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A NEW ALLIANCE COULD CHANGE PUERTO RICAN POLITICS  
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Rafael Bernabe, Ed Morales
March 15, 2024
Jacobin
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_ The Citizens’ Victory Movement and the Puerto Rican Independence
Party are forming a coalition called La Alianza. Their goal: a radical
shift in Puerto Rican politics. _

Public sector workers during a protest demanding higher wages and
more pension guarantees in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on February 9,
2022., Xavier Garcia / Bloomberg via Getty Images

 

Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States since the 1898
Spanish-American War. It had only US-appointed governors until 1948,
and in 1952, Congress passed a joint resolution that approved its
first constitution, which provided for limited autonomy. It would
become a “Commonwealth,” but the island remained an unincorporated
territory that lacked sovereignty and full rights afforded to US
citizens
[[link removed]],
despite the fact that residents of Puerto Rico were granted
citizenship in 1917.

Since then, the island’s politics have revolved around three
political parties whose platforms are focused on its political status:
the pro-Commonwealth Popular Democratic Party (PDP), the pro-statehood
New Progressive Party (PNP), and the pro-sovereign Puerto Rican
Independence Party (PIP). Beginning in the 1930s, a series of
uprisings by nationalist forces have been met with repression by US
agencies (notably the FBI, which maintained extensive files of
suspected “subversives”
[[link removed]]),
minimizing the voter base for the Independence Party and creating a
two-party duopoly consisting of the PDP and PNP.
In the 2010s, the combination of Congress’s imposition of a Fiscal
Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) to restructure Puerto Rico’s
$72 billion debt and the devastating natural disaster of Hurricane
Maria had the effect of shaking the island’s residents’ faith in
the two-party duopoly.

The FOMB made it clear that the local government was not in charge of
the island’s finances, neutering the Commonwealth’s illusory
autonomy, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) poor
response to Maria made Puerto Ricans doubt the pro-statehood party. As
a result, a new, possibly game-changing element will be a feature of
the elections in Puerto Rico this November. The newly created
Citizens’ Victory Movement (MVC) and the PIP will form a coalition
(called La Alianza)
[[link removed]] to pool
their growing constituency in an attempt to further erode, if not
destroy, the existing two-party system comprised of the PNP and PDP.

Earlier this year, I visited Puerto Rico and sat down with the MVC’s
Rafael Bernabe, who was elected as senator at-large in 2020, engaging
in a dialogue with him about the new alliance. The following is an
edited version of our conversation.

Forming the Alliance

ED MORALES

The deterioration of Puerto Rico’s economy and the US Congress’s
imposition of the FOMB to manage the $72 billion debt crisis
[[link removed]] has
led to Puerto Rico’s people losing faith in its traditional
electoral politics. What are the conditions that lead to the emergence
of the alliance between the MVC and the PIP?

 

RAFAEL BERNABE

When you look at what has happened in the past fifteen years in Puerto
Rico, it’s not too hard to see the reason La Alianza came about. The
economy of Puerto Rico went into a very deep depression in 2005. If
you look at the numbers, the economy of Puerto Rico has been in a
depression. We have had fifteen years of economic stagnation, no
growth whatsoever. About two hundred thousand jobs have vanished;
thousands of people have had to leave the island because they can’t
find them. They can’t live here. And at the same time, you have all
of these terrible corruption cases in the government. The result of
that crisis (which people feel very deeply), the fact that the two
major parties have not been able to offer any alternative to that
crisis, and that they are increasingly corrupt machines has meant that
the support for these two political parties is decreasing sharply.

When you look at what has happened in the past fifteen years in Puerto
Rico, it’s not too hard to see the reason La Alianza came about.

These parties combined used to get around 97 percent of the votes
between them. The PIP got 3 percent, and they got the rest. And now
that’s down to like 64 percent: the PNP gets 33 percent; the PPD got
31 percent. These political parties have basically collapsed over the
past ten years. In 2016, [ousted former governor] Ricky Rosselló won
the governorship with 42 percent of the vote, which was already low
enough, and then he was not even able to complete his term because the
people got so fed up with his government that they mobilized and they
overthrew him. It’s the closest thing we’ve had to a revolution in
Puerto Rico. People were in the street mobilizing for twenty days
nonstop
[[link removed]] and
forced the governor to resign. In the election in 2017, the PIP jumped
from 3 percent to 14 percent. And the MVC, which was participating for
the first time, gets 14 percent, which is an indication that people
are very much open to new alternatives. So the rise of the vote for
the MVC and for the people is very much part of the same process,
because many of the people who were on the streets trying to get rid
of him were seeking new alternatives. Now that we are in an alliance,
we have come together in one single force.

