On the Other Election
from the world's oldest colony
the world’s oldest colony, Puerto Rico, is also having their election day today. even though all things “historic” do not immediately indicate transformation or merit, the current electoral arch in Puerto Rico is illuminating a new sliver of renewed hope in an island that has been defined by ever-present disaster and despair. even western media in the US has had to take account for how unprecedented this moment is.
for an island with a chilling history of intimidation, suppression, incarceration, torture, and assassinations of pro-independence, anti-colonial marxist leaders, organizers, and artists, the popularity of a pro-independence candidate and an anti-colonial front in the main electoral stage reveals that Boricuas, despite the odds and the consequences, are more ready every day to reclaim our homeland from the far reaching tentacles of US imperialism. The FBI, CIA, and Puerto Rican police have long collaborated and kept files, or “carpetas” on pro independence leaders, constructing twisted plans on ways to sabotage their political work, as well as their personal lives and the lives of those they love most.
a few months ago, i began writing my debut book (!!!!!!), unearthing the historical relationship between three places i adore and care for deeply: miami, puerto rico, and cuba. this personal chapter of lessened social interaction and being physically away from home, my friends and family, has been a time for me to excavate with more intent and discernment the impact of coloniality and its disposability in my own life and in lands sacred to my ancestors. this process also happens to be coinciding with the historic juncture of Palestinian sumud [steadfastness] towards self-determination, setting a new revolutionary standard of what fighting for one’s land can and should mean, and of course, making the ultimate sacrifice - all glory to the martyrs.
what is happening currently on the island of Puerto Rico comes as a cascade of defeat: obama’s implementation of la junta [fiscal oversight board], category 5 hurricane Maria which killed over 4,000/devastated the island/resulted in a mass exodus leaving the island particularly vulnerable to US tax-haven predators, organized abandonment from FEMA, the ousting of the former governor ricky rosello complicit in all the horrors. all these crises, within the backdrop of the main crisis: centuries of US domination. ultimately, by now, Puerto Ricans are waking up to the realization that all of these are threads from the same cloth and that we will en masse have to begin reckoning with what lies under the surface of lip service. in the words of Ghassan Kanafani during his 1968 lecture in Beirut, thoughts on change and the blind language, he reminds us:
“periods of defeat in a people’s history are witness to a rapid growth in critical spirit, which remains an indispensable constructive capacity. this critical spirit in times of defeat seems all at once to awaken human feelings in time of danger, feelings that double the capacity for both self-awareness and confrontation”.
i didn’t grow up in a particularly political household, but the first time i asked my parents about independence on the island when i was young, my dad expressed the dialogue of internalized colonization, “without the united states, Puerto Rico would be in ruin.” it almost parallels the most recent “joke” of Puerto Rico being a floating island of garbage. it also mirrors the framing the US used when it declared PR had “unpayable debt” and thus needed to an “oversight” board of wall street financiers to supervise the island’s finances.
when the world’s largest empire/military of history takes siege of your homeland, occupies it, bans your flag and any display of the flag (even in one’s own home) - ever wonder why Puerto Ricans do the most when it comes to our flag!?, sterilizes over a third of women and child-bearing people, criminalizes any songs or chants that are pro-independence, uses our youth as military cannon to fight US wars be it in Korea/Vietnam/Iraq and so on and so forth, and employs all colonial infrastructures (legal, economic, cultural, medical, etc.) available to justify the brutality and violence of extraction of PR, it is not hard to see how and why some Puerto Ricans have began the believe that maybe we are better off with our long-standing master. in the words of Frantz Fanon, “colonialism is a total project. it is a project that does not leave any part of the human person and its reality untouched.”
colonization is not satiated with just violating the land, it must also violate and humiliate our sense of self.
for the past several decades, pro-independence candidates generally garner 2% of the vote, with a few exceptions. today, alianza, the united front between PIP (PR Independence Party) and MVC (Citizens Victory Movement, a new anti-colonial party) is polling at over 30%, with a real chance at beating the pro-statehood, conservative ruling party that has held the political chokehold of the island for far too long. it feels important to not conflate this electoral moment as a decolonization victory, but more so observe it as a step in a long, protracted process of undermining empire that did not begin today and will certainly not reach completion in the immediate future. regardless of who wins tonight, el Boricua se ha despertado.
similarly to the US context, third party leaders in PR have also had to respond against the fallacy of a “wasted vote”. all the while the ruling party, PNP, publishes campaign videos that demonstrate no policy position beyond protecting the “relationship between PR and the United States” and red-baiting viewers, by demonizing the support of socialist leaders across the global south that also believe PR should be independent. for example, in one of the campaign videos, they show Cuba’s president saying: “viva Puerto Rico libre.” scary! shocker! it’s amusing and embarrassing because anybody who knows a fraction of our history knows how profound the solidarity between Cuba and Puerto Rico run, as the final colonies of the once expansive spanish empire, with both being “gifted” to the US in 1898 as a result of the spanish-american war.
in a now declassified CIA memo, US officials reflect on this fraternity between the two islands, “it is sometimes difficult for US observers to understand the Cuban position because the Spanish-American War does not loom large in US history even though it terminated Spanish sovereignty over Cuba and Puerto Rico and it placed them under US control. For Cubans, however, it is the major event in Cuban history with, perhaps, the exception of Castro's struggle against Batista. It thus follows that Cubans, especially the well educated, feel a strong sense of kinship towards Puerto Ricans. Castro’s own commitment, for example, dates at least from the late 1940’s, when at Havana University, he was a member of the Federation of University Students’ committee for Puerto Rican independence.”
in 1941, US navy troops evicted Vieques’ roughly 10,000 residents at gunpoint and displaced them to a narrow strip of land in Vieques’ center. the rest of the island was turned into a de facto war zone – where the US navy deployed as much as 3M pounds a year of live ordnances containing: napalm, lead, uranium, and countless other toxic chemicals for more than 60 years. the bombs tested in Vieques were later dropped on Palestine. during the decades of protesting and resisting, which led to the eventual expelling of the US navy in 2001-2003, Puerto Rican independence, understood as a vehicle for sovereignty, was a central theme, highlighting questions such as: why does the US think we are nothing but a testing laboratory where they can freely poison our land, our oceans, and all living beings, as a means to them perfecting their military war machine?
regardless of what happens in Puerto Rico and in the US elections today, i am proud to be a young person of consciousness and commitment rejecting imperialist rationale in the belly of the beast and choosing to contribute towards an alternative vision of what is possible in our lifetime and the generations to come. as Filiberto Ojeda Rios, marxist pro-independence martyr assassinated by the FBI in 2005, told us as a mandate:
“quien lucha por su libertad, se la merece.”
i refuse to be afraid, i refuse to bow down to our long standing master, and i’m proud of all of those who are choosing dignity over submission, be it on the island or on empire’s soil.
to close out, i leave you all with an excerpt of Yahya Sinwar’s exceptionally beautiful last will:
“Do not forget that the homeland is not just a story to be told, but a reality to be lived, and with every martyr born from this land a thousand more resistance fighters are born.
If the flood returns and I am not among you, know that I was the first drop in the waves of freedom and I lived to see you continue the journey.
Be a thorn in their throat, a flood that knows no retreat, and do not rest until the world acknowledges that we are the rightful owners, and that we are not just numbers in the news.”
