recent decision to step down from leadership in puerto rico following massive and continued protests over a leaked profane group chat and corruption in his an ministration was met with widespread jubilation throughout the island but where does puerto rico go from here the roots of the discontent go back much further than the recent scandal and puerto rican have a long festering anger at the island's poor governance and commonwealth status many feel they are neither free to govern their own affairs nor granted the respect and dignity of other americans left wing in radical forces on the island have long tried to build unity and a more progressive puerto rico while being split over the nationalist question pro independence groups have prioritized  feminist and environmentalist proposed a broader anti oppression praxis of action centered on social and economic issues the left historically as face intense repression and pushback from both the united states and the island's colonial government as these moves attempted to radically transform power rates once but today a new wave of left this organizing is emerging one free from traditional marxist or nationalist dogmas this new puerto rican left is organizing for economic justice and against colonialism while putting a greater emphasis on collaborating with the u community feminist farmer and environmental justice groups that are bringing vital new energy to the island to better understand where puerto rico might go from here we need to know more about  revolutionary past and we are blessed and so fortunate to have in the radical imagination today a young and dynamic filmmaker who's created a brilliant intimate hour long memorial t apologetic puerto rican revolutionary isabel result of isabel's life in compass puerto rico's historical struggle with colonialism over the last century she passed on in two thousand and fifteen at the age of one hundred and seven beginning at the age of thirty one cheek catapulted into the orbit of the puerto rican nationalist party isabel's over seventy year old to revolutionary have through puerto rico's political landscape sheds light on the hidden history of struggle for independence which continues to affect puerto ricans on and off the island today including the filmmaker herself it's a deeply personal and poignant story of radical love as well as a riveting political drama the filmmaker shares her meeting with this elder who helped to find her own sense of identity as a puerto rican born and raised in new york through isabelle's story and as their friendship evolved she's guided in her own search for meaning in her culture clash memories of growing up in between it fueled her search for belonging revealing the cultural inheritance of being caught in the middle neither from here nor from their meeting isabel changed her life and led to the telling of this beautiful story of her island her home and helped her see in herself what was already there our guest today is currently a graduate student at hunter college in their master of fine arts integrated media arts program where she's studying nonfiction media making she's an activist a film and media maker of puerto rican and ecuadorian heritage from queens new york and a former semiprofessional salsa dancer she's received the award for her work within the puerto rican community and continues organizer work around issues impacting on poor on puerto rico she's co produced numerous educational documentaries for the center for puerto rican studies at hunter that have been broadcast the various new york film festivals and on w i p r puerto rico's p b s television station she's a former fellow of firelight media's producers lab where she was mentored by the iconic filmmaker stanley nelson it doesn't get any better than that for me i'm a dream revolutionary my revolutionary godmother is a beautiful moving film with a universal message a bounding in radical love thank you for making it and welcome melissa montero to the radical imagination thank you for having me thinking this is a terrific film and i'm so glad we have a chance to discuss a little bit now the opening show the opening song that we heard had a very meaning the moon which a lot of people really when it was written by one of isabel's comrades who was in the nationalist party with her is it's really a poem that speaks to i feel like a lot of puerto ricans that live in the diaspora that no matter how far you go from puerto rico or where you where you live or where you're born and raised you're always going to be puerto rican and so i think when we hear that song we we it feels really great because you know that you're not the only one that feels far away from where your heritage is from and so even though he said i was born and raised in puerto rico and lived her life there the the the  lyrics of the song speak to a specific family that she really loves and it was the family of these two former puerto rican political prisoners whom she loved as as  they were obviously younger than her so they were two female puerto rican political prisoners and the story goes that the song is about their father's story of being  agricultural worker and having to leave order to go to the diaspora to provide for his family and so i think those lyrics speak to a lot of people because that's a common story within our families and having to leave and yes my yes no it is it is it is the th yeah because of the economic and agricultural transformations that were going on in the island as a result of political economic policies to industrialize exactly and automate and so on so that this is a magnificent political struggle going on yeah well this is incredibly poignant i just you know no one would ever think that this be a heater in a nursing home was one of the most famous revolutionaries in puerto rico i look at her today and it's hard to imagine that she spent over ten years in prison was a young puerto rican activist born and raised in new york trying to find my place in the world but little did i know that my encounters with the seven would feel my own search for meaning in my memories of growing up in between and what awakened in me a deeper her because i was connected to her through a friend through through two women one of them my mentor one of my mentors today and the other someone that was very close is more on the left he when he was younger as he got older not so much but sometimes it comes out he's he's definitely in general on the left but not i don't think me to her and not just to her just in general i was always pretty we were raised in my family spending a lot of time in puerto rico so we had lived there when i was a child for a few years and then we came back when i was five years old and then from six in on my mom would send myself and my siblings to puerto rico with my grandparents every single summer and we got to spend a lot a lot