Socialists and progressives poised to make big gains in Puerto Rico’s upcoming election
First published at Reform & Revolution.
In recent years Puerto Rico was put into the spotlight by the devastation brought by hurricane Maria and the horrendously inadequate federal response, as well as the successful 2019 protests which ousted Ricky Rossello from the governor’s office. Today there are ongoing struggles against the privatization of the electric grid by LUMA and against ongoing gentrification on the island.
Maria Franzblau spoke recently with Jorge Lefevre and Manuel Rodríguez Banchs, activists in the Marxist formation Democracia Socialista, a section of the Fourth International. Democracia Socialista is active in the larger formation Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana (Citizen’s Victory Movement), which is contesting the upcoming elections on November 5.
What is the status of the working class struggle in Puerto Rico, and what role are socialists playing today?
Jorge Lefevre: In our analysis we are facing a new moment in Puerto Rican history that started in 2006, when our economic recession began. In more than 15 years, Puerto Rico has had only 5 years of positive economic growth, numbers that are usually only seen during war economies. There’s been a 20% contraction of the Puerto Rican economy and around 500,000 people have left the island, out of a population of 3.8 million in 2006.
However the political reaction to this economic crisis was not immediate. In the 2008 and 2012 elections the main political parties, the neoliberal parties, were still favored in political terms. The union movement was being heavily attacked during those years through very aggressive neoliberal policies.
It wasn’t until the 2016 general election that we started seeing a turning point in political terms. In the election for governor, the highest position in the Puerto Rican government, almost 20% of the vote did not go to the two main neoliberal parties, but were instead given to two independent candidates. These two candidates at the time weren’t necessarily anti-neoliberal or progressive, but it showed that the Puerto Rican population was looking for a change.
In 2016 the Financial Oversight and Management Board was approved in the US congress through a law called PROMESA, which translates to “The Promise”, or “Hope.” Puerto Rico was excluded from the bankruptcy law of the United States. The Puerto Rican government attempted creating its own bankruptcy law, but was quickly taken to the courts and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against it, stating it went against federal law. The US Congress response, with support of the Puerto Rican neoliberal parties, was the enactment of a law that created a mechanism for bankruptcy in Puerto Rico and also created a board to enforce it. The board would not be elected, and instead its members were chosen directly by the President of the U.S, by the US Senate, and by the House of Representatives. The board’s official name is the Financial Oversight and Management Board, but most people call it “La Junta.” The board actually controls the economy through the control of the Puerto Rican budget and its allocation. It has the capacity to overrule laws that are approved in the legislature, so there is now a more visible contradiction with the colonial relation between the US and Puerto Rico because there is this new political structure that really dictates how our public policy looks and that has enforced even more aggressive neoliberal policies. Privatization of the public corporations, budget cuts in health, budget cuts in the University Puerto Rico system.
We had a very large May Day strike in 2017 during a general University of Puerto Rico student strike. That was the biggest mobilization we had seen until the date, and it was in part also a mobilization against La Junta. 2017 was also the year of Hurricane Maria. Maria was not only a very traumatic moment in Puerto Rican history, but for working people’s struggles. It interrupted that movement that was built up during May Day because of all the new necessities we had to deal with to survive. The 2019 Summer, which ended up ousting an elected governor is another moment of incredible mobilizations, as there were almost continuous mobilizations for weeks. Some of these surpassed the 2017 May Day, particularly the manifestation on July 22, 2019.
Although again we see difficulties in mobilizations for the workers’ movement, we also know that another breaking point could again create great mobilizations. That is the context of our political organization and of our attempts at creating an important revolutionary, socialist organization in Puerto Rico. We struggle for this not just through Democracia Socialista (DS), but through our creation and participation in the Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana (in English the “Citizens’ Victory Movement”) which is a broader anti-neoliberal political party that participates in Puerto Rican elections.
In 2020, this change in political terms continued. Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana won 13.95% in the gubernatorial elections. The Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), which in past elections was not able to garner the 3% needed to maintain its affiliation as a political party recognized by the state, experienced incredible growth and also arrived at 13.58%. The main neoliberal political parties respectively won 33.24% and 31.75%. It was the first time in recent Puerto Rican history where if you add the progressive vote, it would have been around 28%, just five points short of the candidate who won.
