Puerto Rican Socialist Party - Emergence

Emergence

The PSP originated as the Movimiento Pro-Independencia (MPI), founded on January 11, 1959, in the city of Mayagüez. The MPI was formed by a group of dissidents from the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), former militants of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico and the Communist Party of Puerto Rico, and university students, some of them members of the Federación de Universitarios Pro Independencia (FUPI). The MPI was greatly influenced by the Cuban Revolution.

During the 1964 and 1968 elections, and the 1967 plebiscite on the political status of Puerto Rico, the MPI promoted a boycott. Throughout the decade the MPI campaigned against the presence of big US corporations denouncing they hindered the island's development, destroyed native industries and agriculture, and exploited the workers. The MPI gathered sympathies among students, workers, intellectuals and poor communities, and advocated civil disobedience and resistance. Opposition amongst the youth and students to compulsory military service in the US Army (in which Puerto Ricans had to serve since 1917); to the presence of the ROTC at the University of Puerto Rico; to US aggressive military policies in the Caribbean, Latin America, Southeast Asia and elsewhere; an to American military installations on the island fueled the activity of the MPI and this in its turn created a perspective of a possible decolonization.

The MPI proposed independence for Puerto Rico had to be conquered through popular mobilization, and judged that an independent Puerto Rico would have to explore non-capitalist routes of development. Both the MPI and PSP made thorough Marxist analyses of Puerto Rican society, politics and economy in their programs and declarations.

At its Eighth General Assembly on November 28, 1971, held in Bayamón, the MPI transformed itself into the Puerto Rican Socialist Party and endorsed Marxism and Leninism. Juan Mari Brás was named the PSP's general secretary, and Carlos Gallisá Bisbal later became party president. The party gained a following in the labor movement, student movement, and community organizations. The PSP was also an observer organization at the Non-Aligned Movement. It claimed an internationalist ideology and saw the struggle of Puerto Rico as a part of the struggle for national liberation and against capitalism of the oppressed, colonial and neocolonial countries especially in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Americas.

The PSP maintained it was the first attempt to unify the social and economic struggles of the working class, traditionally channeled by pro-annexation forces favoring total integration of Puerto Rico into the US, and the independence struggle, traditionally channeled by middle class and bourgeois nationalist groups. The working classes had to be the leading force if national liberation was to come about, and independence had to mean a higher stage of social and economic life for the majorities and a true democracy, enjoying a working class government.

The party had ties with left-wing parties and labour organizations of the United States and several nations of Western Europe and the then Soviet-led bloc of Eastern Europe, and with American progressive politicians in Congress and in various states, especially New York. The PSP had close relations with Cuba and usually had a representative in Havana.

The flag of the PSP was red with a white five-point star at the upper left corner. The MPI flag had had the same design except that the bottom half of the flag was black. The emblem of the PSP was a clenched fist inside an industrial gear-wheel. The Internationale anthem was often sung in its rallies and mass meetings, as well as the Puerto Rican national anthem, La Borinqueña, with its revolutionary lyrics.

The PSP further developed Claridad, the newspaper created by the MPI, and made it a news and analysis paper with considerable impact on the rest of the media and the general public. Claridad was first a weekly, later on it came out twice a week, and between 1974 and 1976 it was a daily. It featured scoops on corruption, on the links between private interests and the politicians and bureaucrats, and on the intrigues regarding the unsolved question of the status of Puerto Rico. It ran stories of human interest on local problems, unemployment, poverty, environment, communities, schools, health, migration, and other topics. Claridad featured also sections of literature and the arts, and sports, and stressed themes on Puerto Rican history such as past stages of the independence movement, and the resistance of the Taino indians and the Black slaves.

The party had a political education system for its militants and sympathizers and a bookshop, and promoted popular local papers and newsletters. It managed to record and launch protest and patriotic singers and musicians, some of which later have gained wider audiences and become a part of the Latin American Nueva Trova musical trend, such as Roy Brown, Noel Hernandez, Antonio Caban-Vale "El topo", Pepe y Flora, Andres Jimenez "El jibaro", and the Frank Ferrer band. The PSP also had links with theatre groups, like Anamu.