Puerto Rico first became a US colony in 1898—and remains so well into the 21st century. Today, that colonial relationship is structured through PROMESA, an unelected board that controls the island’s budget and has unleashed a vicious cycle of debt and privatization that has mired Puerto Ricans in poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment. Rafael Bernabe joins Solidarity Without Exception to discuss PROMESA’s role in perpetuating colonialism in Puerto Rico, and the longer history of the island’s oppression under US rule.
Production: Blanca Missé
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Blanca Misse:
Welcome to Solidarity Without Exception, a podcast series about working people’s struggles for national self-determination in the 21st century, and what connects them and us. This podcast is produced by the Real News Network, in partnership with the Ukraine Solidarity Network, and I am Blanca Misse.
We’re releasing our third episode on Puerto Rico in the midst of a new offensive of the Trump administration towards Central and Latin American countries. This new Trump regime is threatening to resurrect the old Monroe Doctrine that the US invoked in the late 19th century to establish its dominance in all the American continent. Marco Rubio, for example, went to Panama last month to demand from its government that it cuts all ties from China and fully recommits to the US.
Trump has also imposed tariffs on Mexico, and threatened new sanctions on Venezuela. We know that other bullying maneuvers are to come. In fact, Project 2025, the blueprint of this new administration, wants to ensure total US hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, which will mean further subordination of independent countries, and also of US territories fighting for self-determination, such as Puerto Rico.
It was precisely in the times of the Monroe Doctrine, let’s remember that, that the US invaded Cuba and Puerto Rico to gain control of the resources and the people of those islands. This means that the support here in the US for anti-imperialist liberation movements in Mexico, Central Latin America, and the Caribbean, is more important today than ever.
Today, we are honored to have Rafael Bernabe in our podcast, a very well-known Puerto Rican historian and politician. He was an elected member of the Puerto Rico Senate, representing the Citizens Victory Movement between 2021 and 2025. Of course, he has been a longtime advocate for the right of self-determination of Puerto Rico with an anti-capitalist perspective.
He is going to explain to us briefly the history of US colonial domination of the island, and the new neo-colonial forms of oppression and plunder that still persist today, and more importantly, how the Puerto Rican people and their allies have been actively resisting them and still continue to fight today.
We will hear the case of reparations, and also how the struggle for national liberation in Puerto Rico connects to other liberation struggles in the world, such as the ones of the Ukrainian, Syrian, and Palestinian people. I’m very glad to have today Rafael with us.
Hi, Rafael. Thank you for coming to the podcast to discuss with us the situation in Puerto Rico and the fight of Puerto Rican people for self-determination. I would like to start speaking a little bit about the situation with the PROMESA plan, which is this plan that the US Congress enacted on Puerto Rico to address the fiscal crisis, establishing a financial oversight and management board, and therefore, also many several austerity measures to reduce the debt.
I would like you to explain to us how do you see the PROMESA plan undermining the living conditions of the population in Puerto Rico, and its right to self-determination, and also on which grounds this plan has been opposed by working people.
Rafael Bernabe:
I’m very happy to be here with you discussing these very interesting points. What’s happening in Puerto Rico, I should point out, is not only of interest to the people who are in Puerto Rico, but it’s also, I think, important for people in the United States and in other places, because the policies that are being carried out in Puerto Rico are, in many ways, similar, or in some cases, are an anticipation of what other people may be confronting in the near future.
PROMESA, as you mentioned, is a piece of legislation adopted by the US Congress in 2016. In Spanish, PROMESA means Promise, but the term stands for Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, and it’s a piece of legislation, a law approved by the US Congress, which did several things. The most important one is that it created a board, which in Puerto Rico, we call the Control Board. Officially, it’s called the Oversight Board. This board is made up of seven people appointed by Congress and the President of the United States.
This board is authorized to control basically everything related to the finances of the government of Puerto Rico. For example, in order for the government of Puerto Rico to approve its annual budget, it has to go through the board, and the board can determine that the way that the Puerto Rico legislature has assigned the funds is not acceptable. They can rearrange that.
