A few days ago, Puerto Rico commemorated 155 years of the Grito de Lares, the uprising of 1868 by Puerto Ricans in defense of their right to self-determination and decolonization.
On September 23 of that year, rebels assembled in the mountain town of Lares to declare via a grito (literally, “shout”) their opposition to nearly 400 years of the Spanish colonial regime. Though the insurrection was rapidly quashed by Spanish forces, the Grito de Lares was the first organized uprising against Spain’s absolute rule in Puerto Rico and it represents the birth of the Puerto Rican decolonization and self-determination movement that echoes through to this day.
“Lo mismo da ser colonia española que colonia yanqui.”
“It makes no difference to be a Spanish colony than to be a yankee [United States] colony” -Ramón Emeterio Betances
In 1898, the anti-colonialist…
Read the full article originally published at blog.ucsusa.org.