CRISIS IN THE PUERTO RICAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT: A POSTNATIONALIST AND COSMOPOLITAN ALTERNATIVE

Gabriel De La Luz, Ph.D. (Universidad de Puerto Rico, Río Piedras)

*Ponencia presentada en la conferencia Rethinking Marxism 2009: New Marxian Times, 5-8 de nov. 2009, UMass-Amherst.

**Bibliografía disponible si el lector la requiere.

Exactly a year and two days ago, the oldest, presumably largest and best organized pro-independence political organization, the Puerto Rican Independence Party failed to win for the second time in the new millennium the necessary votes to remain registered as an official political party.  Also for the first time in thirty six years the Party lost its traditional legislative representation, both in the House and the Senate.  The gubernatorial candidate, Dr. Edwin Irizarry Mora, a well known and respected economist from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez obtained only 2.04% of the total vote, roughly 39,590 votes out of a total of 1,941,704 votes emitted.[1] This for many independentistas [my self included] was a complete disaster.  In this paper, I want to ponder on the significance of this electoral outcome particularly with regards to what it indicates about the Pro-independence movement as a whole; for my contention is that this electoral episode, far from being a problem only for the Puerto Rican Independence Party [PIP], is symptomatic of the general political decay and ideological stagnation that all national liberation movements in the island have been suffering for the last two or three decades.  I will try to establish and question some of the main issues at stake, hoping to collaborate in opening up what has been, with some exceptions, a dogmatic and sadly delusional discourse.

I firmly believe that if the independence movement is to have a future in Puerto Rican political and civil society there is no other alternative but to completely renew both its political and theoretical practice.  While this may sound simple enough, trite even, in the case of the Puerto Rican independence movement such a task constitutes a truly gargantuan effort for it would mean the complete overhaul of our more than a century old political culture.  In other words, if the movement for independence is to survive it must be ready to jettison most, if not all, of its traditional principles, values, and attitudes concerning pro-independence political identity.  From my perspective, anything less than this will condemn independentistas to something worse than political failure, I am talking about total socio-cultural irrelevance.

For the Puerto Rican left, both organized and independent, it is particularly difficult to deal with this problem, since contrary to what many independentistas believe including socialist ones, fostering and caring for the development of a leftist ideology in the colonial territory of Puerto Rico is not necessarily equivalent to the defense of a pro-independence politics.  In many instances the opposite can be true, that is, the claim for statehood or even free association can be theoretically conceptualized in a more progressive fashion.  From this point of view, some contemporary Puerto Rican intellectuals both in the island and in the Diaspora like Mariano Negrón-Portillo, Ramón Grosfoguel, Agustín Lao, and Frances Negrón-Muntaner argue that the imaginary coupling of independence and radical democracy is not only contingent, but also very fragile given the conservative bent of the ideological content and political practice of the independence movement for most of its modern history (Grosfoguel 2003; Negrón-Portillo 1990; Negrón-Muntaner & Grosfoguel 1997).  However, in contradistinction to their important and provocative analysis, and I am the first one to agree with some of their finer points, I want to make the case that a contemporary and renewed leftist independence movement is not only possible but desirable for the present conjuncture.  In fact, in the entire island’s recent history like Francisco Catalá states there has not been a better objective situation both geo-politically and economically for the re-articulation of a pro-independence camp (Catalá 2008).  However, the readiness of the material conditions for social change, as all Marxists know is slowly defused if there is no political subject to act upon them.  Such is the tragedy, or farce, I am not really sure which yet, of the present predicament of the independence movement.

Puerto Rico at the Crossroads

Today Puerto Rico’s model of political and economic development represents an absurd holdover from the cold war.  What was once held to be the “showcase of democracy” in contrast to the Cuban model of soviet like totalitarian state economy [pace Hilferding] has died a painful death.  In socio-economic terms, Puerto Rico has been experiencing a four year old deep recession with no real perspective on how to grow out of it, official unemployment figures have recently been calculated at 16.5 %, our labor force participation rate is 36.5%, our per capita income is less than one-third that of residents on the U.S. mainland and almost 60% of our children live under the federal poverty line (Collins & Bosworth & Soto-Class 2006).  Statistics for diverse social problems such as criminality, addiction, and domestic violence are sky high.  The island’s once proud public education system, both at the K-12 and postsecondary education level is in shambles.  According to Ladd and Rivera-Batiz: “Puerto Rico faces wide gaps in schooling between socioeconomic groups. The poor have higher dropout rates and lower college entrance rates, face lower quality of schooling, and end up with little access to the highly remunerated sectors of the Puerto Rican labor market (Ladd & Rivera-Batiz 2006: 52-53).  In sum, our present situation is nothing but the direct result of a development model exhausted, or better yet a model that was destined to fail from the beginning.

