The Proletarization of the Puerto Rican
An economist recently described the Puerto Ricans' situation by saying: "The Puerto Ricans are becoming with every step, less the actors and more the spectators of the economic drama in Puerto...
...On the other hand, we note the rise of those salaried groups in manufacturing, construction, transportation and communications sectors...
...The bourgeoisie exploits and the proletariat is exploited...
...For Puerto Rico to continue being attractive to yankee exploiters, it is necessary to maintain this wage differential . Rise in the Cost of Living, Puerto Ricans are also exploited as consumers...
...In this differential of wages lies an advantage for the business that establishes itself in our country to compete with the United States...
...The bourgeoisie possesses the means of production and the proletariat does not...
...The same is also true of chemists, physicists, biologists, and economists...
...The bourgeoisie or capitalist appropriates the major part of the social wealth and the proletariat can only sustain himself by selling his labor power for a price...
...Drug Addiction--Data revealed as a result of a study carried out by the Puerto Rican legislature gives us an idea of the level of exploitation that the narcotics business represents in this country, especially among unemployed youth...
...Degree and Forms of Exploitation by Foreign Capital Uneployent...
...That is to say, 45,356 or 39.6/j of Puerto Rican men between 14 and 19 years of age are unemployed...
...Puerto Rico is the fifth largest market for U.S...
...The colonial government, controlled by the absentee owners, is an accomplice in this process...
...It is also nmown that the most coinmmon way of getting money for drugs is through some form of crime., urder and robbery, growing daily here in Puerto Rico, are a product of the monstrous drug business in our country, a business that is controlled by the mafia, the northamlerican gangsters...
...Because they have not had the skills that could be used by manufacturing, they are left unemployed...
...About 675,000 persons receive alms sent from Jashington that are administered by the colonial politicians in power...
...The establishment of modern capitalism in Puerto Rico and its growing control of our economy keeps proletarianizing with accelerated rhythm whole sectors -of our society...
...The average income of these 120 thousand faxnilies who receive maintenance is $4.44 weekly...
...That is, they are being proletarianized...
...They are being integrated into the working class, into the service of foreign capital...
...In accord with this definition, the fundamental classes in a modern capitalist society are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat...
...Because of the systematic destruction of our agriculture and the politics of the capitalist which substitues machines for men, hundreds of thousands of men and wromen in our country have been separated from the productive process...
...One out of everyifour families in the "showcase for progress" depends on the so-called public charity to subsist...
...It can generally be said that yankee business in its enthusiasm for profits, is mlechanizing and automating its operations in Puerto Rico without concern for the effects on the life of the Puerto Ricans...
...Yith absolute control over the financial life of the country, yankee capital fixes interest rates in such a 'ay that Uwagos paid to Puerto Ricans do not cover the contracted debts...
...Families are reduced to a state of begging...
...goods in the world and the second largest for the hemisphere as a whole...
...Many opportunities for employment in business offices are rapidly disappearing due to the increased use of computerized systems...
...The decaying yankee economy has created great masses of men and women in our country who, not being able to participate in the processes of social production, have entered a parasitic existence...
...And rith the development of industry has come the control of the food distribution, clothing and other consumer goods markets by big chains of supermarkets and department stores...
...Yankee capital maintains a complete monopoly on our coimaaercial activity, both internal and external...
...As we all know, one of the problems produced in our colonial situation is the sub-utilization of one of the most important fountains of wealth of any country -- the labor force...
...The struggle is not finished...
...jiinlurimi ;ages Perhaps there is no better way of showing the nature of exploitation of the colonial reimle in Puerto iRico than by examining the tremendous struggles that go on Trhen the U.S...
...iMaritime and air transportation are controlled by northaunerican monopolies...
...The situation is really worse than the figures indicate because the agricultural workers w:Iho represent a sizeable sector receive starvation wages...
...The rest were unemployed...
...It is starting with a deep understanding of this reality, that our work must be oriented...
...These families are found principally in our devastated rural zone...
...105 ,2d Avenue (at E. 5th St...
...The party in power conditions the welfare recipients to support the present regime at the polls by threatening to cut off the pittances if they don't...
...Maintenance is a product of economic exploitation of our country...
...There were one thousand known addicts in 1961 and ten thousand in 1964...
...Through the development of technology the capitalist raises...
...The capitalist plans production to obtain profits for himself...
...It is undeniably true that the modern capitalist in Puerto Rico proletarianizes Vol...
...The slums of the area of San Juan are a belt of violence that circles the colonial city . These are some of the problems that affect the working class in Puerto Rico...
...Lenin gave us one definition of a social class...
...the proletariat carries out the production...
...All sell their labor power in the colonial market in exchange for a wage...
...That is to say that they give us the wing from the breast to eat, as our jibaro (peasant) says...
...There are also significant changes in the functions of engineers, lawyers, techniclsas and researchers...
...The Puerto Ricans themselves pay the social cost of the resulting unemployment...
...The advertising controlled by capital creates consumers...
...The youth and unemployment .According to economist A.C..Jnarton, the rate of unemployment of Puerto Rican youth compounds the cause for'alarm...
...The number of workers per factory has dropped fror,1 80 to 55 in the Fomento factories in the last five years...
...Tins phenomenon is the cause of the so-called lack of savings...
...spiritual and political exploitation...
...n Puerto Rico, one out of every three houses is inadequate...
...WJelfare...
...Hundreds of thousands of families live in shacks on the outskirts of San Juan...
...EL TEATRO CAIE SIi-OI 1 (Farmworker's Theater) Is Corning to the Village Theater !Udnesday July 19th at 8:45P,i...
