As Americans on the U.S. mainland watch the devastating impact of Hurricane Maria on our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico, including the delayed and botched response from President Trump and FEMA, many media outlets are also questioning the relationship between Puerto Rico/Puerto Ricans and the United States.
The New York Times reports that nearly half of mainlanders polled didn’t even know that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. That statistic makes it clear that they probably know zero or next to nothing about the island and its people or the historical relationship between the island territory and the U.S., even though 5 million Puerto Ricans live here on the mainland and comprise the second-largest Spanish language heritage group in our population.
Hurricane Maria coverage started off very slowly but did pick up a bit due to pressure from many folks in the blogosphere. Trump’s ugly Twitter storms and behavior got even more coverage and spurred questions about why Puerto Rico isn’t state, why its people aren’t independent, and even just what it is: a territory, a colony, or a dependency?
This issue of status is hotly debated in Puerto Rico, and most of Puerto Rican politics is shaped around it. Political parties on the island don’t really fit into the mold of Democrats, Republicans, or independents. They are better described as pro-statehood, pro-status quo (or some form of enhanced association), or pro-independence.
This is of course a major debate between and among Puerto Ricans on the island. Mainland Puerto Ricans have strong feelings about status as well. But the status issue encompasses more than just those internal debates, since the relationship must also be decided by the U.S. government, who seized Puerto Rico in the first place.
I am not going to discuss my opinion on status. Everyone who has any involvement with Puerto Rican history, culture, and politics has one, as do I. However, I am not Puerto Rican and my opinion has no real validity, other than the fact that I feel Puerto Ricans should be able to determine their destiny and that the U.S. Congress should accept what they decide, when and if we are ever to get a clear, definitive response from a vote. The history of various plebiscites and referendums that have taken place are in question and the results are still clouded. Historical Puerto Rican struggles for independence are not well known here, and when brought up, they open debates about “terrorists” versus “freedom fighters.”
Today’s objective is to present materials that you can use and pass on to your social networks and assist in informing more people here about Puerto Rico, Puerto Rican history, and politics.
FYI: This series of Sunday articles on Puerto Rico started with “Feeding Puerto Rico” and “Puerto Rico: ‘Race,’ ancestry, identity and culture” (for Black Kos) and was continued in “The Puerto Rico tourists rarely see, and the U.S. role in Puerto Rican poverty.” It was prompted by the New York Times story titled “Nearly Half of Americans Don’t Know Puerto Ricans Are Fellow Citizens.” Given the fact that so many people don’t know even the basics, it is clear that a crash course in Puerto Rican history and culture is needed, and it cannot be accomplished in one story. Other stories on Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands can be found by following the Daily Kos community group SOS Puerto Rico
Much of what I have gathered is video heavy, and not a long list of textbooks, and histories, though I will reference a few. Some of the videos are comedic satire and do a great job of raising the issues in a readily absorbable fashion for those folks you know who have no real interest or time to undertake academic study about Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans.
Kudos to Samantha Bee, who managed to do one of the best capsule versions of the history of the U.S. and Puerto Rico and the current Maria situation in about six minutes.
A quick look at Puerto Rico's hundred-year history of getting screwed with their pantalones on by the United States. With Javier Muñoz.
Before Maria hit Puerto Rico, Al Jazeera took a satirical stab at the statehood issue and history:
There are 3.5 million U.S. citizens currently facing one of the worst financial crises in this country - and they're all in Puerto Rico.The U.S. government has an almost 120-year-long relationship with Puerto Rico – which is a territory, not the 51st state. But what has that relationship looked like? Why is Puerto Rico still a territory, and what do Puerto Ricans, themselves, want for their future? Explore these questions – and some others – with Sana Saeed, who starts the story at the very beginning: May 12, 1898.
W. Kamau Bell, who does the United Shades of America series for CNN, had his own take:
Puerto Rico is complicated. The people are complicated. The history is complicated. The story of the United States' relationship to Puerto Rico is complicated. People born in Puerto Rico are US citizens, except for the teeny, tiny, mind-boggling fact that if you live in Puerto Rico, you are not allowed to cast a vote in the election for president. That tiny fact starts to get bigger when you realize that electing our own leaders is the whole reason that we have a country in the first place. Remember that whole, "No taxation without representation" thing?
The citizens of Puerto Rico pay taxes with no representation every day, because Puerto Rico is not a state. And the rules only became more confusing the more I looked into them during my time there.
