"Puerto Rico's colonial status is shown through its national anthem, which not only reinforces its subjugation but continues to alienate Puerto Ricans from their own history." - Sofia Martinez Rivera (nyunews.com)

Institutions are openly admitting the whitewashing of history and that colonization, corruption and white supremacy plague our country. Puerto Rico, the only existing U.S. colony, has barely survived the systemic oppression and corruption. In the streets, changes are being demanded while statues of Columbus, confederate slave owners and other violent colonizers are being torn down. While changing visual representation in public spaces is important, the narrative is too. It is time to Decolonize the Puerto Rican National anthem.

This Petition is to readopt "La Borinqueña" back to its original lyrics, written in 1868 by Dolores "Lola" Rodriguez de Tió (Puerto Rican-born poet, who believed in Women's Rights, the abolition of slavery and the independence of Puerto Rico, also was a descendant of Juan Ponce de Leon by maternal lineage). After the invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States in 1898, her lyrics were considered to be "subversive" and as part of the Americanization process (such as law 53 "the gag law" of 1948), the lyrics by Manuel Fernandez Juncos (Spanish-born poet, journalist, humanitarian) were adopted instead. Today Puerto Ricans are forced to ignore their true history and compartmentalize the genocide brought on by Columbus' arrival every time the current anthem is sung.

The current anthem says:

"When to her shores arrived Columbus, he exclaimed filled with admiration, 'Oh, Oh, Oh... This is the beautiful land that I have been seeking, Borinquen is the daughter, the daughter of the sea and the sun.'" Borinquen refers to the original name of the island by its native inhabitants, the indigenous Taíno people, who called it Borikén. The richness of the Taino history is completely ignored except for its title, as is the struggle of independence that was fought by Puerto Rican Nationalists in the early 1900s.

After:

*CoVid19  *police brutality  *domestic homicide  *transphobic murders  *unexplained earthquakes  *the protest for Governor Rosselló's resignation  *Hurricane Maria  *4000+ confirmed deaths  *the Jones Act  *Trump's infamous paper towel throwing  *lack of response from FEMA  *depopulation and mass exodus  *40% schools closing  *hospitals closing  *unreliable power grid  *sex trafficking of minors  *tax loopholes for the 1% and mega-corporations  *gentrification  *continued corruption 

The violence and disregard for human life is systemic and rooted in our history, dating all they way back to Christopher Columbus. To Decolonize the Puerto Rican National Anthem would honor Puerto Rico's resilient history and begin to rectify the narrative that continues to propagate its current oppression. All Black and Indigenous Lives Matter, Puerto Ricans are descendants of both.