First Published: Daily World, September 17, 1971.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Sept. 14 (By airmail) – A solid mass of humanity converged here Sunday on the Isla Verde Hotel area to tell the U.S. governors, holding their 63rd annual conference, to go home.
The march and rally, sponsored by the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) and the Movement for Puerto Rican Independence (MPI) and supported by all liberation groups in Puerto Rico, also marked the birthday of the father of the Puerto Rican independence movement, Pedro Albizu Campos.
Estimates of the crowd varied, ranging up to 100,000 but no one questioned that this was the largest demonstration for independence from U.S. domination that Puerto Rico has ever seen.
The four-mile march, from Stop 18 at the junction of Robert Todd and Ponce De Leon Avenues and Wilson Street in Santurce was orderly. A committee of 500 marshals raced back and forth along the sidewalks, leading the chants and advising the marchers, “Please, comrades, go in the streets. We must discipline ourselves.”
By agreement reached prior to Sunday between independistas and the government, police kept to the sidelines and behind the cyclone fences of the posh hotels lining Loiza Street, on the main line of march.
The spectacle of boarded up stores and tightly guarded guest houses at the approaches to the big hotels appeared ludicrous behind flag-waving spectators. By contrast, the low-income public housing projects wedged between Santurce and Old San Juan were generous with invitations to marchers to slake their thirst and use bathrooms.
The tropical mid-day sun was no deterrent to the spirited protesters. Over and over they chanted, “Yankee go home!” and in Spanish, “Albizu (Campos) is our leader, Puerto Rico will be ours!” “Arise Puerto Ricans, defend what is yours!” “Our land, our sea, let us redeem them!” “Get out from under the foot of the oppressor,” and “Puerto Rico will be Socialist, throw out the Capitalist.”
Despite the publicity by the government, by the ruling statehood Party of New Progressives (PNP) and by the commonwealth advocating Popular Party, there could be no error after Sunday that a great many Puerto Ricans favor liberation from American imperialism.
The Puerto Rican flag was everywhere–small, large, draped over shoulders, wound around baby carriages and covering hoods of cars winding up the parade.
Placards carried by a Communist Party contingent denounced California Governor Reagan and one, carried by party leader Felix Ojeda, had a huge picture of Angela Davis with the declaration, “Angela Davis – Victim of Racism.”
In a show of unity, none of the signs bore the names of political groups, not even those of the sponsoring organizations. Besides slogans, flags and pictures, only banners identifying cities and towns were displayed.
Speeches by both PIP president Ramon Berrios and MPI general secretary Juan Mari-Bras called for a united front against U.S. imperialism.
Berrios declared that the decision to open the governors’ conference on the birthday of Albizu Campos was a direct provocation.
He urged that power be transferred to the Puerto Rican people in the manner of Chile, Uruguay and Peru.
Later, Mari-Bras and Berrios clasped hands and lifted them high as the crowd raised fists and La Borinquena, the independence anthem. There have been indications that the two groups may unite in a coalition for electoral purposes.
Felix Ojeda, general secretary of the CP of Puerto Rico, commenting on the demonstration, said it has forced the government to recognize the independence movement. The weeks of negotiations beforehand, he said, and the remarks afterward by Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Ferre showed his obvious concern with the numbers involved.
Talk of a coalition between MPI and PIP, excluding other left and independence groups, he called a mistake. “The other groups,” Ojeda said, “will not go behind like a rat’s tail.”
The Communist Party of Puerto Rico, he stated, has already informed its members to register and, if a PIP-MPI coalition can produce a working class, progressive candidate who is not anti-Communist and not anti-Soviet, the CP will support him.
In a press conference, Gov. Ferre stressed that independistas had received only three percent of the vote, but he did note that the MPI traditionally boycotts the elections and that less than half of those eligible participated in the last election.
Editorials and articles in the only English language daily here, the San Juan Star, falsely emphasized the main concern of the people as the right to vote in Puerto Rico for U.S. President, and equal rights with the states, minimizing any feelings of nationalism.
One commentary addressed to the governors by Star columnist Juan M. Garcia Passalacqua even stated, “In our more than 400 years of colonial history, first under Spain then under the United States, our people have become colonized to the extreme of fearing freedom.”
National Guardsmen and armed Riot Squad police were quartered in and around the hotels, and the FBI, CIA, Secret Service and local detectives milled about the Americana and El San Juan lobbies, checking, double-checking– even triple and quadruple checking – credentials of each other for the week before the meeting.
The U.S. governors largely ignored the march. When some did comment, they called it typical of U.S. demonstrations. “It looks like East Berkeley,” said Gov. Reagan.