The Puerto Rican Socialist Party in the United States
The Pro-Independence Movement (MPI) has been active in the United States for over a decade, with most of its activities centered in New York City. At the founding assembly of the Puerto...
...The work among students, their organization and politicization, although it has as an immediate goal the development of an educative system which responds to the needs of young Puerto Ricans, will also seek to develop youth who can be true vanguard organizing cadres among the Puerto Rican people...
...The Party is convinced that the organization, politicization and incorporation of Puerto Rican workers into the militant struggle in the United States will contribute greatly and decisively to the attainment of independence and socialism in Puerto Rico...
...As part of the process of urging on the militancy of the Puerto Rican workers in all spheres of life and society in which they are direct producers, the Party will foment the creation of a broad and militant quasi-union Puerto Rican mass organization and will fight for the immediate redress of the Puerto Rican working population's grievances -- against the high cost of living and unemployment, in favor of equal salaries and jobs for Puerto Ricans and for the the social services to which the worker has a right and which are made possible by his labor...
...This struggle for immediate redress of the working people's grievances encompasses, of course, all the strata which the process of capitalist exploitation maintains at the margin of the production process and alienated from their human dignity, as are the unemployed, housewives and the lumpen...
...It is here that the national question and the class struggle coincide in the case of the Puerto Rican residents of the United States...
...The work of the Party among the masses will always hold the defense of the national culture as a high priority, promoting it among the Puerto Rican people rooted in the United States...
...At the same time, it is understood that, since we form part of the most exploited strata in the United States, Puerto Rican residents in this country must struggle for revolutionary change right here...
...This has not been so with Puerto Ricans...
...branch of the PSP is committed to the principle that its militants will not serve in the ranks of the Armed Forces of the United States...
...Therefore, it will fight, as much in the heart of the Party as in the heart of the people, petitThe U.S...
...Along with the Puerto Rican who lives in the North American cities is the Puerto Rican migrant agricultural laborer...
...In defense of the national culture, the Party will maintain, in addition, a critical and combative policy towards the vices inherited from the colonial capitalist culture, such as machismo...
...The colonial expliotation to which Puerto Rico is subject has caused our people to live a unique historical experience: that of seeing more than a third of our population leave our national territory in search of jobs and better conditions of life...
...There is some debate as to whether his veto can be overridden in the present Congress...
...Such divisions operate to the benefit of the dominant national class, whose instruments of dominationation are the large corporations...
...A final program for the U.S...
...dition as a worker as in that of a woman and a Puerto Rican...
...ranch will be adopted at a PSP congress to be held in the spring of 1973, after the end of the present "Year of Organization...
...It will also be a priority of the Party to call on the people to resist this imposition and to develop an intense campaign of politicization of the thousands of young boricuas who, for diverse reasons, find themselves serving in the various branches of the yanqui Armed Forces...
...We cannot per-22 Mural on the wall of a New York City apartment building depicting the Puerto Rican patriots, Pedro Albizu Campos and Ramon Emeterio Bethnces...
...Therefore, the task of the Party among students is to combat petit-bourgeois ideas and deepen their consciousness of the class from which they come and of that which they are called to serve...
...continued from page 22...
...from his salary are deducted expenses for transportation, meals and lodging, all of which are of the lowest quality, along with expenses for non-existent services such as medical plans...
...We Puerto Ricans live in the United States, quartered in.the worst slums of the large cities, with the most poorly-paid jobs, without adequate social services and plagued by the gravest problems which grieve North American society -- the outstanding ones being narcotics addiction, poor housing, prostitution and the poor quality of education...
...Taking advantage of the miserable situation of agriculture in our country, the agricultural migrant is brought seasonally to work on North American farms...
...he lives in literal concentration camps...
...Thus, in the struggle for the immediate redress of the grievances of the Puerto Rican residents in the United States and for revolution in the United States, the struggle for independence and socialism in Puerto Rico constitutes a priority...
...The absence of a large vanguard party, embodying the aspirations of all exploited masses and directed toward the success of the struggle for the emancipation of the North American proletariat, is evident...
...Thus, the Party considers itself obligated to maintain, together with its policy of alliances, an intense ideological struggle, based on the solid principles of the Party, as much with the organizations of ethnic minorities -- including Puerto Ricans -- as with the broad gamut of the North American left...
...continued on page 29...
...Before that conflagration, the emigration of Puerto Ricans to the United States had been considerable...
...At the same time, since yanqui imperialism has brought to its national territory a numerous and important sector of the Puerto Rican people, the struggle for Puerto Rican independence and socialism must also be carried on in the streets of the North American cities...
...Both struggles are one and the same, against a common enemy, and to benefit both the Party will contribute itself with all its forces to the organization of the Puerto Rican workers residing in the United States...
...III Upon constituting branches in the United States, the Puerto Rican Socialist Party puts itself to the task of organizing the masses of Puerto Rican workers residing here for the frontal struggle against the common enemy of all peoples of the world -- yanqui imperialism -- within its own borders...
...On the other hand, since there is a permanent Puerto Rican population in the United States exploited by the same enemy which maintains Puerto Rico under colonial exploitation, the Party understands that this population must form part of the struggle for the emancipation of all exploited groups in this country, which is the same liber- ation struggle for all humanity...
