On the Uses of a Machete
Assessing Puerto Rico's Past, Present, and Future on the anniversary of El Grito de Lares...
The machete, apart from being Danny Trejo’s deadly alter ego, is a fascinating object with its own complex history. As we remember the 154th anniversary of El Grito de Lares (an 1868 slave uprising in Puerto Rico against Spanish colonial rule), I want to consider the long march of the machete, its multifarious function, and what it means in the grand scope of Puerto Rican history (past, present, and future). As John Cline notes in his Atlantic essay, “The machete bears an unusual character. It’s possible to conceive of it as a weapon, yes, but it’s also very much a tool—not altogether different from, say, a shovel.” The machete is among a unique subset of blades that has served the dual purpose of agrarian tool and close-quarters weapon. Perhaps the only other comparable implement is the sickle. The sickle, like the machete, has historically served dual purpose, becoming emblematic of popular (proletariat/revolutionary) movements. The sickle remains a potent symbol in post-colonial African, Arabic, Communist, Soviet, and Post-Soviet ideologies. The machete too holds symbolic weight in a hemisphere governed by the Monroe Doctrine and the 19th century ascent of American imperial power. Over the past three centuries, the machete has become an icon of this “new world” shaped by colonial expansion, indigenous genocide, the triangle slave trade (Maafa), and globalization. In that time, it has evolved into three unique primary functions.
El pasado • 1845-1898 • Spanish Rule & the Machete as Agrarian Tool
Puerto Rico had been a possession of Spain for 375 years before El Grito (a battle cry or declaration) was launched in the Lares municipality of Puerto Rico on September 23, 1868. Earlier that year, a handful of Puerto Ricans sick of the Spanish plantation system and ready to abolish slavery had banded together (while in exile) to form the Comité Revolucionario de Puerto Rico (Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico). This group included radicals like Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances (a doctor, well before Che Guevara), Segundo Ruiz Belvis, Francisco Ramírez Medina, Juan Ríus Rivera, and a number of other notable historical figures intent on decolonizing from Spain. This was a relatively well-planned effort between ambitious leaders from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba to establish sovereignty for each of the respective nations and build strong political and economic ties. Their efforts, while diplomatic in theory and ideology, would also manifest in armed struggle against a monarchy unwilling to abandon its property. El Grito de Lares was one such eruption of planned dissent to weaken the crown’s military and economic hold on Puerto Rico. Several hundred slaves and poor farmers gathered outside of Lares on a hacienda owned by revolutionary leader Manuel Rojas. From there, they set off to capture Lares, eventually holding the town hall and declaring a new republic. Unfortunately the uprising was soon after quashed by Spanish military and all prisoners, with the exception of a few notable leaders exiled, were sentenced to execution (though they’d be pardoned by Spanish Governor José Laureano Sanz before any such execution could happen).
Despite El Grito’s thwarting, efforts for liberation from Spain would persist and make considerable progress. But approaching the latter turn of the 19th century, just when it seemed that Spain’s hold over Puerto Rico was weakening, came the Spanish-American War (1898). After a war that lasted only four days (with Puerto Ricans on the island fighting for several days after the war was declared over) the island was signed over to the United States. A new colonial power would soon dominate the island.
Before the arrival of the U.S., the Collins Company (of Collinsville, Connecticut) began marketing its Machete. Such blades had already existed, though they wouldn’t be marketed as Machetes until 1845. This particular blade would become so synonymous with the brand that it was sometimes referred to in Spanish as un collins. The machete in Puerto Rico was used primarily by slaves and jíbaro farmers employed by haciendados (plantation owners) and Puerto Rico’s greatest export, at the time, was sugar (from sugar cane). So earliest use of the “machete” on the island was for cutting through the canebrake during la zafra, or, the harvest. And it was the slaves and poor farmers that would be using them to eke out their meager subsistence.
