of the independence struggle...
...Peasants and agricultural workers will have land to work cooperatively or on state farms...
...Planning will be accompanied by real means in the hands of the workers to intervene, administer, and make decisions at the lowest levels and participate fully in the productive units...
...We will support at all times and in whatever place we may be our principled positions which come out of these eleven sections of the present Declaration and the political thesis in force...
...It was a unity imposed by the precarious state of the struggle and could not go beyond that...
...It is presently $6,861 million...
...PUERTO RICAN POLITICAL PARTIES Throughout the Declaration the following political parties are referred to by their Spanish initials (English name and year of founding in parenthesis): MPI - Movimiento Pro-Independencia (Pro-Independence Movement, 1959...
...We do not wait, however, for the coming of this social revolution to promote the educational revolution...
...Nor did the majority back up our position...
...THE POLITICAL SUPERSTRUCTURE Presently two principal parties compete to administer the colonial government: the New Progressive Party (PNP) and the Popular Democratic Party (PPD...
...It will develop to the maximum its campaigns and actions directed toward the non-participation of independentistas and Puerto Ricans in general in the vote...
...It was the Popular Party itself, with its traitorous policy of the past quarter century, which laid the foundations of its own destruction and the rise of the New Progressive Party...
...In the last instance, what will determine the one-party or multi-party character of the socialist regime is whether, in the revolutionary situation preceding the seizure of power, the vanguard is dispersed in several organizations or concentrated in only one...
...5) It sustains relations of solidarity with a large number of parties, liberation movements and governments throughout the world, opening the way for a systematic campaign toward the internationalization of the colonial case of Puerto Rico...
...PIP - Partido Independentista Puertorriqueno (Puerto Rican Independence Party, 1946...
...For the Puerto Rican rural population, all roads lead toward the urban slums or the New York ghettoes...
...The PIP still has many internal contradictions to resolve, the largest of which stems from the class composition of its militants and the remnants of pipiolismo...
...For this reason there are those who ask if a Puerto Rican nation really exists...
...All workers will have the opportunity to become more qualified and to develop intellectually through access to technical and higher education...
...The colonial position of Puerto Rico allows these industries to contaminate various sectors of our own economy -- especially the fishing sector...
...The Socialist Republic will give priority to development of the agricultural potential of our land...
...In synthesis, the majority of the United Nations refused to back the U.S...
...We consider it necessary to restore the revolutionary and anti-imperialist unity of Latin America, which can only be achieved on the basis of three underlying principles: 1) recognition of the diversity of forms of struggle...
...The Socialist Republic will respect the religious beliefs of all its citizens and will guarantee their exercise...
...2) abandonment of the industrialization program based on the development of government-owned industries...
...The average weekly wage for workers employed in manufacturing is $64.22, but the actual average real wage (calculated on the basis of consumer price indexes for worker families in Puerto Rico, 1959) is only $26,50...
...The investments in this type of industry have shot up astronomically the amount of foreign investment in the island...
...The Popular Democratic Party, prisoner of its own contradictions, cannot oppose the PNP's move...
...NACLA-East is now compiling data on Puerto Rico, particularly in the areas of direct investments, the military occupation, cultural imperialism, emigration, etc., with the aim of producing a pamphlet in the spring of 1972...
...The formation of alliances with other sectors of the people cannot contribute to the development of reformism and petty-bourgeois ideas among our people...
...We maintain that separate electoral participation,on the part of any independentista organizations in the country in the elections of 1972, is contrary to the best interests of the struggle for independence...
...The considerable increase of anti-independence repression has brought with it an increase in the clandestine struggle and in the quantity and quality of armed acts...
...X. The Party must develop a thesis with regard to the portion of the Puerto Rican nation which lives in the United States...
...We consider that to let this historical juncture pass without taking maximum advantage would be, at the least, an act of political negligence on the part of the party leadership responsible for this frustration...
...But if efficient use of our national identity leads finally to the triumph of the working class within the century-old class struggle for the control over a stretch of land, sea and air to live life freely, then we will have managed to use the colonial heritage as a revolutionary weapon...
...armed forces obtained direct control of large amounts of the best lands in the country and installed a network of army, navy and air bases...
...It also meant the removal of important expanses of land from production, the dislocation of the people from their lands, the alienation of these people from their means of production, and in their place, thousands of foreign soldiers and sailors on our soil...
...The broadest opportunities for access to education, culture in general and recreation will be opened to young people...
...The decision of PPD with regard to referendum will seal the future fate of that organization which already is in decline...
...In the latest Economic Report to the Governor (1970), the deficit was $826.3 million...
...The debate and vote taken in the General Assembly of the United Nations last September (1971) on the colonial case of Puerto Rico shows the present balance of forces around this burning problem.* This balance is constantly changing in the direction of support for the Puerto Rican independence forces...
...in force here offers a surer guarantee to the imperialists for the protection of their investments and allows a much higher income from them...
...There has been some progress in unity of action among Puerto Rican partiots...
...At the same time, this struggle picks out the contradictions of the system and develops a vision of the world, truly rooted in the proletariat, imbued with the ideology of the proletariat, Marxism-Leninism...
...It will promote the balanced development of rural areas, bringing in all the basic social services, advances of civilization and programs of recreation and education, with a view toward overcoming the contradiction which has always existed between the urban and rural areas...
...Union colonialism is responsible, in large measure, for the lack of class consciousness and the alienation of Puerto Rican workers...
...The granting of these permits will initiate Yanqui capitalist exploitation of the only aspect of our wealth that it has not yet touched...
...In the Puerto Rican socialist society, the urban and rural workers alike will control the direction of the economy, politics, education, national defense (based on the development of revolutionary militias and a people's army) and international affairs...
...There has been a qualitative change in the physiognomy of independentismo...
...If in the course of our revolutionary struggle diverse political forces participate in the determination of victory, it is probable that a plural leadership will assume command in the building of socialism...
...Deleted portions are indicated by asterisks between the paragraphs...
...In the world of today, direct colonialism of the type that operates in Puerto Rico is practically outlawed...
...2) the recognition of the right of all Puerto Ricans19 regardless of where they live to become part of the revolutionary process of their homeland...
...Not that contradictions do not exist, nor can solutions be perceived in the immediate future, but these are not now antagonistic on the level of the present struggle and will become increasingly less so as the course of action posed by both parties is followed.20 Therefore we maintain that the conditions are ripe for strengthening and institutionalizing unity in action through the creation of a united front...
...The new man to which we aspire, product of an education of excellence, has to begin to be formed in the chrysalis of the man who exists today, even within the same system of education from which he now suffers...
...Thus, confronted with the failure of autonomy, it is inclined toward annexationism...
...Its task is to spread its influence in favor of the complete liberation of women in all sectors of Puerto Rican society, with the full recognition that this cannot be fully achieved until the capitalist structure is destroyed and gives way to the socialist society...
...All this requires the application of the most adi ced techniques, which are necessarily costly...
...The students of Puerto Rico, as a heterogeneous social group, are in more of a transition than the working classes...
Vol. 5 • December 1971 • No. 8
