LASC -- Latin America Solidarity Coalition

January 7, 2008

The Latin America Solidarity Coalition demands:

Stop using the Grand Jury process to harass and intimidate the Puerto Rican people!

Stop the FBI harassment of Puerto Rican independence activists!

End the US occupation of Boricua (Puerto Rico)!

The Latin America Solidarity Coalition condemns the FBI harassment of Puerto Rican independence activists. This reached tragic proportions when agents assassinated Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, Commander in Chief of the Ejército Popular Boricua, on September 23rd, 2005. Ojeda was 72 years old and had suffered a non-life threatening wound. However, he was left to bleed to death slowly by the FBI, which denied him medical assistance. The significance of this date was intentional: the 137th anniversary of the "Grito de Lares" and the beginning of the organized Puerto Rican independence movement. Since then, there have been continuing escalations by the FBI against advocates of independence.

The subpoena to appear before a Grand Jury of three Puerto Rican community members in New York is an example of this. These three are Tania Frontera, Christopher Torres and Julio Pabon, Jr. The FBI had previously visited each of these persons, and others, in their homes, asking questions about independence activists the FBI wanted to brand as "terrorists". The FBI is trying to infiltrate and shut down the Ejército Popular Boricua, also known as the Macheteros, an organization, which has participated in an armed struggle for liberation. However, the Macheteros haven't participated in armed actions for 15 years, pursuing alternative ways to combat

US aggression and imperialism. Nevertheless, the response of the FBI and other armed agents of the occupying government has been to increase its use of violence and repression.

Some of those visited were not even involved in the independence movement, but were only friends or relatives of people who were. They were shown pictures of activists and asked to identify the people in the pictures and provide other information about them. These FBI visits and the subsequent serving of these subpoenas are designed to put those who refuse to cooperate with this "fishing expedition" in jail, and to intimidate all the Puerto Rican community as a whole.

Frontera, Torres, and Pabon are scheduled to appear before the Grand Jury on Friday, Jan. 11th, 2008. This date, too, is significant and, as such, constitutes an intentional insult to the Puerto Rican people. January 11, 1839 was the birthday of the great educator, philosopher, and independence activist, Eugenio María Hostos.

The US occupation of Puerto Rico has been going on for 109 years. That occupation has produced unacceptable conditions in Puerto Rico. The "citizenship" the US government grants to Puerto Ricans is a second-class citizenship comparable to Apartheid in South Africa. Puerto Ricans have no representation in Congress and no vote for the President. The per capita income is about half that of the poorest state; almost half of Puerto Ricans, and a majority of its children, live in poverty; a third of its population is unemployed.

Meanwhile, US corporations, especially an influx of pharmaceutical companies, have been able to set up headquarters in Puerto Rico to avoid paying taxes, while paying lower wages to workers than they would pay in the United States. Because of high unemployment and low wages, Puerto Rico provides a cheap labor force not only in Puerto Rico, but also in the US. There is a new trend emerging in some US industries of replacing undocumented workers with workers flown in from Puerto Rico.

This is what the US occupation of Puerto Rico has lead to: poverty for the Puerto Rican people, profits for big corporations, and repression of Puerto Rico's patriots. Just as we must end the US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and the US funded Israeli occupation of Palestine, we must end the even older US occupation of Puerto Rico. LASC joins with supporters of liberation around the world to offer our solidarity with those working for the liberation of Borinquen and with all Puerto Ricans being repressed as a result of the colonial occupation of their nation.

The Latin America Solidarity Coalition is a coalition of US grassroots organizations that support the right to self-determination for all peoples and oppose US military, political and economic intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean. Our web page is www.lasolidarity.org

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Stop Military & Economic Intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean

The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) is engaged in a joint multi-tactical campaign against U.S. Military and Economic Intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean. We operate and structure our work from a solidarity model: we operate on the principle of self-determination; it is not up to us to determine what our partners in the Global South should or should not do. Nor is it up to us to determine the strategies and methodologies they use. We determine our strategies based on the needs of our partners in Latin America and the Caribbean.

We have a lot to learn from our brothers and sisters throughout Latin America who have been fighting oppression for the past 510 years and who have recently ousted unjust corporate controlled presidents: Fernando de la Roea in Argentina, the Bolivian head of state Gonzalo S?nchez de Lozada, in Ecuador Jamil Mahuad, in Peru Alberto Fujimori. In 2002, popular protests in Venezuela toppled a US supported coup government after 48 hours and reinstated the democratically elected President Hugo Chavez.

Within the U.S., people are beginning to realize that U.S. government policy is not reflective of their own values and proclivities towards making peace. More and more people are starting to question US corporate and military actions. Increasingly citizens are joining the grassroots movements to stop US militarization and intervention in Latin America and worldwide, and to voice that this will not happen in our name. The Latin America Solidarity Coalition recognizes how many issues are inter-connected and that there is potential to make links between Latin America solidarity issues and the work of local community groups.

The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) is an association of national and local US-based grassroots Latin America and Caribbean solidarity groups. LASC’s goal is to serve as a sustainable point of political convergence to help build a truly progressive Latin America solidarity movement. We constitute a collective and democratic working space for collaboration, networking and the building of broad-reaching political organizing and mobilizing capacity in support of the people of Latin America struggling for justice and a better future for their countries free of economic, military and cultural imperialism. Join us!

"International solidarity is not an act of charity:
It is an act of unity between allies fighting on
different terrains toward the same objective.
The foremost of these objectives is to aid the
development of humanity to the highest level possible."
- Samora Machel (1933 - 1986)
Leader of FRELIMO,
First President of Mozambique