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The Puerto Rican Socialist Party (Spanish: Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño, PSP) was a Marxist and pro-independence political party in Puerto Rico seeking the end of United States of America control on the Hispanic and Caribbean island. It proposed a "democratic workers' republic".[1]
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The PSP originated as the Pro-Independence Movement (Movimiento Pro-Independencia, MPI), founded on January 11, 1959, in the city of Mayagüez. The MPI was formed by a group of dissidents from the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), former militants of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico and the Communist Party of Puerto Rico, and university students, some of them members of the Federación de Universitarios Pro Independencia (FUPI). The MPI was greatly influenced by the Cuban Revolution.
During the 1964 and 1968 elections, and the 1967 plebiscite on the political status of Puerto Rico, the MPI promoted a boycott. Throughout the decade the MPI campaigned against the presence of big US corporations denouncing they hindered the island's development, destroyed native industries and agriculture, and exploited the workers. The MPI gathered sympathies among students, workers, intellectuals and poor communities, and advocated civil disobedience and resistance.
The MPI proposed independence for Puerto Rico had to be conquered through popular mobilization, and judged that an independent Puerto Rico would have to explore non-capitalist routes of development.[2] Both the MPI and PSP made thorough Marxist analyses of Puerto Rican society, politics and economy in their programs and declarations.
At its Eighth General Assembly on November 28, 1971, held in Bayamón, the MPI transformed itself into the Puerto Rican Socialist Party and endorsed Marxism and Leninism. Juan Mari Brás was named the PSP's general secretary, and Carlos Gallisá Bisbal later became party president. The party gained a following in the labor movement, student movement, and community organizations. The PSP was also an observer organization at the Non-Aligned Movement.
The flag of the PSP was red with a white five-point star at the upper left corner. The MPI flag had the same design except that the bottom half of the flag was black. The emblem of the PSP was a clenched fist inside an industrial gear-wheel.
The PSP maintained it was the first attempt to unify the social and economic struggles of the working class, traditionally channeled by pro-annexation forces favoring total integration of Puerto Rico into the US, and the independence struggle, traditionally channeled by middle class and bourgeois nationalist groups. The working classes had to be the leading force for national liberation to come about, and independence had to mean a higher stage of social and economic life for the majorities.
The radical independence and socialist movement in Puerto Rico grew in the 1960s and 1970s despite police repression and terrorist activities from right-wing exiled Cubans and pro-Statehood Puerto Ricans (who want to make Puerto Rico a state of the US). That radicalism included a diversity of groups, ranging from socialist Christians to clandestine armed organizations. The PSP was prominent within this movement. The MPI and PSP launched campaigns against US military bases on the island and environmental destruction, and demanded freedom for Puerto Rican Nationalist political prisoners incarcerated in the US. In the United Nations repeatedly denounced US colonialism in Puerto Rico.
PSP branches emerged in the United States, most prominently among the Puerto Rican communities in the zones of New York City and Chicago. The PSP was primarily responsible for a pro-independence rally that drew 20,000 people to Madison Square Garden on October 27, 1974 and was broadcasted on television. PSP members were also active in the movement against the Vietnam War. The party had ties with movements of various ethnic groups of the US, such as Afro-American, Latino, and native-American.
The PSP had cells in the east and mid-west of the US, and California. For some years it was arguably the largest Marxist organization in the northeast of the US. It had links with socialist and revolutionary movements of Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Salvador Allende's Chilean Socialist Party, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) of Nicaragua, and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) of El Salvador. While having strong attachments with the Cuban Communist Party, it stressed its independence from the Soviet Union or China. The PSP saw the Puerto Rican struggle as a part of the struggle of Latin America against US imperialism.
