It was November 1, 1950.
Two Puerto Rican nationalists walked to the front of Blair House,
- guns blazing to assassinate the president of the United States,
who was sleeping upstairs.
- A picket on the iron fence is knocked off.
The steps and doorway of Blair House bear bullet holes.
Their cause: the full independence of Puerto Rico from the U.S.
And four years later, four Puerto Rican nationalists
start shooting on the House floor shouting, “Viva Puerto Rico libre,” —
"long live a free Puerto Rico" — while holding the Puerto Rican flag.
- Estimates of the numbers of shots fired range from 15 to 30.
Their goal: to demand people pay attention to Puerto Rico's
colonial status under U.S. rule.
Their message: Puerto Ricans craved independence
and were willing to sacrifice their lives to get it.
- I'm not sorry for what I did.
I'm not sorry.
But wait, aren't Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens?
So how did things become so extreme?
Well, the answer isn't so simple.
Classic colony under American domination.
Part of the United States empire.
I will do what is necessary for the liberation of Puerto Rico.
The story of Puerto Rico is one filled with U.S.
imperialism, exploitation and secret surveillance by the FBI.
It explains how the U.S.
asserts its power with no regard for the locals of a country.
And how it will do whatever it takes to stay in control.
But it's also a story of unwavering resistance to U.S. colonialism.
Take a look at this:
It's the New York Puerto Rican Day Parade.
What do you notice?
Maybe the hundreds of people waving, wearing and dancing
with the Puerto Rican flag.
So can you believe that in the ‘50s, waving that flag
meant risking up to 10 years in jail or a massive fine?
It was part of U.S. efforts to suppress independence movements on the island.
See, this set of islands right here in the Caribbean, with over 3
million people spread across it, and almost 6 million Puerto Ricans
living in the continental U.S., was once a Spanish colony.
Spanish colonialism in Puerto Rico involved the exploitation of the island's
Indigenous people, the Taíno, and enslaved Africans brought there to mine gold.
If you've ever heard a Puerto Rican refer to themselves as “Boricua,”
it stems from the Taíno word “Borikén,” which is what the Taíno called Puerto Rico.
But after a brutal war over a century ago, Spain gave control of Puerto Rico, Guam
and the Philippines to the U.S., expanding the U.S. empire.
Unlike the Philippines, Puerto Rico
never gained its full independence from Spain or the U.S.
Instead, it's one of the oldest remaining colonies in the world.
And the U.S. has done a lot of work to try to hide that reality.
Like calling it a territory, a commonwealth and even a protectorate.
Or making Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens,
which some historians believe was a disguise
to force Puerto Rican men to join the military before WWI.
Or passing the Gag Law, which made it a crime
to even mention independence or the overthrow of U.S. rule in Puerto Rico.
- The purpose was not only to repress
what was at that time
a really explosive independence movement,
but to also, through incarceration and repression,
to shore up the vote for this new colonial arrangement.
This colonial arrangement Marisol is talking about is Puerto Rico’s
current status — a commonwealth, or free associated state.
Under this arrangement, Puerto Ricans living in the U.S.
can vote for the U.S. president, but those on the island can't.
To make matters worse, those living on the island have no say in Congress,
which has full control over them, and they heavily rely on U.S. imports.
The commonwealth status has ensured that the U.S. looks after its own interests in Puerto Rico,
rather than doing what is best for Puerto Ricans.
Because we are a territory, we are treated as second-class citizens.
For years, the U.S. persecuted, imprisoned and even killed independence supporters.
Going as far as carrying out one of the longest targeted
surveillance programs on U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.
It was secretly carried out
by the police department of Puerto Rico and the FBI's COINTELPRO.
Yep, the same COINTELPRO that infiltrated
the Black Panthers and assassinated Fred Hampton.
COINTELPRO was a covert counterintelligence program run
by the FBI designed to “disrupt, misdirect and otherwise neutralize”
domestic political organizations, usually through illegal measures.
In 1960, the FBI sent this internal memo regarding Puerto Ricans.
It outlined goals, “disruption and discord,"
“creating doubts [about] remaining in the independence movement.”
To accomplish this, the agency needed “information
concerning their weaknesses, morals, criminal record, children, family life.”
The program tracked over 150,000 Puerto Ricans and created
extensive files on about 16,000 of them.
Those records became known as "las carpetas."
For my non-Spanish-speaking friends, that means "the files."
I know, super imaginative.
In 2000, the FBI declassified these files, which revealed over
60 years of suppression of Puerto Rico's independence movement.
This is my file from the intelligence
unit of the police of Puerto Rico.
That's Emilio Pantojas García.
