TEMPORAL

By Luis Cordero Santoni luiscorderosantoni@gmail.com Ever since relocating to Borikén I have tried to connect with art and artists. Borikén is the best place for that. Here you can find museums, galleries, public art, arts and crafts fairs, local shops that sell handmade crafts, and artists that set up galleries wherever they can. So far, I’ve been lucky to have found some great craft fairs here on the west coast. Every town seems to have a fair every week from up in Isabela to down in Cabo Rojo. The Puerto Rican artist plays an important role in maintaining our culture alive. Their role falls right in line with the mission of The Institute for Puerto Rican Culture: ...research, preserve, promote, and disseminate Puerto Rican culture in its diversity and complexity. With the memory and promise of culture, the different levels, sectors, ages and interests of the community create the set of ways of life, customs and artistic manifestations that identify us as a country. I dare to s...

From New York City, Frente Independentista Boricua (El Frente) sends a message of solidarity to the Puerto Rican people who are struggling and protesting in the streets right now, expressing their right to a dignified quality of life.  Today in Union Square, New York City, we march in solidarity with our people in Puerto Rico to say stop the abuse of workers and families.  "The people of Puerto Rico resist the dictatorship of La Junta imposed by Washington. A dictatorship that has, by its mere existence, unmasked a false democracy in the colony and is relentlessly vicious against the working class, whom it intends to bear the burden of paying an illegal and illegitimate debt generated by unscrupulous and corrupt politicians and Wall Street opportunists," said John Meléndez Rivera, Secretary General of the Nationalist Party, Junta de Nueva York, a member organization of El Frente.  For her part, Professor Ana López, from El Pais Posible and spokesperson for El Frente af...

Wednesday, Nov. 10 th was the opening of the International Puerto Rican Film Festival, IPRFF for short, at El Museo del Barrio in one of New York's Puerto Rican communities. One of the two films to open the festival is called We Still Here/Aquí Estamos and one of the producers of the film, Kahlil Jacobs-Fantauzzi was there to introduce the film and take questions from the audience.  We Still Here/Aquí Estamos is a short documentary that focuses on the rebuilding and recovery process in Puerto Rico which in 2019 was devastated by Hurricane Maria. The effect of the devastation was to put into high gear a recovery process that continues to this day. It brought neighbors closer and forced a unity that was unseen on the island.  We Still Here introduces the incredible youth of the town of Comerío, located just south of San Juan and towards the center of the island. Everyone in town is forced to navigate the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, a disaster that brought an unprecedented l...

  By José E. Velazquez Luyanda Jevche@aol.com In September 2020, I called on Puerto Ricans in the Northeast to focus their energies on defeating Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, where a Biden victory was not guaranteed.  Many joined those on the ground in PA, despite few resources being dedicated to the Latino community by the Biden campaign, seemingly taking the Latino vote for granted. However, the class and national interests of the Puerto Rican and Latino electorate led to an overwhelming anti-Trump vote in these communities, helping to cement a Biden victory.  At that time I also emphasized Bernie Sanders’ call for a historic massive voter turnout, particularly from those who traditionally voted in lower numbers.   The Biden victory owes a lot to Bernie Sanders, who understanding the need to defeat the greater right wing enemy discontinued his campaign for the Democratic nomination.  I believed then, despite criticism from some on the Left, that only a “C...

By Luis Cordero Santoni & Victor Quintana Originally published in Comite Noviembre's 2020 Puerto Rican Heritage Month Journal . This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of El Comité-Movimiento de Izquierda Nacional Puertorriqueño, one of the main organizations of the Puerto Rican left in the 1970s in New York City.  The people’s struggles of the 60’s and early 70’s for civil rights and against the Vietnam War spawned many grass roots organizations. El Comité was one of those organizations. El Comité was born on the summer of 1970 in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, what was then the Urban Renewal Area. In that summer, a group of 200 families took over various buildings slated for demolition on the West Side. The courageous action of these squatters to secure decent, affordable housing motivated a group of young people, led by Federico Lora, from the community to take over a storefront on 88th Street and Columbus Avenue. Their goal was to convert it into an office and es...

  November 2, 2020 New York City . Members of the Puerto Rican community in New York today confronted longshot presidential candidate and bitcoin billionaire Brock Pierce at an event in Manhattan to oppose his support for Puerto Rican statehood and his bitcoin dreams for the island. Pierce did NOT come to Puerto Rico to save us. He moved to Puerto Rico to avoid paying taxes under local laws known as Act 20/22. He's been attracting like-minded bitcoiners and Wall St. vultures to the island in an effort to create a “Puertopia.” A Puerto Rico in their image. The disaster capitalists have been buying properties (and politicians) all over the island, displacing long-term Puerto Rican residents and gentrifying our island. Also, Pierce is an accused pedophile with ties to racist Steve Bannon, Jeffrey Epstein, and has even called Trump "a patriot". Puerto Rico will also be going to the polls on Tuesday, November 3rd. The ruling party (PNP) cynically placed a statehood question on...

 Washington, DC, October 26, 2020 In the early hours of the morning of Sunday, October 25, Puerto Rican independence  organizations projected images on walls of emblematic places in Washington DC, the capital of the United States, with messages of NO to Statehood and claiming Freedom and Independence for Puerto Rico. One of the buildings onto which images were projected was the Trump International Hotel, located on Pennsylvania Avenue. The messages of "Free Puerto Rico", "No to Statehood", as well as "Independence for Puerto Rico", among others, could be clearly read. “The activity served a dual purpose. First, it is part of the Day of Celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Nationalist Revolution of October 30, 1950, a historical event where the Republic of Puerto Rico was declared for the second time. This event was the result of a one-sided struggle carried out by the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, led by Don Pedro Albizu Campos, against the Unite...

