Juan Mari Bras

When Boricua revolutionary Juan Mari Bras died on Sept. 10 from lung cancer, he left behind a life dedicated to the struggle for Puerto Rican independence and socialism, including many contributions that propelled the progressive movement on the island. Many in Puerto Rico describe him as the key figure of the “new pro-independence struggle” in the 1960s that included unions, students and community activism.

Born in 1927 in the western city of Mayagüez to pro-independence parents, Mari Bras started his political life quite young. At 15, he and his fellow high school students founded the Capítulo de Agregados Pro Independencia (Chapter of Pro Independence Apprentices).

He was expelled from the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras in 1948 after his UPR organization, the Puerto Rican Independence Youth, invited nationalist hero Don Pedro Albizu Campos to speak on campus. Albizu Campos had just been released from prison.

The students struck to protest the nationalist leader’s ban. Mari Bras raised a Puerto Rican flag on a pole. The U.S. forbid this act, and it served as the reason for his expulsion.

Mari Bras eventually went to the United States, finished his bachelor’s degree and graduated from law school at American University in Washington, D.C., in 1954.

In 1947, he co-founded the Puerto Rican Independence Party together with Gilberto Concepción de Gracia. But his belief in the revolutionary struggle for independence with socialism, led him to found the Pro-Independence Movement in 1959. This was a crucial time for such an organization since the leaders of the Nationalist Party were imprisoned and Mari Bras’ organization helped coalesce some of the pro-independence forces who saw socialism as the path that would in actuality change society. In 1971, the Movement became the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, with a Marxist-Leninist political viewpoint.

The legacy of Mari Bras extends throughout decades and sectors of struggle. In the 1960s, U.S.-based corporations had plans to mine copper in the central part of the island where farmers cultivated important agricultural produce. The PSP was instrumental in defeating these mining plans.

Mari Bras was a key figure in the progressive Colegio de Abogados. He also won the legal right for people to use the bridges’ and overpasses’ columns as a public space to express popular discontent and dissent with posters.

He became the first Puerto Rican person to renounce the U.S. citizenship that has been imposed on all Puerto Ricans since 1917. He formally renounced in the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela. As a result, now the Puerto Rican State Department issues a certificate of Puerto Rican citizenship and the Puerto Rican Supreme Court ruled that a person born in Puerto Rico does not need U.S. citizenship in order to cast a vote on the island.

He was a prolific writer of political analysis, founding the weekly Claridad with his longtime friend and collaborator, César Andreu Iglesias. His writings intertwined with his educational and political interests, leading to the establishment of the Eugenio María de Hostos Law School in his hometown of Mayagüez.

This school’s importance resides on its goals. As its website states, “To train jurists with critical thought, ethical sensitivity and social awareness, for a professional practice of excellence.” Through his writings, he tried to show the practice of applying historical materialism to the analysis of events, past and present.

Throughout his political life, the movement’s relations and solidarity with Revolutionary Cuba grew. This solidarity has endured since the time of the legendary Cuban José Martí and Puerto Rican Ramón Emeterio Betances, both fighters against Spanish domination and for the liberation of the Antilles. Both struggles have since then been intimately connected, both country’s flags identical but with the colors reversed.

Revolutionary Cuba is still waiting, patiently and caring like a big sister, for the freedom of Puerto Rico. In Cuba, Puerto Rico has its office. It was opened in collaboration with Mari Bras’ organization, sometimes referred to as the Embassy of the People of Puerto Rico. During one of Mari Bras’ trips to Cuba, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro received him with all the honors reserved for heads of state, with the Puerto Rican flag raised and the sound of the Lares anthem.

This strong relationship has helped the independentistas to raise the Puerto Rican colonial case in the United Nations through the Movement of Non Aligned Countries, sponsored by beloved Cuba.

But Mari Bras’ life has not been exempt from suffering. The U.S. federal government, its FBI political police and their stooges have been a constant threat as they have been to all Puerto Ricans who are committed to independence and socialism. In 1976, the year Mari Bras was a candidate for governor of the island, his eldest son, Santiago “Chagui” Mari Pesquera, was assassinated.

Although this killing clearly had political motives, to this date the crime remains unpunished. Recent investigations have shown that the FBI knew of the plans and threats from Cuban exiles against Mari Bras and his family but never alerted him. Mari Mari Narváez, Mari Bras’ daughter, said of the crime, “When ‘Chagui’ was killed, he [Mari Bras] declaimed on his tomb, ‘There is no place for revenge in the hearts of real revolutionaries’”.

¡Juan Mari Bras, PRESENTE! ¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre y Socialista!

Email: bjceci@workers.org