Cancel Puerto Rico’s Debt!

JULY 23—For over a week, Puerto Rico has been convulsed by mass protests calling for Governor Ricardo Rosselló to resign. Tens of thousands of youth and working people have marched nearly every day against this hated lackey of the U.S. imperialists. On July 17, an almost 100,000-strong demonstration at the governor’s mansion, La Fortaleza, was attacked by cops who fired tear gas and rubber bullets, injuring many and arresting at least five, including for “violence against the authorities.” We demand: Drop the charges! Hands off the protesters!

The protests were sparked by the leaking of a trove of private group chats between Rosselló and his cabinet that dripped with vile anti-woman and anti-gay bigotry and exuded contempt for the thousands killed by Hurricane Maria. The scandal, popularly known as RickyLeaks, tapped into widespread discontent among the population oppressed under the boot of the U.S. colonial masters represented by Democrats and Republicans alike.

U.S. colonial domination has bled Puerto Rico to the point of collapse. A few years ago, with Puerto Rico mired in a deep recession, itself the result of decisions made in Washington, Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers swooped in to collect on a debt that now stands at $124 billion. To this end, in 2016 the Obama administration set up a financial oversight junta to impose brutal austerity measures—slashing wages, pensions and health care; privatizing education and gutting social services. The next year, the devastation caused by Maria intensified the misery, and emboldened the union-busting privatizers.

These attacks have been met with struggle, including strikes and May Day work stoppages. A popular chant today is: “Ricky renuncia y llévate a la junta!” (“Ricky resign, and take the board with you!”) Workers in the U.S. share a common enemy with the Puerto Rican people. The same imperialist rulers who lord it over Puerto Rico grind down workers at home. In the U.S., many Democrats are now calling for Rosselló to resign in order to defuse the protests and return to the business of colonial pillage as usual. It is in the interest of the American proletariat to take a side with its class brothers and sisters in Puerto Rico and demand: Cancel the debt!

We stand for the right of self-determination for Puerto Rico and favor independence. The feelings of Puerto Ricans on independence are mixed: they hate their second-class status as colonial subjects, but fear losing the ability to work in the U.S. and sinking even further into poverty. Therefore, we emphasize the right of independence.

The bourgeois opposition parties, mainly the Partido Popular Democrático, have been prominent at the demonstrations against Rosselló. Kicking this enemy of the workers and oppressed out of office would be gratifying. But rather than replacing one capitalist politician with another, what is needed is to give the outpouring of anger by working people an independent political expression—a revolutionary workers party that would lead the struggles of all the oppressed against the ravages of capitalism. Our perspective is to build Leninist vanguard parties in the U.S. and in Puerto Rico whose goal is to establish workers rule.