ED MORALES

Has there been any inspiration from these types of alliances that have
happened in multiparty democracies in Europe and Latin America?

RAFAEL BERNABE

In Uruguay, there’s the Frente Amplio
[[link removed]], which includes many parties of the
Left that governed Uruguay for a long time. Some of us may not
necessarily agree with exactly the policies or the lines adopted by
the Frente Amplio, but the notion of an alliance of the Left parties,
yeah, that’s an inspiration. And we know that alliances of parties
of the Left are rather common, have been experienced and tried out in
many places around the world.

ED MORALES

The last time we talked, about a year ago, you talked about legal
strategies to formalize an official alliance. Have you exhausted those
legal strategies?

RAFAEL BERNABE

Well, the situation is as follows: up until 2011, this type of
political alliance in general elections in Puerto Rico was legal. It
was not uncommon in the past for that to happen in New York, for
example, where you could have the same candidate in the column of
different political parties. Going back to the 1930s, there was an
alliance between the Socialist Party and the Republican Party, and it
was called a coalition. Alliances or coalitions like these were
eliminated in 2011 when they rewrote the electoral law in Puerto Rico.
Back then, they prohibited having the same candidate in several
columns. After the 2020 elections, the PIP and the MVC became
interested in forming a coalition or an alliance. So we knew we had to
deal with that prohibition.

The first angle of attack was to enact legislation to reform the law
so that it would go back to the way it was before this prohibition.
But the PNP and PDP majority are not interested in facilitating us
having an alliance, so they blocked that, and there was no chance that
they would approve the legal reestablishment of the possibility of
having an alliance.

The second angle of attack was to challenge this prohibition in the
courts. We argued that this prohibition is a violation of the right of
association and the right of free expression, and that there’s no
reason why the state should prohibit two parties from forming an
alliance in the electoral process. And the courts ruled against us.
It’s really an absurd ruling, holding that even though we do have a
right to associate, the state has the right to limit such rights if
there’s enough reason for doing so. And they decided that there was
enough reason because allowing for a candidate to appear in the column
of more than one party would generate confusion in the electorate and
would lend itself to some sort of manipulation of the voter. So
they’re basically saying that people are too dumb in Puerto Rico to
understand something that is done everywhere else. We appealed to the
appellate court, which ruled similarly. So we were left with the other
option, which is to work around the law.

ED MORALES

In [MVC leader and former Puerto Rico representative] Manuel Natal
Albelo’s explanatory address
[[link removed]] at the MVC
Assembly in December he referred to a “no competition”
arrangement, and a fraternal competition. Could you describe those?

RAFAEL BERNABE

We cannot establish officially an alliance between the two parties,
but we can come to an agreement, which would make it a de facto
alliance. A very clear example is in the race for the mayor of San
Juan. In cases such as this, we run a candidate, in this case Manuel
Natal, and the PIP doesn’t run a candidate. We call on our people
and the PIP people and everybody else to vote for the candidate of the
MVC. The same thing happens, for example, in Caguas, the other way
around — we don’t have a candidate for mayor of Caguas. The PIP
has one, and then over there we vote for the candidate of the PIP.

We cannot establish officially an alliance between the two parties,
but we can come to an agreement, which would make it a de facto
alliance.

It’s a little bit more problematic regarding the national posts, the
governor and the resident commissioner, because in the case of the
governor, the electoral law forces all parties to have a candidate in
order to participate in the elections. So in that case, the MVC agreed
that the gubernatorial candidate of the alliance is going to be Juan
Dalmau, who is the candidate for the PIP. We are calling on everybody
to vote for Juan Dalmau, but the law forces us to have a candidate of
the MVC. We have a candidate for governor, Javier Cordova, and he’s
officially the candidate for governor of the MVC. But he’s telling
people, don’t vote for me, vote for Dalmau, who is the candidate of
the alliance.

