God Is Not American

by Vagabond /February 19, 2012 / Originally published on #nothingtobegainedhere

God Is Not American by vagabond ©

god is not american
this is not a test of the emergency broadcast system
this is a real emergency we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this breaking news as a public service announcement for american voters
god is not american
god’s done blessing america she’s gone on to blessing
afghanistan, iraq, iran, haiti, sudan, somalia, syria, north korea, chiapas, bolivia, brazil, pakistan, palestine, puerto rico

she’s gone on to bless those places that need blessing most
your plea and your prayer for god to bless america yet again will fall on deaf ears
god will not bless you until you learn
that the blessings bestowed upon you already
were not yours to keep but yours to pass on

once you learn to share those blessings
the request line for more blessings will be reopened
until then understand that god is not a democrat or a republican
god is not american god is not american say it with me god is not american

god won’t be contained within your borders
she won’t be defined or fractured by your politic
god is an anarchist
she doesn’t belong to you – you belong to her
when your blessings are redistributed to those in need you will know god
until then you will continue to think american and be treated as such

remember god is not a democrat or a republican
god is not on your side god is not american
god is a non-white illegal alien and not welcome here or anywhere else
you have made that abundantly clear in
afghanistan, iraq, iran, haiti, sudan, somalia, syria, north korea, chiapas, bolivia, brazil, pakistan, palestine, puerto rico

god is not american say it with me god is not american
god was not born in america she doesn’t have a valid birth certificate
not the short form or the long form so stop asking for it
long story short she was born as american bombs fell around the hospitals in
afghanistan, iraq, iran, haiti, sudan, somalia, syria, north korea, chiapas, bolivia, brazil, pakistan, palestine, puerto rico
and the doctor the nurse the midwife the mother worked furiously in the dark
taking her from the womb as the back up generators went down

your addiction for blessings will no longer be fed
don’t try and campaign for more of what’s been misused already
this message was paid for by all US held political prisoners past present and future
in an effort to debunk the american mythology that god is an american
the emergency is not over the danger has not passed
in spite of that we return you now to your regularly scheduled programming

- vagabond

Juan Boria

Juan Boria was born in Dorado, Puerto Rico on February 17, 1905. He started his primary education in his hometown, continued in the neighboring town of Toa Baja and completed high school in Santurce, in 1923. He attended the University of Puerto Rico, where he received a Masters in Industrial Arts, Drawing and Carpentry. In 1968, after 37 years of teaching carpentry, drawing and bookbinding, he retired.

In 1938, during a poetry recital, he became very interested in a poem his friend, Pablito Rivera, recited. His love for Afro-Caribbean poetry grew so much that he began to recite poems on a radio station. It was there that poet Fortunato Vizcarrondo heard and offered him his poems to recite. It was during that time that fellow poet Ramón Rivero (known as "Diplo") began to call Boria "El Faraón del Verso Negro" (The Pharaoh of the Black Verse).

In later years, Boria joined forces with Ramón Rivero "Diplo" and Jose Luis Torregrosa. Together,they traveled all over the island performing at various functions; Boria, both as a poet and as an actor. Under the recommendation of Luis Palés Matos, he traveled to Havana, Cuba, where he showcased his talents for two months. He was also sent to the Panama Canal, by the U.S. Government, to entertain the troops there. Soon after, he traveled to the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Spain and various cities in the U.S.

Boria also made television and film debuts, traveled to cultural centers, schools, and public squares in Puerto Rico and participated at the Cultural Olympics, held during the Ninth Pan American Games, in 1979.

Boria received over 200 awards during his career and an Honorary Doctorate, 'honoris causa', from the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón (Sacred Heart University of Puerto Rico).

Juan Boria died May 29, 1995.

La Fortaleza that Luis Built has Blinders

What is there that can't be understood about the Puerto Rico status issue? I believed that even the most educated have their blind sides and the Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis G. Fortuño, has proven that time and time again. As of late, he is quoted as saying,

 Translation: "I want Puerto Rico to eventually be a state but it doesn't bother me if it remains a territory for a while, that, I call statesman on layaway" 



Unfortunately, his statement proves that a colonized mind will remand itself to such low levels to please the colonizer. It's as if he has spent far too much time living in a void between what is real and what is not.

Where was Fortuño when Republican candidate Newt Gingrich made this comment:

 "Spanish is the language of the ghetto."

The same can be asked of him in reference to the recent book removals in Arizona, books boxed and stored away to eventually be forgotten. When the Tennessee Tea Party demands that slavery be removed from textbooks,  does he not question their motives? No different than the complete erasure of Puerto Rican history. Or is it that he just doesn't care?

Recently in Arizona, the Arizona Supreme Court said Alejandrina Cabrera doesn't speak enough English to hold office in an area where the constituents are predominantly Spanish speaking. It is a reminder of anti-Spanish speaking sentiment in America and a reminder that English is the superior language spoken by the master, therefore you should learn it. My take is that a lack of English should not keep anyone from advancing but rather make it the stepping stone to mastering two or more languages.