Manuel Rodríguez Banchs: For more context, Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States since 1898, and the colonial structure has been changed three times. The first colonial structure was the military government immediately after the occupation. After that there was a “tutelage” government with some local participation through the Jones Act.
Then in 1952 the current “status” began with the creation of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, in Spanish called Estado Libre Asociado, which is literally translated into “Free Associated State”. That status gained support and certain legitimacy because there was economic growth during the postwar boom throughout the capitalist economies. There were also democratic advances, as Puerto Rico adopted its own constitution and limited local autonomy in government was granted. I believe that has changed since the adoption of PROMESA, where as mentioned before, the Junta put in place by PROMESA took away from the local government all powers over the budget. And it has gone further than that: la Junta opposed and challenged in court a modest labor reform that was enacted earlier this term.
I think we’re facing a new structure or moment of the colonial relationship with the United States which we see as an opportunity to push for further advances for the working class. The role we’re playing now is to contribute to the working class struggle in articulating or framing what we call transitional demands, which can further the radicalization of broader sectors of the working class. We are in a defensive position from the class struggle perspective. But after over 40 years of neoliberal policies which have been pushed further by the Junta, combined with all the other factors mentioned by Jorge, people are being pushed to the limit. More people are rejecting those policies, and correctly identifying those policies with the two political parties that have ruled Puerto Rico for the past 50 or more years. That’s where I think the new organization of the political system of Puerto Rico is taking place. For example I think that all the anger, the mobilizations and the struggle of 2019 reflected electorally in favor of both Victoria Ciudadana and PIP. For this new cycle Victoria Ciudadana made an alliance with PIP, and I think there’s a strong chance of increasing the members of both parties in the house and the senate, of winning the race for mayor of San Juan and probably other municipalities as well. There’s also a possibility for the Alianza to win the gubernatorial election.
What is the political role of La Junta and how do the neoliberal parties relate to its oversight?
Jorge Leferve: In 2016 when the law was finally approved in the U.S. congress, the Puerto Rican population mostly favored the creation of this board. The idea was: “we’re tired of Puerto Rican politicians, we need something outside of them managing our economy”. That was even expressed by 4 out of the 6 candidates for governor in 2016, which made the election a competition of which of these four would work better with the board. Only the Partido del Pueblo Trabajador (Working People’s Party), which was an earlier electoral political party that Democracia Socialista was part of, along with the Independence Party, were against the board from the beginning.
Quickly after the creation of the board it was very evident that it was as bad as the left expressed. It was a board created to make the bond holders get the best possible deal out of a possible bankruptcy in Puerto Rico, and the way they control public policy is mostly through the Puerto Rican budget, because they have to approve the Puerto Rican budget, and they are very meticulous about how it gets approved. What I mean to say is that, for example, it’s not only that, the public university system would get $500 million, but that the Junta decides how those $500 million get used, and that is their main mechanism. PROMESA also created its own bankruptcy court under Lauda Taylor Swain, the district judge, which is where the legal disputes are seen.
In theory, there could be a large political contradiction if Puerto Rico’s legislature approves laws that the Junta does not approve of. That does not happen much because the majority of the votes are in the hands of the two main neoliberal parties, but conflicts have still happened. For example, a labor law that was approved with slightly better working conditions with regards to vacation days and paid sick days was later overturned in Laura Taylor Swain’s District Court. The Junta had appealed the law and said it went against the Puerto Rican fiscal plan, which is the broad plan the Junta approved which the budget and the public policy should follow.
But it is also true that sometimes the neoliberal parties will often not implement measures because they think the Junta would not approve it. For example the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) system has received some of the worst budget cuts under the control of the Junta. In Puerto Rico, like in many Latin American countries, the main university system is the public system and it’s older than the private system. There are 11 campuses of the UPR system around the island, and not only is the UPR system historically a place of student movements and some union activism, but from the very start of the 21st century it has been one of the main if not the main site of struggle against neoliberal policies. Students were involved in island-wide strikes in 2010, in 2017, and even in 2021, that last one being a very political strike because it was against a new bondholder plan that the Junta was negotiating. Because the UPR is such a place of resistance, they usually have imposed budget cuts of around half of what it should receive under the university laws that are supposed to be in place but that are not being respected. Neoliberal politicians would tell you, when asked why they don’t comply with this university law that states what the UPR budget should be, that the Junta doesn’t approve it, so they don’t even try. There has not been an attempt to defy these budget cuts by these neoliberal parties because they don’t think the Junta will approve them.
