[ The Puerto Rican Independence Party’s (PIP) latest assembly
marks a turning point in electoral strategy and a challenge to the
colonial paradigms that have long held the archipelago hostage.]
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PUERTO RICO’S NEW LEFTIST ALLIANCE POSES A THREAT TO US IMPERIALISM
 
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Jenaro Abraham
December 19, 2023
NACLA Reports
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_ The Puerto Rican Independence Party’s (PIP) latest assembly marks
a turning point in electoral strategy and a challenge to the colonial
paradigms that have long held the archipelago hostage. _

People wave flags of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) during
the party's general assembly in San Juan, December 10, 2023, (Jenaro
Abraham)

 

On December 10, more than 4,000 people filled the main hall at the
Puerto Rico Convention Center in San Juan for the Puerto Rican
Independence Party (PIP)’s annual general assembly, with thousands
more attending virtually. A latent sense of hope filled the air.
Kicking off with two hours of pro-independence protest songs performed
by musicians and artists from across the nation, the event’s main
purpose was the ratification of the party’s 2024 electoral
candidates.

“We have to lead with truth, with the message that we the government
want to return to the people the dignity they deserve,” said Juan
Dalmau, making a heartfelt case for ratifying his political
program. “And that government is the Patria Nueva.” Dalmau,
Puerto Rico’s most visible political figure, received support from
the assembly to run for governor in the November 2024 election.

The 2023 assembly represented a change in the PIP’s strategy
compared to previous electoral exercises: for the first time in Puerto
Rican history, the PIP set aside its ideological differences with
other sectors of the nation’s progressive left to form an electoral
alliance with the Citizens Victory Movement (MVC), a relatively new
left-wing/progressive coalition. La Alianza—as the alliance,
ratified by the assembly, is known—seeks to overcome the ills of the
colonial duopoly rule by which the pro-statehood New Progressive Party
(PNP) and the pro-status quo Popular Democratic Party (PPD) have
historically shared power. La Alianza’s eventual horizon, however,
is much greater: both parties seek the nation’s eventual
decolonization.

In this sense, the assembly and La Alianza represent an
unprecedented _independentista _unity behind an electoral strategy.
As Puerto Rican journalist Benjamin Torres Gotay put it, “The PIP
has never before been seen trying to measure forces with the PNP and
the PPD in an assembly.” This strategic change­—while years in
the making—came after the PIP received unprecedented support in the
2020 election, winning roughly 14 percent of the vote for
governor—up from the party’s usual 2 to 4 percent of the vote in
recent decades. The MVC also received a little over 14 percent in the
race.

The PIP’s and MVC’s 2020 results came at the expense of the
pro-imperialist PNP and PPD, which finished with an embarrassing 33
percent and 32 percent, respectively. For Puerto Ricans fed up with
the status quo, these results represented an opportunity. The PIP and
MVC began to negotiate a series of internal agreements to support a
slate of each other’s candidates in the 2024 election. Specifically,
La Alianza now includes agreements made around eight mayoral
candidates (PIP/MVC divided equally), one governor candidate (PIP),
one resident commissioner candidate (MVC), and various legislators in
both parties.

There are few moments in history when Puerto Rico’s independence
movement has represented a serious threat to the nation’s colonial
establishment. More than just a change in electoral strategy, the
events surrounding the PIP assembly marked a turning point. As the
naked interests of U.S. imperialism have become more evident, the
conditions for political unity were forged. How did La Alianza come
about and where is it going? In short, this coalition is the product
of the experiences anti-colonial movements have long endured under the
brunt of U.S. imperialism.

REPERTOIRES OF REPRESSION UNDER U.S. IMPERIAL RULE

Upon the signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1898, which ceded the
archipelago to the United States as war booty in the Spanish-American
war, Puerto Rico became the subject of a series of colonial
arrangements. While sanctioned by the U.S. Congress and its
subservient institutions, these arrangements are defined primarily by
Puerto Rico’s productive activities and the corresponding economic
interests they represent. Broadly, these interests include Puerto
Rico’s agroindustrial sugar exports to the United States
(1900s-1930s); its light and eventually high-tech industrial goods and
service exports to the United States (1940s-1980s); the captive market
the nation represents for US imports (1920-present); and the
archipelago’s role as a tax haven for high-net-worth individuals
(2000s-present).

