Decolonization Models for America’s Last Colony: Puerto Rico

The Bride Refuses to Marry

172 The Bride Refuses to Marry July 28, 2006 Statehood, which [José Celso] Barbosa referred to as the “regional homeland ” and others have called “jibaro statehood,” does not exist. The United States is very different today from what the Founding Fathers of the first democracy conceived as a federation of autonomous states: it is now a centralized, federated country. Statehood is not an option for Puerto Rico because the United States does not want it, and the US messages on the subject have been consistent for more than one hundred years. But no one is so blind as one who chooses not to see. Our colonial power has sent us these ten significant signs over the past century: 1. On January 21, 1899, President William McKinley met with our elected delegation, composed of [Eugenio María de] Hostos, Manuel Zeno-Gandía, and Julio Henna. The Puerto Ricans came out of the meeting dispirited after realizing that neither statehood nor independence was what the new colonial power had in mind. 2. In 1922, the chief justice of the US Supreme Court, William Howard Taft, confirmed that Puerto Rico is a unincorporated territory and declared that we belong to but are not a part of the United States. Taft knew the territorial situation very well because he had been the governor of the Philippines and later of Cuba, secretary of war, and president. 3. In 1932, the United States, which had arbitrarily changed our name to “Porto Rico” after signing the Treaty of Paris, returned The Bride Refuses to Marry  173 our name—“Puerto Rico”—to us, having given up hope of Americanizing our Hispanic country. 4. In 1934, the powerful resident commissioner Santiago IglesiasPant ín introduced pro-statehood bills in several sessions, but they could not even get through committee. That was the decade when the pro annexation political parties controlled Puerto Rico. 5. In 1946, President [Harry S.] Truman vetoed a plebiscite bill passed by the Puerto Rico legislature. Truman announced that the United States was not willing to put the results of a plebiscite into effect. 6. In 1961, we had the last official visit from a president. Since then, we have had three annexationist governors of the same political party as the president of the United States, yet no president has visited us officially in almost half a century. Isn’t it logical to think that if the United States is interested in making Puerto Rico a state, a president would have come to visit us? 7. In 1976, President Gerald Ford openly supported statehood for Puerto Rico, but nothing happened. 8. Between 1990 and 1991, President George Bush, the Popular Democratic Party, the New Progressive Party, and the Puerto Rico Independence Party endorsed a plebiscite bill, which then died in a Senate committee. On that occasion, there was consensus, but they did not act because they were not willing to commit to granting statehood to Puerto Rico. 9. In 2001, President George W. Bush referred to Puerto Rico as “our friends and neighbors, and they don’t want us there.” 10. In 2005, one of the principal thinkers and professors of Harvard, Samuel P. Huntington, raised a cry of alarm against Hispanic immigration and compared us with Native Americans: “Indian tribes were recognized in US law as dependent, but separate nations, and they are, along with Puerto Ricans, the only ethnic groups to which lands have been assigned exclusively.” To these signs we must add events as significant as the departure of the [US] Armed Forces from Puerto Rico, the four reports produced by the permanent government, and the elimination of tax incentives that were in place. 174  Newspaper Columns These and other signs say it all: the bride refuses to marry. And [Americans] have been telling us so for one hundred years. It is unworthy of us to continue fantasizing with an impossible dream, waiting for the bride to change her mind some day. They do not want Puerto Rico to be a part of the United States. That is their right, and we have to respect it. It is not a matter of being proAmerican or anti-American; it is a reality check. To continue discussing the advantages and disadvantages of statehood for Puerto Rico is a sterile exercise. Americans do not respect people who do not stand up for themselves . They respect people who respect themselves. Statehood is available for those...