In this episode of The Liberation Day Tapes, Los Bros. Rodriguez, Arturo and Joseph the bass player and drummer of NYC based Hardcore Punk band RICANSTRUCTION and two-thirds of the writing team of the band talk about how the song Shithouse Serenades came about. Shithouse Serenades is a song that takes all the negativity of being one fo the oppressed and inverts it into a righteous revenge. The song was featured on the debut album Liberation Day originally released in 1998 by CBGB Records. i used RICANSTRUCTION’s Liberation Day album as a source of inspiration when writing the script of MACHETERO and the songs found their way into the film. The songs act as a kind of Modern Day Greek Chorus adding another layer of narration to the film. Shithouse Serenades was one of the songs from Liberation Day that was incorporated into MACHETERO. The scene that follows the interview with the Los Bros. Rodriguez is from MACHETERO.
MACHETERO opens in New York City for a one week limited theatrical run.
WED. JUNE 12TH – TUES JUNE 19TH CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ KABAYITO’S THEATER (2ND FLOOR)
107 SUFFOLK STREET
NY NY 10002
(BTWN RIVINGTON & DELANCEY)
TICKETS $10 http://machetero.bpt.me SCREENING TIMES • 1PM • 3PM • 5PM • 7PM • 9PM
F Train to Delancey Street or J , M , or Z Trains to Essex Street.
Walk to Suffolk Street, make a left.
On April 21st of 1965 the great Puerto Rican independence leader Pedro Albizu Campos died of radiation experiments that were done on his body by the US government while he was in prison serving a sentence for fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico. The US has been a colonial power in Puerto Rico since they invaded the island nation in July of 1898. Albizu was the leader of the Nationalist Party and was a staunch, ardent, charismatic and outspoken opponent of US colonialism in Puerto Rico and advocated independence by any and all means necessary, including the use of violence.
To get a better sense of who Albizu was check out the trailer for this documentary that is being made on him called Who Is Albizu Campos?
To give you an idea of how powerful a figure Albizu was let me tell you about the first time my mother heard the voice of Albizu Campos, after half a century. i had been working with RICANSTRUCTION on Liberation Day, their 1st full length album and the first album to be released by CBGB Records. The opening track on Liberation Day is Pedro’s Grave and Pedro’s Grave opens with a sample of Albizu giving a speech. i wanted to play Pedro’s Grave mostly because of the Albizu sample as my mom isn’t into Hardcore Punk. When i pressed play on the CD and she heard the first few seconds of Albizu’s voice she went into a state of shock and told me to turn it off. i asked why and she demanded that i turn it off. i turned it off because something was upsetting her. After a few moments she was able to compose herself and proceeded to tell me that when she was a little girl in Puerto Rico every time Albizu spoke on the radio the threat of a large-scale revolt loomed large. Her father, my grandfather was a follower of Albizu and after almost 50 years of not hearing that voice my mother was transformed into a little girl afraid of the impending revolution that Albizu’s voice might bring. That’s the kind of power and influence and dedication that Albizu had.
My film MACHETERO features several songs from Liberation Day which was a concept album centered around the liberation struggle of Puerto Rico. While writing the script I listened to Liberation Day and found the songs influencing the narrative and the way in which the film could be structured. The songs from Liberation Day became a kind of modern-day Hardcore Punk Rock Greek chorus to the narrative of the film. Imparting important information through the songs into the narrative of the film.
Arturo Rodriguez the bass player and Joseph Rodriguez the drummer and percussionist are two-thirds of the song writing trio for the band with singer Not4Prophet (who also plays the lead character of Pedro Taino in MACHETERO) being the final piece. When we were doing the final mix for MACHETERO Arturo and Joseph came by to talk about the how the songs for Liberation Day came together. In this segment they talk about the song Pedro’s Grave…
Pedro’s Grave is a kind of poetic history lesson that names various Puerto Rican revolutionaries like Hiram Rosado and Elias Beauchamp who assassinated a police chief in Puerto Rico, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo who attempted an assassination on President Truman. Pedro Albizu Campos is mentioned, as well as the famous Puerto Rican freedom fighter Lolita Lebron who along with three others shot up the US House of Congress in 1954 and served 25 years in prison for doing so. The song also lists a few of the towns in Puerto Rico in which their where important uprisings against US colonialism in Puerto Rico. Towns such as Ponce where a group of protesters were massacred in 1937 and Jayuya and Utado where in 1950 there were violent uprisings against US colonial rule. The very famous mountain town of Lares where there was a violent uprising against Spanish colonial rule in 1868 is also named in the song.