There are other cases in which, for whatever reason, we were not able
to come to an agreement. There are towns in which the people are going
to have a candidate for mayor and we are going to have a candidate for
mayor; they’re going to compete. And the idea is that we are not
going to compete in a negative way. It’s a fraternal competition. We
basically allow people to vote for whoever they want to vote for.

ED MORALES

I see in the local press there is this derogatory term, “_candidatos
de agua_
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(“water candidates”), that refer to candidates who are not asking
for votes. What does that mean?

RAFAEL BERNABE

That’s a term that you use traditionally for candidates who are
placed on the ballot because they want a placeholder. But in this
case, it’s not really a _candidato de agua_, because Cordova is
fulfilling a role. We prefer to call it a spokesperson candidate
or _canidato portavoz_, a candidate who is carrying the message of La
Alianza. We have several people who are aspiring to the post of
resident commissioner, but it’s almost sure it’s going to be Ana
Irma Rivera Lassén, my fellow senator. The PIP has somebody who is
their candidate for resident commissioner, but that candidate is
supporting the vote for Ana.

The other element of the alliance is that Puerto Rico has eight
senatorial districts. Each one of them elects two senators. So you
have sixteen senators elected from all over the island and in each
senatorial district, and a voter can vote for two candidates. If you
live in Arecibo, you can vote for two candidates to the Senate and so
on. In each one of those eight districts, the PIP and the MVC are each
presenting one candidate, so it’s split halfway. If you live in San
Juan, you can vote for the candidate of the PIP and the candidate of
the MVC. Instead of having two candidates for the PIP and two
candidates for the MVC, we have one and one. So the people vote for
one of the MVC and one of the PIP. And that’s basically how it’s
organized.

ED MORALES

But it’s still a victory for you if one of the two candidates wins.

RAFAEL BERNABE

Yeah, absolutely. We think we have a good chance of winning in some
municipalities. And there are other municipalities in which both
parties are relatively weak. So we both have candidates and most
probably neither of them is going to win. The fact that we have two
candidates is not really preventing us from winning in a municipality
that we would otherwise win. And in the most significant contests, we
have agreed to support either candidate, one candidate of the PIP or
the MVC.

Possible Victory

ED MORALES

So the goal is to continue to raise awareness that the prevailing
two-party duopoly is not working, and more and more people are feeling
dissatisfied with it.

RAFAEL BERNABE

You could clearly see that with Natal — if you go by the official
results, he lost the election for mayor of San Juan by around two
thousand votes. He almost won. And many of us think that he won. It
was just stolen.

 

ED MORALES

What is the basis for saying that it was stolen?

RAFAEL BERNABE

Because there were a lot of irregularities, particularly regarding the
absentee ballots and mail-in ballots There were a lot of problems with
that, and we denounced it at the time, and it was a matter of much
discussion afterward. But regardless, let’s assume that he lost by
three thousand votes. If he had gotten the votes that the PIP
candidate got, he would’ve won. So he stands a very good chance of
winning the majority of San Juan in the capital city, and that would
be a major thing.

In the 2020 elections, the MVC candidate for governor got 14 percent
of the vote. Dalmau, the PIP candidate, got 14 percent of the vote.
Those two added to 28 percent of the vote. [Current governor] Pedro
Pierluisi won the governor’s race with 33 percent of the vote. So
again, it’s within reach. If Dalmau were to get an increase in votes
greater than these two parties combined receiving the last elections,
which he could very well do, he could become the next governor.

It’s not like in the past, when the Left and the progressive forces
just ran to bring a message and educate people on certain ideas and
raise awareness. There’s a real chance that we are going to win many
important races this time.

It’s not easy. I cannot say it’s even probable, but it’s quite
possible. There are also district candidates for the legislature that
have a very good chance of getting elected. Eva Prados was a candidate
of ours in the last elections, and she lost by a very slim margin and
is now running as a candidate of the alliance. She has a very good
chance of getting elected. Rosa Segui, who worked with me here, was a
candidate for the Senate. She did very well, and now she’s running
as part of the alliance and also has a very good chance of getting
elected. So it’s going to be a very close, interesting race. It’s
not like in the past, when the Left and the progressive forces just
ran to bring a message and educate people on certain ideas and raise
awareness. There’s a real chance that we are going to win many
important races this time.

