Puerto Rico joins protests against Trump's authoritarian policies

San Juan.- Hundreds of people gathered this Saturday in front of the Federal Court of San Juan to denounce the "authoritarian, racist and dictatorial" policies of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, within the framework of a day of protests under the slogan "No King's" ("We don't want kings"), which echoed in several cities in the United States and the world. The demonstration, called by social, union, and human rights organizations, joined the simultaneous mobilizations held in New York, Washington, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, San Diego, San Francisco, and other US cities, as well as in European cities such as Berlin, Paris, and Rome, in rejection of the growing authoritarianism of the Republican president. During the concentration in San Juan, the protesters carried anti-fascist and anti-racist banners, chanting slogans such as "No human being is illegal", "Let the federal go, nobody is illegal here", and "What the people need is anti-racist awareness". The director and founder of the human rights organization Kilómetro 0, Mari Mari Narváez, expressed that Puerto Rico, as a colony of the United States, directly suffers from the "neofascist and violent" policies promoted by the Trump Administration.

“As a colony of the United States, Puerto Rico is tremendously impacted by the death policies that the Donald Trump government is implementing,” Narváez stated.

The activist also criticized the use of Puerto Rican territory as a platform for military operations and immigration persecution policies against Dominicans and Haitians, whom she described as "Caribbean neighbors who have done no harm."

“Our people have fought for decades against the remilitarization of this archipelago and now they are using us again as a platform for aggression,” he added.

For his part, Manuel Rodríguez, spokesperson for the organization Democratic Socialism, explained that although the protests in Puerto Rico are added to those called in the United States, they also respond to demands specific to the Puerto Rican people.

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"We believe that the situation in the United States is very important, but in Puerto Rico we have additional demands. Migrants come to the archipelago to build the country and are an integral part of our society," said Rodriguez, who also denounced the "complicity of the local government" in deportations and detentions of immigrants without criminal records. The social leader emphasized that there is an "extraordinary potential for mobilization" against the remilitarization of the country, recalling that the Puerto Rican people managed to expel the US Navy from Vieques and Culebra in 2003, after years of struggle and massive protests. Among the organizations that participated in the demonstration are the ACLU Puerto Rico, Amnesty International Puerto Rico, Democratic Socialism, the Dominican Committee for Human Rights, the College of Physicians-Surgeons of Puerto Rico, Casa Pueblo, the Broad Front for Social Action and the College of Lawyers of Puerto Rico, among others. The political status of Puerto Rico as a Free Associated State of the United States — in effect since 1952 — grants the territory a limited degree of autonomy, with local government and parliament, but keeps key areas such as defense, borders, and international relations under Washington's control. The protests this Saturday reflect growing social discontent with the colonial situation of the archipelago and federal policies which, according to the protesters, "deepen inequality, racism and repression in the Caribbean and the United States."