VivirLatino

This month is Puerto Rican Heritage Month ( I bet you are surprised I haven’t mentioned it before). In honor of the struggles and history that make Puerto Ricans who we are today and what drives us pa’lante siempre, ProLibertad, an amazing organization doing important work around the issues of Puerto Rico and her political prisoners is holding the Filiberto Ojeda Rios Film Festival.

The Filiberto Ojeda Rios Film Festival 2008 is an initiative of the ProLibertad Freedom Campaign to showcase films that speak to our experience as a colonized people fighting for independence and self-determination!

We have named the film festival after assassinated Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios because his death raised consciousness throughout the Puerto Rican Diaspora; his murder illustrated the colonial oppression Puerto Rico faces and has radicalized a generation of young activists to continue the fight for independence.

We hope these films will do the same. Join us on our three consecutive Fridays!

Don’t support the Hollywood machine that feeds you nonsense, sex, violence and cheap humor! Learn about yourself, your people, and your struggle!

This Friday’s film is la Operacion, a film I have written about and referenced often. Pero for those who have not been paying attention:

La Operacion/The Operation
This documentary brings to the foreground the problem of widespread
sterilization among Puerto Rican women through the use of personal testimony, newsreels, and government propaganda excerpts. The procedure is so common that more than one-third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age have been sterilized. Begun in the 1930′s as a means of curbing the surplus population, it continues to be reinforced politically and socially in the Puerto Rican communities.

$5 donation/Best offer at each film!

Friday November 21st, 2008 @ 8pm @ The Brecht Forum 451 West Street (that’s the West Side Highway) between Bank & Bethune Streets.

This is not just history. It is directly tied into how women’s cuerpos are used today as projects and not respected, how the language of choice is often manipulated to help some while harm others and devalue our lives and how and when we continue to bring forth new lives or not.