ED MORALES

And so how would it work in the legislature? The last time we talked,
you described some elements of La Alianza were already working in the
legislature, right?

RAFAEL BERNABE

Through the last three years of legislative work here in the capital,
we have been collaborating: the PIP, us, and an independent senator,
Vargas Vidot. So the PIP, Vargas Vidot, and us most of the time agree
on just about everything, all the issues, and we work together. We
vote in the same way and so on. So we are practicing the alliance
already in terms of what we do here in the capital. Now we’re trying
to do it more widely.

ED MORALES

What is your take on the PIP? It’s not just focusing on the status
issue; it has been focused on a left progressive position, and I guess
the idea that independence would bring an opportunity for more leftism
and progressivism.

RAFAEL BERNABE

The independence movement for the longest time is not a movement
that’s limited to the goal of making Puerto Rico independent. It’s
very much involved in all sorts of social struggles: the labor
movement, the environmental movement, the student movement, the
women’s movement, the LGBTQ movement, and so on. So most of the
independence movement is very much active in all of these struggles.
The MVC has the particularity that there are
many _independentistas_ in it, but not everybody is
an _independentista_. We include people who are
not _independentista_, but most of the people who are in the MVC are
also active in all sorts of other social struggles. The agenda of both
movements includes the colonial question and the status question, and
the need to determine how we are going to define or redefine the
relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States, but includes
all sorts of issues as well, like the fight against privatization and
the defense of the environment.

The independence movement for the longest time is not a movement
that’s limited to the goal of making Puerto Rico independent. It’s
very much involved in all sorts of social struggles.

One indication of how significant this possibility of the alliance is,
is the fact that you have this very strong effort organized by the
business class. Last March, many important members of the Puerto Rican
business sector organized a super PAC called Democracia es
Prosperidad
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Is Prosperity) to gather funds and intervene in the elections. The
official reason for this super PAC is to combat what they think is the
threat of forces that want to limit free enterprise in Puerto Rico.
They’re very afraid of La Alianza because they know that we have
presented legislation to increase the minimum wage, eliminate the
subminimum wage of the people who receive tips in Puerto Rico, and
reestablish many labor rights that were eliminated back in 2017 when
they approved this labor reform law
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If La Alianza wins or gets a lot of votes, important social and labor
legislation is going to be approved, and they want to avoid that.
Until recently, these business sectors were happy to rely on the PDP
and the PNP to defend their interests. They have this whole campaign
against La Alianza, saying that this is a socialist alliance. There
has been a Left in Puerto Rico for the longest time, and they didn’t
feel that threatened, but now they do.

Building a Platform

ED MORALES

In terms the messaging, this idea of attacking corruption seems to be
the main messaging I hear in the media. But are you using that a lot
to just get people’s attention so you can also talk about things
like decolonization?

RAFAEL BERNABE

The alliance as a whole and the MVC in particular have varied
interests. Depending who you talk to, you will see a different
emphasis. You need to fight corruption, and you need to have people
who are honest occupying government posts. But if you talk with Ana
Irma Rivera Lassén
[[link removed]],
that’s not her main issue. She talks a lot about women’s rights,
about reproductive rights, about the fight against racism, the fight
against transphobia and homophobia and so on and so forth. I tend to
emphasize more labor issues, labor rights and trade-union rights and
so on and so forth. And Mariana Nogales, who’s a representative in
the House, emphasizes environmental questions. The MVC and PIP have
supported measures protecting the University of Puerto Rico and
defending public education from the projects of privatization. I would
say that corruption is an issue, but by no means is our campaign
reduced to the question of corruption.

ED MORALES

Sometimes much of the anti-corruption narrative comes from the Feds
and the FBI, who carry out these investigations.

RAFAEL BERNABE

I guess there is an element that they don’t want their money stolen.
The United States sends millions of dollars to Puerto Rico. So
there’s a problem there. I understand that if they are going to send
some money, it’s supposed to be used for certain things. There’s a
problem if you tolerate violation of the law, and it’s also true
that a lot of people see them in a positive light, given the fact that
the Puerto Rico government agencies have not been up to what they
should be doing regarding these things. Many of the investigations
carried out by federal agencies could have been carried out by Puerto
Rican agencies, but they weren’t.