It’s possible that the architects of El Grito were not particularly concerned with the plight of slaves or poor farmers when they decided to launch their various campaigns for independence from Spain (though primary sources indicate abolition was a major sticking point for many). Make no mistake, most of the recorded men and women who’d form the Revolutionary Committee were aristocrats in the territories who felt acutely the sting of their colonial condition—not men and women contractually obligated to sleep beside the machetes they’d use to chop sugar cane. I imagine what they wanted wasn’t quite the end of slavery so much as it was the right to determine their own financial and political future. This would’ve meant sustaining the hacienda system for, at least, a little while longer—as this would’ve been the island nation’s only hope of a sustainable economic model. As we witnessed with England’s North American colonies, it wasn’t enough to simply gain freedom. Slavery would remain a fundamental, money-making endeavor for the nascent union and each of its members. So this coordinated effort to liberate the islands from Spanish rule in the latter half of the 19th century wasn’t exactly a proletarian effort (and perhaps why it was doomed to fail in the ways that it did). This was not a war fought to end an unjust, proto-capitalistic system by the exploited masses. I suspect this was rather a war initiated by the intelligentsia to control the terms (and profits) of that system and the political machine (of a free state) that might govern/enforce it—they were fighting for the right to participate in a global economy and we’ll see evidence of that struggle persisting well into the 20th and 21st century.
El presente • 1898 - 2006 • American Rule & the Machete as Weapon
After the political awakening of the 19th century, the machete went from agrarian tool to militaristic weapon. In the transition of colonial power from Spain to U.S., the hacienda system would more or less be preserved until its crippling under American cabotage policy and industrialization in the mid 20th century. So the machete was still the implement of choice for jíbaro farmers, even after the abolition of slavery in 1873. But now it wasn’t exclusively a tool for the livelihood of the poor, it would be used in defense of their dignity (when either livelihood or dignity were in question).
“The simple object is imbued with enormous symbolic political power, because its practical value can never be isolated from its violent potential.” —John Cline
Puerto Rico, in the American century, has been witness to an overseer as brutal as the Spanish crown and in many ways worse. The island’s annexation by the United States (which would eventually establish the island as an unincorporated territory and grant all of its inhabitants secondary American citizenship by 1917) gave rise to two (then three) distinct schools of thought regarding Puerto Rican governance. These schools of thought manifested variously in this period through political parties that were/are in favor of Statehood, Independence, or preserving the status quo (after the establishment of “commonwealth status” in the 50s).
More curious than a colony, which we understand primarily as a vehicle of resource extraction for the colonizer, the status of unincorporated territory relies on political ambiguity to mask the intentions of its governing body. In this case, the three branches of the U.S. Government make the decisions for Puerto Rico without allowing Puerto Ricans themselves to vote on contested topics of national import. This is, in essence, a case of taxation without representation. While Puerto Ricans are not expected to pay income tax, they are in every other aspect taxed two or three times as heavily for items they are ONLY allowed to import from the United States or 3rd party contractors appointed by the United States (this includes medication and energy). Puerto Rico is not allowed to trade equitably with other nations and must rely only on absurdly tariffed imports from the States while exporting labor and goods to the U.S. for a song. Puerto Ricans are expected to serve in the U.S. Military and have been drafted to serve throughout the 20th century. The country is also unable to declare bankruptcy or mine its own coast for resources and/or commodities (oil, fish, etc). And the older I get, the more convinced I have become that the U.S. Government’s total control of the island has also come by way of vested psy-ops campaigns against vocal dissidents in the diaspora. We have witnessed the deliberate spread of mis-information that intends to preserve, for as long as possible, Puerto Rico’s current condition and the interests of those profiting from it. But we’ll return to this in our investigation of Puerto Rico’s future. For now, let’s consider how Puerto Rico’s interests in the 20th and 21st century have been fractured along three party lines.
Of course, from the start of American colonial rule, there were vocal supporters—most of these were white male timocrats who assumed their situation would be more favorable under American governance. Then there were those who’d remain true to the cause established by the Revolutionary Committee and its aspirations for a sovereign nation. Early advocates for Puerto Rican independence included Eugenio María de Hostos and Rosendo Matienzo Cintrón. De Hostos remains a national icon. Less discussed, especially in the diaspora, is Cintrón, who started out in favor of “Americanization” and gradually amended his position. One of his most widely anthologized pieces of political critique, La Guachafita Fá, was written later in his life and explored the notion of American citizenship for Puerto Ricans as a “third citizenship” worse even than the second class status of emancipated slaves. Cintrón’s 1911 critique (which I’d translate as The Okey Doke) is unsparing in its language.
El negro de los Estados Unidos tiene allá su problema, en el que nosotros no podemos entrar por el momento sino en una línea general humana. Pero el negro, sea por sus culpas o por las ajenas, no es tal ciudadano de los Estados Unidos. Es un perro, un buey, privilegiado en cuanto se le permite tener propiedad, pero es un ciudadano cosa o es una cosa ciudadano, no es un ciudadano.
Si los blancos quieren los negros votan, si no no votan; si los blancos quieren viven, si no mueren ahorcados o apedreados o fusilados como un perro o un lobo rabioso.
