If you’re a gringo, the word “status” has no particular meaning for you. If you’re Puerto Rican, you tense—here it comes, the old but undiminished in its ferocity debate on whether Puerto Rico should be a state, independent, or continue as it is.
And what is that, you ask?
Depends on whom you ask. In Spanish, our status is something called Estado Libre Asociado, which puzzled me the first time I saw it, those decades ago.
“How can something be free and yet a state and yet associated,” I asked Mr. Fernández, those many years ago.
Little did I know…
“IT’S A LIE, IT’S A TRICK, IT’S A BASE AND FOUL CANARD….”
Hint—remove trajectables (it’s a word in Spanish, computer!) at the onset of any discussion of status.
Advocates of our current status have developed a capacity to smoke screen unparalleled by any other group of fanatics. We are a nation, goes the theory, a sovereign nation in “association” with the United States. We therefore hold US passports, receive federal benefits, pay no taxes, and don’t vote for president. In fact, Puerto Rico is one of the few places—the US Virgin Islands is another—in the world where an American citizen cannot vote for president, and has no voting representation in Congress. And for those of you who gnashed their teeth through the eight long years of George W. Bush, trust me—you would have been spared them had Puerto Rico been allowed to vote….
We got to be citizens back in 1917, with the passage of the Jones Act. And how convenient that was, because there was a little war going on—the first of the World Wars—and Puerto Ricans died, and have subsequently died in every other war, in disproportionate numbers.
Which is what made me believe, fifteen years back, that our current status is heart-stoppingly simple, as well as cynical. Here’s the deal—the rich and empowered Puerto Ricans receive federal dollars in turn for the blood and lives of their poorer brothers.
Predictably, there are those who aren’t satisfied with that. So periodically we have plebiscites—usually when there is a statehood governor. And our last plebiscite, in November 2012, was a double decker—first we were asked if we were satisfied with our current territorial status; then we were asked to choose between statehood, independence, or a sovereign nation in association with the United States.
Also predictably, the Popular Democratic Party—which champions our current status—frothed at the mouth at the mention of the word “territorial.” The party has been trying for years to deny that we are an unincorporated territory. Instead, they hope to “improve” our current status, presumably by getting full parity of money with the states, not paying taxes, but being fully represented in Congress. The last time anyone expressed this idea to a puzzled congress, one congressman noted that if that idea were feasible, he’d have to go home and recommend that his constituents pursue the same option. And so last Wednesday the Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing, and the governor ran up to Washington to advocate for “enhanced” commonwealth.
He had a pretty rotten time of it.
The “New Commonwealth” option continues to be advocated as a viable option by some. It is not.
Persistence in supporting this option after it has been rejected as inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution by the U.S. Justice Department, by the bipartisan leadership of this Committee, by the House, and by the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Administrations undermines resolution of Puerto Rico’s status question.
Well, ABC news reports that the governor was “frustrated” with the event. Here’s a sample of what he said:
In a meeting with reporters after the hearing he said he favors an "enhanced" commonwealth status that would give Puerto Rico "maximum autonomy" while cementing a permanent relationship with the United States. He'd like Congress and Puerto Rico to agree on which federal laws should apply to Puerto Rico and which should not. He would oppose laws that would be "harmful" to the island's development, he said, but didn't go into further detail.
Wyden, apparently, didn’t buy in. Here’s more of the opening statement:
Puerto Rico must either exercise full self-government as a sovereign nation, or achieve equality among the States of the Union.
The current relationship undermines the United States’ moral standing in the world. For a nation founded on the principles of democracy and the consent of the governed, how much longer can America allow a condition to persist in which nearly four million U.S. citizens do not have a vote in the government that makes the national laws which affect their daily lives? That is the question.
At last—a congressman got it….
