The supreme definition and Puerto Ricans: history at last has cornered us

 Artículo publicado originalmente en Abril 2017

The supreme definition and Puerto Ricans: history at last has cornered us

Translation of the original article in spanish version: “ La definición suprema y la puertorriqueñidad: la historia al fin nos acorraló”

Translation by Ada Pérez 

 “In the end, the great issues presented here are civic, not economic. Do Puerto Ricans wish to become Americans? Because that's what statehood ineluctably implies.” -Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) on the Senate floor in May 1990 on debate on the S.712 bill: Puerto Rico Status Referendum Act of 1989-90

It is come the zero hour

It is already a determined and official fact, embodied in Law # 7 of 2017, which the skilled resident voters of this island are prepared to participate in the next plebiscite scheduled for next Sunday June 11, 2017. Unlike previous plebiscites, the way in which it is proposed inevitably seeks to confront Puerto Ricans with what Pedro Albizu Campos called "the moment of supreme definition." And finally Puerto Rican society has been cornered by history, and with no possibility of escape, in terms of its duty to define itself and to clearly establish what it actually wants around a final and firm political status. The “piquitos” bread is gone! Now there are no worthy subterfuges.

Puerto Ricans as a social group must face and overcome once and for all, what can be termed as their worst fear: the determination of how they really conceive their Puerto Rican ideology. In that ideology, there are only two options: to separate Puerto Rican identity of the United States, and thus the aspiration to move PR towards a "separate sovereignty of the United States" as the best way to choose for people who feel this way or that they may aspire, the Puerto Rican identity in which its American component is recognized, valued and appreciated as a vital, essential, and indivisible in the broadest sense as a society, with no other option than to move in the direction of turning PR into State 51 The American nation as the best alternative for those who in this way think and aspire.

In other words, what this plebiscite really represents for Puerto Ricans, in rice and beans, is that at last they will have to self-evaluate and self-examine, and give a clear and diaphanous answer, once and for all, the most important question that we as Puerto Ricans to face who have lived in a colony and territory of the United States for almost 120 years: Do we conceive Puerto Ricans as a separate (mutually exclusive) people of the American people, or, on the contrary, we conceive Integral and functional part of that society as a whole? The moment of truth has come!

Many times in my writings on Facebook related to the importance that the people of Puerto Rico give a final and definitive solution to their unfinished problem of their colonial-territorial political status, I would like to point out that of the three solutions available and guaranteed by international law (Statehood, Independence or Free Association) the most logical alternative for Puerto Ricans is statehood. See that I am not necessarily indicating that it is the best, but I simply refer to it as the most logical of the three for several reasons that I have already outlined and addressed in earlier writings. However, in this paper I intend, rather, to reflect on what I consider as the "mental entanglement" that many Puerto Ricans have in relation to the so-called "Puerto Rican identity" in the context of our political, social and economic relationship with the United States of America, and its link with the solution of the problem of PR political status.

Bankruptcy and failure of ELA

Before going to the heart of this paper, I want to contextualize the fact that the available evidence indicates that the current Puerto Rican political regime called ELAno longer gives more. Although we can stipulate for the historical and sociological record that it was a political arrangement that helped PR to form its own government and to forge its economic-industrial bases, mainly between 1952 and 1973, the reality is that Muñoz Marín himself (Putative, intellectual and spiritual) when he conceived it, it was clear that it was a transitory status toward statehood or independence. In other words, the people at the time, perhaps "when it was ripe for it," would have no other historical alternative to decide to move forward either toward independence or toward statehood. On the other hand, our society, far from that, decided on the somersault to pretend to extend the useful life to ELA 40 years more than for what was designed, and that we are here today with its legacy. What was that legacy? Oh my gosh! The question only offends! But as for a sample with a single button suffices, suffice to mention just a few: an economy in depression since 2006 that treads and does not start (the reality is that available evidence and consensus among economists points to the PR economy has been losing Land since the 1970s), lack of tools, both political and economical, to precisely get out of that crisis, unequal treatment compared to our fellow citizens in all 50 states, ALA bankruptcy, PROMESA Law, Federal Fiscal Control Board , Among the most outstanding.