Our vision, the MVC’s vision and the PIP’s vision, is that the legislature could be a place of struggle. Even though it is a colonial legislature because we live in a colonial government, we believe that a legislature with a majority of Alianza representatives, for example, could create a struggle against the Junta, and it would be not only an economic struggle but also a political and colonial struggle, because the Junta’s power is colonial power. La Junta is right now the most blatant representative of the colonial powers in Puerto Rico.
Manuel Rodríguez Banchs: Also the board ideologically is aligned with the far-right here in Puerto Rico, in terms of separating economic decisions from elected bodies. The rationale behind it is that such a structure like the unelected board is immune from the electoral process. So they cannot be voted out, even if they push bad legislation. And that is true to a certain point, but the board is not immune to mobilizations and we have seen good examples of that.
The retirees were one of the targets of the Junta when it started to restructure the debt of Puerto Rico. The first proposed plan for the adjustment of the pensions was really aggressive, and the retirees were successful in getting a better deal through mass mobilizations. So when there are mobilizations against La Junta’s decisions or recommendations, they have to think twice. Another example was the truck drivers in Puerto Rico. The Junta and the owners of transportation companies were pushing to eliminate the rates regulated by the state to carry goods around. The truck drivers called for a strike, and they also got a better deal and the regulations stood in place. That shows we can confront La Junta through mobilizations and through legislation.
The budget of La Junta is approved by the legislature, and one of the proposals that both Victoria Ciudana and PIP (now la Alianza) are pushing for is to not approve the budget for the Junta, to stop the deviation of funds to La Junta through the legislature. We know that’s gonna be challenged in court, and probably we’re gonna be facing an adverse judgment, and there is a possibility of imprisonment for elected officials who defy those judgments, for contempt of court, and that has to be part of the strategy. We need to tell the United States government that what is going on in Puerto Rico is unacceptable, and we could be in a better position if we combine the defiance of unfair court decisions and the legislative work with mass mobilizations.
What lessons can be drawn from the struggle around the electric grid, including the issue of increased power outages and the larger issue of privatization?
Jorge Lefevre: In Puerto Rico, part of the industrialization project around the 40’s and 50’s involved nationalizing all of the private electrical companies and then expanding the access to electricity around the island. Before the public corporation was created only the cities like San Juan and Ponce had electricity and in a very limited way. The electrification of the island is something that occurred when this public corporation was created, and there was no corner of the island left without access to electricity. And there are a lot of stories and anecdotes about this process (the first place that would put electrical posts with the use of helicopters, for example, was Puerto Rico). So we’re talking about a very important public corporation, a monopoly, the only electrical company that distributes energy.
The plan to privatize this public corporation started in the 90’s, so this has been a long process. First, they started privatizing in a very limited way the generation of electricity, and then finally the privatization that has happened in these last few years that involved concessions of the generation and distribution of electricity as a whole. It is important to say one of the things included in the PROMESA Act was that the Financial Oversight and Management Board should promote structural reforms, and the only structural reform that they have promoted is the privatization of this public corporation. First through the privatization of the distribution of the electrical energy, and later through the privatization of the generation of electrical energy.
Usually privatization is promoted as a type of negotiation in which the private sector contributes some money, some support, and receives a public service transformed into a commodity. In this first contract, LUMA received everything, it is a $1.5 billion contract for 15 years, and it will probably be more than that, because every year LUMA has asked for more money than what it is supposed to receive.
But another important thing is that one of the historic unions in Puerto Rico working class struggle was the union in the electrical public corporation, la UTIER (Unión de Trabajadores de la Industria Eléctrica y de Riego), so privatization was also a mechanism of destroying a key workers union.
You could say there were two important unions in the beginning of the 21st century, the Federación de Maestros y Maestras de Puerto RIco (Teachers Federation), and the UTIER. The Teacher’s Federation was decertified after the 2008 teacher’s strike, and now the UTIER has been heavily weakened, first because neoliberal policies would not create any more jobs in this sector, and later because most of the employees of LUMA do not come from the ranks of the UTIER. They stayed in the government, displaced to different parts of the government. The Utier went from having 6,000 to 8,000 members 10 to 15 years ago to 120 members today.