Using Pedro’s Grave in MACHETERO allowed me to impart part of that history in a compact and efficient way. The visuals could stay within the context of the film and continue to tell the story as the song with the lyrics placed across the screen gave a historical context to the visuals. Using the lyrics to be subtitled onto the screen allowed people to get an idea that their was a historical context for the violence that follows in the visuals. The various individual elements of the song, the lyrics and the visuals made a more cohesive whole that allowed more information to be passed onto the viewer than any one of those elements separately.
Check out the video interview of Arturo and Joseph Rodriguez talking about how Pedro’s Grave came to be followed by the song’s incorporation into MACHETERO.
MACHETERO opens in New York City for a one week limited theatrical run.
WED. JUNE 12TH – TUES JUNE 19TH CLEMENTE SOTO VELEZ KABAYITO’S THEATER (2ND FLOOR)
107 SUFFOLK STREET
NY NY 10002
(BTWN RIVINGTON & DELANCEY)
TICKETS $10 http://machetero.bpt.me SCREENING TIMES • 1PM • 3PM • 5PM • 7PM • 9PM
F Train to Delancey Street or J , M , or Z Trains to Essex Street.
Walk to Suffolk Street, make a left.
In the years following World War II the colonized nations who had fought and died alongside the imperial Allied powers began seeking independence and Puerto Rico was no exception. The US government was not interested in giving up Puerto Rico but it also didn’t want to be seen as a colonial power in the eyes of the world. In 1947 the US Congress passed a law allowing Puerto Ricans the ability to vote for their own governor. As the US Congress allowed Puerto Ricans the right to vote for their own governor they passed a gag law in 1948 known as Ley de la Mordaza. It made flying or displaying the Puerto Rican flag illegal and barred anyone from speaking, printing, publishing, organizing or advocating for independence. In 1949 Luis Muñoz Marin was elected the first Puerto Rican governor. The leader of the Nationalist Party Don Pedro Albizu Campos saw this governorship as a means of having Puerto Ricans administer US colonial interests.
As governor Luis Muñoz Marin immediately endorsed a proposal known as “Free Associated State” to try to get as much autonomy for the island as possible. “Free Associated State” granted some autonomy over Puerto Rico but nowhere near complete autonomy. Albizu Campos, the Nationalists Party and other independence supporters all agreed that “Free Associated State” simply put a Puerto Rican face on US colonialism. In response to all these developments Albizu Campos and the Nationalists Party began to plan an island wide insurrection. On October 30th of 1950 in the towns of Jayuya, Utuado, Arecibo, Ponce, San Juan, Mayagüez, Naranjito and Peñuelas there was an open armed revolution to rid Puerto Rico of the US imperialism it had suffered under since the Spanish American War of 1898. The revolution failed and Albizu and hundreds of other Nationalists were rounded up and arrested.
In 1952 the US Congress ratified “Free Associated State” status for Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico has existed in this very confusing and very nebulous state since then. While in prison for his role in calling for and leading the revolution of 1950, Albizu began writing a young Puerto Rican Nationalist woman named Lolita Lebron. In that correspondence he asked Lolita to lead an attack on the US Congress. She accepted the mission and along with Raphael Cancel Miranda, Irving Flores and Andrès Figueroa she led an attack on the US Congress on March 1st of 1954. The date was chosen because it was the first day of the Interamerican Conference in Caracas, Venezuela and the attack was meant to draw international attention to Puerto Rico’s plight as a US colony especially to the Latin American nations meeting in Caracas.
