Puerto Rico & the United States

ugly rhetoric and uneven treatment

Why were such ugly, inhuman taunts raised last Sunday night at Madison Square Garden? That I can’t answer except gross ignorance at work, at best, and malign intent against millions of loyal citizens, at worst.

In the late 1970s, I served as a Staff Auditor for the Office of the Comptroller General, more commonly known then as the U.S. General Accounting Office. My first D.C. experience introduced me to Puerto Rico. The 1978 audit had a brilliant euphemistic title, “Addressing the Question of Full Fiscal Treatment for Puerto Rico”. We were being asked to consider how things would change if PR became a state. Instead it showed me the contradictions with which we treat these fellow Americans amid some pretty contradictory policy positions.

Spain governed so much of this hemisphere from the late Fifteenth Century through its 1898 defeat in the Spanish American War. As a consequence, the United States received Puerto Rico while Cuba became independent (sort of; we really tried governing it without bringing it into the United States for much of the Twentieth Century). Puerto Rico, an island visited early by the Crown-sponsored conquistadores, is an eastern Caribbean location with 3.2 million people. Flight time from the main city, San Juan, to Miami is roughly three hours over 1045 miles but the politics and culture are far more distant perhaps from one place other than the other.

Only mere hints of the pre-Columbian indigenous population remain as the island has been a melting pot for various ethnic groups for five hundred years, though vast majority of those individuals living there are Spanish-speaking and Roman Catholic. The disease, violence, and miscegenation created by colonization destroyed Caribbean cultures within the first two decades after Columbus’s arrival. This island did not hold the mineral wealth so pervasive in the Andes or the central valley of Mexico but functioned as an entry into the hemisphere so Spaniards poured in.

Spain gradually lost its vast, lucrative Western Hemisphere empire except Cuba and Puerto Rico by the 1820s. These two islands remained crucial toeholds for the Spanish as its presence in an area of former suzerainty.

The U.S. military controlled Puerto Rico for two years following Spain’s defeat. The Foraker Act of 1900 created a civilian government to administer the island. A 1906 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Ortega v Lara, labeled the territory “acquired country” which would be subject to U.S. law, marking true power of law over the population. But it took the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 to grant puertorriqueños U.S. citizenship. This Act affirmed many of the activities of the Americans as true in Montana, Arizona, or Kentucky. As a result, millions of Puerto Ricans live in major urban areas in the United States, exercising their rights as citizens to travel freely from the mainland back to the island and visa-versa.

A glaring controversy for these citizens is that their birthright does not entitle them to vote in federal elections. Like the District of Columbia, Puerto Ricans have no representation in Congress and do not cast votes in the presidential elections. A quirky habit is for the islanders to hold primary campaigns to support presidential candidates but their voting status prohibits contributing to general election results. Foreign governments, often led by Cuba, criticize the United States as hypocritical on this “colonial treatment” for puertorriqueños: “citizens” yet excluded from exercising the most representative of functions of citizenship. The island does have its own elections, however, for its governor and state legislature but that is hardly the same as being part of the governing system for the entire country as are Kansas’s or Utah’s citizens. Puerto Ricans often serve in the military and are subject to conscription when it is operating; they may die for this country but not vote for those who represent them.

The island became a Commonwealth of the United States under President Harry Truman in 1950, with the islanders ratifying that formality by referendum a year later. It is a peculiar relationship to the United States because these Commonwealth residents pay no federal income tax yet Puerto Ricans are eligible for most federal programs. Former President Trump made a highly watched visit to San Juan in September 2017 following a damaging hurricane as indicative of the island’s need for disaster relief as happens regularly as an example.

Puerto Rico’s status as a Commonwealth is easily the most controversial aspect of the island’s politics. We GAO auditors decades ago were studying whether it made sense for to move the Commonwealth status to one of statehood for financial reasons. Even in the late 1970s, we used euphemisms to describe our effort for fear of exacerbating Puerto Rican nationalists who might replay the assassination attempt against President Truman in the 1950s.

Junior auditors never stay on a job for the entire process so I did not attend each and every meeting throughout the couple of years it took to do the investigation. I did learn, however, that even Democrats, anticipating two more Democratic Senators and at least one new House member, were reluctant to welcome any new state into the Union for fear more representatives would water down an individual’s personal power. Republicans did not want to expand the federal leadership in the legislative branch, either.

This was hardly new. Perhaps the most interesting thing I learned was how hard both parties fought against Alaska and Hawai’i becoming states earlier in the Twentieth century. But, these efforts breed unpredictability, proving again that we cannot “straight line” to a guaranteed conclusion. Hawai’i suffered primarily from Democratic opposition to its Statehood in the mid-1900s for fear most new elected officials would be Republicans while the GOP similarly thought most new Alaska members to either body would be Democrats. Sixty-five years later, that proved wrong on both counts. But, no one in the 1970s welcomed Puerto Rico with open arms.

Puerto Rico continues struggling to chart a path forward. Even within the island’s population no consensus exists about what status would be preferable. Plebiscites over the past forty years have revealed deep division on how to help the island proper, though much public rhetoric revolves around seeking independence. Yet federal money still flows to help islanders when they are in crisis. At the same time Puerto Ricans experience the same financial ups and downs, political ins and outs as any other part of the country yet they have this peculiar status as a Commonwealth.

A vibrant culture within the Caribbean marks this island as a place where multiple cultures come together to create yet one more unique Americans lifestyle, cherished by most but recently horribly mocked by disgusting, racist jokes. Is Puerto Rico a carbon copy of the rest of the country, regardless of its status? Absolutely not. Is it garbage amid the Caribbean?? Absolutely not as hundreds of military enlistees and officers, lawyers, beísbol players and other athletes, media personalities, hard working average Josés and Josefinas among a long list of different career paths grace this place and other parts of our nation where Puerto Ricans live. Puertorriqueños are as woven into this country as any other ethnic group, deserving credit, applause and respect for their contributions, their patriotism, and the commitments.

Are they loyal, devouted, and dedicated Americans? About as much as anywhere else, a point not to be forgotten in this era of heated rhetoric, insults, and gaming of race for partisan motives.

I welcome your thoughts, rebuttals, queries, and comments. Please feel free to send them to me or share with the newsletter if you are a subscriber (unique supporters who are invaluable to this effort). I appreciate each of you reading this and circulating it if you find value in its thoughts.

Be well and be safe. FIN