Puerto Rican Socialist Party - The 1970s

The 1970s

A few years after its foundation, the PSP had gained influence on sections of the island's work force. PSP committees emerged among workers of state infrastructure enterprises such as those producing electricity and services of water and telephone, as well as government and hospital employees, and teachers. A worker of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) and leader of the latter's labor union UTIER, Luis Lausell Hernández, would be in 1980 the PSP candidate for governor. Socialist activity coincided with the flourishing of new trade union movements on the island, which in some cases accused big labor unions of the US operating in Puerto Rico of promoting a "colonialist trade unionism". The PSP had following also among university and secondary school students, and professions like lawyers, doctors, and professors.

The PSP proposed a revolutionary struggle and went into electoral politics as a tactical means to broadcast its message, participating in the island's 1976 and 1980 elections. In 1976 Mari Brás was candidate for governor. He and the party's insignia obtained 10,728 votes, whereas socialist veteran labor leader Pedro Grant, running for the island's Senate, obtained more than 20,000 votes, and Gallisá, running for the House of Representatives, gathered more than 80,000. The votes for the PSP amounted to 0.7 per cent of the total.

Socialist activity from 1971 onwards and PSP electoral participation in 1976 contributed indirectly to a hike in the votes for the Puerto Rican Independence Party, although both organizations rarely unified efforts. In 1972 the PIP's program was influenced by socialism, its title being "Arriba los de abajo!" Votes for the PIP in 1972 were 5.4 per cent of the total, more than in 1968, when it reached 3.5 per cent. In 1976 the PIP took 5.7 per cent of the votes. After the 1976 election PSP leaders claimed that many votes for the party were not counted by the main parties, which had representatives in every electoral college while the PSP did not, being a smaller organization. The votes in 1976 were not enough for the PSP to remain registered as an electoral franchise, and it had to collect signatures once more in order to compete in 1980.

In 1977 internal disagreements took place within the PSP, one being over what priority the organization would give to guerrilla warfare and strategic preparation for politico-military struggle. Other debates were on how to promote national independence and socialism in a US territory where, unlike colonial regimes in Africa or Asia, the colonial establishment was a part of modern capitalism and managed to relatively satisfy social and economic needs of the popular classes, skilled labor and high wages were common, wide health and school systems existed, and commerce and financial activity were extensive given the gradual integration of Puerto Rico into the economy of the United States.

The party adopted a new program in 1978 proposing a more modern form of politics that recognized the "democratic-bourgeois" modernizing aspects of US presence on the island. The new program indirectly criticized practices of nationalist desperation and Stalinism. It reassured the concept of the Leninist vanguard party while assigning importance to civil society, grass-roots movements, alliances, and mass politics. The 1978 program reflected influence of the theories of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. It also reassured both revolutionary armed action and electoral politics, given the electoral culture of Puerto Ricans since early 20th century.