This volume offers an intimate look into the organization and transformation of the U.S. branch of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (psp), la Seccional, within the 1960-90s period through the eyes of its members and allies and discusses the Movimiento Pro-Independencia (mpi), founded in 1959, which preceded the psp. These movements began during the heydays of the Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico (commonwealth) and in the middle of its transformative programs, operations Bootstrap (manos a

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... obra) and Serenity (serenidad). This was just a few years after the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Muñoz Marín, asked U.S. President Harry Truman to stop submitting annual reports on Puerto Rico to the United Nations, leading to the international organization's removal of the island from the list of non-self-governing territories in 1953, which may explain the claim that the psp sought to "tear down the curtain of silence concealing U.S. colonialism in its Caribbean territory" (p. 3). The context in which the mpi and the psp emerged may also explain their short-lived existence. The mission of la Seccional was indeed contradictory. On the one hand, it was parented by the psp in Puerto Rico, and thus national liberation was its core mission. On the other hand, the movement tried to be part of the U.S. Left and to forge revolutionary alliances and engage in solidarity work. "The psp asserted that the role of its U.S. Branch [sic] would not be confined to this either/or vision and that it would pursue both goals" (p. 4). Following the editors' introduction, there are 15 essays organized in three main parts (histories, testimonies, and coalitions and alliances) and a short conclusion. The historical context in the introduction includes some reductionist statements, asserting, for example, that the Cuban-Filipino-Spanish-American War ended the "short-lived Autonomist Charter granted to Puerto Rico by the Spanish authorities" (p. 6). The Charter, which had a dubious legality, had been suspended by the Spanish governor general, who declared martial law on April 21, 1898, scarcely two months after the inauguration of the autonomic government. Constitutional guarantees were only reinstated on July 17, 1898, as a last-ditch effort to win the loyalty of the Puerto Ricans on the eve of the U.S. invasion. It is also problematic for Andrés Torres to claim that the ela co-opted "the impetus toward self-determination by promising social and political reform" (p. 22). The lack of support for independence among rural and urban labor sectors was one of the main factors leading to the ela. Torres also states as fact that