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Workers' Socialist Movement (Puerto Rico)
Encyclopedia
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
: Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores, MST) is a Puerto Rican
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
democratic socialist
Democratic socialism
Democratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements and organizations to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation...
revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
organization, dedicated to the self-organization
Self-organization
Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning...
and self-emancipation
Workers' self-management
Worker self-management is a form of workplace decision-making in which the workers themselves agree on choices instead of an owner or traditional supervisor telling workers what to do, how to do it and where to do it...
of the working-class in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
and international solidarity with the workers struggles world-wide. It is usually known as the "MST", and its youth section is the Unión de Juventudes Socialistas (Union of Socialist Youth), also known as the "UJS-MST" or simply "UJS". The MST supports a socialist and independent Puerto Rico.
Politics
The MST politics are democratic socialist revolutionaryRevolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
, understood from the centrality of class as a motor of history. Rather than describing itself as "Marxist", it prefers the term "Dialectical Materialist
Dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a strand of Marxism synthesizing Hegel's dialectics. The idea was originally invented by Moses Hess and it was later developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels...
", feeling the term "Marxist" to have been narrowed by history to represent a single set of views on socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
and class-based revolutionary struggle.
As a multi-tendency
Multi-tendency
Multi-tendency when used in regards to a political organization, especially a left-wing or anarchist one, means that the organization recognizes or at least tolerates members who are affiliated with or identify with a variety of ideologies within the broad stance of the organization...
organization, with a culture of debate and ideological discussion, there are people within its membership and leadership who visualize themselves as anarchists, Anti-Revisionists, communists, democratic socialists, Maoists, revolutionary socialists
Revolutionary socialism
The term revolutionary socialism refers to Socialist tendencies that advocate the need for fundamental social change through revolution by mass movements of the working class, as a strategy to achieve a socialist society...
, syndicalists, and Trotskyists.
What they do have in common is a commitment to revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
action, and to worker's self-emancipation, which leads to a belief that differences in opinion are a positive feature in a revolutionary organization.
Organization
The MST is a cadre organization, which means that membership is not open to the wider public. This is both a result of a need for dedication and trust building from cadres, and as a way to prevent the state repression that has plagued other organizations in Puerto Rico.This does not mean that the organization is in any way "secret", its members are public, vocal, advocates of the organization's politics.
History
The MST was formed in 1982 by the merger of two important (and previously rival) socialist groups, the maoist Partido Socialista Revolucionario/PSR (Revolutionary Socialist Party) and the Guevarist/Marxist-Leninist Movimiento Socialista Popular (People's Socialist Movement).Later, in 1984, the Liga Internacionalista de los Trabajadores/LIT (Workers' Internationalist League (Puerto Rico)) also dissolved into the MST. Influenced by the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
, especially Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
, the Chinese Revolution and Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
, and a number of similar revolutionary experiences world-wide, the MST began to replace the declining Puerto Rican Socialist Party
Puerto Rican Socialist Party
The Puerto Rican Socialist Party was a Marxist and pro-independence political party in Puerto Rico seeking the end of United States of America control on the Hispanic and Caribbean island...
as the predominant far-left group in Puerto Rico.
In 1990, the MST founded the Socialist Front
Socialist Front
The Socialist Front is a coalition of far-left and pro-independence political organizations in Puerto Rico. The Socialist Front also includes non-partisan activists....
along with the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores Puertorriqueños-Macheteros/PRTP-Macheteros (Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers' Party-Macheteros) and the Taller de Formacion Politica-TFP (Political Education Workshop), an alliance of radical-left groups.
Among its supporters are Rafael Feliciano Hernández twice-elected leader of the Teachers' Federation of Puerto Rico
Teachers' Federation of Puerto Rico
The Teachers' Federation of Puerto Rico is a union of teachers in Puerto Rico. Its primary base is among employees of the Departamento de Educación Pública de Puerto Rico....
, on an openly socialist platform; Victor Rodriguez, student leader and spokesman of the UJS in the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras; Pedro Colon Almenas, former political prisoner.
Current activities
The MST publishes a monthly 8-page newspaper, Bandera Roja, formerly of the MSP, and in continuous publication since 1974. Its webpage first went online in 1996, acquired the domain name "bandera.org" in 1997 and has had the current PHP driven format since 1999.It is currently asserting itself after leaving the Socialist Front
Socialist Front
The Socialist Front is a coalition of far-left and pro-independence political organizations in Puerto Rico. The Socialist Front also includes non-partisan activists....
, as in heavily involved in the struggles against re-structuring programs, including the current fiscal crisis in government.
It is also visible in the struggle to call attention to the untried murder case of MSP founding member and Cuban exile Carlos Muñiz Varela, and the attempts on the part of the government to repress protests against the continued coverup in that case, including the recent homage paid for by the Legislature to suspected intellectual author of Muñiz's murder, Julio Labatud.