For example, they can say, “You have given too much money to the University of Puerto Rico, and you have to reduce that,” or, “You have given too much money to programs to promote working class rights or organization, and so on, and you have to alter that.” You have this board, which basically, it’s a very, needless to say, it’s a very undemocratic arrangement. You have seven people who have not been elected by anybody, and these seven people have the right to determine basically the shape of the budget of the government of Puerto Rico.
Now, you may ask yourself, why did they create this board? What is the reason? What is the cause for approving PROMESA and creating the board? The PROMESA arises out of the reality of Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. Puerto Rico has even to this day, a very grave debt crisis. That debt crisis is, in turn, finds its origin in Puerto Rico’s economic crisis. To put it very rapidly, after 2006, almost 20 years now, the Puerto Rican economy basically stopped growing. It stopped expanding.
At one point, around 200,000 jobs were disappeared. This is around 20% of the jobs that existed in 2006 disappeared. The economy in terms of GDP fell by 15%, more or less. For the first time in Puerto Rico’s history, the population of Puerto Rico fell from 2010 to 2020. Thousands of people left Puerto Rico. They had to migrate because they couldn’t find employment in Puerto Rico. There was a very deep economic crisis in Puerto Rico after 2006.
As the economic crisis worsened logically and naturally, the revenues of the government of Puerto Rico also fell. Instead of reconsidering its economic policies, and its tax policies, and so on, the government of Puerto Rico, as its revenue fell, basically borrowed an increasing amount of money. Of course, needless to say, the economy is not growing, and the revenues of the government are falling, and they are borrowing an increasing amount of money.
A point was going to be reached in which the government would not be able to service the debt. That happened in 2015. In 2015, the government of Puerto Rico had to admit publicly that they were not going to be able to service the debt of Puerto Rico. At that moment, the economic crisis became also a debt crisis.
At that moment, there were several options. Puerto Rico could have and should have initiated the process of auditing this debt to determine which part of it was illegitimate, which part of it was illegal, which part of it was unsustainable, meaning that it could not be paid without imposing on the Puerto Rican people an unacceptable sacrifice in terms of its needs, but that’s not what happened.
What happened was that Congress approved PROMESA, created the board, and the objective of PROMESA is to impose on Puerto Rico as a harsh, an austerity program as possible in order to provide, to generate funds to pay as much as possible to the bondholders, to the people who hold Puerto Rico’s debt. The objective of the board is basically to squeeze Puerto Rico’s budget so that Puerto Rico spends less on education or health than the University of Puerto Rico, environmental protection, family services, social services, and so on, to squeeze the spending of the Puerto Rican government as much as possible to generate as much as possible funds to pay the bondholders.
Needless to say, the board, the people who adopted PROMESA know quite well that Puerto Rico’s debt is not going to be paid in full. Puerto Rico’s debt at the point of the debt crisis exploded, was $72 billion. Everyone knows this is not going to be paid in full, but they want as much as possible, to pay as much as possible to the bondholders. The board had two missions, one to renegotiate Puerto Rico’s debt, which they have been doing piece by piece, and to impose austerity policies which would enable Puerto Rico to pay that debt at the cost, as I said, of many things that the Puerto Rican people need.
To give you a very concrete example, I work in the University of Puerto Rico, and the University of Puerto Rico, there’s a law in Puerto Rico which says that the University of Puerto Rico has a right to 9.6% of the revenue of the government of Puerto Rico is supposed to go to the University of Puerto Rico. That’s what the law says. At present, this would mean about a billion dollars. The University of Puerto Rico should have a budget of about a billion dollars.
Right now, the University of Puerto Rico is receiving around $500 million as a budget. It’s half of what it should be receiving and half of what it received in the past. The austerity policies have been applied very harshly on the University of Puerto Rico. It’s what’s one example. The same thing has happened in other sectors. As I said, the situation of Puerto Rico begins with an economic, very deep economic crisis.
You can go further back to the limits of Puerto Rico’s colonial economy. Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States that implies certain facts about Puerto Rico’s situation.
Blanca Misse:
Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about the history of this colonial domination? It seems this is not new, right? You made a first history in 2006 to explain the PROMESA plan, but it seems that this is a neo-colonial relation that has been going on for quite a while here.
Maybe several people in the US are not aware of this relation and need to be educated about it. Can you tell us a little bit more, as concisely as you can be, what is this history of colonial domination with some key examples?