Habrá, pues, si se llegase a dar una tercera ciudadanía, tan envilecedora para los americanos como para los puertorriqueños, una ciudadanía dada por conveniencia, por negocio, por cálculo, por business.
He likens the political status of the newly minted AmeRícan to that of the American “black” who does not enjoy the full citizenship status of white Americans. They are, in Cintrón’s words, treated as privileged dogs, who are allowed to own land, vote, or exist, only if whites permit—as objects subject to the whims of citizenship, never proper citizens. So it shall be, Cintrón reasons, for Puerto Ricans under American rule—an arrangement made for the convenience and benefit of the American government and its white citizens at the expense of Puerto Rico and its creolized denizens.
Another notable voice for Puerto Rican independence in the 20th century was that of Don Pedro Albizu Campos, who’d served in the all-black 375th infantry regiment of the U.S. Army (honorably discharged in 1919), graduated from Harvard with a J.D. (despite timely deferral of the degree from his professors), and would become a major proponent of Puerto Rican Nationalist discourse. The Nationalist party, in favor of independence from the U.S., took a very active stance against American oppression. By the thirties, protests against American efforts to naturalize Puerto Ricans (by enforcing English only education, banning the flag, enforcing unfair labor laws, coerced sterilization of women, emasculating men) had taken to the streets and Campos was instrumental in organizing many of these. Things really reached a boiling point in the 50s. The Nationalists had pushed to a tipping point similar in strength and scope to that of the Revolutionary Committee in the late 19th century. Not only had Campos galvanized sentiments on the island, but radical figures like Oscar Collazo, Grisello Torresola, and Lolita Lebrón had taken the fight to the capital, attempting an assassination of President Harry S. Truman (Collazo and Torresola) and opening fire on the Capitol Building (Lebrón, Miranda, Cordero, Flores). But two things dashed the hopes of the nationalists—a concerted military effort by the U.S. Government to detain and destroy all seeds of dissent by labeling Puerto Rican nationalists as terrorists and the rise of Commonwealth Status. Campos would be arrested by the FBI and was tortured with radiation experiments while detained, injuries from which he’d never recover. Lolita Lebrón was also detained for 25 years and released in 1979. She’d spend the rest of her life advocating for Puerto Rican independence. But by the time of her release, Puerto Rico’s “prosperous” conversion to a Commonwealth had already succeeded. It’s major proponent was Luis Muñoz Marín, the “first elected governor of Puerto Rico”.
Muñoz Marín and his officials agreed to adopt a "Free Associated State" structure...In Spanish the proposal's name remained unchanged [estado libra asociado], but in English, it was commonly referred to as a "Commonwealth", to avoid confusion with full statehood. The main goal of the proposal was to provide more autonomy to the island, including executive functions similar to those in states, and to pass a constitution.[56] -Wikipedia
By the fifties the Nationalist cause had been quashed by joint efforts from the U.S. Government and newly appointed Puerto Rican Government (with the proclamation of La ley de la mordaza or a gag law limiting speech against either government). Agriculture would soon be replaced by industrial/factory-work and many poor folk would find themselves part of their own Great Migration to New York City (as my grandparents had), a move that would forever change the city’s cultural heritage. Marín, to his credit, sought a diplomatic solution to the U.S. Government’s plenary power over the island. Unfortunately, in retrospect, his efforts, which yielded positive short-term economic benefits for the island, would turn out to be more like a deal with the devil. Along with Teodoro Moscoso, Marín would institute many of the policies referred to as Operation Bootstrap (Manos a la obra). For example, the Industrial Incentives Act (1947) “…granted private firms a ten-year exemption from insular income and property taxes, excise taxes on machinery and raw materials, municipal taxes, and industrial licenses.” This, in tandem with low labor wages and low cost-of-living, was a lucrative deal for American corporations. The incentive was indeed good enough to attract big business to the island and increase industrialization. This influx of American money provided what looked like a long-term solution to poverty on the island—but it would serve to tie Puerto Rico’s economy to American interest and further cripple Puerto Rico’s capacity to generate its own domestic products.
