Vol. 73/No. 26      July 13, 2009

Distinguished chairman and honored committee members:

Last week tens of thousands of unionists and students in Puerto Rico, Washington’s largest colony, took to the streets demanding an end to the government’s plans to lay off 30,000 government workers. The Socialist Workers Party extends a hand of solidarity to these fellow fighters. These actions set an example for working people around the world—indeed, here in the United States—on the need to fight back as workers and farmers face an ever-deepening crisis of the world capitalist system, the deepest since the early decades of the 20th century.

Today Puerto Rico’s official unemployment rate stands at nearly 15 percent—that’s 50 percent higher than in the United States—and those figures are understated. The layoffs will be all the more devastating since one-fifth of Puerto Rico’s workforce is employed by the government.

Under the new “fiscal emergency” law, Gov. Luis Fortuño’s administration will freeze wages and essentially tear up union contracts of public employees. While Fortuño claims these attacks are necessary because of the “budget deficit,” 27 percent of the island’s revenue goes to pay interest to U.S. and other bondholders and bankers.

Imperialist investors have demanded sharp assaults on what they call Puerto Rico’s “welfare state”—federal payments such as food stamps and housing subsidies, which Washington has relied on for decades to cushion the effects of superexploitation. They complain that Puerto Rico has become less “competitive” as a source of profits than Ireland, South Korea, and other semicolonial countries.

This reality underscores the fact that the people of Puerto Rico and workers and farmers in the United States share a common enemy—the U.S. billionaire families and their government in Washington. And we share a common struggle to get that enemy off our backs.

For these reasons, a successful fight for Puerto Rico’s independence is in the interests, not only of the people of that Latin American nation, but of the vast majority of the people of the United States. As long as the U.S. rulers control Puerto Rico’s destiny, they will be strengthened, while the fighting capacity and solidarity of working people in both countries will be weakened.

In the United States, the auto bosses are cutting wages and laying off tens of thousands of workers, while jeopardizing their health benefits. Thousands of teachers, health-care, and transportation workers, from California to New York, are facing the axe. Workers dependent on Social Security in their retirement years are seeing it slashed. Farmers face declining prices for their crops that don’t even cover their costs of production. Puerto Ricans living in the United States, who face widespread discrimination, are among those who bear the brunt of these attacks.  
 
Free Puerto Rican political prisoners
I join with fellow independence fighters in demanding the release of all Puerto Rican political prisoners, who are serving draconian sentences in U.S. jails for the “crime” of fighting for the independence and dignity of their country. Carlos Alberto Torres and Haydée Beltrán have been locked up for 29 years, and Oscar López for 28—some of the longest-held political prisoners in the world. Avelino González has been jailed for more than a year now without bail. Free them now!

These attacks are a part of the imperialist rulers’ broader war on working people and the oppressed around the world—from Afghanistan, to Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea, the Philippines, and elsewhere. The people of Puerto Rico and the world over face decades of imperialist wars and economic crisis as the United States and other capitalist powers compete to restore their profit rates.

The U.S. rulers know these conditions will generate working-class resistance, which we see examples of today, from the strike by Stella D’oro bakery workers here in New York to the millions fighting for the legalization of all undocumented workers. That is why Washington is pushing through measures to weaken our political rights and ability to organize.

One example is the Obama administration’s announcement that it plans to use military trials against some prisoners currently locked up at the Guantánamo base, using secret evidence and other violations of basic rights.

The U.S. government has also trampled on constitutional rights in other recent frame-ups based on “conspiracy” charges: five immigrant workers given long sentences in the Ft. Dix, New Jersey, case; six men from the African American neighborhood of Liberty City, Miami; and recently four in New York City charged with a bomb plot. In each of these cases, FBI provocateurs played a central part in hatching these “plots.”  
 
Release Cuban Five
We also call on the U.S. government to release Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, René González, and Antonio Guerrero. These five Cuban revolutionaries have been unjustly held in U.S. prisons for more than a decade, serving sentences of up to life in prison on false “conspiracy” charges. Their only crime was to defend Cuba by monitoring the actions of violent U.S.-based counterrevolutionary groups. Today the Cuban Five, from behind prison bars, continue in the front ranks of the U.S. class struggle.

One of the many “transgressions” of the Cuban Revolution, in the eyes of the U.S. imperialist rulers, is its unwavering defense of Puerto Rico’s right to independence. The refusal of Cuban workers and farmers to bow to Washington’s dictates—despite a half-century-long U.S. economic war and other assaults—is a powerful example and inspiration to all those fighting for freedom. It shatters the lie so often repeated by the U.S. colonial masters that the people of Puerto Rico, and oppressed people in general, cannot survive without Washington’s guiding hand.

Cuba’s socialist revolution shows that, when workers and farmers take state power out of the hands of the capitalist minority, it is possible to win genuine independence. Cuba offers an example for working people worldwide, including right here in the United States.

This committee’s condemnation of U.S. colonial rule over Puerto Rico will serve the interests of the overwhelming majority of the people of the United States and of those everywhere who fight for self-determination and against oppression.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, for the opportunity to present these views before you today.
 
 
Related articles:
UN hearing condemns U.S. rule in Puerto Rico  
 
 
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