La Muñeca by Rosalinda Vargas

La Muñeca

From Not Only Dark Poems by Rosalinda Vargas

 

No juegues después que el sol baja

La muñeca se enoja porque cansada ya esta

La madre explica el cuento de una bruja

Que con muñecas jugaba cuando era una chica

Y al desobedecer de no jugar después que el sol baja

Ahora la bruja es una muñeca sin madre y sin casa

Que mira por las ventanas en la noche buscando

Una niña desobediente que juega después que el sol baja

Si no me crees ve a la ventana y mira hacia el árbol

Allá arriba escondida esperando con ojos verdes

Andale rápido a la cama y ni siquiera mires

A tu muñeca después que el sol baja

No sea que se enoje y se cumple el cuento

Haiku

In a repressed world

Revolution and chaos

Shine bright like the sun

107 years of human experimentation in Puerto Rico

The following is translated from spanish. Original article can be found at pr.indymedia.org
By  Marta Villaizán Montalvo, Saturday, Apr. 02, 2011

When will the U.S. he apologize to the Puerto Ricans?

The international press, on Wednesday, released news that a team of lawyers had filed suit against the United States for medical experiments conducted in Guatemala in which dozens of people were infected with syphilis in the 1940's.


With titles such as "human guinea pigs", "The dark history of medical experimentation" and even "The experiment of the devil", some of the reviews covered the front pages of newspapers from China to Patagonia.

Meanwhile, here in Puerto Rico, two major newspapers on the island spent barely 5 lines copied from the EFE News Agency.


But no one should be surprised.

The lack of interest from the media in Puerto Rico, on the discussion and analysis of the issue of human experimentation, is the result of the good job of disinformation on the use of Puerto Ricans as guinea pigs made by the United States government for over 100 years.

In Puerto Rico, the first experiment was conducted in 1904 (California State Journal of Medicine, November, 1905, p. 341), and the most recent was held TODAY. For 107 years, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans have been used for the most degrading and criminal experiments that anyone can imagine. From studying of our physiological characteristics due to being considered incapable, ("unfit"), through experimentation with radiation, insects, diseases, vaccines, chemical and biological weapons, among others,  we have been, to this day, pharmaceutical industry favorites with a total of 1.158 human experiments cited in the official page of The National Institute of Health, Clinical Trials.gov.


Declassified documents and journals, available on the Internet, document the criminal history of the United States in Puerto Rico. Even so, (although it is absurd), almost 90% of our population "treasures belonging to" the nation that tortures us.

And the denial of that torture, I know for a fact ...

During May 2007, I decided to publish an article investigating the use of 2,000 Puerto Rican soldiers, in World War II, to observe the toxic effects of mustard gas on human skin. (See article in Spanish: El uso de los soldados puertorriqueños en la segunda guerra mundial)

As usual, I sent a copy of the article to a dear friend, a journalist, for a preliminary assessment. Then, in turn, he shared it with a friend, then a senior military official. The response was immediate: Ah, p*# boy, don't publish this information. Plus ..., all these people are already dead.

Needless to say, my friend published the article. "Let's see if gas strips," he told me.

The Guatemalan case, which this week has been circulated around the world, came into the international press in October 2010. At that time and in an act of contrition, Mrs. Hillary Clinton said she was "outraged" by the simple fact that such a project was sponsored by the public health system in the United States.

"The study conducted in Guatemala, to inoculate STD's, clearly lacked ethics," said Clinton. "We deeply regret that this happened and we apologize to all those who were affected by such an abhorrent practice," she concluded.

After 107 years of human experimentation in Puerto Rico, when will the United States apologize to Puerto Ricans?

I leave it on the table.



Marta Villaizán Montalvo,
marta.villaizan@gmail.com
http://pr.indymedia.org/

The Foraker Act...Established the Grip

It was just over a year and half since the U.S. had invaded Puerto Rico in 1898 and the eventual military rule had been installed that on April 2, 1900, then President, William McKinley, signed into law, the Foraker Act. The Foraker Act, sponsored by Joseph Benson Foraker, established a civil government in Puerto Rico. The governor and executive council would be chosen by the President. Of particular interest, all federal laws of the United States were to be in effect on the island.

Quite simply, the Foraker Act did nothing more than establish the grip that the U.S. would maintain on the island for years to come. Forty three years after the Foraker Act was signed, a bill was introduced by U.S. Senator Millard Tydings calling for independence for Puerto Rico. This bill was quickly defeated. Tydings, who had made an earlier introduction of an independence bill in 1936, had been a personal friend of Police Chief Francis Riggs. Riggs had been assassinated early in 1936 in retaliation for the murder of four Nationalist Party members by police. Hence, Tydings introduction of these independence bills were at the time viewed as retaliation.

The 1936 bill included immediate tariffs on products entering the U.S. from the island, lose of all federal assistance and loans and its free access to the U.S. market and a mere 4-year transitory period on the road to independence (if independence was voted upon via a yes or no referendum with independence as the only option). Not long before that, the Philippines had been given a 10 year transitory period to independence. Enough reason to see this as retaliatory, the U.S. could easily wash its hands of the bastard child and leave it crawl out of the economic morass that it had created under colonial rule.

It was quite evident then that, by defeat of the Tydings Bills, the U.S. Congress was disinterested in addressing Puerto Rico’s political status issue, independence or statehood. Hence, a constitution, Luis Muñoz Marin’s* call that Puerto Rico no longer be called a colony and the creation of a commonwealth status. A status which, to this day, is merely a cloak for the colonial dagger that is hidden beneath it.
 
On April 12, 1900, the U.S. Congress passed the Foraker Act.
 
 
*Luis Muñoz Marín, first elected Governor of Puerto Rico.