How You Can Help Puerto Rico (Frente Amplio Edition)

Volunteer? Donate? Send in canned goods? Tweet in support?

Later in the day of October 1st (Sunday), these blocks of texts were posted by a Facebook user with the handle “Frente Amplio de Puerto Rico.”

Many friends abroad ask me what they can do to help Puerto Rico.

This is what matters the most is to advocate for:

1. a moratorium or an amnesty on Puerto Rico’s national debt

2. the repeal of the Jones Act or a permanent exemption for Puerto Rico

3. the repeal of the PROMESA law and the Fiscal Control Board

Now more than ever, we need the removal of these three colonial fetters. The island is completely destroyed. Only if we are free from these three yokes will we be able to begin reconstruction in a just manner.

Esto es de Mara Pastor y yo suscribo para quienes estamos en USA:
Muchas amigas y amigos en el extranjero me preguntan qué pueden hacer para ayudarnos. Lo más importante: abogar por la moratoria o amnistía de la deuda billonaria que nos quieren cobrar, por la eliminación de las leyes de cabotaje o exencion permanente para Puerto Rico de esas leyes, por la eliminación de la ley Promesa y de la Junta de Control Fiscal. Ahora más que nunca, necesitamos que se eliminen estos tres grilletes coloniales. La isla está completamente destruída. Sólo liberándonos de estos tres yugos comenzaremos a reconstruirnos de manera justa.

What exactly is the relationship of this to the truckers’ group founded by Victor Rodriguez in 2003?

Victor Rodriguez has been the most visible and vocal leader of professional truck drivers in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, appearing in many media interviews to denounce the governor.

Puerto Rico Truck Drivers

Frente Amplio de Camioneros

The Facebook page of the “Frente Amplio de Puerto Rico” mentioned first on this page has this in their About section:

The Frente Amplio de Puerto Rico was founded on February 8, 2012 as a political coalition with the purpose of uniting the parties, groups, political causes leftist, sovereign and independence under a single political movement. We seek the union between leftist / pro-independence parties and groups like MAS, MINH, MST, PPT, MUS, Nationalist, Socialist and Communist Party, OSI, FUPI, UJS, PIP, sovereignty within the PPD, recruit independents & leftists who do not vote, recruit those who vote in mixed fashion, those who have no political affiliation among others.

This is an interview of Victor Rodriguez just last week.

Here is another video, also from last week.

And the most infamously bombastic one… where he threatens to have his truck drivers refuse to transport goods around the island for two years, hurricanes be damned.

This page will be updated as more information becomes available.

Frente Amplio
Logo / Profile Photo of Frente Amplio de Puerto Rico