These activities produced economic booms that provided opportunities
for the U.S. government to showcase its imperialist “benevolence.”
But they have also been accompanied by the creation of colonial
institutions that have coerced, repressed, and coopted anti-colonial
and anti-imperialist movements to the point of political irrelevance.
This dynamic has ensured the continuation of economic output by way of
subservience to U.S. and local colonial authorities in times of bust.
Yet, during such economic busts, the most vulnerable often flee
economic ills, draining the nation of anti-imperialist support through
out-migration.

[Juan Dalmau waves the Puerto Rican flag during the PIP's general
assembly in San Juan, December 10, 2023. (Jenaro Abraham)]

Juan Dalmau waves the Puerto Rican flag during the PIP's general
assembly in San Juan, December 10, 2023. (Jenaro Abraham)

At the local level, over most of Puerto Rico's 125-year colonial rule,
naked coercion reinforcing the U.S. imperialist threat of force has
included the open aggression of the FBI and the Puerto Rican police
forces toward independence and anti-imperialist movements, including
through blacklisting. Similarly, the colonial political elites’ use
of clientelism and “corruption”—providing pro-colonial cronies
with preferential employment and contracts in exchange for
votes—represents forms of coercion and cooptation modeled after an
imported brand of U.S. pragmatism. While also present in sovereign
nations, these coercive repertoires have become the heartbeat of
Puerto Rican politics, particularly under the bipartisan pro-colonial
governance by which the PNP and PPD maintain their grip on power.

Against this backdrop, Puerto Rican anti-colonial movements have
struggled to develop politics around the grievances of workers,
peasants, small businesspeople, and other traditionally aggrieved
groups. This reality has undercut these movements’ ability to make
longstanding sustainable political alliances across movements and
social classes, despite some notable exceptions. One of the more
unfortunate consequences of these obstacles is how different
pro-independence, progressive, and socialist movements have subsumed
themselves in a myriad of popular, yet easily cooptable political
strategies. This tendency is often associated with groups like the
MVC, which has focused on the broad material grievances of Puerto
Ricans rather than taking more direct stances against imperialism.

Alternatively, other groups, such as the PIP, have opted to “carry
the flame of independence forward” for new generations, as stated by
PIP strategist Fernando Martín. In other words, they make
independence the central grievance of their political movement,
despite this position’s severe lack of popularity at the ballot box
to date. While these differences still permeate Puerto Rican society,
the unsustainability of the nation’s colonial relationship with the
United States— coupled with a series of economic catalysts induced
by neoliberal austerity, Washington’s deadly mismanagement of
natural disasters, and innumerable corruption scandals at the highest
echelons of the PNP and PPD—has compelled the PIP and the MVC to
partake in a shared strategy that places these differences aside in
service of a more immediate shared goal: uprooting the bipartisan
pro-colonial stranglehold over Puerto Rico’s government.

LA ALIANZA: TACTICS, STRATEGIES, AND SUBJECTS

La Alianza differs from other political coalitions in sovereign
nations for various reasons. First, it recognizes that Puerto Rico’s
colonial “status” must be resolved via more democratic processes
than the ones provided by the PNP and PPD, both of which have
historically wielded plebiscites and referendums to rubber stamp a
relationship that is imposed by U.S. Congress. La Alianza is also
different from other left-wing coalitions in that both parties, the
PIP and the MVC, must support each other’s candidates without the
legal scaffolding of a coalition, as Puerto Rico’s electoral
law—written by the PNP/PPD duopoly—does not allow for parties to
run as coalitions. To these ends, both parties must run shadow
candidates that they want constituents to vote against. Despite these
differences, like left-wing and progressive coalitions elsewhere, La
Alianza has been able to garner support from broad sectors of Puerto
Rican society.