He was 21 when his information was sold to the FBI
for $15 by someone he played baseball with.
In his case, once his name was given to the police, they went to his neighborhood
and interviewed people asking if they knew he supported the independence movement.
They also told the neighbors he had applied for a gun permit.
It was a lie.
By the time I was investigated, there was already
this notion that pro-independence people
were violent and that they were,
you know, the nationalists, the terrorists.
What is interesting [is my file] says that I have no criminal record
and that I am not dangerous, and that I am not violent.
But I was now part of a discredited
group of people,
of a group of people that had been branded.
They demonized me.
There were many revolutionary groups that fought for Puerto Rican independence.
Young people were a big part of the movement.
But one of the most prominent groups was the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party.
The group sought independence through activism and armed resistance
against the U.S. government and the military.
The party thought that by continuously resisting, the U.S.
government would find it too costly to maintain control of the island.
So in the early 1950s, the Nationalist Party launched
a series of revolts in Puerto Rico and the United States.
There was the Jayuya Uprising, when protesters attacked
a local police station in an attempt to ignite a larger rebellion against U.S. rule.
The assassination attempt on President Truman occurred two days later.
In response, the U.S. government unleashed a wave of repression, imprisoning
nationalist leaders, members and sympathizers.
Many spent the rest of their lives in prison.
It was crucial that the pro-independence
movement was isolated, discredited and muscled.
Independence was not supposed to be [one of] the choices
or the best form of decolonization
for the colonial world.
Authorities used the argument that the island would face
unimaginable poverty without financial support from the U.S.
to validate the neocolonial status.
This is very bad.
There's nothing.
There's no work at all.
And that brings us to today.
The U.S. territory of— - Puerto Rico has giant debt troubles.
Announcing it was unable to pay its debts.
Goes in the middle of a $70 billion debt crisis.
The national debt in Puerto Rico is over $70 billion.
Economics in Puerto Rico is not for
Puerto Ricans, but is for the U.S.
and international capital.
A big reason Puerto Rico
is in so much debt is that it doesn't have economic sovereignty.
Instead, its currency is the U.S. dollar,
its businesses are overseen by U.S.
federal regulators, and its trade policy is governed by U.S. laws.
To put this power into perspective, supplies imported and exported from Puerto Rico
have to be put on ships that are U.S.-built and owned and crewed by U.S. citizens,
making everything in Puerto Rico more expensive than in the States
and other Caribbean islands.
All of this has contributed to the deep debt, which in turn has given the U.S.
government an excuse to further cut out Puerto Ricans
from making decisions about their own economy.
Instead, the U.S.
government asserted its authority by enforcing a U.S.-
based finance board known as la junta.
Something that was supposed to help Puerto Rico pay off its debt turned out to be a way
for Wall Street and Puerto Rican elites to line their pockets.
And although la junta has reduced the debt,
it’s been through a significant budget cuts to public schools, the health care system
and other things that actually benefit those living on the island.
On top of that,
the island has been hit hard by natural disasters and local government
corruption, causing people to leave en masse seeking better opportunities.
Today, a majority of Puerto Ricans, about 5.8 million, live in the States.
That's almost more than double than on the island.
This feeling that living a good life is
increasingly out of reach in Puerto Rico,
especially for young people.
You know, and that's a form of colonial violence too —
that inability to stay in the place where you wanna stay, to feel like that
place is not for you anymore, is violence.
And it's related to this colonial process
that’s happening in Puerto Rico
that values the presence of these rich,
white investors over the presence of Puerto Ricans, right?
And it sees actually presence of Puerto Ricans as a drain.
Which raises the status debate: statehood, independence
or some form of its current territorial status?
It's not set in stone.
Today, independence is only supported by a small number of Puerto Ricans,
while more lean toward statehood.
The Puerto Rican local government has held many referendums for statehood
over the years, with 53% voting yes in 2021.
But some critics say these results are flawed, as there's been
low voter turnout and controversy around how the choices are phrased for voters.
There’s also conversations to be
had on what a Puerto Rican economy completely independent from the U.S.
government would look like —
and whether that is even possible given the role of Wall Street.
But whether it's statehood or independence, Puerto Ricans agree
the island's future should be decided by them and not Congress.
The United States will acknowledge its role as a colonizing force.
A proposed bill by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia Velázquez
and Sen. Bob Menendez institutes a process for self-determination.
In this bill, the Puerto Rican legislature would receive funding
to form a group of delegates elected by Puerto Rican voters.
They would clearly define the legal options and terms before a final vote
on the island's status.
It would create a binding process that forces Congress to enact changes
that Puerto Ricans voted on.