Rafael Bernabe:
Yeah, as I said, to very rapidly remind you of what we’re doing here, the creation of PROMESA and the policies of the board are related to the fact that we had a very grave debt crisis, which exploded in 2015. Now, that debt crisis finds its roots in the economic crisis, but Puerto Rico’s economy goes further back. They have to do with Puerto Rico’s colonial situation. It seems politically controlled by the United States.
Perhaps for persons who are not familiar with the situation in Puerto Rico, the fastest way to explain it is that in some ways, we have a situation which is similar to the states of the United States. We have what you would call a state legislature, a state governor, which we elect and so on, with the difference that we don’t have any representation in Congress, or the election of the President of the US, nor do people who live in Puerto Rico and corporations who operate in Puerto Rico pay federal taxes.
There are some important differences that I would explain why they are so insignificant. Anyway, Puerto Rico has been a colony of the US since 1898. Of course, that means, as I said, political subordination to the United States. There are many aspects that are fundamental to the life of Puerto Ricans and to any country which are not under the control of the Puerto Rican people, that is the legislature of Puerto Rico, for example, cannot adopt any measures regarding foreign trade, or regarding migration policies, or regulating communications, and many, many, many other things.
Many fundamental things are in the hands of the US government, the federal government, and they take the decisions, and they apply them to the people in Puerto Rico, and that’s that. It’s a colonial relationship. The colonial relationship is not only a political relationship. When people think about colonialism, normally, they think basically about the political aspect, the political subordination of one country to another. In Puerto Rico, it’s that, but it is also a reality of economic subordination.
Ever since the early 20th century, for 120 years now, the economy of Puerto Rico has been basically controlled, the most important productive sectors of the economy of Puerto Rico has been controlled, owned by large US corporations. In one epoch, it was the sugar industry. After World War II, it was flag manufacturing. Today, it’s high tech factories, and pharmaceutical operations, and so on. Regardless of which sector of the economy we’re talking about, at different stages of Puerto Rico’s history, it has been controlled by US corporations.
That has meant that Puerto Rico’s economy has always been over-specialized. It specializes in one thing. We specialized in sugar, and then we specialized in certain manufacturing processes like manufacturing shoes, and garments, and so on. Then that was abandoned for, as I said, the pharmaceutical industries, and electronic devices, and so on and so forth. It has always been a very specialized economy, which makes it very vulnerable to changes in the market of that product in which we are specialized.
If there’s a crisis in the sugar industry, then the whole Puerto Rico economy goes into crisis, or if there’s a crisis in the pharmaceutical industry, then the whole Puerto Rico economy gets into trouble. The other aspect of that is the fact that a considerable portion of the wealth that is produced in Puerto Rico leaves the island and abandons the island, because these corporations take their profits out of Puerto Rico, they invest them somewhere else. They don’t invest them in Puerto Rico.
The fact that right now, the estimates that most economists make is that around 30% of Puerto Rico’s gross domestic product leaves the island in the form of profits and dividends and so on of corporations operating in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico’s GDP is a little bit more than a hundred billion, and they calculate that around 30 or $35 billion leave the island, as I mentioned. Evidently, if these resources are not reinvested in Puerto Rico, that means that they don’t have employment in Puerto Rico.
The level of unemployment in Puerto Rico has always been very high. All of these problems were there before 2006. The economic crisis, which began in 2006, made things even worse than they were in the past. Of course, the junta or the board, which was put in place in 2017, made it even worse by imposing the austerity policies that I mentioned.
Blanca Misse:
Thank you. You’re telling us that there is this shadow government, this junta that is appointed, that is depriving Puerto Rico from real financial and economic autonomy, but that this PROMESA plan is also coming in the history of economic underdevelopment of Puerto Rico, of this specialization.
Rafael Bernabe:
Sure.
Blanca Misse:
If we were to think, what are the conditions for Puerto Rico to achieve real, full economic and social development, what kind of struggle is needed today to ensure the right of self-determination of Puerto Rican people? What kind of social movements we should be supporting, both in the island and in the US, to really go till the end of the desire of Puerto Rican people to be fully independent?