There will be those who do not want to give me any credibility in sustaining this conclusion and vision of the failed ELA by my statesman convictions. Okay! Stipulated! Well, do not believe me. But at least believe that was the candidate for Resident Commissioner and fellow ballot of Former Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla in the 2012 elections; One of the most prolific leaders and ideologues of the PPD, Rafael Cox Alomar, who wrote for the Spanish newspaper "El Pais" the column entitled "The Puerto Rican Crossroads", in which he pronounced the following: "The constitutional experiment that the United States At the end of the Truman administration, when the Cold War was gaining in intensity and became known as the "Commonwealth of Puerto Rico," it collapse and all the economic scaffolding of neo-colonial court that supported it, advocated on complete claudication Of the island of political control over the economic variables that directly affect his life, came down like a house of cards. " Do not believe me, believe the prolific economist and university professor Dr. Francisco Catalá, who wrote on pages 169 and 170 of his book published in 2013 under the title: "Broken promise: an institutionalist view from Tugwell ", The following:" Is Puerto Rico at such a critical juncture? So it seems. The colonial order is in frank decomposition. The manifestations of its economic dysfunctionality - virtual disappearance of agriculture, contraction in manufacturing, disproportion in the structure of property between residents and foreigners, remission of the surplus abroad, unemployment, desertion of the labor market, inequality in the distribution of income and Wealth, dependence. Fiscal insufficiency, indebtedness, flowering of the underground economy, etc. - are becoming unsustainable. Social decomposition is revealed in high crime rates, Impoverishment of daily life, institutional dismantling and corruption in business and government management. In the dimension of partisan politics, there is an increasing frequency between vulgarity and crime. " As they would say in legal slang: "Admissions of guilt, relay of evidence".

It is important to make this relation of facts because it is time to wake up once and for all from the dream of past glories, and to stop living on the moon of valence. Let us not look back at the past with nostalgia, but look at that future that we want to leave to our children and grandchildren. As the notorious Anglican Pastor Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853) would say, "There is a past that is gone forever, but there is a future that is still ours." Do we want to leave our children and grandchildren with a PR in the economic crisis in which they are plunged? Is this the legacy we want to leave to the next generations? The reality is that long ago we should have made the final decision to end the unfinished business of the "democratic deficit" of our Puerto Rican society. Since we did not do so in the opportunities presented to us earlier (1993, 1998, 2012), let us not miss this great historical opportunity offered by the plebiscite of this coming June 11. Do not stop this anymore! Either we decide between separate sovereignty or sovereignty of the US, or we just sink into immobility at the expense of an ELA that is doomed to failure.

The immobilists and obstructionists of the decolonization of Puerto Rico, the "usual suspects" who will soon use their diatribes against the plebiscite, will manipulate at their whim the concept of Puerto Rican identity to thereby induce paralysis in Puerto Ricans and The fear of definition. There will be no shortage of popular leaders of the lineage of Rafael Hernández Colón and his descendants, Anibal Acevedo Vila, Garcia Padilla, among others, who will use and manipulate at will the concept of Puerto Rican identity to, in some measure, make Puerto Ricans believe that Our Puerto Rican statehood is incompatible. These people use this theme in their speech to encourage mainly their popular hosts because they know that this type of speech, distorted and twisted at will, appeals to the moral fiber of a sector of Puerto Ricans. But all this is a hoax and a great insult to the intelligence of this people, because the mere fact that we are a state of American union is not incompatible or clashes with our Puerto Rican.

