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by Carlos “Carlito” Rovira
Racist Oppression Gives Rise to Solidarity
The historical struggle of the African American people was the inevitable consequence of the introduction of slavery by capitalists in the Western Hemisphere. The collective experience of the African American people over the course of many generations ran parallel to the development of U.S. capitalism at every stage. Their plight, from the era of the slave trade to the present day, reveals inherent oppression within capitalism.
Racist terror, degradation, and discrimination were the objective circumstances that compelled into existence the militant traditions of resistance of the African American masses. Their steadfastness in many key moments of history proved exemplary to the U.S. working-class movement, especially to other oppressed nationalities. African American history is replete with displays of genuine solidarity with other liberation struggles.
The Spanish-American War had a significant impact on African Americans, especially Black soldiers who were sent to wage colonial conquest on behalf of U.S. imperialism for the first time. Black troops resented their white officers using racial slurs against Filipino people, which were reminiscent of their own experience in the United States.
Many Black soldiers defected to join the anti-colonial Filipino Revolutionary Army waging guerilla warfare. The most notable of them was David Fagan, of the 24th Infantry Division. Fagan won the admiration and respect of the Filipino people and was made a commander in their guerrilla army.
The Black press, the Black church and outspoken African American figures such as W.E.B. DuBois, openly condemned the motives behind the 1898 Spanish-American War. The U.S. government and giant banking enterprises sought military conflict with Spain to win colonial control of Guam, the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
Black Puerto Rican scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg devoted his entire life to compiling vast collections of writings documenting significant events in Black history. Before moving to New York City’s Harlem community, Schomburg was a member of the clandestine Revolutionary Committees of Puerto Rico, which organized the famous 1868 Grito de Lares uprising — a revolt that called for the abolition of slavery and the independence of the island nation. Schomburg eventually became a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance, which challenged the ideological facets of white supremacy through the literary, visual and performing arts.
At many of his performance appearances, renowned African American singer, actor and Communist Paul Robeson would call upon his audiences for moments of silence to express solidarity for the incarcerated Puerto Rican revolutionary Nationalist leader, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos.
The young Pedro Albizu Campos gained recognition among African American figures for being very critical of the racism in the United States. Campos’s mother was Black, which gave him first-hand insight into the impact of racist oppression. Campos’s outspoken oratory against the “racist practices in the house of the empire” caught the attention of renown Pan-Africanist leader Marcus Garvey, who traveled to Puerto Rico to meet the Puerto Rican Nationalist leader.
Despite their differences in goals and tactics, this meeting was highly symbolic for that period in history. The Russian Revolution emboldened workers’ struggles and nationalist movements throughout the world, including the United States and Puerto Rico, and instilled a sense of vulnerability in the U.S. capitalist class.
Black Struggle Inspires Puerto Rican Militancy
Puerto Ricans have migrated to New York City and surrounding counties since the mid-1800s—in most cases, to escape Spanish colonial persecution. But in the years after World War II and well into the 1960s, Puerto Ricans migrated to U.S. industrial centers at an annual average rate of 63,000 due to economic hardships caused by U.S. colonial policy.
What Puerto Rican migrants encountered was not what they anticipated when they uprooted in search of a better life. In addition to the agony of coming to a strange land where an unfamiliar language was spoken, Boricuas now experienced the malice of greedy racist landlords, housing and job discrimination, cultural stigma by the mass media, police brutality and the terror of racist white gangs.
While Puerto Ricans began their exodus in the late 1940s African Americans were already in their “Great Migration” from southern states where they had been historically concentrated. Fleeing racist Jim Crow laws and Ku Klux Klan terror, more than 5 million Black people migrated to the North, Northeast and California between the 1920s and the 1960s.
The instinct of any oppressed people is to seek allies and find ways to resist. Being confronted with the realities of colonialism in their homeland and racist injustice in the U.S. made it easy for Puerto Ricans to become attracted to the demands and boldness of the Civil Rights movement. Outspoken prominent activist figures Gilberto Gerena Valentin and Evelina Antonetty became unofficial representatives of the Civil Rights movement in New York City’s Puerto Rican community, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The experiences of these two oppressed communities brought them together in social and cultural activity, especially in the performing arts. This phenomenon was most notable among Black and Puerto Rican musicians. No one can dispute the African American influence in the rise of Latino musical genres which developed in New York City during the 1960s & 70s, like Latin Jazz, Boogaloo, and Salsa. The affinities the two ethnicities had for each other was also attributed to their historic connections to Africa.
The Nation of Islam, under the leadership of Malcolm X, began a campaign that aimed to politicize the newly arrived Latinx immigrants. And when the Black Panther Party began organizing in the Puerto Rican community of Chicago, it was instrumental in transforming the Young Lords from a street “gang” to a revolutionary political organization.
The Young Lords were the first Puerto Rican revolutionary entity to develop based on the concrete circumstances of oppression in the United States. They were a decisive factor in spreading a militant momentum in Puerto Rican communities of various U.S. cities. Like the Black Panthers, they advocated for a multinational revolution in the U.S.
As this movement gained momentum, Puerto Ricans gained a sense of hope and became inspired to fight for their political and economic rights. By the second half of the 1960s, Puerto Ricans in the United States had become politically adept, thanks to the examples of the Black struggle.
African Americans and Puerto Ricans developed an affinity to one another based on resistance to racist oppression. In cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Bridgeport, Newark and New York, at street demonstrations and on college campuses, Black and Puerto Rican people instinctively aligned in common struggle. It was not unusual during that era for the Black liberation flag (red, black & green) to be accompanied by the Puerto Rican flag.
A significant example of solidarity that alarmed the ruling class, was the April 1969 student takeover of City College in Harlem, New York City. They shocked many throughout the country by defiantly uniting to seize control of 17 campus buildings to demand free tuition for all in the City University system. The defiant students renamed the institution “University of Harlem.” To further demonstrate their boldness, these students lowered the U.S. flag from a flagpole and hoisted the Black Liberation and the Puerto Rican Flags. It was an imagery of resistance never before seen in racist United States.
The great lessons gained from the many examples of solidarity between Black and Puerto Rican people are still relevant today. The social, economic, and political basis for unity exist despite how hard white supremacy works to succeed in dividing and conquering Black and Brown people.
Black oppression was instrumental in the economic rise of U.S. capitalism, which African Americans have confronted head-on since its beginning. The Black liberation struggle will continue to be a source of inspiration to all working-class people. It will be instrumental in forging genuine unity required for a decisive battle that shall eventually defeat this system of oppression.
LONG LIVE BLACK & PUERTO RICAN SOLIDARITY
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