Rafael Bernabe:
Well, I think, as I said, there are several levels at which we have to work. We have to make sure that Puerto Rico is able to liberate itself from the present colonial condition. That begins with eliminating the political subordination to the United States. We should struggle for the Puerto Rican people to have a process of self-determination, in which they decide how they want to live, how they want to organize themselves.
In Puerto Rico, historically, there have been three positions regarding that issue. There are people who support Puerto Rico becoming a state of the United States. There are people who support Puerto Rico becoming some sort of associated independent, but associated state with the United States. There are those people who defend independence for Puerto Rico. Now, those of us who support independence, of course, will defend that option as the one that is in the best interests of the Puerto Rican people.
We have to recognize that there are other people in Puerto Rico, many of them who support other options. What we need, and what I think the American people, the people in the United States, need to defend is a process of self-determination for Puerto Rico, that for the first time in 120 years, the Puerto Rican people are allowed to determine what relationship they want to have with the United States, whether they want to be independent, or state, or free, or associated with the United States.
They can have that process in order to determine what their future should be. I won’t go into now into how the support for either option [inaudible 00:18:45] or falling in the recent past, but the most challenging aspect of reconstructing Puerto Rico is reconstructing Puerto Rico’s economy. I think for that, we need to develop a plan of economic reconstruction in Puerto Rico.
This is not going to be reorganizing Puerto Rico’s economy, from my perspective, will not be the result of the, what should I call it, the free and spontaneous movement of the market, or the initiative of US corporations, or even Puerto Rican private corporations. We need a integrated plan for the development of the economy of Puerto Rico, which also requires a radical expansion of the public sector, of the economy of Puerto Rico.
That is, the government has to take a very active role in devising a road, a path towards Puerto Rico’s more integrated economic development. That has to include a larger production in Puerto Rico of many goods that we need and we could produce in Puerto Rico. A very significant example is agricultural goods and food products, which used to be a basically agricultural country, at present, imports about 85% of its food. Only 15% of what we consume is produced in Puerto Rico. That could increase radically.
Everybody who studies the problem recognizes that. We need to also develop other sectors of the economy, which in Puerto Rico, already has a certain base, but which we have to turn into enterprises or activities which benefit Puerto Rico. One of the main things that we have to address is the fact that, as I said, we have corporations operating in Puerto Rico, which extract from Puerto Rico gigantic amounts of profit. As I said, the estimate is about $35 billion a year.
To give you an example, the budget of the government of Puerto Rico is around $10 billion. The amount of profits and dividends that leave the island is about three times the budget of the government of Puerto Rico. While the government of Puerto Rico has no money for many of the things that it needs to do to satisfy the needs of the Puerto Rican people, you have this massive amount of money leaving the island.
Needless to say, we have to address that issue, and we have to make sure that a more significant portion of the wealth and the profits generated in Puerto Rico are reinvested in Puerto Rico. I also think, as in the case of oppressed peoples in other contexts, the Puerto Rican people deserve what I guess in the United States, you would call reparations or compensation for the impact of colonial rule over the past 120 years.
Many of the problems that Puerto Rico is confronting, for example, are due to decisions taken, policies adopted by the US government. They cannot simply say, “Well, Puerto Rico is going to be independent now, and we don’t care any more about Puerto Rico.” No, you’re accountable for what some of the things done in Puerto Rico.
Therefore, it’s fair a task of progressive people in the United States to argue that the US government should provide significant funds for financing the reconstruction of Puerto Rico’s economy. $10 billion, for example, a year, which would be tremendously significant for Puerto Rico, is a drop in the bucket of the budget of the US government. In order to do justice to Puerto Rico, that’s another demand.
I think in summary, people in the United States should be defending self-determination for Puerto Rico, political self-determination, and also for the US government to provide the necessary means for the economic reconstruction of Puerto Rico, which is not that different from what progressive movements in the US, which is that they call on the US, they propose taxes on Wall Street, and taxes on large corporations, taxes on the richer sectors, so that the social services that the working people need can be financed.
Well, it’s more or less the same thing. We need to address the needs of the Puerto Rican people in a similar fashion.
Blanca Misse:
Thank you. In this alliance for a struggle of self-determination, both political self-determination, the fact that in the US, working people need to uphold and defend the right of Puerto Ricans to decide their future without any interference from the US, and also a policy of reparations for the legacy of colonial rule.
