A letter to the NAACP

Movimiento Ñin Negrón

Apartado 32

Naranjito, Puerto Rico, 00719

Mr. Derrick Johnston

President and CEO

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

4805 Mt. Hope Drive
Baltimore MD 21215

“And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding. Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee -- the cry is always the same: "We want to be free."

 'I've been to the mountain top'., Martin Luther King.

            Greetings from Puerto Rico and from all our members of the Ñin Negrón Movement!

We are a community-based organization committed to advance the decolonization of Puerto Rico and achieving our National Independence. 

            We recognize the historical contributions of the National Association for the Advancement of the People of Color (NAACP) to the cause of justice and the civil rights in the United States of America, confronting the institution of racism.

The NAACP is and has been a pillar of the struggle for transformation and liberation of people of color from the chains of discrimination, racism, institutional violence of all minority communities in general and specifically African Americans. Our Movement respects and honors your organization legacy in defense of the most sacred principles of justice and the elimination of oppression in the USA.

            Considering your historical work against all kind of injustice in the United States, we are dismayed to read that Ricardo Roselló Nevarez will be a keynote speaker at your National Conference next week in Texas.

            This colonial administrator has been a consistent defender of the colonial situation of Puerto Rico. He represents a political group that has promoted the lie of the Puerto Rico has self-government under the “Commonwealth of Puerto Rico” or in Spanish, Estado Libre Asociado (ELA). He wants to project our colonial status as a “domestic” issue of the USA.   This, of course, is not the case.

In 1898, Puerto Rico was invaded militarily by the United States. The USA has held Puerto Rico’s sovereignty for 120 years in violation to International Law.

  Colonialism defined by the United Nations is a Crime against Humanity. It is a violation of the Human Rights of the people under colonialism. Those who enforce colonialism are subject to be judged someday in the International Courts.  The USA government’ actions and decisions have stated clearly that Puerto Rico is a colony and subjected to the plenary powers of the Congress under the Territory Clause of the USA Constitution.

 Colonialism is a system sustained and implemented by exerting political, economic, and social violence against a country. Examples of this are: the force migration out of our nation of half of the Puerto Rican population; the economic blockade exerted by the USA Congress impeding the full economic development of Puerto Rico, a devolvement that will benefit our people; the presence and use of military-police violence against all Puerto Ricans in general and against the defenders of independence of  our nation, reflected in the presence of political prisoners, and the presence of ICE, FBI and others military-police-judicial institutions. 

            Puerto Rico is a Nation, with its own territory, language, culture, and customs. Puerto Rico is distinct and different from the United States and any other country. Puerto Rico’s problems is colonialism, we are not a minority of the United States, we are not a civil rights issue, we are not an internal USA affair, we are not American citizens living in Puerto Rico, we are Puerto Ricans who have been under colonial rule for 120 years now. The solution to our colonial problem will come from us and the International Community under Resolution 1514(XV) of the United Nations which states clearly the path for resolving our colonial condition.

            Letting Roselló speaks at your National conference, lying to your membership, trying to project the Puerto Rico colonial situation as a “civil rights” issue and not as what it really is as colonialism, a Crime against Humanity, is a disservice and disrespect to the honorable history of struggle of the NAACP.  

We respectfully request that Mr. Roselló’s invitation be rescinded, or at least have somebody else get equal time to present the truth about the Puerto Rico’s colonial situation. We make this request in the name of justice and the decolonization of Puerto Rico.

We trust that your decision will echo your long-standing commitment for the truth and justice, and Martin Luther King’s words from his speech, Beyond Vietnam, where he quoted James Russell Lowell: “Once to every man and nation comes a moment do decide, in the strife of truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side; some great cause, God’s new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight, and the choice goes by forever ‘twixt that darkness and that light. Though the cause of evil prospers, yet ‘tis truth alone is strong though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong. Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”

Respectfully submitted and thank you for your attention,

Pedro J. Cruz Ayala

Portavoz Movimiento Ñin Negrón

Naranjito Puerto Rico.