This reflection is based on a musical film collaboration, Déjame Respirar, published by Vin Ramos
I am deeply concerned about the reactions and criticism by many Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans (especially those migrated to the US) to the protests against agents of the State who, once again, violently murdered a Black American man.
This is the same State that protects with "due process" those who exert violence against Black, Native American, migrant and LGBT communities, yet sends out SWAT teams and national guards against those who protest that violence with their cries and anger.
It is the same State that allows White folk to walk into capitol buildings armed to the teeth in protest against not being able to go to beauty salons or the mall, but take down those who seek to protect sacred land, land that belongs to those who are leading these protests.
It is the same State that placed Japanese and Japanese Americans in internment camps during WWII, and not other European ethnic groups the US was in conflict with. It is the same State that placed Cubans seeking asylum in internment camps. It is the same State that currently places Central Americans in internment camps - and separates parents from their children.
It is the same State that is giving billions of dollars in "assistance" to multinational corporations while denying clean water security to marginalized communities - marginalized intentionally by the State.
It is the same State that still covers up the murder of Carlos and Enrique in the Cerro Maravilla (Jayuya, Puerto Rico) by agents of the State (and, most likely, under order of the leaders of the State).
It is the same State that charged against a peaceful, pro-independence, march in Ponce (Puerto Rico), in 1937.
It is the same State that leads Puerto Ricans to believe that the US citizenship is one that ought to be protected with our lives, and yet is not willing to give Puerto Ricans equality (and know this, especially Puerto Ricans who think of themselves as White: that denied equality is because that is not the kind of "White" the State values).
It is the same State for which the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is designed intentionally for some - BY DESIGN.
I am deeply concerned because there are Puerto Ricans who, in their comments, pretend to lecture on how "a motherland is built", yet we are not able to say that we have a motherland of our own because we have not had the courage (and the anger) to break the colonizing instruments that are the Popular Democratic Party and the New Progressive Party, and to politically face the State and tell the US that the colonial oppression over Puerto Rico IS OVER - an oppression that is built on the same principles of racism and White Supremacy that murders Black and Native Americans brutally often.
I am deeply concerned because history should teach us, Puerto Ricans - those from the Island, and those born in the diaspora, those that live in the archipelago and those of us who live in diaspora - that we have far more in common with the struggle and reality of African Americans, and that our political and social activism should be in solidarity and commitment with the struggle Black and Native Americans have engaged in for close to 500 years. And if there is any people who know well what it is to live and struggle against the oppressive book of colonialism for over 500 years, it is the people of Puerto Rico.