In November last year the United States reopened its Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico in preparation for military strikes on Venezuela aimed at regime change and grabbing the country’s oil reserves. Prior to the attack on Venezuela in January this year, a build-up of US military forces was observed on Puerto Rico where it has seven other bases. It was a clear declaration of intent that the US intends to impose and vigorously apply the Monroe Doctrine across the continent, which has been reinforced by Trump’s subsequent actions and statements.

Its strategic military importance is a key reason that the US has continued to hold Puerto Rico in its colonial grasp since 1898, when it took it from Spain. This fact, and the consequent repression of independence and left wing movements on the island, is a central theme of Steve Howell’s forthcoming book, Cold War Puerto Rico – anti-communism in Washington’s Caribbean colony.

Howell explains that his journey to writing the book started with finding a trove of documents belonging to his father, Brandon Howell. These shed light on Brandon’s political and professional life but also gave rise to questions which Howell was motivated to try to find answers to. Why did the FBI devote so much time and attention to gathering information on Brandon even after he moved to the UK, and was his eventual exile to Britain voluntary or forced by the prospect of arrest should he return to the US or Puerto Rico?

Brandon Howell was a US citizen and worked in architecture and town planning at a time when progressive ideas about the importance of people’s lived environment were gaining traction and being put into practice. His professional commitment sat alongside a developing commitment to left wing politics and communism. Through much of the 1940’s Brandon worked as a planner in Puerto Rico, having been invited there by the US Governor of the island. Speaking Spanish, which he had learned when working in Chile, he became immersed in communist politics and his powerful political cartoons seemed to be what attracted the attention of the FBI, who were keen to know who the artist was as they appeared under pseudonyms.

This period of his father’s life becomes Howell’s access point for delving into the history of Puerto Rico. It is a great strength of the book that, starting with one man’s story, it locates that story in the social and political context of the time. As Brandon contributed to the communist, labour movement and independence movements, so his life was shaped by the times and above all by the other participants in those movements. We get fascinating portraits of activists and leaders; of their principled politics, commitment and bravery in the face of persecution by the FBI and the authorities in Puerto Rico, and the toll it took as well.

The book is thoroughly researched, drawing on existing histories, official records, FBI files and meetings with the families of individuals involved in the struggle. The author had a long battle to get the FBI files on his father released, and while some are heavily redacted and others destroyed, the files do give a picture of the depth of their investigations, which went to the top with reports going the Director, J Edgar Hoover. They also record links to the British Security Services, who continued to provide information to the FBI after Brandon moved to Britain.

What makes the book engaging and a lively read is that much of the history and politics is told through people who were involved, including a number of women activists. Prominent are César Andreu Iglesias and Jane Speed. Pen pictures of other young comrades who went on to be leaders also appear. All experienced periods of imprisonment for their activism and beliefs. HUAC humiliated in San Juan, the chapter on the abortive hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) held in Puerto Rico, benefit from the description of the testimony of the witnesses summoned to give evidence and the interventions of their defence lawyers. Not to mention the accounts of the growing demonstrations against the hearings which occurred daily.

A key theme of the book is its exposure of the true colonial nature of US domination of Puerto Rico, which designates the island as a “commonwealth”, an “unincorporated territory” of the United States. The effect of this has been that, although Puerto Rico has a parliament and elections it is, at the end of the day, controlled by the US. It cannot act independently domestically or internationally and its economy is at the service of US interests. This dependency has acted both as a spur to the independence movement, but also, paradoxically, as an impediment with people fearing the consequences of breaking away from the US. Howell picks these arguments apart in the conclusion of the book, demonstrating the economic cost to Puerto Rico of not being able to develop its own economy, including the loss of land to US military bases, and that it could actually be better off freed from the US. He points out that poverty on the island is higher than in even the most impoverished US states. Twice as many Puerto Ricans live in poverty as in even the poorest US states – 39.6% in Puerto Rico, compared with 18.9% in Louisiana and 18.0% in Mississippi.

The ambiguity of Puerto Rico’s status as quasi-autonomous was a deliberate tactic by the US, designed to forestall accusations of colonialism, but the reality has struck home continuously in its history. The myth all but disappeared completely when, in 2015, Puerto Rico was unable to service its debt. Unlike cities within the US faced with a similar predicament, it could not file for bankruptcy; instead the United States imposed a Financial Oversight and Management Board to take major decisions regarding the economy. So much for self-governing status.

Another central theme is the nature of the persecution of the independence movement, the left and, in particular, the communists, coupled with how this was closely linked to similar campaigns of persecution in the US itself. The central reason for the persecution in Puerto Rico was the benefits the US derives from the island’s colonial status, economically and militarily, but it was also fed by anti-communist, anti-New Deal politics and underpinned by racism. The same cast of actors and organisations appear in the island’s history as in the US: the FBI under J Edgar Hoover, the House Un-American Activities Committee and its leading figures.

Legal instruments were used to try to silence opponents of US rule - the “Gag” Act, The Smith Act and the HUAC. Illegal spying and dirty tricks campaigns were also use to spread disinformation and create division and fear, primarily the transplantation of COINTELPRO, run by the FBI, whose illegal activities were only exposed many years later through the work of activists and the US Senate Church Commission. Howell details each phase of repression through the stories of the activists affected.

The history of the independence movement, its high and low points, is also tracked in the book. After the second world war, politicians emerged promoting a line that Puerto Rico could prosper under US domination and faced risks if were to pursue independence. The movement waned, divisions opened up and the Communist Party declined in size. The movement, however, was revitalised by the 1959 revolution on the neighbouring island of Cuba. Among the cartoons created by Brandon Howell and reprinted in the book is one which urges unity of working class organisations. Working together they can push the car out of the mud and onwards on the road to happiness and prosperity (see illustration). As the author says, ‘It’s a metaphor conveying a timeless message.’

All of the above themes hold important lessons for anti-imperialist and working class movements everywhere on the role of the state and imperial power in using all means at their disposal, legal and illegal, through force and propaganda, to suppress opposition and create division, as well as on the need for a determined and principled opposition, prepared to challenge that power and the importance of unity in the movement.

As to what lies ahead for Puerto Rico and the campaign for independence, Howell refers to the views of César Andreu, who, after a lifetime of struggle for independence, ‘… argued that the majority would not think about independence until the “neocolonialism” incorporated into Puerto Rico’s status had been “exhausted.”’ Howell sees some hopeful signs that this is beginning to happen. He points to the success of historic campaigns to assert Puerto Rico’s interests – against the HUAC hearings and the military bases for example. Support for the Popular Democratic Party, which has formed the government of Puerto Rico for many years and effectively opposes independence, has plummeted and in 2024, for the first time, a left candidate for Governor came second with 31% of the vote.

However, the US will not give up easily. Its military occupation of the island, which it has found a renewed use for in launching aggression against Venezuela, will make it more determined to hold on to it. It would be a major victory for anti-imperialism world-wide if Puerto Rico were to reject colonialism and everything that that implies.

Steve Howell is a journalist and writer. He was an adviser to Jeremy Corbyn, author of Game Changer and Collateral Damage, and a contributor to left publications in the US and UK, including The Socialist Correspondent.