Lolita, Rafa, Irving and Andrés got into the visitor’s galley of the Congress as it was in session. Lolita unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and screamed “¡Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre!” – Long Live A Free Puerto Rico! then the group shot into the Congress. Five Congressmen were wounded in the attack and the four Nationalists were captured. When Lolita was asked if it was her intention to kill she replied, “I didn’t come to kill, I came to die.”
Lolita, Rafa, Irving and Andrés all served 25 years in prison for the attack. At that time Lolita Lebron was the longest held female political prisoner in the world, a fact that did not go unnoticed during the Cold War. In 1979 President Jimmy Carter pardoned the Lolita Lebron and the other Nationalists after and a long and lengthy international campaign to free them. Carlos Romero Barceló the then governor of Puerto Rico was opposed to the pardon claiming that it would only encourage further acts of “terrorism” on the Puerto Rican government and US interests on the island. When the Nationalists returned home they were received as national heroes, much to Barceló’s chagrin.
Throughout the history of Puerto Rico’s long and complex colonial relationship with the US government there have been many of these uprisings that, at the time of these actions, seem to receive very little support from Puerto Ricans. Yet the Puerto Rican people have always supported their political prisoners and have had an outstanding track record of garnering global support for them that has brought pressure to bear on the US government to free Puerto Rican political prisoners time and time again. If Puerto Ricans don’t want independence from the US then why do they want independence for the political prisoners and prisoners of war who fight to free Puerto Rico from US colonialism?
There have also historically always been massive outpourings of support for these independence leaders when they die. Many Puerto Ricans agreed with the ideas of the Filiberto Ojeda Rios, the independence leader assassinated by the FBI in 2005, even if they didn’t agree with his decision to use violence as a means of expressing those ideas. Puerto Ricans felt that Filiberto was worthy of their admiration. Filiberto’s funeral procession was the longest in Puerto Rican history. The same could be said for Lolita Lebron. When she passed away in August of 2010 it wasn’t only the so-called minority of Puerto Rican’s who want independence that mourned her passing but the whole Puerto Rico nation that mourned. It was also the Puerto Rican diaspora that mourned as well as the international community that has always supported Puerto Rico’s independence. Many will say that the violent actions taken by Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irving Flores and Andrés Figueroa on March 1st of 1954 can’t advance the cause of Puerto Rican independence but history has proven that this argument doesn’t hold up…
The image of Lolita Lebron above is available as a T-shirt and a 1″ button from my design company RICANSTRUCTED. There are other designs that can be found there of other Puerto Rican independence leaders there as well… You don’t need to believe in Puerto Rican independence to wear a shirt with an independence leader on it like you don’t have to be Argentinian or Cuban to wear a Che T-shirt… Show your support for the independence of Puerto Rico and get yourself a RICANSTRUCTED shirt…
Luis Rosa Perez is a former US held Puerto Rican political prisoner of war. He served almost 20 in US prisons for fighting to free Puerto Rico from the colonial relationship it’s had with the US since 1898. In 1999 a group of Puerto Rican political prisoners and prisoners of war were given clemency by President Clinton. Luis Rosa Perez was among them. Sacrifice Without Hesitation is his story. This is part one of an ongoing weekly documentary web series.
“Never let your schooling interfere with your eduction”
“”I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” – Mark Twain
“I first learned of Manifest Destiny in American History in Junior High School. To me it has always meant that one could set goals, work hard, and achieve their dreams. Having the opportunity to design for the Gap was the realization of one of my dreams. This phrase and they way I used it was in no way meant to be offensive or hurtful, and I apologize to those who might have interpreted it in that manner.” - Mark McNairy designer of the MANIFEST DESTINY T-shirt for the Gap
If you’re looking for evidence of how stupid and racist American imperialism can make you, look no further than the MANIFEST DESTINY T-shirt that was released by the Gap. The designer Mark McNairy thought he was taking a political ideology of imperial empowerment and reclaiming it as a personal improvement slogan. Don’t know what Manifest Destiny is? … Then consider this to be a teachable moment for you… The question is, is it possible for white people to go all through their lives and not know that touting the benefits of Manifest Destiny is not a good thing? It would seem so… But when you analyze it further it sadly doesn’t seem that far-fetched. When i think about on my own schooling i remember how American imperialism was buffed to a shine so that it became easy to gloss over, slavery, women’s suffrage, the labor struggles of the late 19th and early 20th century, and the civil rights era, just to name a few things that come to mind. So the fact that Mark McNairy came out of Junior High School thinking that Manifest Destiny was a positive ideology is not that far off.
