 The Meaning of Vieques
On June 15, 2001, the US Secretary
of the Navy announced the decision to stop bombing the little
island of Vieques in the year 2003.
Vieques is a tiny island
just 33,000 acres and only 9,300 inhabitants -- off the east
coast of Puerto Rico. But Vieques matters, to US politics and
the world, because Puerto Rican activists have known how to make
it matter. They have reached out to potential allies including
African Americans and, especially, non-Puerto Rican Hispanics.
Cuban American Congressman Robert Menéndez (D-NJ) has
been one of those who have protested the bombing vigorously,
and Mexican-American movie star Edward James Olmos has been among
the many prominent figures along with Rev. Al Sharpton
and numerous Island and US Puerto Rican politicians -- who went
so far as to get themselves arrested for "criminal trespass"
on the Navy's firing range.
This has been one more sign of
a phenomenon that is changing US political dynamics in a big
way. The diverse Americans who share a Spanish-language heritage
are learning to act as a single social force, supporting one
another even when their own particular interests are not at stake.
For example Puerto Ricans, themselves unaffected by immigration
law (because they are ipso facto US citizens), have been among
the stoutest defenders of immigrants from Central and South America.
US Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who also got himself arrested
in Vieques (and reportedly was seriously mistreated there), has
been prominent among these Puerto Ricans who have spoken out
for Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans and others.
Such reciprocity among Hispanic
groups has been effective in large part because the shared heritage
is real -- despite differences of skin color, accents, legal
status, etc. There is the linguistic memory, even for those who
no longer speak Spanish readily. And there are many shared
values and attitudes, including especially a sense of dignity,
what Puerto Ricans call "respeto." Bombing somebody
else's territory is a gross falta de respeto an
offense against that person's dignity. All Hispanics, whether
they usually call it respeto, dignidad, or something else,
understand that concept. And they've experienced enough faltas
de respeto in their own lives, and they've had enough.
Building a united Hispanic solidarity
group is not easy there remain deep differences in lifestyle,
attitudes and other things between Mexican Americans, Puerto
Ricans, Cuban Americans, and all the other Hispanic groups. But
it is happening, and politicians who are not Hispanic are beginning
to feel its power. That's why the bombing is going to stop.
00/10/26 --Puerto Rico's colonial status: a contradiction
for America
 The United States' continuing failure
to permit a resolution of Puerto Rico's status is not only an
international embarrassment. It is a contradiction of the fundamental
principles of equality and liberty on which this country was
founded.
Puerto Ricans lack "equality"
because they alone of US citizens do not elect the federal senators
and representatives who make the laws which govern them, nor
the president who appoints the federal judges who can overrule
any island court.
And they lack the fundamental
"liberty" of self-government and self-determination
because, since 1898, the United States government has blocked
all three options, resulting in a status that satisfies no one.
Independence option has been
treated as treasonous, and its adherents have been barred from
employment, fired from jobs, arbitrarily arrested and even killed.
In the 1930s police killings of their members drove independentistas
to ever more desperate acts, including assassination of the US-appointed
chief of police, and later -- out of the same kind of frustration
that sparks nationalist terrorism in many parts of the world
today -- the 1950 assassination attempts against President Harry
Truman and Luis Muñoz Marín, or the bombings by
the FALN and the Macheteros in the 1970s & 80s. To the colonial
power, such reactions justified even more severe repression,
including one that still burns in the memories of Puerto Rican
activists: the FBI murder of two young independentistas
on Cerro Maravilla in 1978.
The police raids and arrests
of alleged sympathizers, the imprisonments, the killings did
their job. They intimidated people, and broke the independence
movement. They also showed that the US did not regard independence
as a legitimate option. Congress has never given any sign that
it would respect a Puerto Rican vote for independence, much less
that it would assist the new republic to reorganize its economic
and legal affairs as an independent country.
Statehood was once favored by
social progressives, including the Spanish-born labor leader
and founder of the Socialist Party, Santiago Iglesias Pantín.
Statehood, he believed, would make social and economic reform
possible, because Puerto Ricans would elect their own governor
and a legislature and participate in the drafting of federal
law. Stateside labor law left much to be desired, but twould
have been an improvement over the laws then applied in Puerto
Rico. But the US Congress treated Iglesias' petitions with contempt,
and in 1938, over this and other issues, the Socialist Party
split. Luis Muñoz Marín led the pro-independence
faction into his new Partido Popular Democrático.