Allan Wall writes in an article favoring Puerto Rico statehood on the Tea Party VDARE.Com site:

If Puerto Rico becomes a state, it will be a Trojan Horse for the Hispanicization of the United States.......That’s true, and mass Mexican immigration, and the way it is handled is indeed a cultural threat to the United States.

It may seem as small potatoes but what isn't seen or heard also matters. The polls may speak a bit, but in the end, it is foolish to believe in something that has been on layaway for so long. Such is the case when it applies to the American dream in Puerto Rico. There is a complete and total ignorance on the part of Fortuño which prevents him from seeing in between the lines. Point blank and in your face.

Photo from PrimeraHora.com: Encuesta no apoya la estadidad

Instead, the deep chagrin of his political aspirations allows him to say that he would prefer to be a statesmen on layaway. Puerto Rico has been on layaway a lot longer than he thinks. To say such a statement should be more an embarrassment than a thing of pride.The onus is on the Puerto Rican voters on the island to teach him a lesson or two come election time. Maybe Sarah Palin will take him in.

One Mans Terrorist Is Another Mans Revolutionary

by Vagabond /February 1, 2012 / Originally published on #nothingtobegainedhere

-Another Mans Revolutionary by vagabond ©

“One mans terrorist, is another mans revolutionary.”
- Moises Pagan Santos (my grandfather) 


“In our communique number 2 we warned the North American government that to terrorize and kill our people would mean retaliation by us. This was not an empty warning.”
- FALN Communique #3

 “It is not disputed that the Pentagon was a military target, or that a CIA office was situated in the World Trade Center. Following the logic by which U.S. Defense Department spokespersons have consistently sought to justify target selection in places like Baghdad, this placement of an element of the American “command and control infrastructure” in an ostensibly civilian facility converted the Trade Center itself into a “legitimate” target. Again following U.S. military doctrine, as announced in briefing after briefing, those who did not work for the CIA but were nonetheless killed in the attack amounted to no more than “collateral damage”. If the U.S. public is prepared to accept these “standards” when they are routinely applied to other people, they should not be surprised when the same standards are applied to them.”
— Ward Churchill , Statement to Rocky Mountain News

A few days ago the NY Daily News ran an article describing the FALN bombing of Fraunces Tavern in 1975. It was yellow journalism at its best. Anemic on facts but obese on sensationalism. There is no historical context or background explanation on how or why “a tiny group terrorists bent on Puerto Rican independence” would strike at “corporate executives”, just the spectacle of terrorism in service to flimsy jingoism. A self-righteous tone of superiority trumps the facts in an effort to prop up the zombie of patriotic fervor that naturally assumes that the US government and her “corporative executives” have nothing to do with the colonization of Puerto Rico.

And so it falls on me (and others like me) to set this broken record straight. First things first. Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. The FALN – the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional, the Armed Forces of National Liberation were a clandestine armed force that operated in the US in the 1970′s and 1980′s and used any and all means at their disposal to rid Puerto Rico of US colonialism. Oscar Lopez Rivera was a member of the FALN. He was arrested in 1980 and charged with seditious conspiracy to overthrow the US government. He claimed a prisoner of war status and refused to take part in the trial outside of an opening and closing statement. He was found guilt and sentenced to 70 years.

The NY Daily News article places the responsibility of the deaths of the four businessmen on the shoulders of Oscar. However there was no evidence that linked Oscar to the Fraunces Tavern bombing. Oscar was never charged with the Fraunces Tavern bombing. Oscar is not in prison for the Fraunces Tavern bombing. This myth that Oscar had anything to do with the Fraunces Tavern bombing has been continually propagated as a rallying cry against the FALN. The FALN were at war with the US government in the same way that the American Revolutionaries were at war with the British. The targeting of Fraunces Tavern which played a prominent role in the American Revolution is not mere coincidence but a means towards making a bold statement about the origins of this countries colonialism and its battle for independence. Claiming that the Fraunces Tavern bombing is an act of terrorism is not much different from the British viewing the Boston Tea Party as an act of terrorism. But nothing blinds like one who refuses to see.

The FALN claimed responsibility for the bombing of Fraunces Tavern in retaliation to a CIA bombing of a restaurant in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico where two Puerto Rican independence supporters were killed and ten others were maimed including a six-year-old child. No one was ever prosecuted for that Fraunces Tavern bombing action. The irony of all this is that the yellow journalism being used by the NY Daily News is the same yellow journalism used to stoked the fires of the Spanish-American War of 1898. It was that war that led to the colonization of Puerto Rico by the US. Now all these years later it continues to haunt Puerto Ricans in our struggle to achieve independence.

When Oscar is released from prison and comes home to be received like the rightful hero that he is and Puerto Rico is free from US colonialism, there won’t be a newspaper large enough for the US government and the lackeys who supported it to hide their shame…

-FALN COMMUNIQUE #3 January 24, 1975