Alan Aja testifies on Puerto Rican studies

Thank you.

Muchisimas gracias.

Thank you, colega.

I want to thank Councilmember Aviles for your immense work today as well.

My name is Alan Aja.

I'm the chair and professor in the Department of Puerto Rican and Latinx Studies at Brooklyn College.

This is a department founded over 50 years ago through student activism.

Let's go.

Students who, in their struggle for curricular inclusion at CUNY, connected the anti-colonial struggles of the Puerto Rican people through their practice here.

It is indeed appropriate that this hearing is being held at the Schomburg Center, hence the self-described Afro-Borinqueno abolitionist historian.

There's a really fun fact about Schomburg is that he would sometimes use the pseudonym Guadionex in editorials he published in the New York Times.

Guadionex, of course, is the indigenous or Taino cacique who resisted Spanish colonialism on Quisqueya, now Haiti in the DR.

Clearly, 400 years later, Schomburg was honoring his legacy, writing not just with eyes on Puerto Rican and Cuban independence, but at a time of burgeoning U.S.

Colonialism in the

One of the ironies and the appalling effects of the U.S.

Colonial project in Puerto Rico is that over a century of extraction of Puerto Rican labor, land, and culture is the notion that the country is required to pay back debts?

Where have we heard this before?

We know that Ley 22, La Junta, Project Esencia, to the very luma that Bad Bunny eviscerated through song and protest at the Super Bowl, they aren't new.

They are the present manifestations of an ugly history of imposed U.S.

Policy of leyes and plans and operaciones that exploit workers, extract resources, poison the water, and displace the people.

When La Junta was conceived, the people saw the debt trap that was coming, a boon for bondholders and private equity, while public sector, the hospitals, the schools, electricity experiences austerity, the subvestment of privatization.

Including pensions that are taxed in order to pay back these so-called debts.

In reality, if anyone owes a debt, it's those who set the trap.

The least we can do is pass these resolutions, acting in solidarity with our neighbors that we heard online.

I must highlight the racist audacity of the dual occupation of Cabo Rojo, as has been shared.

A recent study by Camila Rodriguez Tolento questions if it is not esencia, but ausencia.

Or in existence.

The researcher, along with many scientists and activists, are warning us of the impact of the carbon footprint in the era.

We've heard it all today.

Shame on you, J.P.

Morgan Chase.

As we support the bare minimum through these resolutions, we must be in solidarity with our friends in Puerto Rico, we heard in testimonies.

After Hurricane Maria,

Activists and scholars called for a quasi-martial plan, an obligation of the U.S.

To rebuild the infrastructure.

Instead, it got more austerity, more extraction, more exploitation.

It's clear we need something more radical that channels the spirit of Guadionex.

This is a call for massive reparations, island-wide to household level, support for food, energy, and a political and economic sovereignty that is free of the reigns of U.S.

Imperialism.

Palante.

Palante.

Gracias.