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- Pacific Ocean - An ocean bordered by the American, Asian, and Australian continents. Largest ocean in the world, divided by the equator into the North Pacific and the South Pacific. 70,000,000 sq. miles.
- Palenque - Great city of Maya civilization from 200 to about 1000 A.D., located in what is today Chiapas, Mexico.
- Palestine - An ancient country in Southwest Asia, on the East coast of the Mediterranean. A former British mandate 1923-1948 comprising part of this country, then divided between Israel, Jordan, and Egypt in 1948: the Jordanian and Egyptian parts were occupied by Israel in 1967. Even today the struggle of the Palestinians and Israel continues as one of the most violent struggles in the Middle East.
- Panama - A Central American country.
- Panama Canal - A man-made water opening allowing ships to pass from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and back. Built from 1880 to 1914, at the cost of nearly 30,000 dead workers, it later was used to increase shipping and economic growth as well as expanded military uses. It passes through Panama extending Southeast from the Atlantic to the Pacific across Isthmus of Panama. 48 miles long. In 1903 the construction of the canal was used by U.S. imperialism as a pretext to force the breaking off of Panama which was a part of Colombia at the time. After maintaining control with U.S. military bases for almost 100 years, the U.S. government "handed over" control of the canal to the Panamanian government on 12/31/1999.
- Paraguay - Officially the Republic of Paraguay, it is one of the two landlocked countries which lie entirely within the Western Hemisphere, the other being Bolivia, both in South America.
- Paramount - The highest point.
- Parks, Rosa - The Black woman who came to symbolize the Civil Rights movement when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man as the law required her to do. This act led to a bus boycott and the rise of Martin Luther King.
- Parsons, Lucy - Lucy Eldine González Parsons (1853 - March 7, 1942) was a revolutionary Mujer and radical labor organizer, anarchist communist, and is remembered as a powerful speaker.
- Participation - To get involved in something.
- Participatory Democracy - A process emphasizing the broad participation of all people at the community level in the direction and operation of political systems and controlling national governments. See also democracy.
- Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) - The PAN represents reactionary politics and is famous because it is the first Political Party in modern Mexican to win the presidency away from the PRI.
- Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida (PNLRU) - Also known as the "La Raza Unida Party (LRUP)". This was one of the most important organizations of the Chicano Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when the organization struggled to unite the leading Chicano movement organizations of the time. UdB and PNLRU maintained a close working relationship throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. The PNLRU continues to struggle today, focusing primarily on work with barrio youth in Southern California.
- Partido Liberal Mexicano - The organization started by Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón that published the newspaper Regeneración.
- Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) - The PRD represents liberal politics in Mexico and is famous for having the presidency in stolen from it in 1988 and 2006.
- Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) - The PRI represents the conservative (sometimes reactionary) politics and is famous for being corrupt.
- Pearl Harbor - A harbor near Honolulu, on south Oahu, in Hawaii, known for the surprise attack launched by Japan on the U.S. naval base on December 7,1941, that led to direct U.S. involvement in WWII.
- Peltier, Leonard - .
- People's Republic of China - This became the name of China after the victory of the communist revolution led by Mao Tse Tung.
- Peninsulares - People born in Spain or Portugal who held the most important positions in colonial Latin American.
- Perestroika - Term meaning restructuring that refers to the changing of the Soviet economy and society under Mikhail Gorbachev. Today represents the betrayal away from socialism and communism in Russia.
- Pershing, John "Blackjack" - The American general sent into Mexico leading an invasion force ordered to bring back Francisco Villa, "dead or alive", preferably dead. They failed to catch Villa.
- Personal Property - These are the things each person needs for a comfortable life - a place to live, transportation (a car, bike, motorcycle, etc.), clothes, shoes, etc. Important to be noted as different from private property.
- Peru - A republic in South America. 21,300,000; 496,222 sq. miles. Capital: Lima.
- Philosophy - The study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.
- Pinochet, Augusto - Right-wing fascist pig that led the military coup against Allende in 1973.
- Plan de San Luis Potosí - This was the plan developed by Francisco I. Madero that called for the beginning of "La Revolución Mexicana" on November 20, 1910 at 6:00 p.m.
- Plan de Santa Barbara - A document written in 1969 during the Chicano Movement that described Chicano Studies and united Chicano students under the term MEChA.
- Plato & Aristotle - Two of the most important founding figures in Western European philosophy.
- Playa Girón - Also known as the "Bay of Pigs".
- Policy - A deliberate plan of action to guide decisions and achieve an outcome.
- Political Class - The social class that controls and dominates the political struggle in a country.
- Political Crisis - A political crisis is when a government no longer is accepted by the people, and the government has lost the power and authority to lead as a government should.
- Political Domination - This is one of the tools used by an imperialist country to dominate weaker countries. It involves making sure that the government of the weaker country does not defend the rights and/or interests of its own people, but instead puts as a priority the interests of the imperialist country.
