BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Black liberation & the Puerto Rican struggle
By
Carlos Rovira
African Americans hold a special place in U.S. history.
Their struggle for liberation has been both exemplary and
inspirational to the general class struggle in this
country.
The development of African Americans as a national entity
runs parallel to the evolution of U.S. capitalism. Forced into
chattel slavery, Black labor--or more precisely, the theft of
Black labor--played a decisive role in the initial accumulation
of capitalist wealth during the early years of the United
States. Concurrently, Black laborers' revolutionary traditions
became rooted in the birth and growth of U.S. capitalism.
From its inception, the African American struggle has been
intimately connected to the struggles of the working class--and
to the liberation of super-exploited and oppressed people in
particular. For instance, because this history began at the
same time as the genocide of Indigenous peoples, runaway
African American slaves found special solidarity and
commonality with Native nations. It was with Native peoples
that escaped slaves found refuge so as to continue their
struggle for survival.
In the last quarter of the 19th century when the populist
movement grew in response to capitalism's devouring
monopolization of agriculture, it did not welcome African
Americans. Nevertheless, African Americans objectively aided
the populist movement by organizing themselves to end the
brutal conditions of sharecropping, which monopoly capitalism
also facilitated.
Black struggle
The African American solidarity tradition was also expressed
in relation to the 1898 U.S. invasion of the Philippines, Guam,
Cuba and Puerto Rico. It was at this time that the United
States rose to become a world imperialist power--a direct
result of the increasing monopolization of finance and
industrial capital.
It was only natural for African Americans to identify with
the struggles of people in other lands. After all, Jim Crow
laws and racist lynchings were a daily part of their
lives--perpetuated by the same government calling on them to
fight and die overseas. Many African American social activists,
like W.E.B. DuBois, were among the most outspoken and militant
fighters in the great anti-imperialist movement of that
period.
This solidarity had an impact on the Puerto Rican national
struggle. When the young Pedro Albizu Campos first came to the
United States during his academic years, he witnessed firsthand
the racist segregationist laws used to oppress African
Americans. Since he was of African origin himself--his mother
had been an African slave on the island--this experience left
an impression on Albizu Campos, and contributed to his later
development as a revolutionary leader of Puerto Rico.
In 1936, Albizu Campos was arrested and put in prison. In
1937, in the city of Ponce, colonial police fired on a
gathering demanding the release of Albizu Campos. In what is
known as the Ponce massacre, 21 people were killed and 120
wounded.
Many progressives in the United States who were sympathetic
with Puerto Rico's right to independence condemned this vicious
act. Among the voices of protest was noted African American
artist and communist Paul Robeson.
By the 1950s, giant American corporations had tightened
their economic grip on Puerto Rico so severely that half the
Puerto Rican nation began migrating to the northeastern part of
the United States. With no other Latino concentration in this
region at the time, Puerto Ricans immediately identified their
plight with that of African Americans. This commonality came
with living in the same urban ghettos, being placed in the same
prison cells, and enduring the same racist discrimination and
police terror.
The affinities that grew out of necessity among these two
communities began to manifest in the cultural realm as well,
especially with the young people of the 1960s. In fact, the
Nation of Islam was the first organization from the African
American community to aggressively politicize and recruit
Puerto Ricans. In their speeches at public rallies in New York,
African American representatives, including Malcolm X, began to
include Puerto Ricans when speaking of oppression.
The Puerto Rican migration also added to the political
experience of the Black struggle. When the Puerto Rican flag
was raised as a symbol of struggle, very often it was
accompanied by the three colors of the Black liberation
flag.
The oppression Puerto Ricans faced compelled them to
recognize the need for new forms of struggle. The rise of the
Black Panther Party in 1966 represented a new hope for the
millions of African American masses. The Panthers were
revolutionary internationalists; they recognized the need to
build a multinational movement of the oppressed and exploited
in order to smash the capitalist system.
In Chicago, Panther leader Fred Hampton became quite
familiar with the plight of the Puerto Rican community. He
began working diligently to politicize a street youth group
called the Young Lords. Indeed, the Black Panther Party
succeeded in helping the Young Lords transform themselves into
a revolutionary political organization, which branched out to
other cities with large Puerto Rican communities, especially
New York.
The Young Lords adopted the socialist perspective and
militancy of the Black Panther Party. Winning the respect of
the Puerto Rican people, the Young Lords were then able to lead
many struggles in their community.
The alliance between Panthers and the Lords represented a
special chapter in the revolutionary history in the United
States. It demonstrated that as long as oppression presents
oppressed peoples with the need to fight, the basis for uniting
into a single powerful movement can flourish. And it points to
the potential to take on and defeat the common class enemy.
References: Howard Zinn, "People's History of the
United States"; William Foster, "The Negro People in
American History"; Herbert Aptheker , "American Negro
Slave Revolts"; Gerald Meyer, "Vito Marcantonio";
Michael Abrades, "Palante, History of the Young Lords";
Philip S. Foner, "The Spanish-Cuban-American War";
the writers' own Puerto Rican/Young Lord experience.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
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