However it’s not just Mark McNairy who isn’t aware that Manifest Destiny is an ideology of imperialism with its roots firmly planted in racism, but everyone at the Gap and at GQ Magazine which seems to have had a hand in the collaboration between Mr McNairy and the Gap. It seems that this design got past everyone at the Gap and GQ and made it all the way to being a product that they were selling online. That is of course until an online petition started by AIM Southern California (AIM = American Indian Movement) got together a few thousand signatures and shamed the Gap into removing it from their stores. What’s shocking is that no one, at the Gap or GQ or even Mark McNairy thought even for a moment to do even the slightest research on Manifest Destiny before charging forward with this offensive idea. Or maybe they did and didn’t give a damn anyway? Either way that kind of thinking comes with the territory when it comes to white privilege. In the eyes of whiteness the world is designed (pun intended) and shaped by white people for their benefit. Manifest Destiny as an imperialist ideology rooted in racism that justified the slaughter of millions of indigenous people in the Americas and the Caribbean, is just a sidebar to the new brand of ironic hipster racism.
The implications of this are so wide and so deep that it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where things went wrong… i’d like to throw the idea out there that things went wrong (and continue to go wrong) with the education system in this country. It’s a system that force feeds a warped white washed view of American history in order to indoctrinate the populace into pliability for the ongoing Manifest Destiny in Iraq and Afghanistan and the continued Manifest Destiny of American colonies like Puerto Rico. The problem with this kind of education is that it runs headlong into an opposing view outside of the classroom. In the real world Manifest Destiny is just as bad an ideology as Nazism. That however didn’t stop Mark McNairy from defending his MANIFEST DESTINY T-shirt design with this tweet as his initial response when the uproar began… MANIFEST DESTINY. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. The fittest, get it? The fittest…? As in T-shirt, as in fashion…? There seems to be no end to this ironic brand of hipster racism that comes from white people believing that the election of President Obama is the beginning of post-racism.
This won’t stop here, because American imperialism needs a compliant populace to support its imperialist adventures around the world and the seeds of that compliance are sown in the American education system. The recent naming of the mission to get Osama Bin Laden as Operation Geronimo is another example of the failure (or success, depending on your politics) of an American imperialist education. (Check out my thoughts on that in A Rejection of American Mythology Part I and Part II) The ongoing elevation and hero-worship of Columbus, who was the harbinger of the holocaust of indigenous people in the Caribbean and in the Americas. It’s an ongoing and never-ending assault. The saddest part to all of this, is not that this happened, but that it will happen again and again and again because what can be sown from imperialist seeds planted within the American educational system but the yielding of an imperialist crop…?
A few years ago i started a T-shirt company called RICANSTRUCTED dedicated to the independence of Puerto Rico from US colonial rule. i’ve done a few of my own designs that were created to created discussion and dialogue about some of these issues… If you’re looking for something for an alternative to the Gap’s Manifest Destiny and the rewritten version of America’s imperialist version of history, then look no further…
MANIFEST DESTINY RECORD COMPANY by vagabond for RICANSTRUCTED
To get more info on the Manifest Destiny Record Company check out Record OF Empire…
This was originally posted on 7/4/11 and is reposted here as a Public Service Announcement that American freedom is still American colonialism for others…
I am the third and youngest of three brothers ands sisters born to Inocencio Ojeda and Gloria Rios, all natives of Naguabo, Puerto Rico. My father was a teacher in the public instruction system. My mother administered what was then the rural Post Office which consisted of a room in the house where I was born in Rio Blanco, a small community about five miles from the town of Naguabo.