I have a question for you that has to do with how do you see this fight for self-determination of Puerto Ricans connected to other fights of liberation in the US, but also in the region, in the Caribbean region, and what alliances have Puerto Ricans forged with other key working class and popular movements to advance their struggle for liberation? Which ones should we forge?
Rafael Bernabe:
Yeah. Well, Puerto Rico, as you know, is a Latin American nation. Logically, all of Latin America in one way or another has been confronted with the power and the interference of the United States over many decades. There are anti-imperialist, self-determination movements of many sorts. All of Latin America right now, as you know, Trump, for example, is threatening Mexico, is threatening Panama and so on. There have been very strong anti-imperialist movements in Latin America.
The Puerto Rico independence movement historically has had close connections with different currents of the Latin American anti-imperialist currents. One of the ones with which Puerto Rico has had the closest connection in terms of the, I’m talking about the independence movement, is the Cuban struggle. Cuba and Puerto Rico have very similar histories. While the rest of Latin America became independent in the 1820s, Cuba and Puerto Rico were the only two territories that remained under Spanish control.
They both fought together. They collaborated in the struggle against Spanish colonialism during the 19th century, and then they were both invaded by the United States in 1898. They both remained in the case of Cuba until 1959, very much under the influence of the United States after 1898. The Puerto Rico independence movement has a long tradition of contact with the Cuban anti-imperialist movement.
There have also been significant connections with progressive forces in the United States at different points, if only because millions of Puerto Rico, as a result of US colonial rule, have moved to the United States. These Puerto Ricans in the United States, many of them have become correctly and logically involved in US labor struggles historically, and more recently, environmental struggles, women’s struggles, and so on and so forth.
They have created links between the struggle for Puerto Rico self-determination and social struggles in the United States. Perhaps one of the most admirable chapters I can mention too, that are very admirable, in the 1930s, there was a very progressive congressman, his name was Vito Marcantonio.
He was a congressman for his representative district in New York, which included the Puerto Rican barrio, the major Puerto Rican neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. He was the most progressive congressman at the time. He was very close to the communist party, that had some problems because of that. Overall, he was a very admirable figure, and he defended Puerto Rico’s self-determination and the rights of Puerto Ricans very, very sternly in the US Congress.
He presented legislation, which I think is a model of what we should defend. He presented legislation, I think it was in 1936, which was to grant Puerto Rico independence, and to grant Puerto Rico reparations for the impact of US colonialism, and to grant Puerto Rico independence on their favorable conditions for Puerto Rico to develop economically. For example, allowing Puerto Ricans to enter, people from Puerto Rico to enter the United States freely, move back and forth freely between the United States and Puerto Rico, and as I said, providing reparations.
I think it’s a model. It’s a beautiful example of solidarity, of progressive forces in the United States with the self-determination of Puerto Rico by a man who was also involved in all the important labor struggles and anti-racist struggles at the time in the US. The other example is more recent. It was the struggle that some of you may have heard about, the struggle to expel, to stop the US Navy occupation of the island of Vieques.
When we talk about Puerto Rico, normally we think about one island, but it’s really three islands. Culebra and Vieques are the other two islands. Vieques, Culebra as well, but Vieques for a longer time, were occupied, largely occupied by the US Navy and used as a fighting range with terrible consequences for the inhabitants and for nature, for the ecology of that region. In the early 21st century, in year 2000, 2003, between those dates, there was a massive movement in Puerto Rico to stop the Navy operations in Vieques.
There was a massive support in the United States. There was tremendous support by progressive forces in the United States in support, in solidarity with that struggle in Puerto Rico, to the point that the struggle was successful, the Navy was forced to abandon Vieques. As I said, the independence movement historically has created links with different forces outside Puerto Rico, some of them with Latin American countries, some of them with progressive forces within the United States, some of them beyond the United States and Latin America.
These two regions logically are the most important ones. I should add that the independence movement is not monolithic in the independence movement. In Puerto Rico, you could basically say that there are three big currents. There is the liberal current, or the social democratic current. It’s the more moderate one. It seeks independence for Puerto Rico with some significant social reforms. It abides by the perspective that this should be by all means, a peaceful process, a process through the elections, through the legal channels, and so on.