By the 1970s, that bullish economy and progressive idealism began to stagnate. Then Governor Rafael Hernández Colón appointed economist James Tobin in 1974 to assess the nations financial situation. The Tobin report “…admitted that ‘dependence’ was an appropriate description of the Puerto Rican economy: half of the ‘tangible reproducible assets’ located in Puerto Rico were ‘externally owned.’” (PR in the American Century, 268). Rather than commit to the difficult task of investing in Puerto Rico’s future, Colón insisted on maintaining the benefits of “the commonwealth” by further inviting American corporate interest. The Colón administration lobbied congress to amend Internal Revenue Code 931, which, like the Industrial Incentives Act before it, was meant to attract and maintain American business with the promise of little to no governmental interference. You can use our poor labor and we won’t bother you, as long as you bring your yankee dollar. Internal Revenue Code 931 was amended to become Code 936 (which allowed for the transfer of funds to the island, tax free) and was fully adopted by the island government as the Tax Reform Act of 1976. As it had in past iterations, the policy yielded a high short-term return in American corporate investment, the highest in Latin America at the time, approximately worth $10.8 billion. Much of this investment (from companies like Pepsi Co.) was inspired not because of Puerto Rico’s favorable climate and warm people, or a willingness to build sustainable infrastructure, but to avoid having to pay federal taxes. Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. This policy was to be phased out between 1996-2006. And indeed, by 2006, Puerto Rico was in the throes of another terrible financial recession and the mainland U.S. economy would follow with the collapse of its housing market. Greed is right. With its own economy in shambles and no money coming in from its only economic lifeline, it’s the Puerto Rican people who’d realize, all too late, that the government had been playing with borrowed money. Greed works.
But what about the machete?
The rapid ascent of mid-century industrialism and its even quicker disappearance had rendered the machete nearly useless. The island has no sustainable agricultural sector (so there’s no need for jíbaros and farm hands) and, with few exceptions, the idea of armed struggle provides little to no hope of salvation. Nevertheless, the machete endures. Not as a tool per se, but as a symbol.
El futuro • 2006 - present • Debt Rule & the Machete as Symbol
Now in the 21st century, it’s become clear to all that the unusual prosperity enjoyed by the Caribbean island in the 20th century was the result of juiced balls. Pardon my mixing metaphors, but it has only gotten worse for Puerto Rico after realization that those juiced balls have shriveled with age. A 2016 report from Hedge Clippers traced Puerto Rico’s debt back to underwriters in Santander Bank and other corporate players. Unconstitutional capital appreciation bonds were taken out by the government to pay off other outstanding interest and debts, accruing interest on interest, debt on debt. The painful irony of course is that the architects of this financial crisis (Carlos “Kako” Garcia and José Ramon Gonzalez), appointed at the time by Governor Luis Fortuño, were former Santander Bank executives.
What in essence has happened to Puerto Rico is a leveraged buyout. The island’s debt was pumped up and sold to the highest bidders. What Gordon Gekko and the other mad geniuses of Wall Street realized in the eighties is that debt is more lucrative in the short term than solvency (with interest payments on debt sometimes protecting corporations from income tax liability). Puerto Rico (and its tremendous debt) is now owned by hedge funds and banks with a vested interest in capitalizing on its death spiral. It’s not the intelligentsia, the well-educated, and well-to-do who’ve managed to hoard their privilege behind the walls of private institutions on the island. It’s the people who suffer, the working class who’ve had their pensions, retirement funds, and public infrastructure sold off. It’s the people who suffer, unable to buy or maintain land on their own island, unable to meet basic needs, or have reliable energy or water. Everything we take for granted as readily available first-world amenities are not at all promised for Puerto Ricans and more often than not entirely absent.
Puerto Rico’s overseers have implemented a plan to pay off the debt (the majority of this $70b owned by Santander Bank) by killing all of the island’s inhabitants with unreasonable austerity measures and prohibitions. Things like DIY solar panels are subject to a “solar tax” for not abiding by the enforced use of the state’s energy (provided poorly by LUMA). And with climate change threatening an increase in catastrophic “Acts of God”, the island and its people are hardly prepared to deal with the long-term devastation of such natural disasters.
I suppose the government’s plan to resolve the debt makes sense. If the problem is how best to repair a broken system and restore economic and political balance, the easiest way to solve that problem is by suffocating it in its sleep. Voila. No more problem.
“Austerity has raped us.”
—from “Chôra” by Adrianne Kalfopoulou
(Ruin: Essays in Exilic Living)
Even so, for what it’s worth, the dream of an independent Puerto Rico did not die with the Nationalist cause. What may have started with the Revolutionary Committee found voice again in the militant position held by Los Macheteros or El Ejército Popular Boricua (Boricua Popular Army). Founded in 1976 during the first of Puerto Rico’s significant economic downturns, Los Macheteros were so named for the icon that would represent their proletarian aim for equity and liberation.