When I showed up to the island, even the things I thought I knew it turned out that I didn't know. For example, I was sure that Puerto Rico was a commonwealth. I didn't know what that meant, but it's in the official name of the island, "The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico." Well, it turns out that "commonwealth" is defined as an independent country or community -- but in this case it is just a fancy word that somebody stuck in the official name of the island. It's like calling Julius Erving Dr. J. even though you know he's not a medical doctor.
John Oliver, who manages to teach quite a bit of serious history in the midst of his satire, has addressed Puerto Rico twice. First came this piece on the debt crisis:
In it he references Lin-Manuel Miranda’s appeal to Congress via a powerful op-ed in that appeared in The New York Times in March 2016:
ON Aug. 31, 1772, a hurricane devastated the island of St. Croix, the home of the teenage Alexander Hamilton. In a letter one week later, he described the force of the storm and the destruction it caused as “sufficient to strike astonishment into angels.”
His letter included this plea for help for his countrymen: “O ye, who revel in affluence, see the afflictions of humanity and bestow your superfluity to ease them. Say not, we have suffered also, and thence withhold your compassion. What are your sufferings compared to those? Ye have still more than enough left. Act wisely. Succour the miserable and lay up a treasure in Heaven.” So vivid was his account of the disaster that the letter was published in a newspaper in the Virgin Islands, The Royal Danish American Gazette, and used to support relief efforts for the island.
I’m invoking Hamilton’s words today, in this plea for relief for Puerto Rico.
Much has been said about the dire economic situation pressing down on Puerto Rico. I am the son of Puerto Rican parents. What can I say to persuade elected officials and policy makers to act? What influence do I have to change the minds and hearts of those in Congress to put aside their differences and deal with the crisis confronting 3.5 million American citizens in the Caribbean? I’m not a politician or an economist. I’m a storyteller.
Read the story he tells.
His dad spoke out recently on Democracy Now (transcript here):
Oliver did an earlier piece on voting rights and U.S. territories, which I’ve posted in the past. It is well worth reviewing.
Moving away from satire and humor, the most extensive review of the various positions on the island and here in the U.S. Congress is is the documentary film The Last Colony - A Brief History of Puerto Rico's Status.
in 1898, the United States invaded and colonized Puerto Rico as part of the Spanish American War. For 114 years the people of Puerto Rico have maintained a polarizing debate on the STATUS ISSUE that has been front and center of the political discourse on the Island. Puerto Ricans (American citizens since 1917) constantly dispute between the options of Statehood, Independence and Commonwealth.
On November 6, 2012 the people of Puerto Rico held the fourth plebiscite in the Island’s history to try to redefine the political relationship with the United States.
Weeks before the plebiscite vote, filmmaker Juan Agustín Márquez traveled back to his homeland and interviewed leading politicians, historians, sociologists, and economists to dissect the status debate in a multilayered conversation about the pros and cons of each option on the ballot.
His mission: To explain the status debate to the people of the United States, Congress and the President, and bring the American people up to date on this century old question: Will there be a change in status in America’s Last Colony?
The film can be downloaded from the website, and if any of you have access to the kanopy streaming service at your school, the film can be viewed there.
The website Puerto Rico: Unsettled Territory also has a series of interesting interviews with Puerto Ricans about the status issue.
In March 2012, 18 student journalists from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University traveled to Puerto Rico to report on immigration and the U.S. territory's November plebiscite to determine if the island will move toward independence, statehood or stay as is.
Statehood Issue Stirs Passions About Puerto Rican Identity
For over 500 years, the people of this island have struggled with the answer to that question. This November, the question will follow them into the voting booth.
As the rest of the United States goes to the polls to elect a new president, the big issue for Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens but can't vote for president unless they live in a U.S. state, is whether to vote for a change in their territorial status. They can decide to remain as they are, become an independent nation, or apply to become the 51st U.S. state. If statehood wins at the polls Congress will eventually have to decide Puerto Rico's political fate.
But much more than meets the eye rides on the vote. The question on the ballot goes to the heart of what it means to be Puerto Rican. A question that has hung over the island since the U.S. acquired it in 1890.
These days, citizenship links Puerto Ricans to the United States on paper but culture and history separate the two.
"Puerto Rico is not a nation-state, not an independent … country, but still it has its own history, language, territory, culture and autonomy," said Jorge Duany, a dean and anthropologist at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras. "And perhaps more importantly, the awareness people do have of being separate from other people of the world, including the United States."
