Version imprimableThe enemy in Puerto Rico is not abstract.
It has a name—the organised right—and it has a budget, lobbyists, and representation in the Capitol. It has spent years pushing against LGBTQI+ rights, against gender-inclusive education, and against bodily autonomy.
These people advance when we don’t confront them. Through laws, through their resumes, through media rhetoric, through pressure on every legislator willing to cooperate. Their strategy is long-term, and they have executed it patiently.
Marching in Pride is a way of standing up against that project. In the streets, ready to fight.
This fight is not happening on just one island.
While we march in Puerto Rico, anti-trans laws are advancing in Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and two dozen other states. Hungary has outright banned Pride. Italy is dismantling LGBTQI+ protections that took decades to build. The process is international and coordinated — the same think tanks, the same churches, the same funding networks.
But so is resistance. Every Pride march taking to the streets right now—in San Juan, in Budapest, in Rome, in Tegucigalpa, in Buenos Aires—is part of the same thing. No one is fighting this alone. And no one should have to.
Internationalism is not just decoration for the socialist program. It is survival.
What We Defend.
We don’t have a five-point programme for LGBTQI+ rights. We have commitments. These guide us when deciding where we stand.
* Equality Equality without conditions. There is no “debate” on rights. No one’s body is "politically controversial".
* Dignity Self-determination over one’s own body, one’s own identity, one’s own life. Without permission, without guardianship, without panels of experts deciding who has the right to exist.
* Solidarity Concrete solidarity with trans people, especially with black and migrant trans women, who bear the heaviest burden of violence and receive the least attention.
* Tradition Pride as a political tradition, not a product. The Stonewall uprising was a rebellion against police repression, led by Black and Latina trans women. That’s the line we stand by and for.
What we do not accept.
X We do not accept the politically deactivated Pride that the market wants to sell us. The version where the only demand is to be left alone to consume in peace. Where the bank that finances the displacement of working-class neighbourhoods displays its logo in rainbow colours once a year. It’s not a Pride celebration for brands. It’s a Pride celebration for the people.
X We do not accept performative solidarity. We say it in June because we say it all year round. Pride isn’t our marketing month. If the words don’t point to concrete work, they’re not worth the ink.
X We do not accept that all this has already been won. Every right that seems secure is a right that the right wing is organising to overturn. We saw it with Roe v. Wade. We’re seeing it with anti-trans laws. It’s our turn here too, before it catches us by surprise.
Democracia Socialista: For a free Puerto Rico, ecosocialist, feminist, anti-racist and sovereign
Translated by David Fagan for International Viewpoint from pride.socialista.pr.