Most social scientists in the island agree that the territory’s modernization strategy commenced during the late 1940’s and predicated exclusively on the import and attraction of U.S. capital based on huge tax incentives did not produce an endogamous economic system, quite the contrary.  As Benson argues:

“Some of the most pressing problems that Puerto Rico currently faces as a regional armature of U.S. capitalist accumulation and regulation are the high unemployment levels that are a consequence of its asymmetrical insertion into U.S. accumulation circuits, which has resulted in a lopsided, disarticulated local industrial structure with a very low employment multiplier for new investment and in the current participation in U.S. competitive regulation and U.S. extensive accumulation.  An outcome of these two effects has been the continued heavy reliance on U.S. treasury revenues, high dependence on U.S. capital and on imports of intermediate and consumer goods, the lack of dynamic autonomous economic institutions that could foster local autonomous economic development initiatives, stagnant overall productivity, a skyrocketing consumer debt, and a greater social polarization” (Benson 1997: 89).

This regional and uneven sub-area of American capitalism is further weakened in an era characterized by the consolidation of international capital, i.e. so called globalization.  In the present Puerto Rico does not even retain what was once considered privileged access to U.S. markets.  The continued production of international commercial treaties between the U.S. and other nations has made it so (Catalá 2009).  Moreover, fiscal concessions to U.S. companies that established themselves in Puerto Rico such as the defunct section 936 of the 1976 Federal Tax Reform Act have been destroyed with the tributary pressures exerted by mounting Federal deficits (Catalá 2008).

Also, it is important to remember that Puerto Rico’s role in traditional U.S. geo-politics has notably diminished.  With the end of the Cold War, and the rapid development of new military and intelligence technology Puerto Rico’s tenure as a stronghold of American imperial power is significantly changed.  The closing of the important naval base at Roosevelt Roads and the elimination of the targeting and maneuvering range of the Atlantic Fleet in Vieques in 2003 are evident signals of this transformation.[2] Politically speaking the oldest colony in the world is an anachronism.

The limits of “Really Existing Pro-independence Movement”

The modern independence movement, for I will strictly talk about the organizations originating during the Cold War in the late 1940’s until the early 1980’s [PIP, MPI-PSP-MINH, MSP-PSR-MST] consists in a small plurality of center-left and radical political organizations that while diverging ideologically on important issues share certain ideological affinities that relate more to their identity as independentistas than to socialist ideology.  Two things should be clear from the start.  One, I will not consider due to time limitations the complexities of each group’s history and specificity in regards to the independence movement as a whole.[3] On the contrary, I argue that regardless of real differences it is in the nature of what they share as independentistas that the danger of social irrelevance becomes most clear.  Two, I will not discuss any of the historical military-clandestine organizations such as the FALN, CAL, or EPB-Macheteros due to the different nature of their proposed tactics [armed insurrection not mass mobilization].  Nonetheless, my critique of independentista political identity can also be extended to them.  It is important to state that while the organizations discussed have changed over time or morphed into other groups, the traditional limitations of pro-independence political culture are sadly still quite alive.  I will reduce for the sake of time some of these impediments to three distinct issues:

1.     Sectarianism:  From the electoral field of politics of the Puerto Rican Independence Party to the union entrism of smaller groups like the Socialist Movement of Workers [MST] one common element among all independentistas is their excessive sectarianism.  Each group can be accused of acting as if they were the sole possessors of revolutionary truth.  For a minority group [after all independentistas do not represent more than 5% of the population according to the results of multiple status plebiscites held in the island’s past] this is strategically suicidal.  Not only do these groups fail to act together on most occasions but are completely blind to the possibility of identifying potential allies in non-independentista sectors of civil society when it comes down to proposing alternative policies in contrast to the ones promoted by the traditional parties.  Of course, I am not referring here to the practice of melonismo which some in the movement have used to “stop” statehood candidates in the general elections by voting for the pro-commonwealth party instead of fortifying the organization that actively promotes independence.  This form of political tactic gains nothing since these independentistas do not negotiate their vote, but merely give it away in order stop what for them is a greater evil.  On the one hand, a truly leftist pro-independence movement might have more in common with a pro-statehood candidate if theoretically that candidate represented a progressive platform of public administration than with the conservative agenda often defended by the cultural nationalists which uphold the current territorial status.  Besides in any case ordinary elections do not have a real impact on the status issue, and if anything a real pro-statehood movement would have more in common with independentistas since both seek to end the colonial situation, one group through national liberation, the other through the acquisition of the full civil and political rights granted by annexation.  On the other hand the Puerto Rican Independence Party has done almost close to nothing to open up its doors to other sectors within the independence movement.  Quite the contrary, they have constantly suffocated any critical dissidence within their own ranks.

2.     The second characteristic then has to do with the authoritarian nature of pro-independence political leadership.  This is common to all organizations.  The figure of the caudillo or the leader is seen as representing the sole voice and sentiments of the organization.  Internally most independentista groups are ordered in accordance to the democratic centralism of the old Marxist-Leninist parties.  A General Secretariat, a Political Commission, or the President of the Party in question decides unilaterally the organization’s official position on most issues of substance.  Little consultation with the base, beyond certain formalities is permitted to occur.  A perfect example is the recent reorganization of the Puerto Rican Independence Party which after six months of meetings and public hearings decided that after the calamity of last year’s election they only needed to fine tune certain aspects regarding communication strategies and outreach without touching upon the main issue of contention for many rank and file militants which is the continued presence of a leadership that has been in power for almost four decades.

