Push for Puerto Rican Independence Gathering Steam

El Nuevo Dia

PanAm Post

Belen Marty

Independence from the United States. That’s what almost 2,000 Puerto Ricans
in the island’s capital of San Juan demanded on Sunday, June 14. Protesters
also called for the release of Oscar López Rivera, an independence activist and
former member of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), who has
been locked up in a US federal prison on conspiracy charges since 1981.

The march comes just days ahead of a meeting of the UN Special Committee
on Decolonization scheduled for June 22, where nation members are expected
to discuss the commonwealth’s case, officially an unincorporated US territory.
The groups involved in organizing Sunday’s protest included the Nationalist
Party, the Workers’ Socialist Movement (MST), New School, Caribbean and
Latin American Coordinator, the Resistance Collective, and the Revolutionary
Workers’ Party-Macheteros...[CONTINUE READING]

Opinion: A Declaration of Independence for Puerto Rico

Note: The Puerto Rico Monitor's linking to this column does not necessarily equal an 
endorsement of its views on our part.

A Declaration of Independence for Puerto Rico

The Panam Post

by Frank Worley-Lopez

On September 23, 1868, a group of nearly 1,000 men rose up against

Spain and declared Puerto Rico’s independence from the colonial power. 

Their rebellion, known as El Grito de Lares and led by men such as 

Ramón Emeterio Betances (author of the Ten Commandments of Free  

Men), was crushed by the Spaniards, but in many ways, it was the birth  

of the Puerto Rican independence movement.

While a complete history lesson is not in order today, Betances was

clearly an individualist and believer in liberty. Since then, mostly 

since the 1950s, the independence movement has been dominated

by Marxist leftists and socialism. In the subsequent years, the people

of Puerto Rico have rejected communism and the Puerto Rico Inde-

pendence Party (PIP)...[MORE]