The members of UTIER were asked whether or not they wanted to enter LUMA, but the conditions to enter LUMA was that they would have to quit their positions as government employees, so older members could lose what they had achieved with regards to their retirement and pensions. Also, the union made a campaign for the workers to not enter LUMA. It was a strategy that was an attempt to make the LUMA contract just not operational. A large amount of UTIER workers did not enter LUMA, most were relocated within the government, others retired, and that meant LUMA employees were either new employees or probably UTIER members that had not assured their retirement plans or other benefits. There is now a union, IBEW, that represents LUMA workers.
With regards to daily life, the privatization has had nine rate raises in a period of three years, and something that was not common at all in Puerto Rico, constant blackouts. One of the arguments in favor of privatization was that electrical costs were too expensive and privatization would keep electrical prices cheap. The exact opposite has happened, and the Junta has been very quiet about this.
What is the history of Democracia Socialista, and what role has it played in the recent struggles in Puerto Rico? How does it relate to Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana?
Manuel Rodríguez Banchs: Democracia Socialista was founded in 2014. Although there’s a red thread, a hilo rojo as we call it. I believe a good number of the founding members of Democracia Socialista came from what was initially the Taller de Formación Política (The Political Education Workshop), that in 2008 joined other revolutionary organizations and founded Movimiento al Socialismo, MAS. I think one of the biggest contributions of MAS was the founding of the PPT, which participated in the elections of 2012 and 2016.
The group of people that came from el Taller, together with other new members from MAS, founded the fourth international tendency within MAS. El Taller was the section of the Fourth International in Puerto Rico. Then, our tendency within MAS was recognized as the section. In 2014 MAS was dissolved, and those members of the fourth international tendency within MAS founded Democracia Socialista.
Even though we were founded in 2014, we did not go out publicly as Democracia Socialista until 2020 for different reasons. Most of them had to do with the construction of the broader party and the tasks we assumed within the construction first of the PPT, and, later, of Victoria Ciudadana.
We played an important role in the process of creating Victoria Ciudadana. After the elections in 2016, where two independent candidates received huge support in the elections, politics really started changing rapidly in Puerto Rico. One of those independent candidates, Alexandra Lúgaro, started organizing events along with Manuel Natal. Manuel Natal, who is also one of the leaders of Victoria Ciudadana, and current candidate for mayor of San Juan, resigned from the Partido Popular Democrático, the Popular Democratic Party, after the 2016 elections. The PPD is one of the two parties that has governed Puerto Rico for the past 50 years. Natal was a representative, a member of the house of representatives at-large of the PPD. He resigned to the PPD but kept his seat at the house. Alexandra Lúgaro and Manuel Natal started to organize a political alternative for the elections of 2020. At the same time, there were several groups of mostly left and militants of different organizations and social movements that were discussing the possibility of creating an alternative for the elections of 2020. There were 3 or 4 concurrent efforts, all discussing and evaluating what could be done for the elections of 2020.
We were participating in most of these efforts. Our members together with labor leaders were instrumental in the integration of those different efforts that eventually joined to create Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana. We also had an important participation in the adoption of what is called the Agenda Urgente, or Urgent Agenda, the minimum program that was launched by this effort of Victoria Ciudadana. The Agenda Urgente was further developed into a political program that was presented for the elections of 2020. We also participated in this process. Now we have one member of the organization who is a senator in Puerto Rico for Victoria Ciudadana, and for these upcoming elections we have 10 members who are running for different positions as candidates of Victoria Ciudadana and La Alianza.
Our members participate in the different struggles in Puerto Rico and internationally. DS cadres participate in the environmental movement, in the women’s movement, in the labor movement, in the LGBTTQi+ struggles, in the student movement, and so on. Leaders of the organization are also leaders in these struggles. Militants of Democracia Socialista are also members of labor unions, and we have members in the leadership of at least two important unions. Even though the labor movement and the student and youth movements are relatively weak right now, compared to other periods, we have a strong presence, as well as in the women’s movement.
What are the other political parties in Puerto Rico and how are they approaching this upcoming election?
