"The fact that Oscar López Rivera still sits unjustly in a prison cell is proof that the voices of Puerto Ricans simply do not matter to first-class American citizens on the mainland who hold power".

On April 20 the FBI detained Puerto Rican pro-independence activist Orlando González-Claudio. He was driving his car along the Caribbean island nation’s Route 2 when several US government vehicles intercepted him and forced him to stop.

«Ten years after a paralyzing recession and an unpayable debt of US$70 billion, Puerto Rico faces an unprecedented crisis which threatens to bring down the institutional foundations of this Caribbean nation, under United States colonial rule ever since it was ceded by Spain as a result of the Treaty of Paris which ended the Spanish American War in 1898.»

Empire is once again fashionable. The financial crisis that is presently gutting the island of Puerto Rico plays out like the world’s worst case of botched assisted suicide.