Ojeda's assassination gives fresh impetus to the independence struggle

CAPITALISM creates its own gravediggers, as Karl Marx and Frederich Engels explained in the Communist Manifesto. And the U.S. government, in its latest attack on the Puerto Rican people's struggle to free themselves from U.S. colonial rule, has not only revealed how alive that struggle is, it has given it new impetus.

After the FBI assassinated long-time independence fighter Filiberto Ojeda Ríos on September 23, rage exploded among Puerto Ricans and others everywhere, whether or not they identify themselves as independentistas (pro-independence). Some 300 agents surrounded the 72-year-old's home in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico - supposedly to arrest him for the 1983 robbery of an armored car –, refused his offer to turn himself in to a well-known journalist, shot him and left him to bleed to death.

Thousands demonstrated against this murder, both on the island and in the United States itself, where more than 1 million Puerto Ricans live. Thousands of people attended Ojeda's wake and funeral, and students and others took down the U.S. flag from various points around the island in protest.