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< | The Oldest Colony in the World | >
> | Crossroads of Destiny: Puerto Rico's Search for its Future | | | -- By JorgeRosario - 23 Feb 2024 | |
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> | “We, the people of Puerto Rico in order to organize politically on a fully democratic basis, to promote the general welfare, and to secure for ourselves and our posterity the complete enjoyment of human rights, placing our trust in Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Commonwealth which, in the exercise of our natural rights, we now create within our union with the United States of America.” These words mean more than a mere formality to Puerto Ricans living on the island. They represent an assertion of freedom, of self- determination, even if it is in a very limited sense. They embody the pinnacle of cross-cultural immersion. As Morales Carrion puts it “Puerto Rico stands as a vivid and tangible example of the possibilities of inter-american friendship and understanding.” | | | | |
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< | With its sunny beaches and blue waters, most mainland Americans forget that they are entering a territory wrought with a troubling history and an even more concerning present when coming into contact with the borders of Puerto Rico. The small island in the Caribbean coast has known no other status quo than colonialism since the beginning of the Age of Exploration. First coming under Spanish rule and adopting its civil system for the next 400 years, it was ceded to the United States after an overwhelming defeat of the Spanish power in the Spanish-American war. The American overseas enterprise had reached empire status. | >
> | While Puerto Rico has been able to import American ideas and methods to strengthen its democratic processes and to wage an implacable fight against hunger, disease, poverty and ignorance, the fruits that the island enjoys today was not always the case. | | | | |
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< | Puerto Rico provided a strategic position in the Caribbean for overseas markets and military interests, expanding the United States’ navy and solidifying its later presence in Latin America. However, these developments that heightened the United States’ power in the international field did not come without a tremendous cost to the people of the island.
It is important to note where citizenship arose and for what purpose were people Congress considered “negroes and of mixed blood [that had] nothing in common with [mainland Americans] and were impossible to assimilate” granted citizenship, even in a second-class sense. On the eve of what would be the century of overseas conflict in the United States, Puerto Ricans were granted U.S citizenship under the Jones-Shafroth Act. While this allowed Puerto Ricans to move freely between the continental United States, it also gave the federal government license to send Puerto Ricans to unknown parts of the world and fight until their inevitable deaths for causes they did not even support. World War II, Vietnam, and Korea ended up claiming enough Puerto Rican lives that one would think equal treatment and protection under the law would naturally follow. This proved not to be the case. Injustice towards Puerto Rico has been propagated since then and comes in various forms that are impossible to overlook. | >
> | The American colonialism project has sped up Puerto Rico's development ten-fold. Educational programs, medical care, and rural electrification have become commonplace in an island that used to be able to only sustain a traditional agrarian society. This reality of economic prosperity clashes with the difficult truth that Puerto Rico is still a colony. The language of the insular cases ringing loud in the mind of the common Puerto Rican, “belonging to but not a part of” igniting a feeling of indignation across the island. | | | | |
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< | The most pressing disparity for Puerto Ricans is that of voting rights for both the residents of the island and Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner. As simply as it can be stated, if a person lives in Puerto Rico, then that person is unable to vote for president of the United States. Absurd proposition for a country that prides itself on being the paragon of democracy. This leaves over 3.2 million Puerto Rican-Americans without the ability to vote for a president that will not just use the island as a publicity stunt after a massive natural disaster. The Resident Commissioner, Puerto Rico’s sole representative in Congress, also faces great challenges in the bicameral legislature. While she has to represent her Puerto Rican constituents, she has absolutely no vote to cast towards upcoming legislature. The job effectively requires her to sell and barter for the interests of the island; swindling and selling as an effective lawyer does. For Puerto Ricans, the law is a set of abstract principles that are in a completely esoteric realm, impossible to logically interpreted as they are simply imposed upon them without even an illusion of choice or agency. We are therefore limited to involuntarily experiencing the law of the United States and living through some of its benefits, but mostly hardships.
Even though Puerto Ricans cannot vote for the president or for legislation, the laws that do inevitably leave Congress’ chambers and wash up on the island’s shores come in a different form from how they are in the mainland. Seemingly, the laws lose provisions and thresholds when they are applied to the island. For example, Puerto Rico exhibits a debt of over $74 billion, comparable to other mainland states. However, Puerto Rican cities and municipalities are not offered the luxury of filing for bankruptcy under Chapter IX Bankruptcy Code to alleviate economic strain. What the island does receive to manage its debt is the imposition of an Financial Oversight and Management Board by the federal government, propagating deeper strands of colonialism and providing an illusion of certainty and promises of future repose that never seem to materialize. | >
> | The United States, in turn, has to balance its lists of contradictions: “testing of both its altruism and national egoism; its capacity to understand in its proclivity to misunderstand, its mature worldview and its self-centered parochialism.” Being the beacon of democracy while subjugating Caribbean Americans becomes a hard balancing act to maintain, undermining its governance and legitimacy. | | | | |
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< | So, what is the solution when the status quo requires a drastic shift? Should the island fight for its independence such as Haiti did from the French, ending colonialism and starting anew with the support of our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean or should Puerto Rico assimilate to the national power and join the democratic Union? This question is one that unravels into a sea of nuance and complexity within the island. Some Puerto Ricans question whether the island will be able to survive economic independence from the mainland, while others worry of it becoming another token of American exceptionalism and have the Latino-Caribbean culture wiped out by rapid Americanization as it happened in Hawaii. | >
