By Owei Lakemfa
To be a citizen of the United States, the universal super power, largest economy, the world policeman and God’s own country, is an opportunity millions across the earth would grab with both hands.
So, to find a man who, as a right, does not want to be an American and has been fighting this for over half a century, would sound strange to many across the world. It would sound stranger still, if such a man spent 16 and half years in US maximum jails for refusing to be an American citizen. It may seem even more bizarre if the US government insists that such a man, in violation of his fundamental human rights, must be its citizen.
All Edwin Cortes wants is to be a citizen of his native Puerto Rico, a small territory of 3,424.5 square metres, and not of the giant US with a huge territory of 3,790,000 square metres. He prefers being one of 3.5 million Puerto Ricans listed as living in that territory, rather than being part of the 340,110,988 Americans. He does not want to be a citizen of a country with nuclear weapons and stealth bombers, he simply wants to live in the natural environment of his native nation; at peace with the waters and the pelicans flying in its caves.
Some of his current campaigns are to stop American businesses building on the mangrove and natural caves that are sanctuaries of the pelicans or, turning the pristine 1,900.3 square metre-waters of Puerto Rico to commercial places.
Cortes, who I first met in August, 2024 when he came out to Nigeria to give the Opening Address at the “Forgotten Peoples: International Conference to Decolonize the World,” is not alone. Millions of Puerto Ricans want a free country. In fact, today, despite 127 years of American occupation, the American Census revealed that 95.4 per-cent of Puerto Rican households still speak Spanish.
On June 29, 1983, American security forces captured Cortes whom they nicknamed “The Rabbit” and three fellow Puerto Ricans: Alejandrina Torres, Alberto Rodriguez and Jose Rodriguez.
The security services claimed that in the safe house they effected the arrests, they found weapons, thousands of rounds of ammunition, 24 pounds of dynamite, 24 blasting caps, disguises and false identification.
The four were charged with involvement in an armed insurrection to overthrow the US government.
To mark the 37th year of that arrest, I had interviews and talks with Cortes. He said they were the third generation of Puerto Ricans to be charged. The first was in 1954 and the next in 1981. According to him: “We took the position that we were Prisoners Of War because we did not recognise the authority of the United States over us.” He said they were combatants of a different country and refused to recognise the US courts and its illegal, colonial, and unlawful authority over Puerto Rico.
After two years, they were each sentenced in October 1985, to 35 years imprisonment.
Cortes, who served his sentence in three different US maximum prisons, said other prisoners generally treated the Purto Rican POWs with respect.
Incarcerated when he was 28, he said the hardest part of being in prison was not being able to be with his family.
He spent his time in prison as a translator for Latin American prisoners, advocate of prisoners civil and human rights, and studying Heating, Cooling, Plumbing, electrical and Solar energy, HVAC.
Cortes had attended the University of Illinois Chicago for five years from 1974. There, he founded the Union for Puerto Rican Students to deepen consciousness about his country’s continuous colonisation, the struggle for freedom and, generally to uplift Latin American students.
The organisation built strong ties with the Eritreans who were combating Ethiopian colonialism, the Palestinians fighting Israeli settler-colonialism, South Africans against Apartheid, and Iranian students struggling to overthrow the Shah of Iran. It equally campaigned against the US war in Vietnam, and worked with the Mexican/Chicano peoples for the reunification of Mexico with cities seized by the US. They also allied with the Black Panther and the New Africa Movement.
Cortes who was part of those who in 1977 established the Movement for National Liberation, MLN, to fight for self-determination and independence, said Puerto Ricans have a long history of resistance against “US aggression.”
He recalled that in 1898, Puerto Ricans, machete in hand, staged an armed resistance against the US. He said in 1950, there were series of insurrections against the US. He recalled that on March 1, 1954, an armed Puerto Rican brigade invaded the US Capitol which houses the American Congress. Five Congressmen were shot in the process. Four liberation fighters, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andre Figueroa Cordero, Irvin Flores Rodriguez and the lady, Lolita Lebron carried out the attack. They were given life sentences. After over 25 years in prison, President Jimmy Carter on September 9, 1979, commuted their sentences.
There was a sustained international campaign for Cortes release which included Reverend Desmond Tutu of South Africa and, former President Jimmy Carter. President Bill Clinton extended clemency to him leading to his release on September 10, 1999. Eleven other Puerto Rican liberation fighters were also released.
The campaign for the release of all Purto Rican POWs continued. On July 26, 2010, Carlos Alberto Torres who in the 1970s was listed for three years on the Ten Most Wanted List, was freed after 30 years in prison. In May 2017, the famous Puerto Rican liberation leader, Oscar Lopez Rivera, walked out of jail after 38 years in prison.
Cortes told me that as at today, his country is neither a state nor allowed independence. In the latest situation, the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation on June 16, 2025 entertained Hearings for the independence of Puerto Rico. Perhaps there is not much to cheer as the US ignores the world body on such matters. Cortes further noted that these Hearings on the fundamental human right of Puerto Ricans to self-determination have been dragging on since 1972.
The liberation fighter said the US has deliberately ran Puerto Rico aground with 40 per cent of its population living below the poverty line, and then, imposed a $72 billion debt on it. “This is their way of trying to continue colonialism,” he said.
He noted that over 55,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and, with the greater rise of fascism, the world is at a dangerous stage where a Third World War can break out. The urgent tasks he sees include an end to the genocide in Gaza and freedom for all colonised peoples, including those in Western Sahara.
As for Puerto Rico, Cortes says: “We believe that, eventually, we are going to be a free and independent nation.”
