Every great and powerful empire falls. History has shown it to be as inevitable and cyclical as the tides of our oceans and shifting sands beneath our seas. Take some of the largest or most enduring: the Romans; the Ottomans; the Chinese Ming Dynasty; the Persians; the Romanov Tsarist Dynasty; and of course the British Empire where they used to boast that it was so vast, that the sun never set in their empire.
Why is it inevitable? Simply put – what makes an empire, breaks it. An empire is built on the manipulation, suppression and exploitation of other peoples. It is only a matter of time – it could be decades, even millennia – before the suppressed will no longer put up with those injustices. From that friction, come the sparks that will burn red; the hot passions of resistance.
The Irish road for independence took many forms over eight centuries: diplomacy, politics, boycotts, monster meetings, economic wars, and outright rebellions. The War of Independence was all the more remarkable given the size of the opponent that the Irish had to overcome and lack of resources they had at their disposal. It was a David versus Goliath tussle. We must be careful not to underestimate just how inspiring that victory was for so many countries, who themselves were under the yoke of foreign rule. India is often cited as an example of one such country who took their inspiration from the Irish. Sir Henry Wilson, British general, imperialist and chief tormentor of the Irish rebels during the War of Independence, declared, ‘If we lose Ireland, we lose India’. How prophetic those words were. A prominent Indian nationalist, called V.J. Patel travelled to Ireland four times throughout the 1920s and 1930s, as he was a keen follower of the Irish independence movement. Not only that, he also formed part of an Ireland-Indian independence league who met in Dublin in 1932 and with De Valera. One British diplomat observed that ‘the Congress Party (the main Indian Party during British rule) are largely founding themselves on the methods by which the Irish Free State secured practical independence of Great Britain’. This type of relationship continued with the official visit of another Indian nationalist, Subhas Chandra Bose, who sought to learn from Ireland the methods to break the chains of their imperialist jailers.
However, what is lesser known is the story of Pedro Albizu Campos, another revolutionary influenced by the daring resistance of the Irish. This Puerto Rican fought one of the mightiest empires of all – the United States of America. He met Eamonn De Valera and both influenced each other. Yet there was no fairytale ending for Campos, and Puerto Rico today is as far away from Independence as it ever has been, partly down to systematic years of making it too reliant on the USA, as well as the erosion of its identity and development of economic dependency. It’s part of the imperialistic playbook. Ireland itself was on a similar course to be subsumed as a province of the UK until the formation of the Gaelic League, the GAA and the significant development of the Irish Parliamentary Party, all in and around the 1870s and 1880s. The zenith of British colonial rule had been reached – the Irish language was on its knees. Education of the masses was conducted through English. Cricket (I kid you not), was the most popular sport in Ireland. Local governance was in the hands of the aristocratic unionists, while national politics was firmly ensconced in Westminster, in London.
Today Puerto Rico feels and smells like a piece of America: big cars, ubiquitous American chain stores, the American dollar. Baseball is their number one sport. (brought in by the Americas after occupation in 1898). It has territory status, and thus is not a State. The US district courts operate in English though the primary language spoken by most residents at home is Spanish. The people have been given American citizenship since 1917, yet strangely they can’t vote in the Presidential elections or even be represented in Congress, yet are subject to their laws. Puerto Ricans don’t pay federal income tax, but neither do they benefit from federal funding in key areas such as Medicare or food stamps. The country’s largest party is the pro-American statehood status PNP (Partido Nuevo Progresista) whose candidate for governor won with over 50 per cent of the vote against an alliance party that includes the sovereign seeking, Independent Party PIP (Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño) on about 30 per cent. Is Puerto Rico past its moment in history where independence no longer matters? Or, is it at that point of its journey that Ireland faced in the 1870s/80s from where it sought to break from its Britishness or remain pacified and tamed.
Most Puerto Ricans like the idea of being able to work and travel in the USA and the separatist question is not an issue – depending on who you speak with. A younger generation are beginning to look into their past and connect to their Taino indigenous ancestors, though the language they spoke, sadly has become extinct. They are the generation similar to many people in Ireland who struggle to get on the housing market, made even harder by it becoming a holiday destination for wealthy mainland Americans who can benefit from ‘ACT 60’. This is a tax break on investment income, which is great for investors and people with excess money, but it means young people on local wages cannot compete and are driven out of the market. Now I know Ireland has faced its own housing problem, but without representation in Congress, how can the average Puerto Rican make their voice heard in the American Congress, which after all can overrule any laws made at a local level by the island’s parties? The aforementioned Alliance party [with the PIP] have at least made some groan in getting investors to legally invest more in local employment.
Never has the need to know one’s history been so important, and perhaps the strongest indication of Puerto Rico becoming just another State was brought sharply into focus by a chance meeting I had with an 83-year-old Puerto Rican man. Sometimes it sounds cliché to say can we really know who we are if we don’t know our past? After striking up a convivial conversation, I was hungry to delve into the island’s past. I asked him what he thought of the ‘Ponce Massacre’ of 1937 where sixteen men, one woman and one child, were shot dead, and 200 more wounded, by police acting on the orders of the Military Governor Colonel Winship, who was appointed to the role by president FD Roosevelt. He stared at me as if I had slapped him in the face. “What is the ‘Ponce Massacre’?” He beckoned his family over, and three generations of puzzled eyes wondered how an Irishman might know more than them.
The answer was found in a corner book store, on a narrow street in San Juan, after another conversation with a guide in the local museum. When I asked her why the museum has such little information about Puerto Rico modern history, she asked me if I had read ‘Guerra Contra Todos los Puertorriqueños: Revolución y Terror’? With some luck I found the English translation ‘War Against All Puerto Ricans Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony’. It was here I learned about The Ponce Massacre, Pedro Albizu Campos and Eamonn De Valera, the economic exploitation of the sugar croppers for American companies, the laws that banned Puerto Ricans from speaking Spanish or even possessing a Puerto Rican flag, the mass round-ups, the inhumane incarcerations, the torturing of prisoners and the destruction of any revolutionary fervour. Perhaps the most terrifying thing is that the Americans even buried the history so deep, that the desire for independence has been forgotten by generations. This deserves its own telling and I intend to bring it to life in next month’s issue To do it justice, it needs a deep delve, but I had to paint the context of this most astonishing history. Its author, by the way, is not some underground radical. Nelson A. Denis is a writer, editor, film maker and served as an elected assemblyman for New York in the state legislature. It’s a remarkable story made all the more remarkable that it was the Irish Revolution that inspired Alibizu Campos in his attempt to overthrow an empire.