3.     Finally, the last issue and the hardest one to tackle since it strikes at the heart and soul of all independentistas is nationalism.  Regardless of the fact that the modern pro-independence movement was forged in the heyday of diverse forms of socialist thought, from the Guevarismo of early Revolutionary Cuba to the democratic socialism of Salvador Allende, or just the old style variants of Stalinist or Maoist communism, Puerto Rican nationalism has been the structuring principle of the movement.  Everything else is subsumed under this identity.  Nationalist ideology, which in Puerto Rico dates back to the 19^th century, constantly clashes with whatever progressive content pro-independence organizations inject into their struggles.  The most pernicious result has been the lack of organic weight that independentistas have had on Puerto Rican society.  Many working or poor people tend to see pro-independence leaders, if not most militants, as petit bourgeois intellectuals full of a vacuous idealism having little to do with the plight of ordinary folk.  In this sense no matter which type of socialism is supposedly defended, it is a rhetorical imposition from above.  With exceptions in the past, during the sixties and seventies where groups were actually engaged with several popular struggles, for the most part sectarianism and unreflective nationalism has impeded independentistas from developing lasting links with subaltern sectors of Puerto Rican society.

What is to be done? Towards a pluralist, democratic and cosmopolitan independence movement

First, concerning sectarianism independentistas have only one choice, either die as an irrelevant political sector or accept organizational pluralism.  In other words, all organizations have to allow not only internal dissidence but structurally promote its defense.  Allowing internal tendencies to organize and be represented in the central organs of the parties involved is a must.  Also, independentistas have to recognize that while belonging to diverse organizations, there must be a wider front which emphasizes and channels larger independence claims irrespective of difference, a minimum program at the level of a pro-independence platform perhaps.

Second, opening up groups to other currents of thought both internally and externally necessarily involves de-centering political organizations at different levels, especially the uppermost echelons.  Contrary to certain libertarian trends, I strongly believe in the relevance of political organization, and yes why not say it political parties.  However, the latter have to be as democratic as possible and that means eliminating democratic centralism [“freedom of discussion, unity of action!” as Lenin would say] and substituting such principles with more open methods of regulation.  It is true that minorities in the party for the most part have to follow majority decisions; nevertheless majorities should be formed through a strict deliberative process where methods such as open and public debates or primaries between candidates representing diverse opinions are held.  It is also true that once an organization decides on a position this becomes an official line, yet this does not mean that divergent opinions disappear, in fact they must be allowed to co-exist even if subaltern to official ones.  Finally, we have to eliminate rigid upper structures and their absolute power over lower ones and be more creative when structuring our representative bodies.  Instead of general secretariats or central committees we can have flexible organs of co-ordination, which could include proportional representation of inner minority positions diverse observant chairs for other sectors not exclusively tied to the party, for example a permanent labor or community representative and most important of all we have to establish limited terms for all party officials, no matter how charismatic or efficient they are.

Third, nationalism has to be left aside politically.  As leftists we are independentistas because we believe independence is the best political and economic option to Puerto Rico’s problems today.  Contrary to many compatriots I believe that our struggle should not be framed strategically as a moral issue of self-determination [which does not mean that it is not] but as a concrete solution to everyday people’s needs.  Political education is of the essence here.  Wider sectors of our nation have to understand why we believe this is the case, but in order to send the message we have to incorporate ourselves into their demands which after all, materially speaking are our own.  Independentistas have to engage intensively in a war of position, form part of a larger struggle and try to ascertain ethico-political leadership yes, but this can only be done by winning hegemony which means not only political dominance but also moral and intellectual leadership and sadly this is far from our present reality.  People perceive our platitudes and rhetoric as pretty words, if not open cynicism.  A renewed sense of practice if we are to move forward is inevitable.  It is not fortuitous, that pro-independence organizations have had more membership and sympathies when people perceive them to be an ally, getting their hand dirty in everyday struggles.

Also, independence is not a goal in itself but a means to an end, to a real integration on equal footing with the rest of the world.  It is the ability to construct a more just, democratic, and prosperous social order.  However, as independentistas we also have to recognize that there is no guarantee that independence will always be the option to do just that.  The concrete analysis of the concrete situation should guide our actions.  If in the near future this reality changes we have to be prepared to change too.  Here lies the real dilemma for in that case we could hypothetically have to choose between being independentistas or leftists.  In that decoupling if the choices are between being pro-independence and reactionary, or leave behind independence and foster a more democratic ethos even though it could be attached to another political status, the path is clear, democratic socialism first and above everything else.

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[1] In contemporary Puerto Rican general elections, a political party remains registered with 3% of the total vote, or alternatively 5% of votes emitted for the gubernatorial candidate, or 7% of votes counted under the party’s insignia.

[2] This does not mean that Puerto Rico does not hold any interest for the U.S. military but that its position and relevance has been altered (Torres-Rivera 2009).

[3] This remains a crucial task for Puerto Rican historiography.