By Moro
Albizu presented to Puerto Ricans the political dilemma as a route between reform or revolution. During the decades between 1936 and 1956 Puerto Ricans opted for the former. The result was the Estado Libre Asociado (Commonwealth), which crumbles ever quickly. Consequently, the PROMESA law is being imposed along with its Wall Street Junta. Its purpose is the reorganize the colonial regimen so that it can reintegrate itself into the new order of relations between the metropolis and its territory.
The PROMESA law belies any illusions of self-government with which the American citizens of the colony have been able to fantasize. It calls things as they are: Puerto Rico belongs to, but is not a part of the United States. The Wall Street Junta has the mission of training over the course of five years to submissively obey the rules imposed by the empire. A group of omnipotent overseers will make decisions that affect all while they educate us on the required habits to make of us a viable capitalist society.
Puerto Ricans are presented once again a dilemma similar to that which was placed before our forefathers 75 years ago: reform or revolution.
On that occasion, reforms were formulated with the double function of the military transformation of the territory and New Deal programs. Rexford Guy Tugwell, the left-leaning liberal of the imperialist political elite, who sympathized with Soviet efforts to plan development as a method of pulling capitalist countries out of the Great Depression, was named governor of Puerto Rico in 1941.
The content of the revolutionary option, on the other hand, consisted of a frontal armed struggle against the institutions and representatives of colonial domination in Puerto Rico. This revolutionary call was based on idealistic patriotic nationalism, and its appeal for the unity between all classes of the nation to defeat the foreign imperialist master.
Today, the content of the reformist option is the neoliberal program contained within the Krueger Report.
The revolutionary option contains a strong class content. On the one hand, the patriotic petty bourgeoisie will launch towards renewed militant nationalist activity. Alternately, the workers’ movement will radicalize, as a function of the growing rebellion of both working and marginalized masses, against the neoliberal program. Will these forces converge in a radical struggle to defeat the imperial plan of PROMESA?
For communists, nothing is guaranteed except that the vacuum created by PROMESA and the challenge that emerges from its rejection by the majority of Puerto Ricans will also activate right-wing forces, criollo fascists that will offer easy and authoritarian solutions to transcend the inevitable social chaos provoked by the downfall of the ELA and the imposition of PROMESA. Imperialism will strengthen these right-wing criminal forces to counteract the rebellion of the masses. Communists accept the challenge convinced that in the present conjuncture Puerto Ricans will give it their all.
The revolutionary organization and discipline of the masses will defeat fascist criminality and imperial repression. Revolution or subjugation! Communism or barbarism!