ED MORALES

You’ve said that the degree of leftism and progressivism between the
two parties is very similar. That is to say one party is not
necessarily more about socialism or workers’ rights than the other?

RAFAEL BERNABE

I would say neither party is a socialist party. They are both
prolabor, pro–women’s rights, and pro–LGBTQ rights. They both
defend that public services should be essential, that services should
be publicly owned, and the guarantee that includes electricity, water,
education, and health. Both parties support the creation of public
health system. These are by any account left-wing parties, progressive
parties, whichever term you want to use.

Both the MVC and PIP defend that public services should be essential,
that services should be publicly owned, and the guarantee that
includes electricity, water, education, and health.

In the MVC, there are people who are socialists, myself included, and
everybody knows that we are socialists and it’s no secret, but there
are many people who are not socialists. And we agree to struggle for
certain immediate reforms and things that working people need to
defend the environment, that we need to defend women’s rights and so
on and so forth. As a socialist, when I have the opportunity and the
occasion, I explain why I am against capitalism. I think in the end we
have to abolish capitalism in order to solve our fundamental problems.
But I always make it clear that I’m speaking for myself. The MVC as
such is not a socialist movement. It includes people who are and
people who aren’t socialists. If you look at the program of these
two parties, they’re very similar.

ED MORALES

So are you going to have two different party platforms, or are you
going to put out one platform?

RAFAEL BERNABE

The idea is that both parties will retain their individual programs.
That’s fine. And then we are going to have sort of a basic program
of La Alianza, and the way it’s envisioned right now is a relatively
short document that has ten, fifteen basic points. I’m sure it is
going to include the creation of a single-payer type health insurance
system and eliminate this system that we have now. I’m sure it will
include some sort of mechanism to try and solve the status question.
It’s going to include the defense of the autonomy and the finances
of the University of Puerto Rico, the defense of labor rights and
restoration of labor rights as well. The PIP program is two hundred
pages long, and the MVC’s is like 150 pages long. We’re going to
have a much shorter document that consolidates, underlines, or
emphasizes those issues that we think should be in the center of the
campaign of the alliance.

ED MORALES

There’s a theoretical question that I wonder if you could talk about
that is in the US right now. There’s a lot of discussion about this
conflict between people who favor class politics and people who are
involved in identity politics. There’s an idea that supporting class
struggle is somehow mutually exclusive from identity politics, which
many believe has been co-opted by neoliberalism. Does this sort of
conflict exist in Puerto Rico?

RAFAEL BERNABE

No, not really. No, no. I mean not at all.

ED MORALES

You said that you were interested in class issues and are
anti-capitalist: Do you think you are among the furthest to the left
in the MVC?

RAFAEL BERNABE

I’m the most leftist, okay? There’s nobody to the left of me.
[Laughs] There’s a big abyss. There’s nothing. If you go to the
left of me, you’re dead. But I cannot think of anybody that sees
these different topics as contradictory or antagonistic. You could
find people who would say, “I’m interested in the LGBTQ
struggle,” but it’s not like LGBTQ activists are against labor
struggles. I would say most people on the Puerto Rican left see these
struggles as complimentary. And most of the people I know on the Left
would go to a march defending the environment and another day will go
to a gay pride parade, and the next day they will go to some labor
mobilization. I would say there are people who emphasize one thing
more than another. That’s inevitable, I guess. But no, I would say
there’s not such a sharp debate between the different approaches.
Most people mix these things.

ED MORALES

In the United States, discourse on “decolonization” can get
trapped in a theoretical framework, but here you’re literally living
in a colony, and decolonization is an immediate, tangible issue. How
does that affect the political dynamic on the Left?

RAFAEL BERNABE

Here, the Left is made up mostly of people who are active in different
struggles. There’s an element of that, but it’s not an academic
left, let’s say. And I don’t say academic in a bad way. I’m an
academic, I work at the university, but the people who are active in
the Left are active in movements. There are people in the university
theorizing things, but they’re really not part of the Left. Not long
ago, there was a march here in support of Palestine and denouncing the
genocide. There must have been like a thousand people or something.
But most of the people who were there in that march were basically the
same people from the labor mobilizations or the environmental
mobilizations or the women’s rights mobilizations.

