Reaffirming Colonial Rule: Comment on HR 5278: The PROMESA Bill

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, 2019

This essay aims to briefly collect the historical context of colonialism in Puerto Rico since the Spanish era but primarily focuses on revealing the reasons to consider Puerto Rico as a colony and non-self-governing territory of the US-rather than a neocolony of the US. Later, the article addresses the three non-colonial options recognized by the 1514 United Nations (UN) Resolution and the results of the five referendums on the political status of the Caribbean archipelago held over the last five decades. The essay concludes that Puerto Rico is undoubtedly a colony and asks for the United Nations and the sovereign countries of the world to denounce this illegal colonial relationship that subordinates residents of Puerto Rico to the will of the US Congress where they have no voting representatives.

2019

Il caso di Puerto Rico, che nel plebiscito del 2017 si è espresso a favore dell’annessione agli Stati Uniti, assume chiaramente le sembianze di una decolonizzazione inversa: invece di reclamare un diritto di secessione dalla madrepatria, si chiede il diritto ad aderire a quest’ultima, mantenendo strette relazioni politiche, economiche e di sicurezza anche dopo il raggiungimento dell’indipendenza. Per la costituzione statunitense Puerto Rico è un territory rientrante nella sovranità degli Stati Uniti e che gode (al contempo) di un autogoverno e di una propria costituzione. Ma non è definitivamente integrato nel sistema, nel senso che non essendo pari agli altri Stati dell’Unione, rimane un territorio privo di personalità giuridica e definibile solo come un Commonwealth. La libera associazione tra Puerto Rico e gli Stati Uniti sarebbe assimilabile ad una forma di indipendenza in cui due soggetti di diritto concordano un particolare rapporto che comporta deleghe di poteri sovrani in settori importanti quali la difesa oltre a funzioni governative nella misura in cui entrambe le parti coinvolte nel rapporto liberamente lo concordino. L’isola non è uno Stato in libera associazione con gli Stati Uniti né è diventato (o è in previsione di diventare) il 51mo Stato dell’Unione. Inoltre né gli Stati Uniti né il Comitato per la Decolonizzazione delle Nazioni Unite riconoscono a Puerto Rico un «political status freely determined by the people» così come definito dalla Risoluzione 2625 del 1970. È un soggetto sui generis ed i suoi confini giuridici sono determinati da un compact che non può essere modificato senza il consenso sia di Puerto Rico che degli Stati Uniti. Nel 2017 si è tenuto l’ultimo plebiscito sullo status giuridico dell’isola e, nonostante il risultato in favore di un’annessione all’Unione, il Congresso statunitense non è obbligato ad esprimersi in merito. I Ricans anelano ad un futuro diverso e comunque migliore di quello attuale, complice una pesantissima situazione debitoria nei confronti degli Stati Uniti. Questi, in virtù del plebiscito del 2017, si troverebbero dinanzi ad un imbarazzante bivio: espellere l’isola dal Commonwealth oppure prendere atto dell’istanza del popolo isolano ed ammettere l’isola come 51mo Stato dell’Unione, con il corredo del debito pubblico. Ma è evidente che lo status giuridico incerto di Puerto Rico è destinato a protrarsi. The case of Puerto Rico, that in a plebiscite of 2017 has shown to be in favor of being annexed to the United States, assumes the appearance of an inverse decolonization: instead of claiming a right of secession from the motherland, the right asked is to join the latter, maintaining political economic and security relations even after achieving independence. For the US Constitution Puerto Rico is a territory falling within the sovereignty of the United States and (at the same time) enjoying self-government and its own Constitution. But it is not definitively integrated into the system and it isn’t equal to the other States of the Union, it is just a territory without legal personality and definable, only, as a Commonwealth. A free association between Puerto Rico and the United States would be similar to a form of independence where two subjects agree a particular relationship involving delegations of sovereign powers in important sectors such as defense, as well as government functions in the measure that both parties involved in the relationship freely agree. The island is not a State in free association with the United States nor has it become (or is in the process of becoming) the 51st State of the Union. Furthermore, neither the United States nor the United Nations Decolonization Committee acknowledges in Puerto Rico a «political status within the people» as defined by Resolution 2625 of 1970. It is a sui generis subject and its legal boundaries are determined by a compact that can’t be changed without the consent of both parties. In 2017 a last plebiscite on the island’s legal status was held and, despite the impressive result in favor of an annexation to the Union, the US Congress is not obliged to be compliant with it. Among other things precisely because of the plebiscite of 2017, the United States are faced with an embarrassing junction: expel the island from the Commonwealth or take note of the island’s people aims and admit Puerto Rico as the 51st state of the Union, with its public debt. On its side, in light of international law, the people of Puerto Rico would naturally have the right to freely determine its legal status vis-à-vis the mother country and become independent, however it cannot pretend to be integrated in the United States, it can only negotiate for that.

Theory & Event

How do the lived conditions of colonialism assume particular forms of legibility and dissociation in relation to imperial nation-states such as the United States, where a variety of colonialisms remain both constitutive and continuing, but are seldom understood as such? Conventional historical narratives of decolonization are insufficient for addressing the complex overlay of colonizations in the present and what might come afterward. This essay focuses on Puerto Rico in order to consider the colonial disavowals that strive to render these conditions unintelligible and against which counter-epistemologies and new social possibilities take shape under the escalating pressure of recent judicial rulings and fiscal crises.

Congressional discourse on Puerto Rican self-determination is a memorial narrative that, although on its face an attempt at decolonization, constitutes Puerto Ricans as incomplete colonial subjects, reinscribes and normalizes the U.S.-Puerto Rico relationship along the axis of a flexible colonialism, and reveals the way in which Puerto Rico, as colony, is remembered in the “post/colony” envisioned by the United States.

Explores the Cold War-era political and military factors considered by US and Puerto Rican leaders when crafting the model of self-government known as Estado Libre Asociado or Commonwealth of Puerto Rico

Quaderni Costituzionali , 2017

Első Század, 2006

The present study places the analysis of mass media in Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico within a continuous process of transition and transformation towards democratization, interlocked to current international forces of neoliberal-globalized financial and economic structures and the cultural transformations this entails. As the three islands approached the end of 21st century second decade, Antonio Benitez Rojo's Plantation culture-repeating island system of thought allows for understanding of the course taken by mass media industries within each island context, as well as that of Caribbean neoliberalism. Since 1990 Cuba has been undergoing a continuous transition-like state, of an authoritarian socialist-state in a process of re-articulating socialism in the new international neoliberal context, with no provisions for a market economy or pluralization within the society. The International Monetary Fund finds the Dominican Republic a regional star growth performer with averaged unemployment rate of 15.40%, as well as and eroding rule of-law. Puerto Rico finds itself trapped as “[…] a territory appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States within the revenue clauses of the Constitution […]”, ruled since June 30 2016 by a Financial Oversight and Management Board whose supremacy “reaches over any general or specific provisions of territory law, State law, or regulation that is inconsistent with [the Board]”, and is plagued by corruption and an unpayable government debt.