of time there only special in our formative years and it helped and still this like identity and and we've spent all summer come back and do the same thing year after year and i remember in a way kind of comparing puerto rico to ecuador like i was trying to ask questions and sort of ask my mom but she really didn't have the answers for me because she didn't really know too much of puerto rican history outside of what they tell you in the books and stuff like that so i remember i would ask my grandfather who i know would always on the puerto rican yeah because that's who we would that's the grandparents we were raised with that's the side of the family we're really raised with and in his memory yeah so he would see hit him having certain reactions to certain people on t v right and so i'm like why you know i was always like well why does he react this way for this person or that person and then when i was at i would ask more questions like well why is you know ecuador an independent country in puerto rico a part of the u s like why do they have that relationship wise and i'm in that country and i remember east after my mom i would talk about puerto rico as a separate country and she was a it's not a separate country because part of the united states and what is your grandfather's well when i would ask these questions he can kind of i don't think he understood what i were i was coming from and and he would just one time he told me i don't want to nationalist in my home and i'm like i don't know what do you saw him i'm just trying to ask you know i didn't write what that term was and i think he thought i was trying to get somewhere and i wasn't you know just because yeah yeah i was like in high school and i was asking these questions and i was really into history and i was taking a lot of contemporary history classes and how do you wash your about her in these classes no no i didn't i didn't hear about her so then when i was a college student and i started to meet some people that were activists in college that's when i was connected to my mentor and then she knew that i had an interest in this history you know the political said belong to and their leader and i would just read up on it a lot and she one day mentioned her name to me and she said i think you should meet her use of it she's still alive she's really old and and then when i found out how old she was i was like oh my god i have to go to puerto rico and i have to meet her and i was able to arrange that and i remember i went with with a friend of mine from college we were recently graduated and i didn't even know about doing a film i just and i was just like i want to interview her i want to meet her and i want to interview her because what if she dies next year and we don't have this interview on her and nobody knows who she is even though some you know some people and we also didn't have the internet like that we had it but it wasn't like you didn't find as much information as you find today on it but surely you were looking for the strong i was i was looking for a way sense of of my puerto rican identity and i but i didn't know that so much then until you actually met her yeah and then he was and then that's really i met her at a time where i was getting involved as an activist and i was meeting all of these amazing leaders here in the puerto rican diaspora in new york young people as well i think that's why a lot of people gravitated to her but i think one thing that did impact her life obviously out of the few  events in her life i think her growing up in puerto rico at a time where you had this agricultural life and her living this rural life she was a rural teacher yeah yeah where she and she went to the university as well but i think being in community and having that experience where she remembers her father sharing the land with people that didn't have any name without anything in return was something that really impacted her and made her see community and see puerto rico in a different way not just today had yeah cerebral reading books but you could feel that yeah yeah and so she held those values always and that's and you saw that i believe with her even being a social worker  she was born just a few years after the u s invaded puerto rico and so yes yes america spanish american war and so she was born in one thousand and seven just a few years after so she rebel she she remembers feeling rebellious as a child but i think she had a good foundation because her father also believed in independence and he was part of a political party that was called i think the cyclo of the union party and what was really i find uncommon in that party is that you had there was like a division within the party you had people that wanted to be politically connected to puerto rico and as a part of i mean up connected to the united states a part of the united states and then you had people that wanted to break with isabel she kind of already had this little bit of a foundation of having an education her father believes and her going to school her parents i want to know and so when she went to the university of puerto rico she went she did she did she ever marry you know it was brought up ok no no it's not in this cut it's something we have to fit in but we did speak to her about it which was always kind of a little hard to talk to her about it really she was really always brief about it like she didn't care to talk about that so it was a yeah i mean we did speak about it she just said to us i mean if she had some secrets a whatever question is this you never question the leadership i used to try to get these answers questions and she never wavered never wavered even if she disagreed about something i don't think she would have told me when i was trying to get some some sort or did that come into the c language will i think there are some nationalists that you identify with the marxist i know one and there are several because i feel like after the the nationalist party a lot of people kind of transitions into the puerto rican socialist party and someone is the person that actually wrote the song  slavery in puerto rico and they also at the same time were marching because the leadership of the nationalist party was arrested more yet peaceful march and so you have i think about eight dollars to ten dollars leaders and it includes them but they would be so camp they were arrested and they were in atlanta in federal prison and they did a few years in prison and so what ended up have rested for government and so because by then the u s government and the u s government is on authorities are on to the nationalist party and they know that they're for fighting for independence and they're threatened by it and there was a ready for oppression all over throughout the island and the police force was also heavily militarized and frame by by by the military by the u s military