Puerto Rico CWP Event
On August 29th, members of the Communist Workers Platform hosted a documentary screening of The Last American Colony: One Man’s Revolution. The documentary follows prominent member of Los Macheteros, Juan Segarra Palmer. Juan was a clandestine independentista in the 80s, working alongside Filiberto Ojeda Rios to create the insurgent group named the “Boricua Popular Army” in their struggle to inspire their people to rise up and resist colonial occupation.
This event was hosted in solidarity to the “March for Independence” event that occurred in Puerto Rico on August 31st. The Communist Workers Platform applauds the many organizations, including the Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores (MST), for mobilizing over 3,000 Puerto Ricans to demand an end to colonial occupation.
At this event, attendees were given a brief history of Puerto Rico and more notable independence figures in history as well as a short speech on proletarian internationalism.
After watching this documentary, we had a discussion as a group over the Machetero tactics in their attempts at inspiring the Puerto Rican population into spontaneous uprising.
Even though it was heroic and inspiring, oftentimes the Macheteros found themselves abruptly splitting after internal disagreements occurred and lacked any ideological foundation beyond the dire necessity to be liberated as a colony. Several questions were left unanswered, such as: Does liberation ensure that Puerto Rico can establish a socialist mode of production, and what practical steps do we need to take to realize this? Are we philosophically equipped to understand the underpinnings of the laws of nature in order to wield history to our favor? How organized is the working-class of Puerto Rico, and can we win them over through these clandestine efforts?
What will the Puerto Rican people need in order to achieve self-determination, and has there ever been a group in Puerto Rico’s history of independence to have proven to the masses its capability in leading the working-class into victory? While this of course has yet to happen, we wish our brothers, sisters, and siblings of Puerto Rico a gesture of solidarity and our steadfastness in demanding an immediate end to the U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico. And in the end, the Puerto Rican workers and people are masters of their own lands, they must be essentially free to chart their path towards socialism-communism, with the communists of Puerto Rico at the forefront.