Jorge Lefevre: Clarification first, for our U.S. comrades: although we are a U.S. colony, our parties are not structured around the Democratic Party or the Republican Party of the United States. In theory they exist in Puerto Rico, but their only activities are when the Republican Party and the Democratic Party primaries happen, and they are also held here although we do not have the opportunity to vote in the Presidential Elections. We’ve had independent political parties from before the U.S. intervention in Puerto Rico, and ever since then.
Right now there are two main neoliberal parties, historic neoliberal parties. The PPD is basically the party that created a contemporary Puerto Rico, with all of its contradictions included, so we’re talking about the party that was somewhat part of the industrialization projects of the 40’s and 50’s and the architect of the Commonwealth, which now the majority of population knows was just the rearrangement of the colonial agreement in Puerto Rico. Because of this history, with regards to the colonial question, the PPD has favored either status-quo or a new type of commonwealth status. The other neoliberal party is the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP, New Progressive Party), which was founded by industrial capitalists at the time. It articulated itself around statehood.
These modern neoliberal parties, which adopted neoliberalism in the 80’s and 90’s, mainly articulated their support around status issues, either in favor of the status quo or in favor of annexation. These are the two political parties that have governed for the last 60 years. The other historical party, which is older than the PNP, is the PIP, a pro-independence party, which was founded after a split in the PPD once it started opposing the independence of Puerto Rico. And it has had its ups and downs, related to environmental struggles, to worker struggles, to women’s struggles… It did not have a lot of success in the 21st century with regards to electoral politics until 2020, when, like we said, it arrived at almost 14%.
Like we’ve said, there’s a new political movement, anti-neoliberal, progressive, which is Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana, founded in 2019. It participated for the first time in 2020.
But, also in 2019, another party was created, Proyecto Dignidad (Dignity Project), which is a conservative neoliberal fundamentalist political party. It received 7% of the vote in 2020, to the surprise of most of the Puerto Rican population, although in Democracia Socialista, because we see this conservative turn as part of a general international trend of neoliberal conservative fundamentalist parties, we never underestimated it. It was able to vote in a senator and a representative, so it has representation in the legislature. It has been effective also in growing its base.
So like we’ve seen in other countries, we see a polarization of Puerto Rican politics also expressed in the elections, through the creation of La Alianza, which grouped the two main progressive anti-neoliberal parties, but also through the creation of a Proyecto Dignidad, which has been relatively successful also at recruiting some figures from the historical neoliberal parties. Particularly, its candidate for governor is an important mayor of a town in Puerto Rico, formerly running as a PNP.
It is difficult to see what will happen with Dignidad in the 2024 elections, but our analysis is that, if Puerto Rican corporate interest continue to see that the PPD and PNP are in a irreversible crisis, then they could very easily start supporting Dignidad, and start growing into a major force in a matter of nothing, very quickly. We see also that there are new corporate institutions or institutions that promote corporate interests, there is a super PAC created called “Democracy is Prosperity” which has a nice name, but that is a market fundamentalist superPAC. There’s also a known think tank, the Institute for Economic Freedom, and their political programs are even closer to Dignidad’s political program than to the main neoliberal parties. So we are seeing a new shaping of the new right in Puerto Rico with some of the old figures, but many new figures involved.
What is the significance of La Alianza, the alliance between MVC and the PIP? And what is the situation regarding the legal challenges to La Alianza?
Manuel Rodríguez Banchs: In the 2020 elections, Victoria Ciudadana and PIP, together received close to 28% of the votes. In the election, as mentioned by Jorge, the winning party received only 33% of the votes. It’s important to mention that in 2020 people called for Victoria Ciudadana and PIP to join for the elections. This took place really close to the elections. After the elections, when we analyzed the results, there were many places where the votes for the candidate for Victoria Ciudadana and the candidate for Partido Independentista combined were much more than what the elected candidate got. In numerical terms, the combination of both parties could mean important seats in the legislature and in some municipalities as well.
The other aspect that allowed la Alianza to materialize is that the programmatic proposals of both parties are similar in very important areas. Regarding the decolonization of Puerto Rico, the big difference between the parties is that the Partido Independentista promotes independence. And that was the way the political parties organized in Puerto Rico for a long time, around the relationship with the United States: there is also a pro statehood party and a pro status quo party.