...Taking into account only those youths between 14 and 19, we find the following situation: There are in Puerto Rico around 311,528 youth between those ages...
...they are agricultural workers...
...An addict uses an average of five or six bags of heroine a day, each bag costing between four and six dollars...
...Last year it was $1.28 billion.:i A C L A E Y 1 " L - T E R Judy, 1967 -4 It should be noted that in spite of the rise in per capita income, there has been a reduction in saving..This tends to demonstrate the thesis that wages paid in Puerto Rico revert immediately back to the pockets of the foreign capitalists...
...The country is divided into social strata with conflicting interests that fight among themselves, confused by the myth of social mobility...
...The people "want" more of what they can buy and tlus take out loans, rich are also controlled by foreign capital...
...Frantz Fanon wrote in his work The liretched of the rth , that social stratification serves an niportant function for imperialism -- breaking national unity...
...i No...
...This represents an increase of 900') in three years...
...In Puerto Rico, the yankee capital has acted freely to mechanize and automate...
...Thursday July 20th view Yok, ew York Admission -- $150-$3.00 Nine men, sons of grape pickers, from the fields of Delano, CalifDnia, have invented a new art form...
...In a working force of 00,000 workers in 1960, the date of the last census count, only 551,690 persons wTere working...
...Although relatively privileged, these "new working class" groups are drawing nearer and nearer to the rest of the proletariat...
...In this agricultural sector, half of the work force is unemployed six months out of every year...
...If we compare past census data with the most recent, we become aware of the disappearance of small merchants, small farmers and small owners of shops and businesses...
...An economist recently described the Puerto Ricans' situation by saying: "The Puerto Ricans are becoming with every step, less the actors and more the spectators of the economic drama in Puerto Rico...
...These Puerto Ricans are utilized by the "yankee" capitalist businesses, directly or indirectly, in creating a surplus...
...In this way the economist described the phenomenon by which the eons of our country are losing possession of the means of production and are being converted into salaried workers in the firms of North American foreigners...
...According to the advertisements that Foento distributes to the capitalists of the north to attract business to Puerto Rico, the net corporate profit is more than double the profit rate of investments in the U.S...
...This "showcase of progress" is the country with the highest level of inability to save in the world...
...This equals 30/ unemployment, double what it was in the United States during the depression...
...The other half receive no education...
...A few have been employed as unskilled construction workers, On top of these vile living conditions they see the world of so-called progress which, although they construct it, is ureachLble...
...Jobs that were of a domestic nature are now salaried...
...Of the group that does not go to school, only 32,588 are working...
...These men were there, chief figures in that strike...
...To have an idea of the tragedy that youth in the colony live, we need only point out thaL bf,the 45I000 compatriots forced to 2,Lyrat-e to the misery of the stateside city ghettos in the 1950s and 1960s, 62J were youths between 20 and 24 years of age...
...the productivity of his workers and therefore his profits...
...iYineteen percent of all loans in the last year, for example,were personal...
...But it is at the sane time a form bf...
...Its only subject is the strike, Cesar Chavez's successful action that built the first Farmworkerst Union...
...Congress legislates on the minimlum wage in Puerto Rico...
...The problem of unemployment will increase in the coming years due to increasing mechanization and automation and to the steady disintegration of Puerto Rican agrriculture...
...It wouldn't be unreasonable to think that if the Puerto Rican proletariat were to be united, a unified and successful struggle against imperialism would ensue...
...Half of the young men attend school...
...The shippers have also mechanized their operations so that very little of the cargo arriving in our ports is touched by hulian hands...
...The cause for this is the inability of Puerto Rico to accumulate capital which results in an external debt that doubles every five years...
...While in the past such skilled workers were more or less independent in the productive process, today, due to technological development, they are found working in factories or institutes at the service of the big businesses...
...The Housing Probleml...
...The total drug market in Puerto Rico in a year involves frown 70 - 90 million dollars.N A C LA N E S L E T T ER Jut-, 1967 - 3 The Center for Study of Addiction reports that the majority who seek treatment haven't worked in the last to years...
...Let us try to define the term proletariat, or the "working class...
...The classes," he said, "are large groups of men who are differentiated among themselves tith respect to the place they occupy in the historically determined system of social production, by the relations in which they find themselves with respect to the means of production, by the role they play in the social organization of work and consequently by the mode and the proportion in which they receive part of the social wealth available...
...Ousted from the agricultural sector by the process of penetration of yankee capital in our country, the agricultural workers have come to the metropolitan area to look for a new environment...
...5 July, 1967A C L A E S L E T T ER Jul, 1967 - 2 an icreasingly wide sector of society while simultaneously continuing to stratify tile once simple Puerto Rican society, and stratifying divides...
...e observe, then, two phenomena created by the penetration of modern capitalism in ?uerto Rico: (1) the proletarianization of the Puerto Rican (2) the rupture of national unity.It is perhaps the simultaneous ourrefice of these two phenomena that must determine the orientation of our political work...
...Thousands of workers have been left unemployed as a result of mechanized sugar refineries without receiving one cent of compensation...
...They sang Lexican songs in the fields and wore the masks they made to explain the struggle to their fellow campesinos...
...ational unity will be proletarian unity...
...Our job is this: to achieve the unity of the exxploited sectors for independence and for national liberation...
...The wagesyn being payed in Puerto Rico are less than half the wages paid in the United States...
...Of these,154,904 are male and 156,624 are female...
...Automation In order to be able to compete with firms in the United States, those established in Puerto Rico must develop their technology at the same rate it develops on the continent...
Vol. 1 • July 1967 • No. 5
