The tribunal is dedicated to the commemoration of the first anniversary of the forced disappearance of 43 students from the Rural Teacher´s College of Ayotzinapa. Puerto Rico will be represented by Wilma E. Reverón Collazo, Co-President of Movimiento Independentista Nacional Hostosiano.

The capitalist crisis is relentless, ravaging one region of the world after another. As exemplified by Europe’s “weakest link,” economic and political turmoil in even a small country like Greece can have a knock-on effect throughout the world system. In the Americas, there are many “weak links.” The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is just the latest of the world’s economies to be dragged down by the crisis. Made up of 143 mostly uninhabited islands, cays, atolls, and islets, it is formally an unincorporated territory of the United States, and is linked by countless economic, social, political, and historic ties to the US mainland.

The Hispanic National Bar Association urges President Obama to exercise his constitutional power to commute the 55 year sentence of Puerto Rican activist Oscar López Rivera and grant his immediate release.

Puerto Rico is in a state of emergency. Its public debt, which Governor Garcia Padilla recently declared unpayable, is $73 billion and counting. Unemployment is hovering at a dismal 14 percent and 46 percent of the island's inhabitants are living below the poverty line, a rate higher than that of any state on the mainland.