The PSP faced disruption from the FBI's COINTELPRO program and attacks from anticommunist forces on the island. Mari Brás's son, Santiago Mari Pesquera, was murdered mysteriously in March 1976, and the offices and printing press of the PSP newspaper Claridad were bombed. Several party members narrowly escaped murder attempts. Other party members were accused of possessing weapons and explosives but the prosecution's case failed to progress. Police kept files of tens of thousands of sympathizers of the PSP and other groups.[3]
A few years after its foundation, the PSP had gained influence on sections of the island's work force. PSP committees emerged among workers of state infrastructure enterprises such as those producing electricity and services of water and telephone, as well as government and hospital employees, and teachers. A worker of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and leader of the latter's labor union UTIER, Luis Lausell Hernández, would be in 1980 the PSP candidate for governor. Socialist activity coincided with the flourishing of new trade union movements on the island, which in some cases accused big labor unions of the US operating in Puerto Rico of promoting a "colonialist trade unionism". The PSP had following also among university and secondary school students, and professions like lawyers, doctors, and professors.
The PSP proposed a revolutionary struggle and went into electoral politics as a tactical means to broadcast its message, participating in the island's 1976 and 1980 elections. In 1976 Mari Brás was candidate for governor. He and the party's insignia obtained 10,728 votes, whereas socialist veteran labor leader Pedro Grant, running for the island's Senate, obtained more than 20,000 votes, and Gallisá, running for the House of Representatives, gathered more than 80,000. The votes for the PSP amounted to 0.7 per cent of the total.[4]
Socialist activity from 1971 onwards and PSP electoral participation in 1976 contributed indirectly to a hike in the votes for the Puerto Rican Independence Party, although both organizations rarely unified efforts. In 1972 the PIP's program was influenced by socialism, its title being "Arriba los de abajo!" Votes for the PIP in 1972 were 5.4 per cent of the total, more than in 1968, when it reached 3.5 per cent. In 1976 the PIP took 5.7 per cent of the votes. [5] After the 1976 election PSP leaders claimed that many votes for the party were not counted by the main parties, which had representatives in every electoral college while the PSP did not, being a smaller organization. The votes in 1976 were not enough for the PSP to remain registered as an electoral franchise, and it had to collect signatures once more in order to compete in 1980.
In 1977 internal disagreements took place within the PSP, one being over what priority the organization would give to guerrilla warfare and strategic preparation for politico-military struggle. Other debates were on how to promote national independence and socialism in a US territory where, unlike colonial regimes in Africa or Asia, the colonial establishment was a part of modern capitalism and managed to relatively satisfy social and economic needs of the popular classes, skilled labor and high wages were common, wide health and school systems existed, and commerce and financial activity were extensive given the gradual integration of Puerto Rico into the economy of the United States.
The party adopted a new program in 1978 proposing a more modern form of politics that recognized the "democratic-bourgeois" modernizing aspects of US presence on the island. The new program indirectly criticized practices of nationalist desperation and Stalinism. It reassured the concept of the Leninist vanguard party while assigning importance to civil society, grass-roots movements, alliances, and mass politics. The 1978 program reflected influence of the theories of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. It also reassured both revolutionary armed action and electoral politics, given the electoral culture of Puerto Ricans since early 20th century.[6]
Nevertheless, the activity of the party lessened in the following years. In 1980, 5,224 votes were accounted for the PSP governor candidacy of Lausell Hernández, or 0.3 per cent of the total, while PIP votes accounted for 5.4 per cent.[7] [8] But PSP Senate candidate Mari Brás took more than 50,000 votes, and Gallisá, running again for the local House, obtained around 90,000.[9] As with the 1976 PSP electoral participation, some claimed the 1980 votes were too few, while others argued the electoral experiences had to be seen as part of a long-run process of building a mass workers' party and that the overwhelming US propaganda, ideological control and political repression had to be taken into account.
In 1982 a new rift took place between the traditional nationalist-oriented leadership, led by Mari Brás and Gallisá, and a group of militants who claimed the leadership was not taking seriously the tasks of building a working class party and implementing the 1978 program. The debate was sparked by the resignation of Wilfredo Mattos Cintrón, member of the Political Commission, secretary of political education, and a leading figure in the drafting of the 1978 program as well as previous programs and theses.[10] A fraction of the party denounced the leadership for concealing from the base a plan to give up the strategy of building a workers' party. Some of its members were journalist Héctor Meléndez Lugo, organizer Wilfredo López Montañez, and San Juan party secretary Marta E. Fernández. The group was defeated by a large majority loyal to Mari Brás and Gallisá and with rather nationalistic leanings. A part of the opposition fraction left the party that same year.