Collage by Iris Zavala-Martinez irzamar@gmail.com

José E.Velázquez Luyanda - Jevche@aol.com   On July 17, 2020, we mourned one of America’s greatest heroes, “the conscience of the nation,” civil rights leader and Congressman, John Lewis. His well-deserved six-day memorial services included being the first African-American to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. The entire country relived that fateful Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965 where civil rights marchers gathered to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama to the state capital in Montgomery, in a campaign for the right to vote.  It has been 55 years since the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and some may have forgotten how under the mantle of “states rights,” local governments repressed the right to vote of African-American men granted by the 15th Amendment to the Constitution (1870), and to African American women by the 19th amendment (1920). After the “Compromise of 1877,” southern Confederates who lost the Civil ...

José E.Velázquez Luyanda (Jevche@aol.com)  With only several weeks left to November 3, 2020, the battle to win the hearts and minds of the American (U.S.) people has intensified. The American people face an existential threat with the possible re-election of Donald Trump. Candidate Trump now seeks to replay the successful Nixon Republican strategy of 1968, essentially focusing on “law and order,” withdrawal from foreign conflicts (“peace with honor”), and the encouragement of a white backlash based on fear. Added on is the now customary appeal to American nationalism, jingoism, xenophobia, racism, and economic populism. Taking advantage of the Covid pandemic, the Republican Party seeks to discourage voting and to raise questions about the legitimacy of a possible electoral defeat. On the other hand, the Democratic Party faces the challenge of insuring a massive turnout during a pandemic. The Democratic Party must win back the voters that they lost to Trump in 2016...

Editor's note: The Frente Independentista Boricua (El Frente), a New York based coalition of organizations with chapters in cities around the US that support the independence of Puerto Rico, issued the following statement with regards to the elections taking place in Puerto Rico: Elections in Puerto Rico are held in a context of political subordination and colonialism and within the framework of a dictatorial Fiscal Board that makes arbitrary decisions outside of any democratic process. The Puerto Rican electoral process is uneven and is aimed at protecting both the colonial framework and the colonial interests. This reality is widely recognized by all sectors of the independence movement, whether or not they participate in the election process. As independentistas, we have fought in the past and we will fight that system in the future from all flanks, resisting from outside and from within its structures. Among the points of unity adopted by El Frente made public in the summer o...

June 13, 2020 By Manuel Melendez Lavandero As part of the Boricua National Affirmation Day, the Frente Independentista Boricua (El Frente), projected monumental images under the Brooklyn Bridge on Friday night, June 12, in New York. The projected images contained quotes from leaders of the Puerto Rican national liberation struggle such as Pedro Albizu Campos, Juan Antonio Corretjer, as well as modern day poets/activists like Mariposa Fernández. One of the most impressive images contained the message: From Puerto Rico to New York, #BlackLivesMatter! An affirmation of Puerto Rican blackness and the fight against racism here and there. Likewise, one related to the topic: "Yo soy boricua, pa' que tu lo sepas" ( I am Puerto Rican, just so you know).  These were created as part of the celebration of Boricua National Affirmation Day next Sunday, June 14 in New York City. El Frente is a coalition of Puerto Rican independence organizations that operate in the United States and are...

The organizations of the National Liberation Movement of Puerto Rico, signatories to this statement, express our strongest support to African-American communities that during the past few days have been protesting in the streets of the United States, demanding justice for George Floyd. We also join the demand for the immediate arrest and  prosecution of the policemen who murdered him. The murder of George Floyd, a young African-American worker, in broad daylight and in front of the cameras adds another affront, a direct attack on African-American communities and all oppressed communities in the U.S. The police and far-right forces have been emboldened by the sectarian policies of the racist president and the forces of America's corporate-financial elite in power, who want to rewrite history by ripping off conquered rights, even if it means taking the American people back into a civil war. Puerto Ricans, Latinos, Native Americans, and all oppressed communities, as an important compo...

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 The crisis that Puerto Rico is living as a result of the pandemic caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus moves the Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico, Movimiento Libertador to issue this manifesto. Our organization has maintained, and maintains, that only with independence and sovereignty organized in a state whose Constitution guarantees the development of a society based upon full justice and dignity for its citizens, only then, will we, as Puerto Ricans, have the ability to govern the destiny of our Homeland. 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...

April 16, 2020 In an unprecedented show of unity the major independence organizations in Puerto Rico and in the US issued a joint statement. The COVID-19 crisis in Puerto Rico has forced the various groups to come together, putting aside their differences to demand that the government protect and safeguard the health and safety of the Puerto Rican people.  Emerging from these efforts is a historic document which both analyzes and makes demands amidst the current COVID-19 situation both in Puerto Rico and in the diaspora. Among the concerns denounced in the document are ongoing corruption, continued neglect and blatant discrimination. The document also calls for the implementation of specific action items necessary for the well-being of our community during this pandemic. Some of their demands include the passing of laws to help the population cope with the crisis: • A moratorium on utility and debt payments • A moratorium on the mortgage payments with an extension on the term of th...