Sotomayor & Puerto Rico’s colonial status

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!