In their turn, Mari Brás and Gallisá did not deny they were giving up the creation of a workers' party. They said the priority should be to create a wide and pluralist national liberation movement, which they did not clearly define. The opposition group claimed that a working class party did not contradict a wide anticolonial front of alliances, and, in fact, the latter would be more probable if a workers' party existed and influenced the relation of forces on the island.[11]
The 1982 split manifested a latent conflict between nationalism and socialism. Similar tensions had surfaced during the MPI stage, in a disagreement in 1970 between Mari Brás and another leader of the organization, Marxist journalist and novelist César Andreu Iglesias.[12] In the 1970s Mattos Cintrón had written that within the PSP coexisted a "radicalized nationalist petite bourgeois" wing along with the socialist tendency, although for a previous phase this coexistence played a positive role.[13] [14]
Mattos Cintrón and the 1982 opposition argued that the absence of a strong left-wing in the island would weaken the cause for independence and other attempts of sovereignty for Puerto Rico. The national struggle, they said, grew only in close relation with the popular and working classes.[15]
The PSP name was maintained during the 1980s but the organization ceased political activity among the working class. The PSP was formally disbanded in 1993. Some of its members went to colaborate with the Popular Democratic Party (PDP), one of the two main parties and the one which receives most votes oppossing Puerto Rico's annexation to the US. The other main party is the New Progressive Party (NPP), representing the pro-annexation vote. The PPD defends the present Commonwealth or "Estado Libre Asociado" of Puerto Rico,[16] considered a colonial status by many.
Mari Brás and other former PSP leaders later became involved in the Hostosian National Independence Movement (MINH), a smaller organization.[17] Gallisá became active in a radio program of political discussion.
The PSP militancy left a legacy that contributed to change Puerto Rican culture. Protest and patriotic singers, literary authors and graphic artists whose works became popular by means of socialist recording and editorial production, spectacles, book shops, local publications, demonstrations and rallies, later on have gained general recognition, thus strengthening Puerto Rican national identity and popular culture.
Activities defiant to authorities and demanding rights now common in the island and among the Puerto Rican community in New York and other urban areas of the US, such as pickets, street rallies, protest strikes and mass demonstrations, were made popular by the MPI and PSP. The spreading of the ideas that Puerto Rico is a distinct nation and the present political system is a colonial one, is largely due to the PSP. Claridad, which became a daily newspaper between 1974 and 1977, cleared the way for incisive journalism revealing scandals of corruption and links between private interests and the island's government, and reporting on the problems and claims of the downtrodden and the poor.
Nevertheless, from the 1990s onwards Puerto Rican sympathies towards integration to the US and the New Progressive Party seem to have increased, since the NPP has managed to coopt social and poverty issues. Since mid 1970s the US federal government has gradually increased its funds of social assistance for Puerto Rico, more ostensibly for Food Stamps, WIC, education, public works, and climatic events emergency relief.
Claridad continues to be published as a weekly newspaper, though it has a limited circulation and is no longer the news and research paper it was in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
On May 5, 2007 at Hostos Community College in the Bronx, NY, former members of the PSP, now working under the name of the October 27 Committee, held a small conference on, "Desde Las Entrañas 30 Years Later: Implications for the Independence Movement." Desde Las Entranas was the political declaration of the First Congress of the United States Branch of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party, approved on April 1, 1973. This 77-page document, examined, "the nature of Puerto Rican immigration to this country; its present composition, its attitudes and behavior, its experience within the system of exploitation imposed by the ruling class of this country, the relationship between its working class and the exploited countries of the Third World, the super-exploited sectors of this country and their role; the nature of national liberation struggles and their relation to the class struggles of the United States working class; the future that this system assigns to our youth and, finally, the present situation of the left in the United States." (1976 translation) Organized by José "Che" Velázquez, speakers at this 2007 conference included Andrés Torres, Raquel Rivera, and Angelo Falcón.