We have to show these people that Puerto Ricans do not suck our thumbs, that the baby's teeth have fallen to us a long time, and that we are no longer in the time where people thought that the dogs were moored with longaniza and that the moon It was cheese and it was eaten with honey. For me, the most degrading and outrageous thing is that they seek to appeal to people with whom their logo type is the only one that has a Puerto Rican element because it has the figure of a Puerto Rican as it was conceived in the times of the 30's. I consider this a veritable insult to the intelligence of the Puerto Rican of the 21st Century, that we have overcome and left behind that sad historical reality. That generation of the 30's, 40's and 50's mostly illiterate and poorly educated in terms of their fundamental rights were victims of the dreams that sold him, mainly, a populist, charismatic and great orator, Luis Muñoz Marín, with the call ELA. Things are very different today. The game is a very different one.

Eugenio María de Hostos once said: "Democracy is a fiction when there is no people ... without education of the people there will never be a true people; Without a true people, democracy is a resounding word, not a system of government. " It seems that these popular leaders pretend that Puerto Ricans, in the 21st century, remain illiterate Jibaros, who can easily manipulate, and that we aspire to nothing more than to live and work in conditions of inferiority and precariousness, as They were lived by the Puerto Rican jibaro that era. How outrageous! As Carlos Romero Barceló would say: "Alas, leave that Rafael ...!" I tell the people not to be deceived or buy the twisted reality that these leaders of the PPD will have to paint, with the main objective of discouraging the Puerto Ricans from deciding Statehood once and for all. PR deserves something better than the bankruptcy of ELA. PR deserves to move forward. PR deserves the powerful tools that would provide the stability of a non-colonial and non-territorial political status, such as statehood, to shape its future, which undoubtedly does not have or possesses under the worn-out political regime of the ELA.

The moment of truth, ..., the moment of supreme definition

Having left the previous point completely clear, now is the good. In my opinion, the most important dilemma they have to face, define and solve Puerto Ricans before the new plebiscite event has to do precisely with the concept of Puerto Rican identity. In other words, the time came for the truth in which Puerto Ricans will have to confront themselves in this moral and spiritual exercise. Exercise that most of the Puerto Ricans had been fleeing "like the devil to the cross." Exercise that a large substantial portion of Puerto Ricans, mainly, those who suffer from the problem (or jaiberia) of wanting to have everything (ie "wanting to have the bird in hand and at the same time the hundred flying"), had managed very well , To date, to obviate, prevent it and avoid it at all costs.

To be clear, I make the distinction that there is another group of citizens, possibly exceeding more than half the population, that we have done this exercise for a long time and passed that stage of our lives. To this day, those of us who identify in this group are more than clear as to what we want and where we want to go in relation to the issue of PR's political definition, through non-colonial and non-territorial status. We want to move forward and overcome this embarrassing unfinished colonial stumbling block of Puerto Rican history and democracy. This issue of PR's political indefinition is one that has not only divided Puerto Ricans, but, even more, stagnant as a society, and we are consuming important energies in the daily debate. Energies that we could well be employing in more fundamental issues like the search for new ways to make our economy a more robust, dynamic and sustainable, and in the cultivation of those values ​​that make our coexistence in society a better and healthier.

Clarifying the point expressed in the previous paragraph, I will return to the question that I left in the initial paragraphs: should we conceive of Puerto Ricans as a separate (mutually exclusive) people of the American people, or, on the contrary, we owe Conceive as an integral and functional part of that society in a wider context? There are those who ask themselves: where do Puerto Ricans fit into the American ideology? The first thing to be understood and put in its proper perspective is the sociological paradigm of the American people. Nowadays, the population of the American nation is no longer conformed (if ever it really was) by what in the past was known as the "Whiteman-Saxon-Protesant". Today the American society is composed of an amalgam of immigrants of different international extractions, races and ethnic groups. And it is noteworthy that in that concert of ethnics and extractions the Hispanic has been gaining more power and influence every day that passes. And that, in this context of Spanish-American influence within the broader ideology of American society, we as American citizens of Puerto Rican origin, in our context also of Hispanic origin, are in a better position with regard to American citizens from other extractions Hispanic.

