WW COMMENTARY
Sotomayor & Puerto Rico’s colonial status
By
Berta Joubert-Ceci
Published Jun 10, 2009 2:41 PM
President Barak Obama’s recent nomination of Federal Appeals Judge Sonia
Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has stirred much controversy. The U.S. far right
has whipped up venomous racist diatribes against her.
If confirmed by the Senate, Sotomayor would be the first Latina justice and the
third woman to sit on the 220-year-old court. And Sotomayor is not simply
Latina in general, but she is Puerto Rican.
We people of Puerto Rico are Latinos/as but also mostly Afro-Caribbean and
Indigenous—even though our original Indigenous population was
exterminated during the Spanish colonization. But that also holds true for
Dominicans and Cubans.
Puerto Rico, an occupied territory by USA
What makes Puerto Rico different is that our country is still the only formal
colony of the United States in this hemisphere, subject to U.S. rule in all our
spheres of life. U.S. rule is what has marked the political life of the Boricua
people—the Taíno Indigenous name of the island is
Boriquén—since 1898, both on the island and in the U.S.
According to international law, that our country is a colony is itself a crime.
That law recognizes the right of the subjugated peoples to end colonial rule by
any means that they have available. The United Nations’ De-colonization
Committee has for many years approved resolutions on behalf of the right for
independence and self-determination of Puerto Rico.
We consider Sotomayor, though born in the South Bronx, a product of that colony
just as those born on the island are. Does it sound then like a contradiction
or a case of ultimate irony that she might hold a post on the highest legal
court of the colonizer?
Every Puerto Rican person I know is glad that Sotomayor has won this bourgeois
democratic right. She has an impressive professional background and, most of
all, has never renounced her identification as a Puerto Rican in order to be
accepted by her peers on the bench or other professionals.
Probably her refusal to deny her heritage and her unwavering defense of
affirmative action are the main reasons she is under attack from the right
wing.
Of all the articles about Sotomayor, I have seen none in the corporate media
dealing with Puerto Rico’s colonial status. Should a Puerto Rican be
accepted on the Supreme Court, Puerto Rico’s colonial status may become
an issue central to many discussions.
U.S. crimes hurt Puerto Rico
The ProLibertad website explains what the U.S. did to Puerto Rico: “The
U.S. military declared martial law, installed a U.S. governor, and began a
program to alter and destroy the fiber of Puerto Rico. Over the years, the U.S.
destroyed Puerto Rico’s agrarian economy; devalued its money; imposed
citizenship on its people to facilitate drafting its men into the U.S. army to
fight the U.S.’s wars; imposed the teaching of the English language and
U.S. history on its students; polluted its air, land, and water; sterilized its
women; and installed 21 U.S. military bases on some of the best land.”
(www.prolibertadweb.com)
But there has been resistance to U.S. rule, both armed and unarmed, since the
very beginning. Washington and its island stooges have always attacked this
resistance with repression. This article will mention just one of many
examples, the cruelest in recent history.
On Sept. 23, 2005, on the most important for independence activists—The
Day of Grito de Lares, commemorating the 1868 uprising against Spanish
colonialism—the crime occurred. While thousands of pro-independence
Puerto Ricans were gathering in Lares for the annual event, the FBI landed on
the island and killed Filiberto Ojeda Rios, leader of the anti-imperialist
Machetero (Popular Boricua) Army in his house in nearby Hormigueros.
A sharpshooter atop a nearby roof shot Ojeda Rios in the neck. Though the wound
would not have been fatal had he received immediate medical aid, the FBI
prevented medical help from arriving and let him bleed to death for hours.
Independence activists and sympathizers have been and still are under
surveillance, harassed and their homes invaded. Many have been imprisoned for
long terms, called to grand jury hearings, some such as Filiberto Ojeda Rios
have been executed, and the imperialists have used many more infamous
repressive tactics.
The struggle continues
Because of its colonial status, Puerto Rico’s economy is just an appendix
of the imperialist economy. This is now the most crucial aspect in Puerto Rican
politics. The U.S.-centered economic and financial crisis has had enormous
negative impact on the island’s economy.
That impact, together with the new pro-statehood administration of neoliberal
Gov. Luis Fortuño, acts as a death blow to the union movement and all
workers’ rights. Fortuño is trying to impose several laws that
according to him will stabilize Puerto Rico’s economy. These laws,
however, will cause massive layoffs. They will also privatize what was not
privatized during the previous pro-statehood administration of Pedro
Roselló.
These changes are causing an unprecedented response from the masses. A movement
initially called by some of the most militant unions in the island, “All
Puerto Rico for Puerto Rico,” has coalesced forces from all sectors of
society. Labor, religious, left political organizations and parties, students
and youth, environmental, cultural and other sectors have joined to protest
these neo-liberal policies and demand reparations from the government.
On June 5, some 100,000 people gathered in San Juan in a “Peoples
Assembly.” Before the Capitol, they read a declaration with the demands
from Puerto Rico’s people and vowed to continue organizing in each of the
78 municipalities in the nation. The front banner read: “Puerto Rico is
on its feet; Puerto Rico is in the streets.”
As are all the peoples of the world when they unite and struggle, the people of
Puerto Rico are an indomitable force. This action on June 5 has demonstrated
the resilience and the capabilities of the people united. They did it when they
drove the U.S. Navy out of Vieques; they can do it again. ¡Viva Puerto
Rico libre!
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