Revolution, Reprisal, & Repression series
Luisa Capetillo,4 a lectora/journalist/anarchist from Arecibo who read to tobacco workers throughout the Carribean, in the American South and up in New York, wrote:5
“Education is the foundation of happiness among people. Teach under the canopy of truth; slash open the veil of ignorance, by showing the true light of progress, free of rites and dogmas... Ignorance is the cause of the greatest crimes and injustices.”
Revolution, Reprisal, and Repression
A direct line can be drawn from the Cuban tradition of lectors—practiced here and everywhere that tobacco work went—to the modern Puerto Rican independence movement. In Utuado, the tobacco strikes for better wages and working conditions prompted strikes across sugar and coffee workers, truck and taxi drivers, bakers, and workers in textiles and construction. Our mountain town became a hotbed for union and independence organizing.