Victoria Ciudadana emphasizes the decolonization process and organizes around other issues. We learned from the experience of the labor unions, which organize workers who favor different alternatives of non colonial non territorial status. Members of MVC support different alternatives of status, however they agree on decolonization as part of our right to self determination. There is agreement on a democratic process: a status convention with representatives of all the alternatives.
Regarding health, we both support public health through a public universal healthcare system. In education we both support public education and the University of Puerto Rico, and in so many other areas we have similar programmatic proposals.
The other thing I must mention is, as Jorge mentioned, the potential growth of the far-right with Proyecto Dignidad, and the accelerated decomposition of the two traditional neoliberal parties presented us with an opportunity to build an alliance between these two progressive parties. Otherwise we would compete against each other and we would do better than 2020, but not enough to increase our chances, as can be done through an alliance.
In Puerto Rico, alliances were part of the political system until recently, until 2011, where alliances were prohibited by law. Both parties, MVC and PIP, challenged that prohibition in court. What was proposed was a fusion ballot, which is very common in the United States, that is that a candidate can run for the same position for different parties. That was the proposal. We were proposing to have Juan Dalmau from the PIP as candidate for governor in the two columns.
That prohibition was sustained by the courts, so we had to find a creative way, even though not allowed by law, to put in place the alliance that was approved by the members of both parties. So we ended up supporting different candidates in different ballots. We are doing the same, but risking our franchises, our electoral franchises. In order to be able to maintain the electoral franchise, there are several requisites that you have to comply with. One of them is having a candidate for governor, a candidate for resident commissioner, one at-large for the House of Representatives and one for the senate. We are now proposing Juan Dalmau for governor, and Ana Irma Rivera Lassén, currently a senator of Victoria Ciudadana, for the Resident Commissioner, which is a non-voting member of the House of Representatives in the U.S. congress. There are 8 senatorial districts, where we are presenting one candidate of each party for each one of those districts. For the House of Representatives we made a similar distribution, and we’ve made an agreement in four municipalities to either support Victoria Ciudadana’s candidate, such as Manuel Natal in San Juan, or the PIP’s candidate such as Jason Domenech in Caguas, another important town in Puerto Rico.
The Alianza is being presented as a change regarding the way the political and electoral process was organized, which used to be around the relationship with the United States once the colonial status is changed. Now it’s more around social issues. There’s a clear divide between left and right proposals.
Even though it’s difficult, I think a victory of the Alianza is within the possibilities for this next election cycle. I think the PPD is behind La Alianza, and we are putting up a fight with the New Progressive Party, which is the party of big business and the party of the current governor and the resident commissioner, who is going to run for governor. One factor to consider is that the current governor of the PNP lost his primary election against Jennifer Gonzalez, who is a Trump supporter Republican, currently holding the seat of resident commissioner. That also represents a different scenario and from our perspective, more opportunities for la Alianza.
There are possibilities of increasing the presence in the legislature through the arrangements, for the senate, and for the house in the districts, even though we’re facing a huge challenge. The candidates for Victoria Ciudadana for the senate and the house at-large were disqualified by the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico in a case brought by both members of the PNP and PPD parties, and they are now running, with the support of Victoria CIudadana, as write-in candidates.
Thinking about the day after the elections at the very least Victoria Ciudadana would have more members in the house of representatives, more members in the senate, would win the city of San Juan, and that would be a huge advance for us. We have been thinking about what the government of the Alianza might look like, also. We know that if the Alianza wins, it’s going to face not only the opposition of the other political parties, but also the opposition and the sabotage of the corporate interests, like Jorge mentioned, or, in more traditional terms, the bourgeoisie. We should be thinking about ways of maintaining the government while facing the sabotage of the other parties and the bourgeoisie. We need to organize workers, we need to be able to mobilize the population in order for the Alianza to be successful in pushing forward the proposals it is presenting. These proposals are going to be resisted not only by the opposition and the bourgeoisie, but also by the fiscal control board and by the federal government.
What is the status of the current election campaign, the main issues, and the response from voters?
Jorge Lefevre: I would say that contrary to the previous elections, the main neoliberal parties have made an attempt to make no issue an important issue in the elections, other than whether Victoria Ciudadana has a communist agenda, or whether we follow or do not follow correctly the electoral laws. It has been mostly noise around the political issues. We know it’s a conscious effort. We have our candidates often saying in the media “we would prefer to talk about economic issues, social issues, instead of all of this political gossip”. But that has mostly been what we have been seeing for at least a year.