> | It is under this backdrop of development at a cost, that the Puerto Rican people face political hardship that permeates representation and constitutional rights. Citizenship for the “negroes and of mixed blood [that had] nothing in common with [mainland Americans] and were impossible to assimilate” was granted under the Jones-Shafroth Act. While this allowed Puerto Ricans to move freely between the continental United States, it also gave the federal government license to use Puerto Rico as an oil well of bodies to send overseas and fight for American exceptionalism. From WWII to Korea, enough Puerto Rican lives were claimed that one would think equal treatment and protection under the law would naturally follow. This proved not to be the case. Injustice towards Puerto Rico has been propagated since then and comes in various forms that are impossible to overlook such as inability to vote for president and have federal laws apply differently to the island (logically violating the Equal Protections Clause, but technically not under the Insular cases). | | | | |
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< | The reality is that this question is beyond the Puerto Rican people. As long as Congress does not know with certainty whether Puerto Rico will be a Democrat or Republican state, they find no reason to even consider the issue of status. What is within the agency of the Puerto Rican people is their voice and ability to protest. While armed conflict such as El grito de Lares and the Capitol shooting of 1954 have proven that violent conflict will not bring about radical change in this scenario, political mobilization within the island and among diaspora Puerto Ricans, who can vote for president, has brought about a wave of sentiment towards adding a new state to the Union and breaking the “doctrine of pure judicial invention, with absolutely no basis in the Constitution and one that is contrary to all judicial precedent and territorial practice.” | >
> | So what is the solution, when the status quo requires a drastic shift? Should the island fight for its independence such as Haiti did from the French, ending colonialism and starting anew with the support of our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean or should Puerto Rico assimilate to the national power and join the democratic Union? This question is one that unravels into a sea of nuance and complexity within the island. | | | | |
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> | The viability of the independence prospect would have to be addressed by looking at comparable Caribbean nations that have been successful in their voyage to independence and have remained afloat in the sea of debt and instability. Nations like Jamaica and the Dominican Republic instantly come to mind with their similar GDP and population. Both of these countries after liberation from colonial powers were able to cultivate their own economy through three major industries: tourism, manufacturing, and agriculture. Given Puerto Rico’s comparable history of building an infrastructure predicated on the fruits of the land and its potential for tourism, the sugarcane and cruising industry could begin to chip away at the massive debt in the island. However, this would come at a cost of the years of transition that will likely be characterized by both social and economic upheaval as the unprecedented liberty from colonialism opens a menu of options and opportunities that are bound to breed violence and resentment, as seen in other post-colonial nations. The vacuum left by the departure of the United States’ rule would result in large-scale fighting between the remaining pro-statehood advocates and the new independence ruling class. The post-Haitian Revolution period’s violence and instability paints a stark reminder of the cost of independence, and that the price may be collected in spilled blood from dull machetes. | | | | |
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"Oldest" here means "in modern times," since the expansion of European societies into the oceanic world, the day before yesterday in the long history of humanity, correct? What to regard as the oldest colony in the world depends on that aperture, but I suppose the answer might be in Sudan, then called by its Egyptian colonizers "Nubia," roughly 4,000 years ago. It's not important, of course, because despite the capsule introduction, this is about the present, not about history. | >
> | While the larger consequences of independence would remain confined within the island’s borders, statehood would cause reverberations emanating from the island all the way across the ocean to the mainland. Statehood would not only signify the culmination of over 100 years of colonization, but also a restructuring of the federal government’s legislative branch. As soon as a 51st star is added to the flag, the transformation of the United States political landscape would be immediate. The new state would receive two senators, which would most likely be Democrats given the island’s left leaning ideals. These two senators would tip the balance of the Senate in favor of Democrats, likely leading to the passage of social welfare reforms such as carbon emission restrictions and DACA recipient resolutions. Furthermore, Puerto Rican statehood would have a massive impact on the Electoral College and would greatly influence the presidential elections. The island would likely receive seven electoral votes based on its 3.2 million population, which would prove decisive in close races. Puerto Rico has the potential to be a linchpin of the United States’ future, with a degree of influence that is likely to shift both social reform and political outcomes. | | | | |
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< | Improving the draft, in my view, is best done by orienting the writing present-ward and getting the essay into relation to the literature. You can reduce the historical introduction to a couple of sentences linking some basic references. Arturo Morales Carrión's Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History is still after forty years the best one-volume introduction and starting-point. Your discussion of the independence-statehood conflict, on the other hand, is at a great disadvantage because you don't refer to any of the absolutely enormous literature generated by and about the participants in the society-wide discussion of the island's future. That Puerto Rico is potentially the linchpin of the US future too is worthy of a discussion you do not offer, but which a less Wikipedia-inflected effort would have space for. Statehood, and two US Senators from the island, would transform the present US political landscape overnight. A moment's reflection on how the US would be different if P.R. had been a state during just the last four years shows the nature of that possible degree of influence. The possibilities of independence too can be reflected upon by comparison to the other comparable Caribbean nations. One statistical table showing the rough demographic and economic position of an independent P.R. among its cohort would be very effective. The dynamics of the island's internal political life, which will ultimately determine between those outcomes, are what you can most directly and knowledgeably address, in a draft that uses others' writing and thinking more effectively to inform the reader and support your own.
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> | Morales Carrion expresses it best when he writes "understanding the island involves transcending the confines of American nationalism in an effort at empathy and insight. Only through mutual understanding and respect will the United States and Puerto Rico face with hope and creativity the many baffling and thorny issues of the present." Though the United States has massively aided in the development of the island, it has reached a point where the Puerto Rican people require a decisive future. Whether that be independence or statehood, the island’s future prosperity hinges on fostering inter-American relations, crossing colonial boundaries, and beginning to level the perceptions playing field. | | |
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