• José Luis González, The Four-Storeyed Country and other essays (Markus Wiener, Princeton and New York, 1993) ISBN 1-55876-072-3
• César J. Ayala and R. Bernabe, Puerto Rico in the American century. A history since 1898 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2007) ISBN 978-0-8078-3113-7
• Angel G. Quintero Rivera, Workers' Struggle in Puerto Rico (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1977) ISBN 0853453926
• Edwin Meléndez and Edgardo Meléndez, eds., Colonial Dilemma: Critical perspectives on contemporary Puerto Rico (South End Press, Boston, 1993) ISBN 0-89608-441-8
• César Andreu Iglesias, ed., Memoirs of Bernardo Vega (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1984) ISBN 0853456569
• Frances Negrón-Muntaner and R. Grosfoguel, eds., Puerto Rican Jam. Rethinking colonialism and nationalism (University opf Minnestoa Press, 2008) ISBN 978-0816628490
• Juan Flores, From Bomba to Hip-hop. Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (Columbia University Press, 2000) ISBN 978-0231110778
• Gail Cueto, R. Fernández and S. Méndez, Puerto Rico Past and Present: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood, 1998) ISBN 978-0313298226
• James L. Dietz, Economic History of Puerto Rico (Princeton University Press, 1987) ISBN 978-0691022482
• José Trías Monge, Puerto Rico; the trials of the oldest colony in the world (Yale University Press, 1999) ISBN 978-0300076189
• Juan Mari Brás, Selección de obra periodística 1959-1994 (Editorial Ateneo Puertorriqueño, San Juan, 1997) ISBN 1881703096
• Juan Mari Brás, Memorias de un ciudadano (Ediciones Barco de Papel, San Juan, 2006) ISBN 0979861004
• Sherrie L. Baver, The Political Economy of Colonialism: The State and Industrialization in Puerto Rico (Praeger Publishers, 1993) ISBN 978-0275945039
• Ronald Fernández, The Disenchanted Island. Puerto Rico and the United States in the Twentieth Century (Preager, 1996) ISBN 978-0275952273
• Arturo Morales Carrión, Puerto Rico. A Political and Cultural History (W.W. Norton, New York, 1983) ISBN 0-393-30193-0
• Jorge Duany, The Puerto Rican nation on the move. Identities on the Island and in the United States (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 2002) ISBN 0-8078-5372-0
• Luisa Hernández Angueira, Mujeres puertorriqueñas, 'welfare' y globalización; desconstruyendo el estigma (Publicaciones Puertorriqueñas, 2001) ISBN 1-881720-33-0
• Héctor Meléndez, "Historia ambigua: inercia de la nación cultural", Revista de Ciencias Sociales, University of Puerto Rico, Num 5, 1998
• Juan Carlos Albors, Nation within a nation. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Ediciones Cordillera, San Juan, 2011) ISBN 978-088495216-9
• Carlos Gallisá, Desde Lares (CG Editores, San Juan, 2010) ISBN 978-1-59608-749-1
• Aarón Ramos Bonilla, Las ideas anexionistas en Puerto Rico bajo la dominación norteamericana (Ediciones Huracán, San Juan, 1987) ISBN 0-940238-92-6
• Erick Pérez Velasco and D. Baronov, Bibliografía sobre el movimiento obrero de Puerto Rico 1873-1996 (Ediciones Cildes, San Juan, 1996)
• César J. Ayala, "La formación de capital local en Puerto Rico, 1947 al presente", Revista de Ciencias Sociales, University of Puerto Rico, Num. 18, 2008
• Pedro Juan Rúa, Bolívar ante Marx y otros ensayos (Ediciones Huracán, San Juan, 1978) ISBN 968-429-042-0
• Gervasio García y A.G. Quintero Rivera, Desafío y solidaridad. Breve historia del movimiento obrero puertorriqueño (Huracán, San Juan, 1982) ISBN 0-940238-54-3
• Taller de Formación Política, La cuestión nacional. El Partido Nacionalista y el movimiento obrero puertorriqueño (aspectos de las luchas económicas y políticas de la década de 1930-1940) (Huracán, 1982) ISBN 0-940238-67-5
• José "Che" Paralitici, La represión contra el independentismo puertorriqueño 1960-2010 (Publicaciones Gaviota, San Juan, 2011) ISBN 978-1-61505-046-8