Part of these distractions also have to do with the lawfare against the Alianza. Manuel mentioned the case that disqualified our candidates at-large, both of which were incumbents, but there was also a lawfare offensive against Mariana Nogales, who is currently in the House of Representatives and also one of the people who was disqualified. Because there is no progressive newspaper, because there is no progressive news outlet in the television, because there are very few spaces for our parties to participate in the media, there has been a lot of fog around what should be the actual issues coming up in November 2024.
We have continued to raise our program: in favor of economic reconstruction, in favor of LGBT rights, in favor of rescuing public corporations, public instrumentalities, public agencies, in favor of life, in favor of health, in favor of women’s rights, in favor of LGBT rights. But contrary to the 2016 elections, where the Financial Oversight Board was a central issue, the central issue right now have been the controversies between the Victoria Ciudadana and the Alianza. That and LUMA, which has also been a central issue.
Manuel Rodríguez Banchs: There’s a red scare campaign basically pushed forward, as Jorge said, and we are proposing la Alianza as the democratic alternative to the far-right threat in Puerto Rico. To stop the far-right, the only viable alternative is la Alianza. Also, with regards to the elections in the United States, where we do not participate but that have a huge effect in Puerto Rico, we also think that the government of la Alianza would be the most effective. In either case if Donald Trump wins the election, and we have a government of Jennifer Gonzalez in Puerto Rico, she will be servile to Donald Trump as she has been in the past. And a government of la Alianza would definitely mitigate the impact of a Trump administration through direct confrontation and mass mobilizations.
The same is true if Harris wins the election of the United States, I think la Alianza will be the alternative to hold accountable the Democratic Party. There are many promises and proposals in the Biden/Harris program involving Puerto Rico, none of which have been met. There were proposals to get rid of La Junta, to return powers to the Puerto Rican government, to push for economic measures for the population, and those specific commitments were not complied with. Whatever happens in the United States election la Alianza would be the best government to protect the people of Puerto Rico.
The issue of Puerto Rico status is hotly contested on the island and in the diaspora between independence, statehood, and free association with the U.S. This election there will be a non-binding referendum on the status of Puerto Rico. How does Democracia Socialistas relate to this debate?
Manuel Rodríguez Banchs: I first want to say that Democracia Socialista is a pro-independence organization with an internationalist perspective. We believe that the people of Puerto Rico have an inalienable right to self-determination and independence, in a Leninist orientation if you will. But we are also conscious that the majority of the workers and the people in Puerto Rico are not pro-independence; even though those numbers have risen in recent years, the support for independence is not majoritarian. That’s why when we engage in the construction of mass organizations, of political parties, we have a structure in which the issue of the colonial relationship is dealt with through a demand for decolonization. We have focused on a process, on the procedural aspect of how that can be materialized. The proposal is to call for a constitutional convention where delegates of each of the alternatives would be elected, and that convention would have as a central task the development of the status proposals, write them down, and negotiate with congress those alternatives. There would be several steps within the proposal we are managing, but once the alternatives are drafted in the convention they should be submitted to the population for approval of those definitions in referendums.
At the same time, there have to be negotiations with Congress in order for the result of the process to be binding, and for them to express approval or disapproval of the alternatives, other than independence, and what the terms of those alternatives would be. Then, those alternatives would need to be submitted for general approval or rejection. There would be rounds; if none of the proposals gets a majority of the votes, the two that received the most votes would go to the second round.
The experience of organizing around issues and not around a specific status alternative has been possible, and that we learned from the labor unions. They organize workers who favor different tendencies, they have the ability to get together and push for more common demands. That’s the model we try to replicate in the electoral process and we have been successful.
This new referendum that is going to happen on the same day of the elections has several problems. The first one is that it was called for by the governor without legislative action. And that has been challenged by the PIP to no avail. But other than the formalities, I think the main reason for calling another referendum for the elections is for the new progressive party to be able to mobilize electors. Otherwise, a huge sector of their sympathizers would not mobilize, so they are using the pro-statehood movement and the plebiscite as an excuse to mobilize the pro-statehood electorate towards the PNP. That didn’t go well for them in 2020. They did the same thing, but those who voted for statehood in the plebiscite were 51%, while only 33% voted for their candidate for governor. So that also tells us that a lot of pro-statehood supporters are not exclusive members of the PNP, and would probably vote for la Alianza. That’s part of the votes we had in 2020.