The most important representative of that force in Puerto Rico today is the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño, the Puerto Rico Independence Party, which in the recent times has grown very significantly. The second current, which is much diminished at present, but it has important significance historically, is the nationalist current, best exemplified by the Partido Nacionalista, the Nationalist Party, and its leader who died in the 1960s, Pedro Vizucampos, a very important figure in Puerto Rican history.
The nationalist party, as the name indicates, was a nationalist party, supported independence, had a fairly progressive view of labor issues, and so on. On some areas, it was rather conservative. For example, on questions related to the family, and religion, and women’s rights, and so on, it was sort of traditionalist, but it was open, in favor, and engaged in armed struggle against the US rule. It was willing, and it did take up arms against US colonialism, most saliently in 1950. They attempted an insurrection against the US.
The third tendency is the socialist tendency. The socialist tendency, which at different points, has been embodied in different organizations. In the 1940s, there was a significant communist party that had a significant role in the labor movement. It was later on basically repressed in the McCarthyite period. Then in the 1960s, there were several important groups inspired by and large by the Cuban Revolution.
The most important one was the Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño, Puerto Rican socialist party, also became a significant force in the labor movement, in the environmental movement, and so on, and up to the present, in which there are several socialist organizations who exist in Puerto Rico and very active in different struggles. Over the years, we have these three tendencies. These tendencies, going back to your question, have had different, not necessarily contradictory, but different links outside Puerto Rico.
For example, the more liberal social democratic current has links with the socialist international, or with parties who are linked to the socialist internationals, and so on. The nationalist movement has links with similar forces outside Puerto Rico. The socialist movement has links with socialist forces outside Puerto Rico. There are many, many, what should I say, many connections between the Puerto Rican independent struggle and many forces outside Puerto Rico, which have been forged by different currents at different points.
I do think that at present, both the Puerto Rican progressive forces and US progressive forces have to make a conscious effort to connect. It seems to me that many times, I criticize both. The Puerto Rican left, the Puerto Rican independence movement, many times, I think is not active enough in trying to link up with progressive forces in the United States.
They should seek connection with the US labor movement, with the US LGBT movement, with the US environmental movement, with the US movement in defense of migrants rights, to make sure that all of those movements, when they elaborate their program, when they elaborate their demands, when they go before the state government, or Congress, or anywhere, they include among their many demands, a demand for self-determination for Puerto Rico and for reparations for Puerto Rico.
In the same fashion that I think the Puerto Rican progressive forces must be very active in seeking that connection, I think progressive forces in the United States, progressive persons in the United States, should seek that the movements in which they are involved in the US pick up the demand for Puerto Rico self-determination. If a person is in a union in the United States, in the labor movement, or is in an environmental coalition, or a Native people’s coalition, or anti-racist coalition, or whatever, that among their program, that they should include the element of solidarity with the problem of Puerto Rico that would allow for that.
Blanca Misse:
Thank you, Rafael, because you’re being very eloquent to show these connections that are historical, but that need to be developed today between the movement for independence and self-determination in Puerto Rico, and many other movements in the US, such as the labor movement, the women’s movement, the Native American movement, the Black Liberation Movement, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, I want us now to go even bigger and wider in our internationalist reach, and I want to ask you a question about if you see, or how you see the connection of the struggle of the Puerto Rican people for self-determination to other liberation struggles sometimes farther away in the world. I’m thinking of Ukraine, I’m thinking of Syria, I’m thinking of Palestine. The reason I ask you this question is because today, sometimes we have folks who, for example, only support the right of self-determination of one people.
For example, many adamant supporters of the right of self-determination in Ukraine do not want to support the right of self-determination of Palestinians, or vice versa. We have some folks who in the US, support the right of self-determination of Palestine, but do not want to support, and maybe Puerto Rico too, but they don’t want to support the right of self-determination for Ukraine, because the US has been supporting Zelenskyy, and therefore, they say, “This is not a struggle we can get involved in.”
I’m very curious to get your take about how do you see this connection between these different liberation struggles worldwide?
Rafael Bernabe:
Well, I’m going to give you my take, and then I will give you a little comment on what the position of other people in the Puerto Rican left is. It’s not necessarily mine. My take is that as consistent opponents of oppression, any kind of oppression, we need to fight against all forms of oppression, and we need to fight against all, we need to support all the peoples of the world who are struggling against some form of national oppression or imperialist aggression, without exceptions.