During the early years of my life, Puerto Rico experienced one of its worst social and economic crises. Unemployment, malnutrition, abandonment of children, and the propagation of highly contagious illnesses were destroying a large portion of our population. My grandparents, on both my mother’s and father’s sides, were farmers. Their land and agricultural properties were lost and businesses ruined when the established system of production changed hands and the North American sugar monopolies took over the Puerto Rican economic structure. These were years in which many thousands of Macheteros (sugar cane cutters) were enslaved by North American absentee companies. These companies controlled all productive agricultural land in Puerto Rico. The wages paid to the Puerto Rican people guaranteed nothing but abject poverty and misery.
These were also years of great struggles for freedom. The names of Don Pedro Albizu Campos, Elias Beauchamp, Hiram Rosado, and such criminal act as the Ponce Massacre, could not possibly escape the attention of Puerto Rican children of the era. During my early years, my father was a Cadet of the Republic, an organization which at that time had as its primary purpose recruiting volunteers for a Puerto Rican Army, sometimes called the Liberation Army.
My early education was influenced by this socio-political context. The English language was forced upon all the Puerto Rican students as the main vehicle of learning. Many teachers in those days expressed resentment of this fact, and their resentment carried an independentista message directly to their students. The preservation of our national language became an important tool against colonialism in the absence of sufficient strength to oppose the fierce repression through other means.
When I was 11, in 1944, my mother emigrated to New York. It was then that I was confronted, for the first time in my life, with all the elements of racism, social discrimination and social oppression that characterized the life of Puerto Rican émigrés and which prevail to this day. I went through my junior high school years in different schools in Manhattan and Brooklyn, returning to Puerto Rico in 1947. This was due mainly to my inadaptability and non-acceptance of a degrading and humiliating system with its highly institutionalized discrimination mechanisms.
During the early fifties, I worked in factories in New York City while I continued musical studies. It was this contact with brother Puerto Ricans in the factories which finally helped me understand the true nature of exploitation, racism and colonialism. I understood what life in the ghettoes meant; the reasons for being denied decent education, health, and housing services and equal work opportunities. In sum, I was able to establish the connection between workers’ exploitation and the predominating economic system, including colonialism. This understanding led me to oppose the forced military recruiting of Puerto Ricans to be utilized by the United States as cannon fodder in their wars of aggression. (I had the misfortune of losing loved family members and receiving others spiritually and emotionally wounded in a war they never understood or condoned.) I refused to be drafted during the Korean War.
In 1957 I joined the Puerto Rican independence movement through active participation in diverse political activities. I formalized, in 1959, my membership in the Movimiento Libertador de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rican Liberation Movement) to which I dedicated my efforts. Through it, I engaged in Puerto Rican historical and political studies.
In 1961, I went to Cuba, taking my family with me. Once there, I joined the Movimiento Pro-Independencia (MPI) [Pro-independence Movement]. In 1964, I entered the University of Havana, and studied political science until 1965. In 1965, I became Sub-Chief of the Permanent Mission of the Movimiento Pro-Independencia in Cuba. In early 1966, I became the Alternate Delegate to the Organization of Solidarity for the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin American (OSPAAL). From 1966 to 1969, I was also a member of the Directorate of the Association of Puerto Rican Residents in Cuba. I was the editor of the Puerto Rican publications that were directed at our community and to other Latin American communities in Cuba.
In 1969, I returned to my country, Puerto Rico, engaging in diverse political activities as part of the Puerto Rican revolutionary movement in our struggle for independence. I physically witnessed the police attack against the central officers of the Movimiento Pro Independencia (MPI). In 1970 I was arrested in Puerto Rico and accused of being an organizer of the Movimiento Independentista Revolucionario en Armas (MIRA) which was involved in armed struggle during those years. I was never convicted of such charges. In 1980, the charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. From 1970 until my arrest, I lived clandestinely in my country. The persecution of independentistas by the federal colonialist forces, the numerous attacks and assassinations executed by the right-wing forces (including police ‘death squads’, and other vigilante groups which were organized or encouraged by the CIA and the FBI) and the repeated threats against my life made by these same elements have not permitted me to assume an open role in the struggle for the independence of my country. This personal experience confirmed the significance of the concept of ‘clandestinity’ which is an unfortunately necessary response to the consistent repression of the nationalist movements in particular and the independentista movements in general.