Jorge Lefevre: Along with the red scare, one of the scares that corporate interests arebemoaning in the press is that the Alianza is a pro-independence alliance. Again, it’s a way of trying to get people that are in favor of statehood to not vote for Alianza, and maybe to vote again for the PNP, or maybe even for Proyecto Dignidad. But like Manuel said, we’ve seen that these attempts of trying to mobilize the pro-statehood sector to favor the PNP have not been successful. In the last 30-something years, we have had plebiscites in 1993, 1998, and then some that are very close in time: 2012, 2017, and 2020. Both the 2012 and the 2020 plebiscites were on election day. People that favor statehood see this as another gimmick by the pro-statehood party, and one thing that the people are seeing is that the PNP isn’t really advancing statehood. It says it does, it might have an anti-colonial rhetoric, but it is just another colonial force, another colonial party, heavily neoliberal, heavily anti-popular.
As an example, the last two times that there has been a federal increase in wages for exempt employees, the Partido Nuevo Progresista, the supposedly pro-statehood party, has intervened to exempt Puerto Rico from that pay increase. So on one hand they speak of equality, on the other hand they favor policies that continue impoverishing the Puerto Rican population.
The current candidate for governor of PNP, Jenniffer Gonzalez, said in 2016 that she would be the last resident commissioner in Puerto Rico’s history because she would bring statehood in that four year term. She again was elected to that position in 2020, and now she’s running for governor. So there has been a lot of rhetoric, aggressive rhetoric by the PNP, but there has been an increasing independence of pro-statehood voters in these last elections that have either voted differently (we know that there was a large amount of people, for example, who voted for Juan Dalmau, the candidate for governor in 2020 for the PIP, but that voted for Jenniffer Gonzalez as Resident Commissioner, or in favor of Statehood in the plebiscite).
And there is also a growing force which we haven’t mentioned, and that is electoral abstention. Puerto Rico has historically had a high percentage of people who are eligible to vote participating in elections. That has decreased very rapidly during the epoch of the economic crisis starting in 2006, and beating apathy is one thing that the Alianza also has to do in order to think of a possible victory. Apathy is then another enemy, not as greedy or as dangerous as corporate interest or the fundamentalist party, but definitely something we have to combat. Because of this economic crisis being so extended, we’re talking about 15 years again, with only 5 years of positive growth, most of the population has lost hope. And that is one of the things that both in our program but also in our slogans, candidates of Victoria Ciudadana, of PIP, and of La Alianza are trying to bring back to the political terrain, hope that we can triumph and we can transform this society into one much more just, equal, and democratic.
How can socialists in DSA fight U.S. imperialism’s grip on Puerto Rico and on Latin America more generally, and how can we assist?
Jorge Lefevre: I think because of what I said earlier about there not being important progressive news outlets, one way DSA can help not only Victoria Ciudadana and the Alianza but also progressive politics in Puerto Rico in general is helping us get people in the United States to know what’s going on in the political Puerto Rican political agenda, in the worker’s movement, because our news outlets aren’t going to give a lot of time to these issues. I think it’s also important for DSA members to get in contact with the various organizations of the Puerto Rican diaspora who are active in many of these issues, in Chicago, in New York, in different parts of the country where there are Puerto Rican populations. But I think it would also be very helpful if we could strengthen ties with DSA and be able to talk to many of our comrades about many of these issues.
Manuel Rodríguez Banchs: We in Puerto Rico need to organize and mobilize to tax corporate profits; for job programs, urban reconstruction, expanded social services, universal health insurance and free higher public education; for renewable energy, student debt cancellation and relief for indebted families; for reduced military spending in favor of social spending; to organize workers and revitalize the labor movement; to end all forms of racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic discrimination as much as you do. We count on you to build and expand these transitional demands. And we ask that you include Puerto Rico’s needs for economic reconstruction, debt cancellation and self-determination in your demands and proposals.
We need to work together for justice for working people in Puerto Rico, in the United States and in Latin America.