The Empire’s attack on Ojeda-Rios & Independence
Published Oct 29, 2005 8:14 PM
The
Sept. 23 attack and armed assault on Puerto Rican nationalist Filiberto Ojeda
Rios left the family and his island without his proud and noble presence, but it
did not achieve its real desired objective.
The armed agents of Empire
attacked the home and family of the 72-year old revolutionary, shot him, and
left him to bleed to death for hours in his home in Hormigueros in the
island’s mountainous regions.
Dr. Hector Pesquera, president of the
Hostosiano independence movement, nailed it when he said of the heavily-armed
FBI assault, “They did not come to arrest Filiberto Ojeda, they came to
kill him.”
Nor was it mere coincidence that the date the FBI chose
to raid the Ojeda home was the island’s day of national historical
significance. Sept. 23 was the 107th anni versary of “El Grito de
Lares,” when thousands of Puerto Ricans annually mark a day of resistance
against the Spanish colonizers.
Today, it remains a colony of the
Americans.
By the slaughter of Filiberto Ojeda Rios, the issue of
independence has arisen like a flame within the hearts of Puerto
Ricans.
When word arrived of his assassination, I flashed almost
immediately back to Dec. 4, 1969, when Fred Hampton, Deputy Minister of Defense
of the Black Panther Party chapter in Illinois, and Peoria’s Black Panther
Capt. Mark Clark were assassinated in their home in Chicago.
The FBI was
behind those murders also. And just like that assassination, the government
reacted to their political assassinations with lies.
The objective of the
Empire was to extinguish the fires of freedom and independence from the heart of
the nation. If reaction to Ojeda’s murder is any indication, then they
have failed miserably.
There are events in the life of a people that mark
them. That spark them. That move their minds and hearts from acquiescence to
resistance.
This may prove just such a moment.
Dylcia Pagan, former
Puerto Rican political prisoner, wrote, within hours of the
slaughter:
“What occurred was a political assassination of a Puerto
Rican warrior orchestrated by a U.S. FBI Federal Task Force. Even the
municipality mayor Pedro Garcia in a radio interview stated that this occurrence
was not a coincidence. The initial strategic firing by the FBI took place at
3:00 pm; at 6:00 to 6:30 pm another follow-up firing occurred. The president of
the Utier Union, Roberto Santos, that represents the electrical workers of
Puerto Rico, called a major radio station to inform the Puerto Rican people that
he had been informed by the FBI that all electrical power to the municipality of
Hormigueros would be cut off. It took two days for all of us to know their
justification which was that they needed to utilize their [infra]-red equipment
for security measures. Hormigueros has been under federal seizure for the last
four days. All of the Puerto Rican press has not been allowed to bring their
cameras into Filiberto’s residence ... .”
Pagan adds:
“In 1898 El Grito de Lares was a fight against Spanish colonialism. Today
in 2005 a new Grito de Lares emerges against U.S. colonial rule over our nation,
Puerto Rico.”
The spirit that led to the assassination of Filiberto
Ojeda Rios is precisely the spirit that led to the brutal and illegal invasion
and occupation in Iraq. It is capitalism run wild. It is imperialism in its
nakedness.
It is the spirit that wishes to crush all expressions of human
freedom, while doing so in the name of “Freedom!”
It is state
terrorism, pure and simple, against the very idea of freedom and true
independence.
There is only one real response that can bring
change.
Broad, deep mobilization of the people against this neoliberal
nightmare.
Resistance. Resistance. And More Resistance!
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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