- Political Economy - Originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy. It developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states - polities, hence political economy.
- Political Maturity - Related to the concept of a cuadro, a politically mature person has developed the skill of seeing contradictions and dealing with them in a constructive way.
- Political Orientation - The choice we make in relation to out political principles.
- Political Party - Are organized groups of individuals or other groups who attempt to exercise power in a political system by winning control of the government or influencing governmental policy. This could be done through elections, community struggle, armed insurrection, etc.). Usually political parties represent a specific class interest. See also "Vanguard Party".
- Political Program - The basic points of unity of an organization or poltical party.
- Political Values - What politcal priorities a person has and how they represent class interests.
- Politics - A process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in other group interactions, including community, and academic institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power", and refers to the regulation of a political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy.
- Population - The total number of persons inhabiting a country, city or any district or area. the body of inhabitants in a place. It is estimated that the current number of raza living within the border of the U.S. ranges between 40 and 50 million depending on how you count. This number includes people born in Latin American countries, or of Latin American heritage, with the Mexicana and Mexicano polulation by far the largest.
- Popol Vuh - The sacred spiritual book of the Mayas.
- Populism - The political strategy or movement that promotes the interests of the "common people". Can be left wing or right wing.
- Positivism - This has little to do with its name, but refers to any of several viewpoints that stresses attention to actual practice over consideration of what is ideal, and views the world and positive human knowledge as being based on the natural world - thus accepting everything as it is as being pretty cool, and rejecting most forms of social theory and social struggle.
- Poverty - The state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor; indigence. Deficiency of necessary or desirable ingredients, qualities.
- Power - A measure of an entity's ability to control the environment around itself, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power, perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to humans as social beings. Often, the study of power in a society is referred to as politics.
- Power Loom - The second machine of the Industrial Revolution the got its power from water power.
- Practice - The actual work we do in the community.
- Praxis - The balance between theory and practice.
- Preparedness - To what level you are ready to do some task.
- Prestes, Luís Carlos - January 3, 1898 - March 7, 1990, was a leader of the 1920s rebellion and the Communist opposition to the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil.
- Primitive Accumulation of Capital - The early period in capitalism when the initial capital needed for it to function as a system was stolen from the rest of the planet by Europeans. The two most notable forms of primitive accumulation were the genocide of indigenous peoples, the theft of our land and resources (including massive amounts of gold and silver), and the mass enslavement of Africans who were brought to the Americas to work and enrich European capitalists.
- Principles (Political) - The most basic and important ideas and objectives which guide our work and our lives. For example, the principle of "Raza Liberation" unites UdB with other people and/or organizations. An unprincipled person or group does things based on what may be convenient or based on self-interest.
- PRI - PAN - PRD - These are the three main political parties in Mexico. See PRI, PAN, PRD under individual listings.
- Private Property - This is another name given to the word "capital". Materials or means necessary for the production and marketing (selling) of a commodity (product, goods, articles, etc.) such as mines, farms, factories, banks, stores, railroads, transportation systems, etc. Should not be confused with personal property.
- Privilege - .
- Procedural Democracy - A democracy in name only, these types of governments allow campaigns, hold elections, and do the rest of a democratic "show", but the exact same political class remains in power, and they promote the exact same political and economic interests. In many ways it is the illusion of democracy without real democratic participation. See participatory democracy.
- Professional - A member of a vocation founded upon specialised educational training.
- Profit - Making money off small or large capital you might have, not having to do labor and still make money. Monetary gain resulting from the employment of capital in any transaction, where a capitalist takes the money left from selling the product of another persons labor (a worker).
- Progressive (Political) - A political position that a person or groups takes when it is more radical than just being liberal, yet does not accept revolutionary struggle.
- Proletariat - The class of workers as industrial wage earners, who do not possess capital or property, and must sell their labor to survive. In Marxist literature the "industrial (factory) worker" or wage earner. "Proletarianizing" means the spreading across a group of the status of becoming a wage worker. This was something very dramatic during Marx's lifetime (early 1800s) since many people who had worked on small farms, and "bartered" (traded) for goods they needed, had been forced off their lands and into cities to work in factories under terrible conditions. Marxism upholds that the proletariat (working people/class) as historically the only class capable of making revolution and bringing the world closer to socialism.
- Propaganda - Ideas, allegations, or rumors used to promote a cause or to damage an opposing cause. It refers to the systematic spreading of information, ideas, or beliefs. Propaganda could be positive or negative (depending on source). Propaganda can be truth or lies. Presently, the masses get propaganda through the mass media as advertising and reactionary political values. It is extremely important that our movement gets liberation propaganda to our communities to push back against the overwhelming propaganda power of the system.
- Provisional Government - .
- Protracted (struggle) - .
- Puerto Rico - A Caribbean island country.
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