[Many thanks to Veerle Poupeye for bringing this item to our attention via Critical.Caribbean.Art.] Mariela Fullana Acosta (El Nuevo Día) writes about Puerto Rican artist Víctor Vázquez, whose latest exhibition “invites us to reflect on our historical memory.” The exhibition “Ciudad sobre ruinas: Memoria y la metafísica de la presencia y el yo” [“City over Ruins: Memory and…
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RUND ABDELFATAH, HOST: Hi, it s Rund. And this week, we wanted to bring you something a little different. It s part of a series called La Brega, and it s a co-production of our friends at WNYC Studios and Futuro Studios.
RAMTIN ARABLOUEI, HOST: La brega is a hard word to translate. In Spanish, it means something like the struggle or the hustle. And the seven episodes look at how la brega has defined so many aspects of life in Puerto Rico, which of course is a distinctly American story.
Remembering another sad day at the U.S. Capitol
THE EDGE
With the storming on the Capitol by a mob that led to the impeachment of President Donald Trump, there has been a lot of references to the fact that this sacred ground of our republic has not been breached by violence since the War of 1812.
That was after the defeat of American troops at the Battle of Bladensburg in Maryland, when British forces marched on Washington. On Aug. 24, 1814, they entered our capital – the first and only foreign power to occupy Washington – and set fire to many government buildings, including the White House and Capitol.
The 1954 Attack On The Capitol And The Woman Who Led It
By Marina Manoukian/Jan. 10, 2021 9:22 pm EDT/Updated: Feb. 15, 2021 4:50 pm EDT
In the middle of the 20th century, one woman became the face of the movement for Puerto Rican self-determination. Her name was Lolita Lebrón, and in an effort to draw the world s attention to Puerto Rico s colonial subjugation by the United States, she and a handful of men opened fire in the U.S. House of Representatives.
After the United States Capitol was stormed by insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021, Amarilis Rodriguez questioned how long the domestic terrorists would serve in prison, considering that Lebrón and her fellow pro-independence activists served 25 years (after being sentenced to even more.) Will the United States legal system punish insurrection as harshly as it punishes anti-colonialism?
8 Atrocities Committed Against Puerto Rico by the US
Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States located in the Caribbean Sea. It is a small island with a population of almost four million citizens. On July 25, 1898, during the Spanish American War, United States invaded Puerto Rico and commenced a long relationship between the two. With this list, I’ll try to underline eight atrocities committed by the United States in Puerto Rico.
8
La Operacion is a documentary that highlights the female sterilization policy. This policy was implanted by the United States as part of FDR’s “Operation Bootstrap” in a move toward industrialization. By 1974 35% of the Puerto Rican women were sterile and this number reached 39% by 1981. The problem with this sterilization policy is that most of the Puerto Rican women were misinformed about the sterilization process and most of the women didn’t know what the consequences would be.