...It is our responsibility, therefore, as part of the most exploited sector of this society, to play a decisive role in the revolutionary struggle of this country.Other previous migrations, by having arrived 21 in the country in times when capitalism was still in a period of expansion and development and by injecting "white" immigrants into a racist society were able to incorporate some of their sectors into the dominant class, at least on a regional level...
...By so doing, the Party understands that Puerto Ricans living in the United States form an integral part of the Puerto Rican nation, that the struggle for independence and socialism in Puerto Rico contributes to the development of the revolutionary struggle in the United States...
...IV Upon defining three principal areas in which the Party will develop its organizing work, the Assembly advises that students and the community are no more than stages in the life of the worker...
...They also benefit the regional dominant classes who generally have their base of power in their ancestry and possession of land, as well as in smaller-scale industry and business dependent on the large corporations...
...Recognizing that the application to our people of the laws for obligatory military service is one of the cruelest and most direct forms of colonial exploitation to which our people are subjected, the U.S...
...In addition, he has no right to collective bargaining and sees his most elemental human rights disregarded...
...As for those farm-labor migrants who have decided to remain and seek permanent employment, many constitute a growing Puerto Rican population living in conditions of extreme poverty in small towns and cities in the interior of the United States...
...This enormous mass of humanity has not dispersed itself throughout the world, but has emigrated to a common location: the large cities of the United States, among which New York stands out most strongly...
...II North American society, in addition to its division into classes by its capitalist nature, is fragmented by the racism imposed by the culture of its dominant class...
...In the communities where Puerto Ricans reside, the Party is called to combat and work toward the immediate solution of the gravest problems which affect Puerto Rican working people...
...The struggle for syndical democracy, against discrimination in the unions and for better representation of Puerto Ricans in union leadership are assignments of the first order in the agenda of the Party...
...As part of the development of proletarian culture, the Party will struggle for the emanci- pation of the Puerto Rican woman within the struggle for the emancipation of our nation...
...Puerto Rican residents in the United States are unified by nationality and by the fact that super-exploitation is expressed as much in national terms as in class terms due to the racism which permeates North American society...
...4 (April 1972), the second sen- tence of the final paragraph is erroneous and should be deleted...
...By the same token, this society today finds itself greatly divided in terms of the so-called national minorities...
...The United States section of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party understands that the situation in which we boricuas live in the United States is a direct result of the colonial expolitation of our homeland...
...Upon arriving in the metropolis, he finds that all the institutions of the system, from education to labor, are used to maintain him in that super-exploited situation...
...In consequence, the Party must maintain itself faithful to the principles of Marxism-Leninism as applied to the concrete reality of our nation, as well as to the principles of democratic centralism and criticism and self-criticism...
...It was brought by yanqui imperialism to occupy the branches of production and services which were being gradually displaced by the application of technology to industry after the Second World War...
...Nor do any of the exploited minorities have a massive vanguard party, capable at this time of precipitating the revolutionary struggle and encouraging the amalgamation of those sectors struggling against imperialism...
...At the founding assembly of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) in November, 1971, the New York MPI members submitted the following document for approval as a guide to the development of the U.S...
...CORRECTION In Vol...
...branch of the PSP...
...Unfortunately, the state of atomization of the North American left at this time impedes an effective confrontation of this situation...
...but it was from that point on that an official policy of the colonial government was unleashed, that of stimulating migration as an escape valve from the grave economic problems for which the Puerto Rican regime has no solution...
...At this point, our policy of unity and support of existing Puerto Rican organizations must be accompanied by constant ideological struggle, which simultaneously ex- poses the contradictions of the system and develops a truly proletarian vision of the world and of the struggle -- that is, develops the ideology of the proletariat, Marxism-Leninism...
...We Puerto Ricans residing in the United States form part of the so-called non-white ethnic minorities, along with our Chicano, Black, Oriental and North American Indian brothers...
...mit the founding and development of Puerto Rican organizations in the communities to contribute to the development of reformism and liberal and petit- bourgeois ideas among our people...
...The Puerto Rican immigrant has an origin of common type: an unskilled or semi-skilled laborer, displaced from the economic process in his own country and therefore, proceeding from the army of unemployed upon which yanqui capitalism feeds to assure itself of cheap labor...
...therefore, the work in these two areas will always be directed toward the development of proletarian culture, class consciousness and the strengthening of the will and the capacity for struggle of the Puerto Rican working class...
...branch of the Party will maintain bourgeois ideas concerning the position of woman sufficient autonomy to flexibly adapt tactics and in society and will struggle for the immediate popular campaigns in tune with the reality of the redress of her grievances as much in her con- communities in which it moves in this country...
...In its place, read as follows: The Chilean Congress has passed a law which would make it more difficult for the executive branch to expropriate corporations, but Allende will veto that law...
...In particular, young Puerto Ricans born and raised in the United States, who presently see their culture mutilated by the imposition of the culture of the oppressor, will receive the most intense attention of the Party...
...VI, No...
...Living there, it forms one of the most exploited strata of the working class...
...For his labor, he receives starvation wages, the lowest in the entire salary scale in the United States...
...But during all this, the Party is also called on to maintain at its heart a process which assures the constant development of proletarian ideology and which assures that when its militants go to the people, they do it with the attitude of learning from the people...
Vol. 6 • May 1972 • No. 5