The second thing to understand in all this imaginary is the fact that under the American constitution the American citizens conform a "Melting Pot" under the slogan "E Pluribus Unum". So what makes us Americans has nothing to do with race, ethnicity, or extraction; What makes us Americans is sharing the same values ​​that led to the American Revolution and inspired the declaration of US Independence. What makes us really American, without that being incompatible with being Puerto Rican, is sharing the values ​​of democracy, freedom of the individual, right to life, right to private property and right to pursue the happiness that inspired that great American constitution . What makes us Americans is to share the fruit of the result of the American democracy experiment, conceived in the realization of the "American Dream" .

Third, it is certainly necessary to contextualize that it is understandable that the Puerto Ricans of the generation who were born before the invasion of the USA into PR in 1898 and who lived through that transition had mixed feelings about their national identity, Since they first belonged to another nation (Spain), then to be part of a new one to which they had to get accustomed (USA). While this is true, it is also true that the historical and sociological reality that concerns us today is totally different, and much more complex, than that of those days. The reality for those who were born and developed in a Puerto Rican society in which culturally has coexisted with the American system and way of life for almost 120 years is another and quite different. Therefore, what is politically correct is to say that we are Americans of Puerto Rican idiosyncrasy. What that means is that we are a people conformed by the essence and American values ​​in combination with the autochthonous of the local cultural ideology.

Fourth, the American people are at a defining turning point in their history. There are two competing paradigms: on the one hand, the paradigm of the "melting pot" or crucible of races, and on the other the paradigm of "strength in diversity". The melting pot paradigm posits the assimilation of the foreigner who arrives in the United States into the cultural modes of a nation perceived as unitary and homogeneous. The idea is that no matter the nationalities of origin all end up merging into a nation of unitary culture. On the other hand, the paradigm of strength in diversity postulates an American people who accept the wealth and strength as a nation in the coexistence of groups, which, although with different cultural modes, share the values ​​of democracy, freedom of the individual, Civil rights, rejection of tyranny, common dream of overcoming, political and religious freedom, disciplined work culture, and the prosperity and happiness of the individual.

In that context, it must be understood that the American nation today, sociologically very different from the era in which the Whiteman-Saxon-Protesant predominated, is composed of an amalgamation of nationalities, races and ethnicities, where the Spanish cobra More and more power. In fact, today there are more than 50 million Hispanic American citizens and representatives of this sector in all spheres of American power, both in the executive, legislative and judicial branch of that nation. There are particularly more Puerto Ricans today living in the 50 states of the American nation than those living in the PR territory, and this has made Puerto Ricans a sector of special interest to the political factions of the USA. Candidates for elective positions are constantly seeking their support. Higher Still, there are more and more candidates for elective positions of Puerto Rican origin in the different spheres, both state and federal.

Fifth, whether we like it or not, the development of the so-called "Puerto Rican identity" or conception we have today, has occurred in the context of the political, social and economic relationship with the United States for the last almost 120 years . In other words, one cannot speak of Puerto Rican identity by dissociating it from the history shared by PR with the US in its colonial relationship. The sociological reality is that these “national” identities we dare to say have a large component of the influence received from the US in their years of joint history. And this is an important component to bear in mind when stating that PR is a thing apart from the US, or that US for Puerto Ricans represents a foreign nation nothing further from truth and reality. And whoever says this to the people deceives him.

Closing reflection

My call in this writing is mainly to those people who value their American citizenship and permanent union with the United States of America. The status plebiscite event represents that great opportunity to decide the course we want to take to our Puerto Rican society. It is time to resolve that unfinished business, that open wound, because "there is no evil that will last a hundred years nor body that will resist it". But if in that process of definition you still have doubts about choosing the option of statehood because you understand it to be incompatible with your Puerto Rican sense of identity, remember, first of all, that you are already an American citizen, and second, that our identity Puerto Rican society contains an important and indivisible component of the American society, product of the natural influence of a political, social and economic relation of more than 100 years. In the sociological context of the 21st century our Puerto Ricans not incompatible with the fact that we become the 51st state of the American nation. In fact, the natural thing should be to move in that direction, because there are more things that unite us to that society than those that separate us, one of them our citizenship