• Ramón Arbona Martínez and A. Núñez Miranda, Pedro Grant. Memorias de un líder sindical (Ediciones Callejón, San Juan, 2005) ISBN 1-881748-32-4
• Ronald Fernández, Los Macheteros: The Wells Fargo robbery and the violent struggle for Puerto Rican independence (Simon and Schuster, 1987) ISBN 978-0139500565
• Frances Negrón Muntaner, ed, None of the above. Puerto Ricans in the global era (new directions in Latino American cultures) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) ISBN 978-0816628490
• Wilfredo Mattos Cintrón, La política y lo político en Puerto Rico (ERA, Mexico, 1980) ISBN 968-411-026X
• Wilfredo Mattos Cintrón, "La hegemonía de Estados Unidos en Puerto Rico". El Caribe Contemporáneo 16 (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico, 1988) ISSN 0185-2426
• Joan Moore and Harry Pachon, Hispanics in the United States (Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1985) ISBN 0-13-388984-X 01
• James M. Blaut, The National Question. Decolonising the theory of nationalism (Zed Books, London and New Jersey, 1987) ISBN 0-86232-439-4
• Juan Antonio Corretjer, Pedro Albizu Campos, el líder de la desesperación (San Juan, 1972, 1978)
• Gordon K. Lewis, Puerto Rico. Freedom and Power in the Caribbean (Montly Review Press, New York and London, 1963) Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 63-20065
• Angel I. Rivera and A. Ramos, Islands at the Crossroads: Politics in the Non-Independent Caribbean (Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, 2001) ISBN 1588260011
• Juan Manuel Carrión, et al, La nación puertorriqueña; ensayos en torno a Pedro Albizu Campos (Editorial Universidad de Puerto Rico, San Juan, 1993) ISBN 0847702030
• Antonio A. Santucci, Antonio Gramsci (Monthly Review Press, 2010) ISBN 978-1-58367-211-2
• Angel G. Quintero Rivera, Conflictos de clase y política en Puerto Rico (Huracán, San Juan, 1977) ISBN 0-940238-09-8
• Linda Colón Reyes, Sobrevivencia, pobreza y mantengo. La política asistencialista estadounidense en Puerto Rico: el PAN y el TANF (Callejón, San Juan, 2011) ISBN 1-881748-77-4
• J. Benjamín Torres, ed., Pedro Albizu Campos. Obras Escogidas 1923-1936 (dos tomos) (Editorial Jelofe, San Juan, 1975)
• Fidel Castro, "Segunda Declaración de La Habana", Antología mínima (Ocean Sur, Mexico, 2008) ISBN 978-1-921438-01-1
• Ramón Medina Ramírez, El movimiento libertador en la historia de Puerto Rico (San Juan, 1965)
• Edgardo Meléndez, Partidos, política pública y status en Puerto Rico (Nueva Aurora, San Juan, 1998) ISBN 0965004848
• Eduardo Rivera Medina and R. Ramírez, Del cañaveral a la fábrica. Cambio social en Puerto Rico (Huracán, 1985) ISBN 0-940238-78-0
• Heriberto Marín Torres, Coabey, el valle heroico (Ediciones Patria, San Juan, 1995, 2011) ISBN 1932766243
• Jesús Colón, A Puerto Rican in New York and other sketches (International Publishers, New York, 1982) ISBN 0717805891
• Luis Nieves Falcón, ed., Violation of Human Rights in Puerto Rico by the United States (Ediciones Puerto, San Juan, 2002) ISBN 0942347676
• Luis Nieves Falcón, Can't jail the spirit. Political prisoners in the U.S.A. Collection of Biographies (El Coquí Publishers, 1988)
• Héctor Meléndez, "La identidad ausente: Puerto Rico y sus intelectuales en el fin de siglo", La identidad ausente; credos, pueblos, capital, siglo (Ediciones La Sierra, San Juan, 1996)
• Luis A. Ferrao, Pedro Albizu Campos y el nacionalismo puertorriqueño 1930-1939 (Editorial Cultural, San Juan, 1990) ISBN 1567580114
• Arlene Dávila, Sponsored identities. Cultural politics in Puerto Rico (Puerto Rican Studies) (Temple University Press, 1997) ISBN 1566395496
• Roland Perusse, The United States and Puerto Rico; the struggle for equality (Robert Krieger Publishing, Florida, 1990) ISBN 0-89464-396-7
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