Founded by Filiberto Ojeda Rios, Juan Enrique Segarra-Palmer, and Orlando González Claudio, the platform endeavored to make clear that Puerto Rico’s future rested squarely on its freedom from oppressive and extractive colonial entities. The Machete was adopted as a sign of their willingness to defend the island (through armed struggle if need be), and the red star at center a sign of their ideological alignment with the masses and their belief in forms of democratic socialism, marxist economic reconfiguration. Or, as Ojeda Rios would describe it, humanist globalism.
“We believe that there can be no just and egalitarian globalization without the equal participation of underdeveloped nations and the poor. The globalization of the capitalists is the globalization of slavery. Humanist globalization, in contrast, is the globalization of justice, material equality, and rights for all of humanity. For globalization to be fair for all Puerto Ricans, independence is vital; otherwise, we will not only end up as slaves but also disappear as a nation.” (translated by Alicia Del Campo)
It’s no accident that the Lamb of God adorns Puerto Rico’s coat of arms. No greater symbol of sacrifice and passivity has existed since the crucifixion of Christ and remains painfully emblematic of the expectation that Puerto Rico comport itself as a “well-behaved” colony for the crown. As a good Christian nation, Puerto Rico has historically played by rules set by their oppressive masters.
Los Macheteros, on the other hand, as a paramilitary force have been notably violent in their demonstrations. Of course the question then is whether or not the violence might be considered justifiable and in whose eyes. To what end has the group been violent and against whom? Los Macheteros, deemed terrorists by the U.S. Government, counter that argument by reminding that their actions have not resulted in civilian casualties and that their goal is not to inspire fear and resentment by attempting to cripple infrastructure that average citizens rely on. They are rather invested in the liberation of their own land and people by ousting strategically placed agents of hegemonic power (American military bases in Vieques and Culebra, for example). And like the Revolutionary Committee, Los Macheteros are not anarchists, but individuals looking to control the terms of their economic and political reality.
The symbol of the machete has thus come full circle. For Los Macheteros it signifies their kinship and closeness to those on the ground, those expected to toil in the fields for the benefit of those in power. It also represents their willingness to fight for the masses, a fight that is ongoing.
On September 23rd, 2005, Filiberto Ojeda Rios, the most recognizable figure in the organization, was gunned down by FBI agents while in his house outside of Hormigueros, Puerto Rico. The Hostage Rescue Team surrounded the house and opened fire. His body was recovered the next day and autopsy reports suggest he died of blood loss from a gunshot wound that punctured a lung. He was 72.
Regardless of the current governor and the country’s sham politicians, Puerto Rico is now governed by a financial oversight board, signed into law by 44th President Barack Obama. The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) has ceded control of Puerto Rico and its governance to a board of executives almost exclusively interested in protecting the investments of those outside entities that have underwritten the debt. After the category 4 gusts of hurricane María and, more recently, Fiona, the carpet hiding all this graft was permanently blown away. Relief supplies after María from neighboring countries were not immediately allowed into Puerto Rico because the U.S. controls what goes in and what goes out. The truth of Puerto Rico’s corrupt puppet government (appointed by the U.S.), deliberate mismanagement of its finances (to benefit the few), and the austerity measures placed on the island (governmental borrowing not to exceed more than 1.1 billion in the fiscal year, for example) cannot be hidden any longer. Not only have these conditions crippled the island, but they have severely impacted the possibility that it will ever recover as anything remotely resembling the Puerto Rico I and my family have origins in.
Today, Act 22 of 2012, also known as the Individual Investors act, makes tax exemption for bona-fide residents of the island who’d not moved or resided there in the six year period prior to its enactment. This was to encourage wealthy transplants, an open invitation to cryptocolonizers and mooks like Logan Paul. Act 73 of 2008 was a further effort to stimulate business after the end of 936, providing tax exemptions and credits for businesses that might encourage production of goods in Puerto Rico. The machinations of imperial power and financial greed are ever present and at work privatizing the public sector while most are grieving, struggling, fighting, planning.
The debt, which is illegal, must be canceled, and Puerto Rico needs an opportunity to build its own future—this means controlling its own borders, allowing for diplomatic relations with neighboring hispanophone and anglophone Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well as economic superpowers like the U.S., China, Brasil, and India. More importantly, Puerto Rico must be allowed to invest in itself, build its private sector to begin repairing what neo-liberal policy has deliberately destroyed. Given the opportunity, Puerto Rico can thrive in a 21st century global economy. There’s still time. It’s still possible.