For more info on the Puerto Rican independence movement… www.september23.org
Sidebar: You can get a T-shirt of Filiberto from RICANSTRUCTED… RICANSTRUCTED is a design company i founded that is dedicated to the independence of Puerto Rico.
“I didn’t come to kill, I came to die.” - Lolita Lebrón
On March 1st of 1954 four Puerto Rican Nationalists, Andrés Figueroa, Irving Flores, Raphael Cancel Miranda and Lolita Lebrón went into the US House of Congress while it was in session with guns and fired on the session to bring international attention to the fact that Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. The attack was led by the woman of the group Lolita Lebrón. The idea for such an assault came from Pedro Albizu Campos the leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party who was in prison for his role in an assassination attempt on President Harry Truman in 1950. Albizu wrote to Lolita from prison and asked her to help organize the attack.
She met Andrés, Irving and Raphael at Grand Central Station where they took a train to Washington DC. They walked calmly into the Ladies Gallery, a viewing area above the congress and Lolita yelled out “¡Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre!” and then the group unleashed a hail of gunfire on the congress. Five congressmen were wounded in the attack. The group was caught arrested, tried and imprisoned to long terms. After a long international campaign for their freedom, they were released by Jimmy Carter in 1979. Until then Lolita was the longest held female political prisoner in the world, serving 25 years.
Her commitment to the independence of Puerto Rico never wavered. Not while she was in prison and not when she was released. She worked tirelessly towards doing whatever she could toward that end. When the FBI assassinated Puerto Rican independence leader Comandante Filiberto Oeda Rios on September 23rd of 2005, it was her voice that was among the loudest in protest. On August 1 of 2010 she passed away a free woman fighting for a land that was not yet and is not yet free…
News reel footage from the March 1st 1954 attack on the House Of Congress
Lolita on the assassination of Comandante Filiberto Ojeda Rios
You can get a T-shirt of Lolita from RICANSTRUCTED a design company that i founded in support of the Puerto Rican independence struggle.
We did a wardrobe fitting for PAWNSHOP DREAM with Alexis “Flea” Fernandez late last night. Flea who is not only my niece but the co-star of PAWNSHOP DREAM. Flea will be playing a younger version of former US Held Puerto Rican political prisoner and prisoner of war Dylcia Pagan. Who served 20 years in US prisons for fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico using any and all means at her disposal…
Dylcia is the inspiration for PAWNSHOP DREAM. She has always claimed her freedom even locked up within the bowels of prison but has never really ever fully owned it. It’s that complicated sentiment that is at the crux of PAWNSHOP DREAM. The film is a surreal comedic allegory about Puerto Rico’s complicated relationship with a freedom, that like Dylcia, it has always claims but has never owned. The colonial relationship Puerto Rico has had with the US since 1898 is a complex one and is a metaphor for Dylcia’s life. It’s also a film about how capitalism colonizes all of us except the very few who benefit from such colonialism.
Flea will play a young version of Dylcia. i decided to go with a Punk Aesthetic for her character since Punk is such a strong and easily recognizable rebellious fashion. And what would fit a rebellious warrior like Dylcia better than Punk? So i turned to my girlfriend of many years Resister who dug into her closet and came up with this outfit. A red Che hoodie with green plaid bondage pants, green boots with thin orange laces, fingerless black star bondage gloves and a long sleeve Lion Of Judah Rasta T-shirt underneath it all… The RICANSTRUCTED baseball hat is a one of a kind sample that i wear all the time and Flea added that little bit of flavor afterward.
i think this outfit says it all… Defiant but fun and vibrant and full of life… Like Dylcia herself…
We are still struggling to make PAWNSHOP DREAM… We have only just reached (as i write now) the %10 mark in our goal to raise $5000 to make the film… Please think about sending in a donation of $25, $10 even $5 to help make this surreal comedy a reality…