It was Muñoz who crafted
the third option, a modern version of the "autonomy"
within the colony that his father, Luis Muñoz Rivera,
advocated in Spanish colonial times and in the early years of
US occupation. He called it the Estado Libre Asociado for his
Spanish-speaking constituents -- "Free Associated State,"
state here understood in its classical sense of independent
government. In English he called it the "Commonwealth,"
so as not to frighten US legislators (who might interpret "state"
as something else). The Estado Libre Asociado, or "Commonwealth,"
was conceived as a emporary arrangement, preparing the citizens
-- and the US Congress -- for either independence or statehood.
Statehood then became exclusively
the banner of conservatives. They feared that Muñoz's
"Free Associated State" might lead to independence,
which might mean socialist reform. A new statehood party formed
in reaction to LMM's "Operation Bootstrap" reforms.
Many of the leaders of the modern pro-statehood party, the Partido
Nuevo Progresista, have business interests which involve them
intimately in US corporate affairs, and they fear, among other
things, greater demands by labor. But even so, the PNP knows
it cannot risk abandoning Puerto Rican "identity,"
including especially the use of Spanish -- because then it would
lose almost all its voters. (See Nancy Morris'
survey.)
But no matter how conservative,
the PNP cannot get the US Congress to consider statehood seriously.
Meanwhile, Congress has blocked
or ignored even minor reforms of the Estado Libre Asociado, always
taking into consideration the interests of their US constituents
and backers with little regard to the desires of Puerto Ricans.
This compromise status, a kind
of pseudo-autonomy which can be overridden any time the US Congress
takes a mind to do so, creates confusion and doubt among Puerto
Rican political leaders. It has also affected social relations
within Puerto Rico in many ways, including race relations. In
an important study of color prejudice in Puerto Rico published
in 1942 Salvador Blanco argued that
prejudice was not racial but "social." The author meant that there was a common
presumption among Puerto Ricans, especially lighter-skinned Puerto
Ricans, that "el negro" would have the characteristics
of the lower class. But if this presumption turned out to be
false -- if the individual demonstrated education, proper manners
and so on -- he or she was accepted. Blanco was not excusing
this Puerto Rican color prejudice, but pointed out that itcontrasted
sharply with attitudes then common in the United States, that
blacks were inherently inferior and no amount of education or
good breeding would ever make them acceptable to whites.Thirty
years later, another study (La Ruffa,
1973) found that racial polarization, blancos-trigueños vs.
morenos (blacks) is developing on the Island as a result
of "Puerto Rico's association with the U.S.' and industrialization.
The subordinate, colonial status
has also had serious psychological consequences on the development
of Puerto Rican personality, according to many researchers.(Albizu and Marty) The objective helplessness of Puerto
Rico, the constant frustration of not being able to determine
one's own fate, seems to have been internalized by many Puerto
Ricans. It contributes to domestic family tensions, and to emigration,
which for many is the only kind of change that's available. (García Ramis, 1993) A parallel
effect has been reported by Helen Safa
(1993): Export
manufacturing in both the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico
has been reducing men's wages and employment, while increasing
women's labor force participation eroding their dependence on
men. This, Safa argues, has fueled migration to the states (and
from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico) - by men without
women, and by women without men.
José Luis Méndez
(1997) has
pointed out that the three status formulas -- independence, statehood
and "commonwealth" -- have converged far more than
their spokesmen in the three establishment parties are willing
to acknowledge. Each position has been modified over the years,
so that today, leaders of the Partido Nuevo Progresista insist
that their statehood has to be "jíbara" (the
"jíbaro" is the classic figure of a Puerto Rican
rustic, not usually associated with the old sugar barons and
modern technocrats of the PNP). What they seem to mean is that
the Spanish language would safeguarded, and that somehow the
State of Puerto Rico should still look like a separate country
-- maybe everybody would be required to wear straw hats. The
Partido Independentista talks about an independence "associated"
with the United States, independent but not too independent.
Whereas the "commonwealth" defenders want their "Free
Associated State" to be a little more free and a little
less associated than it is at present.
If the differences are that trivial,
then maybe the whole status question is an enormous red herring,
serving to distract people from the serious economic and social
issues in Puerto Rico that they will have to deal with whether
they are independently associated, or associatedly independent,
with or without straw hats. But I think there is, or should be,
more at stake in choosing between the three formulas, and that
those differences would be made clear only if Puerto Ricans were
truly free to make a choice that could be enforced.
