Manifesto of the Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico, Movimiento Libertador, regarding the coronavirus pandemic in Puerto Rico
Puerto Ricans cannot go to foreigners to ask for anything,
nor can they expect anything from their executioner, nor from the denatured of Puerto Rico.
We must rise up as a single soul
and a single body, and move like human beings,
as a civilized nation of honor, valor and sacrifice.
Pedro Albizu Campos, 1949
This pandemic once again illustrates the total collapse of values we experience today in Puerto Rico, the total disdain of Washington towards its colony and the powerless of its proxies. It also makes manifest the need for all Puerto Ricans who believe in freedom to join and, in an organized fashion, put into action, a plan to secure the independence of our homeland. A failure to do so would make us accomplices of the empire, slaves, and, to paraphrase Pedro Albizu Campos, the only thing that slaves who don’t know to defend the freedom of their homeland know how to do, is clean the despot’s pedestal.
A required introduction
Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States of North America since 1898. In 2016, the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, (“PROMESA”) definitively unmasked the “Free Associated State” (ELA) created by Public Law 600 of July 3, 1950 by the US Congress, for what it is: a trick played on the national and international community in order to perpetuate colonialism. With the law called PROMESA (“promise” in Spanish) Washington imposed a control board (“la Junta”) of seven people named by the President of the United States who represent his will and whose powers exceed those of the structure of the ELA, including those of the governor and the legislature that sits in Puerta de Tierra. The primary objective of the Junta is to identify funds that can be used to pay the Wall Street creditors, restructuring the entire apparatus of the so-called government of Puerto Rico in order to scoop up economic resources and use them to repay a debt imposed on Puerto Ricans. A debt that is, in reality, nothing but the cost of colonialism.
As a result of the entire colonial framework, Puerto Rico is deprived of every power of sovereignty: it cannot control its borders by sea or by air, nor establish its own economy, much less enter into international commerce. All of these powers are reserved exclusively for the US government.
The pandemic and Puerto Rico
The coronavirus pandemic arrived in Puerto Rico on the Costa Luminosa cruise ship which sailed from Italy, and whose passengers disembarked in San Juan on March 8, thus exposing the population to the deadly virus. A passenger on that ship was the first casualty. The colonial condition and total incapacity of those who say they govern Puerto Rico to control sea and air arrivals also resulted in the arrival of multitudes from cities like New York, where the virus was already running rampant. Nor can it keep sailboats and luxury yachts full of tourists from all over the Caribbean from dropping anchor in its coves and keys and walking into town for groceries. And colonialism keeps us from getting ready assistance from our Caribbean neighbors like Cuba, with the expertise of its epidemiologists, or the Dominican Republic, manufacturing masks. Indeed, we lack even the ability to put our own economy to work manufacturing the much-need masks and medical protective equipment essential to controlling the epidemic.
To the inability of the so-called government of Puerto Rico to attend to the medical needs created by the pandemic, must be added its egregious inefficiency devolving into administrative chaos: the failure to structure a plan to control the spread of the disease by identifying a sufficient number of those infected or to implement any contract tracing, preventing the isolation of contacts as well as those testing positive. Nor, contrary to the recommendations of the World Health Organization, is it doing systematic serological or molecular testing of those who are asymptomatic. In fact, once again, the colonial administration has proven unable to provide reliable statistics on the number of deaths, as well as infections.
The immorality and ethical failures among those involved in what is supposed to be an action plan to counteract COVID-19 and their political cronies, the willingness to put selfish interests and hopes of enrichment over the suffering and death it causes, is a public scandal. Contracts are signed overnight for between 2.2 and 38 million dollars for the purchase of respirators and rapid tests for many times their market value from companies with absolutely no experience in the field taking advantage of an opportunity for huge profits.Consistent with the character of the colonized, the colonial administration and its personages are incapable of generating any plan to help the almost 200,000 employees that have been left without income as a result of the mid-March stay at home and business closing order. For them, nothing but the empty promise of a “benefit” the funds for which, in many cases, were exhausted almost as soon as they were announced.
Of course, the disease has not hit all sectors of the population equally. Staying at home is hardly the same for those who live in large houses with yards and swimming pools and those who live in crowded public housing projects. Nor for those who feel they are living “forced vacations” or working from home on salary and those who live from day to day on income they are no longer generating, including from the informal sector. There is no comparison between those who complaining because they have to order take out delivery by UVA or UberEats instead of going to their favorite restaurant and the elderly w ho live alone and have to wait in lines at the supermarket.
Nor has the colonial administration paid real attention to people who have no place to live but the street, not even orienting them about where or how to go for help or orientation. It has shown similar disdain for those confined in the penal institutions of the country, where disinfectants are scarce or absent, and social distancing impossible while they are exposed to personnel who come and go each day from communities with infected people. The first two documented inmates are children in an institution where a guard tested positive last week.
The coronavirus does not discriminate. It attacks all equally. What discriminates are the socio-economic conditions that are the result of the prevailing colonialism in our country. Those of us who love Puerto Rico’s liberty accomplish nothing looking for handouts, be it from this colonial administration or the empire. It accomplishes nothing because the current crisis is but another demonstration of the cruel ravages of colonialism. Colonial remedies can only prolong the malady. It is time to recognize that our vulnerability to this new disease is the product of evil that has lasted for over a century. If we don’t do this with a single voice united to rescue our homeland, demanding the decolonization of Puerto Rico, we will continue begging like sheep under the economic and political whip that will follow the disease.
San Juan, Puerto Rico, April 20th. 2020.
National Board
Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico, Movimiento Libertador
San Juan, Puerto Rico April 21, 2020 (translation)