“The colonial world,” as Frantz Fanon once said, “is a
compartmentalized world,” where economic output, the interests it
represents, and the violence that enforces separation often impede
political change. Challenges to colonial rule require that the shared
interests of different social subjects be entertained and
instrumentalized against the empire. In this sense, anti-colonial
movements’ capacity to enact change is often impeded by separations
inherent to colonialism’s structures. Both the PIP and the MVC have
pursued different strategies to break down the barriers of colonial
compartmentalization, garnering the support of different, yet
complementary support bases that are shaping the candidacies and
expectations of La Alianza. 

For the PIP, much of its support base among independentistas from
across the political spectrum is a product of the party’s
longstanding strategy of maintaining independence as its primary
political goal. In the PIP’s ranks is a social democratic majority
with formidable socialist and liberal minorities. It also garners the
support of people from other independentista movements that took
refuge in the party during times of stringent Cold War-era repression
against militant groups such as the Nationalist Party, among others.
The PIP’s proposal for an economic model that isn’t dependent on
the brazen exploitation of the nation’s natural and human resources
has also won it the support of independent unions, such as the
teachers' federation; environmentalist groups; and a variety of
marginalized communities, all of which benefit from the PIP’s
support of anti-neoliberal grievances by way of legislation and direct
action.

The PIP’s democratic outlook and utmost defense of human rights have
also helped it win the support of much of the LGBTQI+ community, as
well as the steadfast support of much of Puerto Rico’s diaspora,
which largely considers itself a victim of displacement. This has
helped the party develop a “_PIPiolo_” cultural identity that has
worked to maintain political cohesion, a reality that translates into
a formidable electoral machinery. The party’s clean financial
record, anti-corruption stances, and longstanding trajectory of fiscal
scrutiny over government waste also have helped it win the support of
a growing anti-corruption political identity. Despite these virtues,
the PIP’s strengths also underscore its shortcomings, as it has only
recently begun to seriously break into mainstream politics following
the Cold War stigmatization of independentistas. 

For its part, the MVC draws much support from its ability to appeal to
people’s raw material grievances. Built primarily on the socialist
outlook of many of its founding members, the MVC has attempted to
channel Puerto Rico’s large working majorities by speaking to their
economic grievances amid the neoliberal decay of societal protections
under colonial rule. This political approach is also made possible by
its attention to widely shared grievances about corruption and
displacement. Keeping their ear to the ground constantly has also
helped the MVC gain the support of other groups traditionally excluded
from Puerto Rican politics and, in the process, put the issues of
racial and gender-based exclusion at the center of their campaign.

In this sense, the MVC represents a wide variety of people who share a
common goal of deepening democracy and defending human rights. These
stances have lent the MVC much legitimacy in its short tenure in
electoral politics. Yet, unlike the PIP, the MVC’s shortcomings are
defined primarily by its programmatic unwillingness to support one
particular status position—a reality that has also brought the party
the public support of some pro-imperialist and pro-statehood elements
in Puerto Rican society, despite the independentista majority among
their rank-and-file members.

In this sense, the electoral strength of La Alianza lies in its
ability to speak to broad sectors of Puerto Rican civil society. It
also represents a threat to the pro-colonial Puerto Rican political
caste in that it will likely supplant them with largely anti-colonial
politicians at the local level. However, the real success of this
alliance sits not in its capacity to win the elections, but rather in
its ability to transform the nation’s politics in service of
decolonization. In other words, it is through its ability to change
the imperialist, colonial paradigms that hold the Puerto Rican nation
hostage that the alliance may yield real changes.

_JENARO ABRAHAM is a professor of Latin American Politics at Gonzaga
University, the vice president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party
in the Diaspora (DPIP), and a collaborator with Boricuas Unidos en la
Diáspora (BUDPR). His research focuses primarily on social movements,
politics, and insurgencies in Latin America and the Caribbean._

_The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) is an
independent, nonprofit organization founded in 1966 to examine and
critique U.S. imperialism and political, economic, and military
intervention in the Western hemisphere. In an evolving political and
media landscape, we continue to work toward a world in which the
nations and peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean are free from
oppression, injustice, and economic and political subordination._

* Puerto Rican independence
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* colonialism
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