How Puerto Ricans choose to resolve
this issue is none of my business, because I am not Puerto Rican.
That they be permitted to resolve it is my business, because
I am an American, that is, a citizen of the United States, whose
pride in and respect for our country is based on our traditions
of liberty and equaltiy. This country's lack of respect for nearly
4 million people on the Island, and another approximately 2 million
descendants of Puerto Ricans in the US, is deeply embarrassing
to the US and to all of us, because it contradicts those fundamental
principles. The outpouring of support, the massive demonstrations
around the bombing of Vieques show that this issue is still alive
and burning. (2000 November)
References
Albizu Miranda, Carlos, and Herbert
Marty Torres. "Atisbos en la personalidad puertorriqueña."
Revista de Ciencias Sociales: 383-401. Psychological tests
administered to Puerto Rican lower class migrants in Chicago
confirm findings of independent study of lower-class Puerto Ricans
on the island: "alternan la desconfianza y el recelo, de
un lado, y la renunciación pasiva y entrega de la iniciativa
individual, por otro." This is attributed to frustrations
experienced in Puerto Rico, but "lo que en Puerto Rico pudiera
haber sido en nuestro individuo una condición de 'constricción
natural', de acuerdo a las limitaciones del medio, se convierte
en el Continente en una 'constricción neurótica'."
400
Blanco, Tomás. El prejuicio
racial en Puerto Rico. San Juan: Biblioteca de Autores Puertorriqueños,
1942. 82 First published in Revista de Estudios Afrocubanos,
núm. 1, volumen ii (1937 Según Blanco, el prejuicio
en Puerto Rico no es racial sino social (atribúyesele
al negro en general características de clase baja, pero
si se demuestra no ser de esa clase es aceptado), debido a que
PR no desarrolló producción económica que
dependía de la esclavitud (como más tarde sería
el cultivo de caña de azucar, ya después de la
emancipación) y a la religión católica,
que insiste en la igualdad ante Dios y que no da lugar al erotismo
sádico que es efecto de la represión sexual del
protestantismo.)
García Ramis, Magali. "Los
cerebros que se van y el corazón que se queda." In
La ciudad que me habita, 9-20. Río Piedras: Ediciones
Huracán, Inc., 1993. "Todos tienen algo roto, por
eso se van; si no es el cristal del carro, es el matrimonio."
12
La Ruffa, Anthony. "Interracial
Marriage Among Puerto Ricans." In Interracial Marriage:
Expectations and Realities, edited by I.R. Stuart and L.E.
Abt, 213-228. New York: Grossman, 1973.
Méndez, José Luis. Entre
el limbo y el consenso: el dilema de Puerto Rico para el próximo
siglo. San Juan, PR: José Luis Méndez, 1997.
Síntesis: La única manera de salir del empantanamiento,
en que las tres clásicas posturas respecto al "status"
de Puerto Rico -- independencia, estadidad, ELA -- se bloquean
mutuamente, es reconocer los valores que todos defienden en común,
y que en el mundo actual, no representan principios tan diferentes
la una de las otras. A diferencia de cuando empezaron, las 3
tienen "apellidos" que las cualifican y las acercan:
la estadidad tiene que ser "jíbara" (conservando
el español y las idiosincracias culturales), la independencia
"asociada" con EU (para que sea factible, porque en
la economía globalizada, nadie es realmente "independiente"
de los grandes centros del capital), y el ELA "culminado"
(o sea, descolonizado). El libro pretende recuperar a todos los
próceres, incluyendo a Hostos, Albizu y Marx (prócer
virtual) para su gran consenso.144
Morris, Nancy. Puerto Rico: Culture,
Politics, and Identity. Westport CT: Praeger, 1995. Includes
a very concise and useful political history of the island, but
its most original contribution is the survey of political leaders
and activists of all of the (legal) parties. Her work supports
Méndez's argument, that the divergences in fundamental
values, and particularly how they see their "Puerto Ricanness,"
are not great among advocates of the three status formulas.
Safa, Helen I. "The New Women
Workers: Does Money Equal Power?" NACLA Report on the
Americas 27, no. 1 (1993): 24-29
Map from
Holt,
Rinehart and Winstion Atlas
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