ED MORALES

I covered a little bit about the University of Puerto Rico protests
in 2010
[[link removed]],
and saw that they had assemblies and this notion of horizontalism. The
assemblies that the MVC functions through seem to echo this kind of
organizing and party process.

RAFAEL BERNABE

The MVC has a very strong element of promoting participation and
promoting debate and discussion and openness. If you look at our
assemblies, not only are they open to everybody — anybody can speak,
everything is put to a vote. All of it is transmitted over social
media, so there’s no secret decision-making and so on. We decided in
an open assembly where we discussed the two candidates for Puerto
Rican senators at-large, and we just finished the process of people
registering who want to aspire to be a candidate. I am one of the
candidates. So whoever’s going to be the candidate is not decided by
the leadership of the movement. It is going to be decided by many
people. There’s very much that culture of participation and debate
and discussion.

The MVC has a very strong element of promoting participation and
promoting debate and discussion and openness.

ED MORALES

From below.

RAFAEL BERNABE

Yeah, yeah, from below, absolutely.

ED MORALES

I saw that in _Claridad_
[[link removed]] that
the Hostosian National Independence Movement (MINH), which has roots
in the old Puerto Rican Socialist Party, had expressed a desire to
cooperate with La Alianza. Are there more parties like that?

RAFAEL BERNABE

Yeah, the MINH officially approved supporting the alliance. And there
are some members of the MINH who are running as candidates for the MVC
within the list of the MVC. They are running as candidates. And there
are other left-wing groups that are also either already supporting or
will probably endorse voting for the alliance; I wouldn’t be
surprised.

ED MORALES

How about the unions?

RAFAEL BERNABE

In the case of the MVC, we’ve had a lot of support. One of the
founding organizations of the MVC is the Sindicato Puertorriqueño de
Trabajadores (SPT), which is the Puerto Rico local of the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU). And the SPT had a long process
of internal discussion and debate in which it officially, through
several assemblies, determined that it didn’t want to support
candidates in the old traditional parties anymore, and that it wants
to engage in the construction of a new political party that would be
capable of defending the interests of the labor movement. But we’ve
also had established links with labor leaders and labor activists in
many other unions, and many of them are very sympathetic to La
Alianza.

ED MORALES

One more question. You’re going to have the constitutional
convention as part of your platform. I think I saw somewhere a quote
of you saying, “We can’t keep waiting for Washington to push that
through.” How much of a priority is the constitutional convention?

 

RAFAEL BERNABE

Normally, in Puerto Rican politics, people are taught and people are
told that we have to wait for the United States and for Congress to
take action to solve this status question. As I argued, many times,
they want us to be spectators to the process of determining what
it’s going to be our future. We just watch to see what Congress is
doing, what it’s not doing, whether such certain congressperson is
willing to support something or not support something, whether a
committee acts or doesn’t act.

But the process of self-determination is not going to come that way;
it should start with us. We should take action so that we begin the
process of self-determination, and we sort of serve notice to the US
Congress that we, the Puerto Rican people, have organized ourselves to
solve this problem as urgently as possible. The way to do that is to
call an Asamblea Constitucional de Estatus, which means that people
vote, they elect delegates to this assembly. These delegates will be
elected on the basis of what status they represent. There will be some
who support statehood. There will be some who support independence.
There will be some who support free association. People will vote for
whoever they want; if people choose a statehood majority, that’s it.
Independence majority, whatever. And that assembly then, as a
representative of the will of the Puerto Rican people, will have the
task of reaching out to the US Congress and telling them, well here we
are.

We have to figure out how we are going to decolonize Puerto Rico. The
bill that was presented by Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez several years ago was probably the best, because that
bill said that the US Congress recognized that Puerto Rico is in a
colonial status. The bill was good, but it died. So our position is
that we have to take action as soon as possible in the direction of
solving this issue. And the first action we could take is electing
this assembly as a representative of the Puerto Rican people in order
to start the ball rolling.

RAFAEL BERNABE is a Puerto Rican historian and politician. He is
currently an elected member of the Puerto Rico Senate representing the
Citizens’ Victory Movement.

ED MORALES is the author of Living in Spanglish, Latinx, and the
forthcoming Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the
Betrayal of Puerto Rico. He is currently a lecturer at Columbia
University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.

* Puerto Rico
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* Politics
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* decolonization
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* U.S. imperialism
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