My perspective is that there is more than one imperialism in the world. There is American imperialism. We have to fight US imperialism. I spent my whole life fighting against US imperialism in Puerto Rico. There’s NATO imperialism, and obviously, we need to fight against NATO imperialism. I also think that there is a Russian imperialism. Capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union, as we all know. It is a capitalist state. It’s an authoritarian capitalist state. Its leadership seeks to create its own sphere or zone of influence in its near abroad.
This is very evident and is very evident in the case of the Ukraine. Putin, when he announced the invasion of the Ukraine, the most recent invasion of the Ukraine, he very openly said that Ukraine does not exist as an independent nation. This was an invention of Lenin who was crazy, because he defended this crazy idea of the right of nations to self-determination. Putin himself very clearly said, “My intent is to crush this nation as an independent state, and I am doing this in violation of what this crazy guy, Lenin, called the right of nations to self-determination.”
Now, I defend the right of nations to self-determination, and that means that we have, for me, that means that we have to support the right of the Puerto Rican people to self-determination against US imperialism, and the fight for the Palestinian people for self-determination against the Zionist state, and the right of the Ukrainian people for self-determination against Russian aggression. I think that is the only consistent position for an anti-imperialist.
We have to be against all imperialisms, not only US imperialism, all imperialisms, and we have to be for the right of all peoples to self-determination, not only some people. I agree with, I can grant the government, it’s a neoliberal government, this is not our government. We don’t support Zelenskyy, we don’t like Zelenskyy, but from the government of the Ukraine, it’s a task for the Ukrainian people. It cannot be used to justify the invasion of the Ukraine.
This is a very long tradition, a very long-standing perspective in the sector of the left and the socialist left that I belong to. I’ll give you a historical example. In the 1930s, Japan invaded China, and all of the left in the world was on the side of China. All of the left supported China against Japanese imperialism. At that time, China was ruled by Chiang Kai-shek and by the Kuomintang, which were a terribly reactionary party, totally anti-communist, repressive of the labor movement, incredibly corrupt, and who had the support of the western imperialist powers who wanted to weaken Japan.
The left supported China, despite the government of Chiang Kai-shek. In the same fashion, we need to support the Ukraine against the Russian intervention, despite the government of Zelenskyy. If we can replace the government of Zelenskyy with something better, fine, that will be wonderful. Even if we can’t do that now, we cannot simply say, “Well, Ukraine has a bad government, therefore we are not going to denounce Russian intervention.” The same thing, I can give you many examples.
When Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, which was an empire, had an emperor, nothing democratic about its economic or social struggle, all the anti-imperialist left for most of it was on the side of Ethiopia. They didn’t say, “Oh, well, hey, Selassie is a repressive emperor, therefore we can’t support Ethiopia.” No, we were on the side of Ethiopia, resisting Italian imperialism. To me, that’s the perspective. We oppose all imperialisms, we support the struggle for self-determination of all peoples.
As you say, unfortunately, in the left, there are many who do not adopt this, what I think is a consistent internationalist logic. They adopt what some people call, I think it’s correct, a campist logic, in which they divide the world in two parts. There’s US imperialism and there’s NATO imperialism. That furthermore leads to the conclusion that any force, any movement, any government that is somehow finds itself in contradiction or in tension with the United States is, as a result of that fact, a progressive force.
You have a terrible sanguinary, brutal dictatorship of Assad in Syria. Since it had, at different stages, conflict with the United States, there were people who considered themselves progressive, who thought that Assad was a progressive force. The same thing, some people have argued regarding Iran. Iran has contradictions with the US, therefore, the Iranian regime is a progressive force, or Putin. Putin has contradictions with the United States, therefore Putin is a progressive force.
Now, not everybody goes to the extent, but there are many variations of it. It’s a very flawed logic. Sometimes it operates in terms of silences more than statements. For example, as you say, people will be very vocal against Zionism, in support of the Palestinian people, very vocal in support of other struggles, but then they will say nothing about the Ukraine, simply ignore that reality. Not that they don’t say, “I support Putin,” but their silence, in a way, it’s a complicit silence because they avoid taking a stand on that issue.