Professor Milagros Denis-Rosario wrote in “Asserting Their Rights: Puerto Ricans in Their Quest for Social Justice”:
When the United States became involved in what began as the Cuban-Spanish conflict of 1895, high hopes arose within many sectors of the Puerto Rican society; the United States was seen as a model of economic progress and liberty (Guerra 1999). However, the thought of Puerto Rico being ruled by an Anglo Saxon country fueled discussion on issues of citizenship and class among the Puerto Rican people, whose culture was essentially influenced by a Hispanic-Roman Catholic ideology. Nevertheless, immediately after the war ended in 1898, the island became a possession of the United States. In the meantime, the question of citizenship and the contemplation of annexing the island to the Union became the headlines of the American press and topic of debate for political leaders. All kinds of legal and constitutional arguments in the US Congress delayed the conferral of the American citizenship to Puerto Ricans. Regarding this issue, Juan F. Perea (2001) points out that the United States Supreme Court likewise played an important role in this decision. He compared the Puerto Rican saga with African American disenfranchisement under the Dred Scott decision and the eventual legalization of segregation laws (known as Jim Crow) under the landmark case Plessy v Ferguson (1896). Perea concluded that these two cases established a precedent for the legalization of second-class citizenship for colored people. The heated debate among members of the US Congress reluctance on granting American citizenship to Puerto Ricans because they were considered racially inferior supports Perea’s statement. Moreover, for the Congress, the issue of citizenship implied a possible annexation of the island to the Union, an issue that was also scrutinized and considered by President Taft. In an effort to reach a compromise with the Congress, the President was willing to support the cause of citizenship without the “concomitant hope of statehood” (Weston 1972: 193). In the end, by virtue of the Jones Act of 1917, which established that Puerto Ricans living on the island are not allowed to vote for the President and the island will not have representation in the US Congress, Puerto Ricans became American citizens. Incongruously, Puerto Ricans have been allowed to give their lives for the Union by serving in the military. Burnett and Marshall (2001) and Cabán (1999), in contested arguments on the timing of the US Congress decision, suggest that by 1917 the US participation in the World War I created an urgent need to recruit citizens. This period also coincides with the US enactment of migration quotas that restricted influx of people from the Asiatic continent to the United States. They have been an important source of labor. One might add this factor to the argument about the Congress’s decision of granting American citizenship to Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricans took advantage of their new status and felt entitled to enjoy the benefit of cruzar el charco, or traveling to the United States, in order to improve their lives. In other words, the “American Dream” was extended to Puerto Ricans along with the “ticket” of the American citizenship. Although James Truslow Adams does not propose the concept in Epic of America (2001), its practice is intrinsic to migrations. As expected, after the 1920s Puerto Ricans began to migrate in larger numbers to the new mainland. Many of them settled in the rural areas to work on farms, but the great majority became established in urban centers. In New York City, Boricuas’ cultural and social organizations provided them with mechanisms of support.
Denis-Rosario references the work of Dr. Hazel McFerson, who has examined the racial elements of U.S. colonial policy.
Former New York State assemblyman, writer, and filmmaker Nelson Antonio Denis has assembled an amazing collection of videos on the website for his book War Against All Puerto Ricans that examine and expose the radical history of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States.
When it won the Spanish-American War in 1898, the U.S. acquired Puerto Rico as a new “possession.” The American who led the invasion, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, promised “liberty” to Puerto Ricans. He also promised “prosperity” and “the advantages and blessings of enlightened civilization.”
This never occurred. Puerto Rico was stripped of her land and natural resources by U.S. banking syndicates. By 1934, the theft was so extreme that Puerto Ricans organized an island-wide agricultural strike. In response to this strike the Yale-educated Chief of Police, whose father owned the Riggs National Bank, promised that “there will be war to the death against all Puerto Ricans.”
This web site documents some of that war.
It documents the murder of innocent Puerto Ricans; the bombing of Puerto Rican towns; the blackmail of Puerto Rico’s governor; the beating, torture and execution of Puerto Rican prisoners; and the hiding of all this information from the American public.
Much of what he documents is grim. Almost none of this history is taught in high schools across the U.S. and unless you are taking Latin American or Caribbean studies in college, it will probably go unlearned there as well.
As the post-Maria crisis continues on the island and as many Puerto Ricans leave to come to the States either temporarily or for good, we do not yet know what effect Trump’s positions will have on Puerto Rican attitudes toward the current status. It’s also not yet clear if mainland citizen attitudes toward Puerto Rico have shifted as a result of viewing the debacle.
As Donald Trump and his Republican sycophants escalate his war against Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, it is imperative that we fight back—and one of our tools in that battle is education.
Spread the word, support relief efforts, and contact your elected officials in Washington to give Puerto Rico financial aid—and not loans, which will burden the island with even more debt.
Support Puerto Rico.
Pa’lante