and so that's why you have governor winship who was a colonel and then at that time in puerto rico you had the leadership in the police force were former colonels as well and so it's very very militarized in puerto rico and so the justice system really is on the side of the oppressor not on on the side of puerto rican let's see another clip here ok should some more brilliant well so this is the leader that was so powerful and was met with great resistance yes take us a little further into the island and there's a lot that passes us called the gag law and so the gag law which really   and so actually in fifty one when she needed a job because they took her teaching and her social work her department of education license away she was hired by a catholic priest to teach in a i don't want to see all because i know some that were in the party that are actually more marxists in their beliefs but the nationalist party did have these christian beliefs that people do question as well and if you hear any of the rules speeches you know he does mention in some of his writings he does mention god and and things like that and he was a catholic man and he does speech yeah he does say that but you know some peace sometimes you know people question well they they were catholic or christian or but they believed in armed struggle because the church did play a role in ther church in her town and and the the the priests in her local town loved her so and so and it was a catholic mass so if you have like this relationship with the church yes so what ends up happening is that they have this referendum to vote whether or not you want puerto rico to be a commonwealth right which is called a solidly would associate the if you want to be independent leadership yeah you're ready started to have the leadership of the nationalist party come under fire so then by fifty one puerto rico by fifty two they they become the commonwealth they get removed from the list of colonies in the un so then that's why the attack on congress happens in one thousand nine hundred and fifty four that's really into our pension yes so they're removed from the list of colonies in the un saying that puerto rico is not a colony anymore them and under the leadership of them as a company to call for the independence of puerto rico and to call for of world attention that puerto rico was removed from this list and the puerto rico is really go to prison they were nationally given the death penalty or the electric chair but then they their sentence changed commuted and they were sentenced to twenty five years in prison these are the comrades that you have not everybody's going to know what certain people are going to do or what act is going to have you know young and so she didn't know that that happened she found out i think through the news or hearing and  somebody told you know somebody actually comes up to her and told her like what happened and she's like ok i know that they're going to come looking for me and they're going to come looking for them so i'm going to go to where he's at and some of my other comrades and we're going to go and be there with him and protect him and so she goes to the nationalist party headquarters and old one and five days leader of the authorities come to arrest him well was more some tell him it was more to kill him but they arrest him and they were there defending his life at this point they are already suffering from chemical radiation poison because he when he was arrested so he spent a lot of his public life in federal prison in atlanta right because of the nationalist party and they always wanted to you know keep him in jail while he was in prison in georgia he was given radiation and so when he comes out you see all of his  and he spent the last really few years of his life dying in very very sick in the hospital and so they're they're taking care of him they're putting bags of ice all over him and towels to keep him cool because he's experienced so much radiation and they he was on the bed they put carry him to the ground to protect him and there was a shootout truth out happens and then they all fall on their conscious and then they're arrested and she serves time yes and she serves about twelve years twelve years yes so she's a serious revolutionary a one of the ports we don't have a clip for you but the she speaks to her nephew about this yes the violence is that she says don't take up arms at the same time right she know and they lived so many years under being repressed for their ideals right and knowing that in a way i always say that they foreshadowed what was happening what we see for puerto rico today like they knew puerto rico that the u s would calm and suck everything up and take advantage of puerto rico and that's what they wanted to prevent and that should be because we we have about five minutes yet so much more to talk about but again hurricane and then the debt yes again yes puerto rico is not able to declare bankruptcy right yes and all the ways in which the government the united states government has played around with all of this to control the banking system and last being involved in this community of about almost twenty years i do see a transformation myself which i think is amazing and a new way to call for self determination and sel sovereignty and it's not just calling for independence but it's rebuilding an island from the ground up and trying to rebuild with your own the land and farming and even turning to solar energy and so you have all of these different and innovative ways a lot of different grassroots organizations are forming you have local farms and people are turning more to local produce and so things like that things that that really prepare people you know the national issue is still there but it's yet and will exist yeah and i think people still  general i feel you know it's really an independence movement you just have a different part of it now where i think people would call and say we need to do this we need to do that and now people are would bring her little clips you did so she saw yes and so i just was our whole audience we just come on and we'll play it because it's so beautiful and she goes there's a scene where she goes to hairdresser and yes and she picks up her hair and so she just full of why she is the be so confident and very very strong one thing i took away from her was just like her mental her mental strength she just had a lot of mental strength  positive she didn't like about the future yeah positive about the future she just kept saying like i know puerto rico is going to be independent she says say i'm going to be i'm going to be around to see you  know that stanley nelson is fully supportive of this and so we believe it was a we just as we know yeah i did a show the last weekend we got off the air and said wow we've got to contact you and thank you so very very n