I think that it’s a wrong position, and I think it doesn’t help us build an international anti-imperialist, progressive forces. There are progressive people in Ukraine who, as I would, if I see a Russian intervention, they want their nation to be free. They don’t want to leave. Maybe they don’t like Zelenskyy, but they don’t want their country to be invaded by Putin. They are for resisting the Russian invasion. The left doesn’t say anything.
If we want the people in the Ukraine to, [inaudible 00:43:12] their present allies, NATO, and the United States, and so on, if we want the people in the Ukraine to move towards an anti-imperialist position against those imperialist powers, we have to begin by saying, “We support you. We are with you in the struggle against Russian imperialism, but we warn you, NATO is not a good ally. United States is also imperialist. You have to fight against Russia, and we will support you, but we also need to address the fact that there’s also US imperialism.”
If we talk to the people in the Ukraine, “We don’t like your allies, we don’t like your government, so we are not going to support your struggle,” they are not going to pay any attention to our perspectives, to our ideas, whether they are socialists and imperialists. These people are not willing to support our struggle. Why should we listen to them?
I think an internationalist left, the only position that is consistent is to fight the people of the Sahara who are fighting against Moroccan oppression, the people of Puerto Rico who are fighting against US imperialists, the people of Palestine who are fighting against Zionism, the people of Kanaky, people in the Pacific who are fighting against French imperialism, the Ukrainian people who are fighting against Russian imperialism, and so on.
All of these struggles, we have to see as part of the struggles that we need to support against all imperialisms. There are many aspects to this, but the left got used to the idea after the disappearance of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, that there was only one imperialism, because for a few decades, two decades, basically, it was the US, [inaudible 00:44:50] imperialism around, and we are all against that. Now, we are in a situation which I think is increasingly similar to the situation that existed in the epoch of Lenin, ironically.
We are going to a previous period in which there were several imperialisms fighting over control. Trump just said yesterday, I think, that he wants the mineral resources of the Ukraine in exchange for supporting it. The United States and NATO evidently want to control this region, and Russia also wants to control that region. We support neither. We support the self-determination of peoples. I mentioned the struggle of the Kurdish people, which is another major national liberation struggle, in their case, oppressed by several states.
The national question and the need to support national liberation against different imperialist powers or different local powers, as in the case of Turkey, I think it’s a task for all revolutionaries and all progressive people. We should avoid, as you mentioned, the logic of selective solidarity. I support some struggles that I don’t support other struggles. Sometimes I think it’s pathetic. I follow many people in the internet and so on.
All of a sudden, when Assad fell recently, you could hear all of a sudden, many people that I appreciate, but it’s, I think, very objectionable, all of a sudden, they were very worried about democratic rights and civil rights in Syria. These new forces took power. All of a sudden, there was this concern about human rights in Syria, and so on and so forth, as if the government of Assad had not been a government which violated human rights.
Since it was a government that was somehow thought to be in somehow in contradiction with the United States, then we don’t denounce the crimes of these governments. I think it’s a wrong perspective. It’s inconsistent, and it doesn’t help us build, as I said, an international movement. We need the Puerto Rican people, if I were to speak from my country, Puerto Rico is a small country, has 3 million people. There is no way that Puerto Rico is going to be able to reconstruct itself in any significant way if reactionary forces, neoliberal forces, repressive forces prevail around the world.
We cannot have a free, and independent, and flourishing Puerto Rico in a world of fascism and semi-fascism. We need to build an international movement in order to confront all of these repressive forces. The only way we can build an international movement is by supporting all struggles against all imperialism. We cannot leave out the Ukrainians, or we cannot leave out anybody because they are fighting against an imperialism which is not US imperialism.
Blanca Misse:
That was our episode of Solidarity Without Exception on Puerto Rico, with our guest, Rafael Bernabe, who reminded us of the importance of being a consistent internationalist in supporting all the struggles for freedom of working people everywhere in the world. For our next episode, we’ll move to another part of the globe, the Philippines.
My co-host, Ashley Smith, will interview Joshua Mata, a political activist and trend union leader there. Stay tuned for more episodes of Solidarity Without Exception, and especially sign up for our newsletter of The Real News Network at TheRealNews.com.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.