Juan Dalmau hanging out with the Seattle's Puerto Rican community at a BUDPR sponsored event.
Juan Dalmau's scheduled activities in Seattle have surprised many in Puerto Rico and the Diaspora. But in reality, the reason for this visit has a lot to do with the new political developments that are taking place in Puerto Rico.
For 125 years Puerto Rico has been under U.S. colonial rule. During this time, the Puerto Rican nation has suffered patterns of economic and demographic extraction for military and industrial purposes.
With no legal or political recourse in U.S. institutions to protect our economy, Puerto Rican "economic development" was organized at the behest of U.S. industrial demands in times of boom – a bonanza that colonial elites replicated to adapt to new extractive logics in times of crisis.
Consequently, our nation suffered the systematic displacement of two-thirds of its daughters and sons to the United States, taking with them many of our best and brightest, thus perpetuating the inability to develop our economy and political institutions in a sustainable manner.
In New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio, our diaspora was shoehorned into the cogs of the industries of yesteryear. In Florida and Texas, they were poached to meet the growing demands of organizations seeking a more bilingual workforce.
And more recently, in places like Seattle, Washington, many were attracted to some of the most lucrative technology – and military – industries in the United States. While Puerto Ricans have excelled in virtually every state they have moved to and in all areas of professional and intellectual endeavor (something that fills us with great pride), in many cases this has come at the expense of Puerto Rico's development.
These demographic and economic trends have also helped perpetuate a clientelistic and corrupt political class that hides behind the guise of a pro-statehood/pro-status quo positions that benefit from our displacement. Attempts to change this situation have often ended in the subversion of the few democratic institutional procedures that exist in Puerto Rico.
However, after decades of neglect and governments that have failed to live up to the people, for the first time in the last four decades a new political alternative is emerging: La Alianza, led by Juan Dalmau, gubernatorial candidate of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP).
While previous colonial governments feared the diaspora as potential agents of change that could alter the privileged positions of a few that benefit from our subordination, Dalmau and La Alianza embrace the diaspora for those very reasons, in service of a more sustainable and equitable Puerto Rico.
Juan Dalmau understands that the diaspora has much to contribute to a Puerto Rican future that is free of corruption, clientelism and waste. That is why Dalmau wants to engage some of our nation's best and brightest to help put Puerto Rico on the road to a more prosperous future, where there are opportunities for everyone, including those who have had to leave the archipelago without necessarily wanting to.
It is for this that many in the Diaspora, from different organizations, including Boricuas Unidos en la Diaspora, are supporting more discussion about Puerto Rico's colonial case and efforts for decolonization and independence. The time is now for our nation of 9 million Boricuas to move towards creating a Puerto Rico that we can not only continue to call a homeland, but also a home and a future.
Prof. Jenaro Abraham, Ph.D.
Professor of Political Science at Gonzaga University (Spokane, WA). Collaborator for Boricuas Unidos en la Diaspora (BUDPR) and Vice President of the Diaspora PIP (DPIP).
