Culture As An Act of Resistance
I was listening to a CD that just came out from Puerto Rico called "La Nueva Escuela" (The New School). It is a CD of protest music just released and it pays homage to the recently murdered Comandante Filiberto Ojeda Rios of the clandestine group the Macheteros. I was struck by one of the cuts in the CD, a speech by Comandante Che Guevara who in 1964 he addressed the United Nations and spoke in support of Don Pedro Albizu Campos and the independence struggle in Puerto Rico. I was struck by how his statements still ring true today. In his speech he talks about Don Pedro Albizu Campos having spent a lifetime behind bars, tortured, alienated from his family and people and all the while resisting US Imperialism. Don Pedro's actions he goes on to say, are symbolic of the fact that the people of Puerto Rico have steadily resisted the attemps by the U.S. to destroy Puerto Rican culture and replace it with North American culture. That the people of Puerto Rico have maintained the...