Puerto Rico is Mourning

An abundant group of people dressed with black shirts and carrying forty-nine boxes simulating coffins, representing the forty-nine soldiers from this Island who have died in this useless war, marched towards our Capital to manifest their claim in favor of ending the Middle East war and the return of our Puerto Rican soldiers. Hundreds of people marched silently under a burning sun starting at 2:00 PM from the Peace Pavillion in the Luis Muñoz Rivera Park all the way to our Capital, with messages that read: "An End to the War."

The boxes simulated coffins covered with United States flags and were carried by family members of our soldiers who died in Irak and Afghanistan, besides representatives from different religious, civil rights and anti-military, veterans, and feminists groups.

In the beginning of the public manifestation and carrying one of the coffins were the parents of Orville Gerena who died at the age of 21 last month in Hit, in Irak. They expressed they were hoping the number of dead soldiers would not reach fifty because Orvile was number forty-nine to fall in this war. His sister said she wished that her brother's death would be the last one of a Puerto Rican in this conflict. The 13 year old who carried her brother's photo and a white shirt that read "Orville, you are our heroe" assured that we must fight so that no one else should die.

The soldier's father said he was against the military reclutement because he understood it was "unjust" to sacrifice their lives in exchange for economic benefit promises. We are disproportionally paying for this conflict considering the high number of Puerto Rican soldiers lost as an oppressive and racist measure. It is not fair to sacrifice the lives of our sons in an unjust war which has been overly demonstrated has no sense whatever except for political and economical reasons.

Right now millions of people from different parts of the world are protesting against the conflict in Irak upon celebrating the third anniversary since the beginning of this war, qualifying it as an unnecessary aggression based on lies.

The war in Irak was the biggest mistake ever made by President George W. Bush and the world is against him. Irak should decide it's own affairs. Enough with the hypocrisy, enough with the lies. All soldiers should return home. Let there be no more war.