The heroic armed resistance in Puerto Rico

The only way for a people and a nation to win liberation from white supremacy, American hypernationalism and global capitalism is revolution. This is true for the entire colonized world but especially for the Puerto Rican colony.

I am a Puerto Rican who loves her nation, her people and her island. I believe that we — Puerto Ricans — need a revolutionary communist, nationalist party.

The Puerto Rican people at one time had the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico. It was founded in 1922 to oppose the U.S. colonialist occupation which began when the U.S. took the island for its own ends after the Spanish-American War ended Spanish colonial rule in 1898.

The Nationalist Party, through its newspaper and its various popular organizations — such as the Cadets of the Republic, its armed wing — fought the oppressive U.S. colonial regime. While its leader, Pedro Albizu Campos, was being suppressed by the white supremacist, anti-Puerto Rican U.S. government, the Nationalist Party held parades and events to celebrate its existence and to educate Puerto Ricans on the importance of nationalism and independence in Puerto Rico.

After the state tried to murder several Nationalists and, following the efforts of the Nationalists to overthrow the colonial regime headed by Governor Blanton Winship, the traitorous Puerto Rican legislature passed the Gag Law, a law making it illegal to be a Nationalist, to possess a Puerto Rican flag and even to discuss the political status of Puerto Rico. This law remained in place for years, until 1957 when it was declared unconstitutional.

In the early 1950s the Nationalist Party committed to an insurgency against the colonialist government in Puerto Rico and fought in Washington, D.C. against the tyrannical U.S. government.

Cries of Jayuya and Utuado

On October 29, 1950, police attacked the home of a Nationalist’s mother. The very next day, in the towns Jayuya and Utuado, revolutionary actions against the United States and their pet Puerto Rican supporters began. The rebellions, called the Cries of Jayuya and Utuado, resulted in several deaths on both sides.

On Nov. 1, 1950, while President Harry Truman was residing at the Blair House because the White House was being renovated, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola attempted to kill him. While a guard was murdered, the attempt failed, leaving Torresola dead and Collazo imprisoned for 29 years.

Nationalist Party members Lolita Lebrón, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero and Irvin Flores staged an armed attack on the U.S. Capitol building on March 1, 1954. They unfurled a Puerto Rican flag, fired shots on the floor of the House of Representatives, and Lebrón cried out, “¡Viva Puerto Rico Libre!” The four were immediately arrested.

The uprisings of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico failed to overthrow U.S. colonial rule, but they inspired attempts from other forces, forces this time guided by both nationalism and Marxism-Leninism that knew the necessity of armed revolution. From the Puerto Rican Socialist League (La Liga Socialista Puertorriqueña) to the armed forces of the Armed Liberation Commandos (Comandos Armados de Liberación), the Armed Forces of National Liberation (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional), the Boricua Popular Army (Ejército Popular Boricua), the People’s Revolutionary Commandos (Comandos Revolucionarios del Pueblo), the Armed Forces of Popular Resistance (Fuerzas Armadas de Resistencia Popular) and the Revolutionary Workers Commandos (Comando Revolucionario Obrero), these groupings are different with different lines, but they realize that our people can only be freed with the dual weapons of armed struggle and political education.

Between 1968 and 1972, the Armed Liberation Commandos (CAL) attacked several public corporate and military targets. While some people didn’t understand their tactics, the Commandos were trying to do as much damage to capitalism in Puerto Rico as possible while linking their actions with the Puerto Rican working class. In a 1968 interview with Tricontinental — a publication of the Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America — CAL leader Alfonso Beal said that one of their attacks on the telephone monopoly in Puerto Rico in 1968 was in solidarity with ITT telephone workers on strike.

The Armed Liberation Commandos (CAL) were, fortunately, not impacted by the splits in the international communist movement. Their organization was united in the face of those divergences, and Alfonso Beal said, in the interview cited above, that “the divergences have not affected us,” because the Armed Liberation Commandos were “clear” in their objectives. But they did recognize that theoretical work and learning theory were an important part of the struggle and that all forms of work are “part of the struggle.”

In the first document the Commandos released to the public, they argued the need for armed combat against anti-Puerto Rican colonialism. Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution, argued that there were just and unjust wars, that unjust wars are wars for oppression, wars for exploitation, wars for harming other people and that just wars were wars to liberate the people from capitalism and oppression.

The Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN)

In the fight for the liberation of Puerto Rico, the people need to do whatever they believe is right and whatever the struggle calls for.

While it’s impossible to go over every single revolutionary organization in Puerto Rico, it’s important to specifically talk about the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN). The FALN was formed by the merger of the CAL and the Independent Revolutionary Movement in Arms (Movimiento Independentista Revolucionario Armada, MIRA).

On Oct. 26, 1974, the FALN launched an armed struggle. This was undertaken to commemorate the 1950 uprising in Puerto Rico and to demand the freedom of Collazo, Lebrón, Miranda, Cordero and Flores, still imprisoned in the U.S.

In 1979, Collazo, Lebrón, Cancel Miranda and Flores were pardoned by President Jimmy Carter’s administration after pressure from international and Puerto Rican forces. Unfortunately, Cordero, released in 1977 for health reasons, died of cancer in 1979 before his comrades were released.

The FALN didn’t just engage in the armed struggle to pressure the United States into releasing our heroes; it also used the tactics of military strategy put forward by Lenin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh and others to strike where Yankee imperialism was weak and where it used Puerto Rico to gain wealth. It also struck police forces to inspire the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States to join the struggle for Puerto Rican liberation.

The FALN wasn’t just a military organization but supported, emphatically, other forms of organization and movement to free Puerto Rico, for instance political education, meetings and the use of the general strike in combination with many different tactics.

The Puerto Rican movement took its inspiration from the Russian, Cuban, Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions. The FALN repeatedly issued documents in support of the Cuban Revolution.

We also must acknowledge the Dec. 11, 1974, retaliatory strike of FALN against the violent and racist New York Police Department. This was a response to the murder of Martin “Tito” Perez by the NYPD and to the NYPD’S racist oppression of Puerto Rican and Black youth. It was right of the FALN to strike back when many were afraid to do so.

The FALN spoke of the racist oppression of Indios — Native Americans and Indigenous Caribbean people — in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

The armed movement of Puerto Ricans against white supremacy, U.S. imperialist nationalism and colonialism is perhaps one of the most important movements in the U.S. and the countries it occupies.

While it may be said that the United States is not ready for an armed battle yet, the FALN showed the heaviness and importance of trying to strike against white supremacy even when outnumbered or even alone.

Workers World Party does not force its will on oppressed peoples, we would not force other oppressed movements to take up the gun — or not — but we support any tactics the oppressed may use to fight back.

Long live the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico!

Long live the revolutionary armed movement of Puerto Rico!

¡Despierta Boricua, defiende lo tuyo! (Wake up, Boricua! Defend what is yours!)

Build a Workers World!