First Among Failures. I was unable to get to sleep tonite (it is now well past dawn), and equally unable to find anything of interest on cable TV in English. So I dallied at a Spanish news broadcast on Telemundo (one of the United States' two Spanish-language TV networks, this one owned by the same owners as NBC, the other owned by interests titely aligned with Mexico's national broadcaster, Televisa). It seems there is some kind of controversy/power play in Puerto Rico's legislature, now dominated by "estadistas" (statehooders, that is, advocates of making Puerto Rico the 51st State of the United States), aligned against the anti-statehood, pro-"Commonwealth" governor.
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The former governor, physician Pedro Rosselló, did something or other to secure his power in PR's Senate, which required him to be on a cellphone, possibly to Senator Kenneth McClintock-Hernandez ("KMH"). My Spanish is so crappy that I couldn't really follow the several sequential news reports, but it seems that the former Governor is contending for Senate President against KMH. It's not really important, because the Puerto Rico statehood movement, of which both Rosselló and KMH are members, is dedicated to failure.
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In summer 1967, as a callow youth of 22, I paid my own way to fly to Puerto Rico for the first of its modern status referendums on whether to become a State of the Union or independent country, or remain a "Commonwealth" (colony) "freely associated" with the United States. Since my Spanish then was even worse than my Spanish now, I was able only to hand out leaflets under the palm-tree icon of the statehood party in Rio Piedras, a 'boro' of Greater San Juan much as Queens is a boro of New York City. (I was then residing in Manhattan, so was comfortable with that concept.)
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The statehooders lost that election (and have lost every single referendum since then, but not by wide margins the last couple of times) only because they refused to pose the question to voters in the starkest of terms: Given a choice only between statehood and independence, which do you want? Instead, the statehooders have insisted on offering the Puerto Rico electorate the choice of refusing to choose between the only permanent resolutions ultimately available to them, but instead permitting them to put the question off indefinitely by voting for "Commonwealth" (in Spanish, "Estado Libre Asociado", which translates to "Free[ly] Associated State").
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Given the choice of not choosing, the winning margin of Puerto Ricans have chosen not to choose. What a surprise!
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I have in the past written to two statehood-party governors, Carlos Romero Barceló and Pedro Roselló, to say that they will always lose as long as they content themselves with offering Puerto Ricans a choice to refuse to choose, so Puerto Rico's leaders must instead insist that any referendum ask only about the two ultimate choices: statehood or independence, fish or cut bait! Both governors replied that they felt it indispensable to democracy that they offer instead a three-way choice that included the two permanent statuses plus the neither/nor, refuse-to-choose option "Commonwealth". I warned them plainly that as long as they allow voters the option to refuse to choose, they will always lose. They ignored me. And they have always lost to the option to refuse to choose.
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Romero Barceló wrote a kind letter saying he recognized my long interest in Puerto Rico's status, but he refused to alter the estadistas' longstanding policy of refusing to ask Congress to cut off "Commonwealth" and thus force Puerto Rico to make the stark choice between statehood and independence alone.
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Rosselló merely said that he felt it was necessary to offer Puerto Ricans a full range of choices.
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I denounce Romero Barceló, Rosselló, and every other member of the statehood movement leadership as imitation statehooders, frauds, and cowards. They don't really want statehood. They want personal importance. But what kind of importance is it to be a big frog in a small pond? What conceivable importance does any failure have?
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Third Worlders love to feel important. They love titles and uniforms and status in the community. Unfortunately, they care much less about results than they do about status — not Puerto Rico's status: their own social and political status. It is, alas, enuf for them to be chief of staff of this or president of the Senate of that than to make any substantive and transformative change in the condition of their people. Self-vaunting seems to be the main concern of too many officeholders in Puerto Rico.
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At least the "Commonwealthers" don't aspire higher. They are content to be little people in charge of a little island. Same with the independentistas. But the statehooders? They're supposed to have higher aspirations.
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Let me challenge the estadistas, then: You fought the good fite, sort of, but failed? — again and again? when you could have won? That makes you not a hero of democracy, for offering people the option to refuse to choose, but an IDIOT for refusing to demand they grow up and make a choice!
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Americans who believe in equality may have to take the statehood issue AWAY from Puerto Rico's own "leaders" and make it a mainland issue. Colonialism, no matter how colorfully and ingeniously disguised, is still colonialism.
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Puerto Rico is a colony, period. All attempts to make colonialism look nice by putting it into fancy dress as "Commonwealth" are bull. As Gertrude Stein, looking at Puerto Rico's unending inequality in the American system, might have put it, "A colony is a colony is a colony."
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Hispanics (or, today's favored term, "Latinos") are the Nation's largest minority, having surpassed blacks several years ago, but they don't have anything like the power in Congress that they should have, because many are fairly recent immigrants who haven't yet taken U.S. citizenship, so cannot vote. OLD citizens, Puerto Ricans (who were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917), refuse to elect people to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. So we have the bizarre reality that those who want representation cannot get it, and those who could have representation won't take it!
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There are 2 Hispanics in the U.S. Senate, this despite the fact that Latinos comprise the Nation's largest minority. And 2 is the most there have ever been. Before the current Congress, there were none:

