Por y Para Mi Gente: Puerto Rico-US Relations (Meditation 7)

Note

This is my seventh meditation on the documents of barbarism that solidified Puerto Rico’s standing as a US colony from 1898 to present (As Jóse Trías Monge writes, Puerto is the “oldest colony” in the world). You may find the first meditation here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, the fifth here, and the sixth here.

Preface

Given multiple responsibilities, this, sadly, is my final mediation on the documents of barbarism that solidified Puerto Rico’s standing as a US colony from 1898 to present. I hope to return to these meditations in a couple years, expanding them to better serve mi gente.

I conclude with three movements. The first unpacks what I’ve meant by “documents of barbarism.” The second discusses a gendered limitation that came with Puerto Rico’s colonial status even after the Jones Act gave Puerto Rican’s US “citizenship.” The third outlines some thoughts I have about Puerto Rico-US relations after Puerto Rico’s 2020-memorandum vote for statehood.

Movement One: Documents of Barbarism

For centuries, anti-Semitism had run rampant through what we now call Germany. But it was reaching a fever pitch as the Nazi’s worked to implement Hitler’s final solution in an effort to establish the racial state.

Facing extreme forms of racial violence conceived in terms of Aryan white supremacy, German-Jew Walter Benjamin penned Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940) in an effort to explain the historic linking of “civilization” with egregious forms of evil. There Benjamin writes:

[A]ll rulers are the heirs of those who conquered before them. Hence, empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers. Historical materialists know what that means. Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.

The texts employed to establish “Western Civilization” are also documents of barbarism: they served to perpetuate heinous evils against the conquered. What’s more, barbarism taints the transmission of these documents, for the processes of transmission maintain the delusion that these artifacts are innocent treasures, not, for instance, blood diamonds. An astute, historically conscious thinker recognizes these patterns, and accordingly analyzes a society’s documentation.

The previous six mediations exemplify my efforts to think with Benjamin by considering the legal documents and discourses that rendered Puerto Rico a perpetual US colony. Letters between Roosevelt and Lodge; the Treaty of Paris (1898); Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”; Farnham’s tracks; the Foraker Act (1900); The Insular Cases (1901); The Jones Act (1917); Congressional records; and Balzac v Puerto Rico (1922)—each is a document of barbarism tied to the racist conquest and colonization of mi gent y mi isla. They are texts that “step over those who are lying prostrate.” We must see them as such. And we must see how the legal practice of stare decisis—standing by legal precedent—has worked these documents into practices of systemic racism, including racial apartheid, against Puerto Ricans.

Movement Two: Gendered Racism

The Insular cases established that, until Congress incorporated Puerto Rico, many of the (racial) rights and privileges US citizens experienced did not extend to mi gente. Cases such as Balzac extended this precedent through the establishment of racial apartheid: Full Constitutional rights accompanying US citizenship applied within the mainland, not the non-White isla.

As we’ve seen, this racist oppression impacted Puerto Rican voting. Mi gente on la isla cannot vote for their President, Vice President, Congress, or whom those people nominate to their highest Courts. What we’ve not noted, however, is that the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution didn’t apply to Puerto Rico, because only states, not colonies, can ratify Constitutional Amendments. Consequently, whereas the 19th Amendment extended suffrage to women on the mainland, it didn’t extend suffrage to women in Puerto Rico. Indeed, it wasn’t until 1935—a full fifteen years later!—that Puerto Rico extended suffrage to women. Of course, that suffrage still carried the same colonial limitations to affect the US’s federal government. These women remained foreign, but in a domestic sense.

Movement Three: Some Concluding Thoughts

On November 5, 2020, the majority of Puerto Ricans who voted on a memorandum about statehood voted to make Puerto Rico the 51st state of the US. This vote binds no one. Yes, the decision will go before Congress. But Congress needn’t act in accordance with this outcome by moving to grant Puerto Rico statehood by incorporating it into the US. Indeed, Congress can simply say, “Duly noted; now let’s resume the racist, exploitive, oppressive status quo.”

Given that incorporating Puerto Rico would lead to a substantial shift in political power—mi gente would have two members in the Senate and five in House, the majority of which would be Democrats—I think Congress will not move to make Puerto Rico a state. The Republicans surely would work against this power change.

Moreover, I find it unlikely that Congress will want to acquire all the financial challenges that would accompany Puerto Rico’s statehood. Consider mi isla’s enormous debt—the fruit of decades-long practices of corruption between the politicians on la isla and the mainland. Consider, too, how much this incorporation would cost federal systems tied to healthcare and unemployment. The financial ruin COVID-19 is wrecking upon the US make these massive financial moves more striking.

Lastly, I think the immense resurgence of violent white nationalist and ideologies of white supremacy make it unlikely that Congress would act to grant full citizenship and statehood status to those racialized non-White. I can already hear the racist assimilationist rhetoric…

Postscript

Thank you to everyone who read this series. May these essays promote race-conscious justice and mercy.