39.9 million [is]
The estimated Hispanic population of the United States as of July 1, 2003, making people of Hispanic origin the nation’s largest race or ethnic minority. Hispanics constitute 13.7% of the nation’s total population. (This does not include the 3.9 million Hispanic residents of Puerto Rico.)

So WITH PR, there are about 44 million Latinos in the United States, but only 2 Hispanic U.S. Senators: 2%. Were Puerto Rico, that little island, admitted to the Union as a State, the number of Hispanic U.S. Senators would double, overnite. But Puerto Ricans are content to let there be only 2 U.S. Senators for 44 million Hispanic Americans. They don't care that PR is the only place from which additional Hispanic Senators are likely to derive in the near future. They don't care that Puerto Rico could as well add 6 Hispanic Representatives to the House, on a base of 24 (of 435 total) — an increase of 25%, which would still leave Hispanics seriously underrepresented. Puerto Rico's politicians seem not to care that their fellow Latino citizens are grossly underrepresented and have almost no one to defend their rights and champion their interests. That is detestable.
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Puerto Rican statehooders have an obligation to face the fact that a majority of Puerto Ricans will continue, for the foreseeable future, to refuse to choose between statehood and independence as long as they are permitted to cast such a gutless and useless vote.
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Statehooders must admit that the decades-long indecision over status and endless, destructive rancor over status keeps Puerto Rico from focusing on its most basic issues, such as education — in what language? — and economic development (to what end? creating a successful part of the larger U.S. economy or creating the base for an independent country?). All Puerto Ricans need to understand that Puerto Rico's perpetually unsettled political status (a) dissuades potential investors from sinking large amounts of money into an economy that could be cast out of the U.S. tariff and currency area at any moment and (b) prevents Puerto Ricans from adopting plans consistent with long-term goals — because Puerto Rico has no idea what its long-term political and thus economic affiliation will be.
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Puerto Rico's political (and, thus, economic) status is not a side issue. It is the most central of all conceivable issues. Unless planners can know exactly what Puerto Rico's political future holds, no one can plan for anything. Uncertainty is a worse enemy of Puerto Rico's future even than independence.
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In October of 2000, I created a presentation for the Internet (c. 17,000 words and many illustrations) on Puerto Rico's endless indecision, called "Puerto Rico: Three Futures, One Unending Past". It appears on the Internet at http://members.aol.com/XPUS2/PR.html, and has been described by a Puerto Rican university student thus:

This is the best and only article I have ever read that actually puts everything into the right prospective with Puerto Rico. I want to thank you for all the research and work that you put into this article and I sincerely hope that all Puerto Ricans get to read this article. I consider this of the utmost importance and feel that you are a true blessing to make these facts known. Thank you for again for having the courage and conviction to put this together for all Puerto Ricans everywhere.

(Forgive the tiny errors in English. Puerto Rico's first language is Spanish.)
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Puerto Ricans are worried that if they make their island a state, it will eventually lose its Spanish language — tho no one can make Puerto Ricans abandon Spanish if they choose to retain it, and English is fully as Puerto Rican a language as Spanish, since it has been spoken on the island for over a century, and the original inhabitants of "Borinquen" spoke Indian languages, not Spanish at all.
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Fear of losing their culture (whose characteristics I address in that presentation) may paralyze Puerto Ricans, but it shouldn't paralyze the United States Government.
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If Puerto Ricans cannot decide, Congress and the President must act, to force Puerto Rico to choose: statehood or independence — fish or cut bait! If Congress ends "Commonwealth" and compels Puerto Rico's voters to choose statehood or independence, with no third option, it is almost certain that Puerto Rico will become our 51st State, and in so doing dramatically increase the power of Latinos and the poor to influence public policy for the entire Nation.
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What on Earth are they waiting for?
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,653.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:20 AM