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Law in Contemporary Society
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The Oldest Colony in the World-- By JorgeRosario - 23 Feb 2024 With its sunny beaches and blue waters, most mainland Americans forget that they are entering a territory wrought with a troubling history and an even more concerning present when coming into contact with the borders of Puerto Rico. The small island in the Caribbean coast has known no other status quo than colonialism since the beginning of the Age of Exploration. First coming under Spanish rule and adopting its civil system for the next 400 years, it was ceded to the United States after an overwhelming defeat of the Spanish power in the Spanish-American war. The American overseas enterprise had reached empire status. Puerto Rico provided a strategic position in the Caribbean for overseas markets and military interests, expanding the United States’ navy and solidifying its later presence in Latin America. However, these developments that heightened the United States’ power in the international field did not come without a tremendous cost to the people of the island. It is important to note where citizenship arose and for what purpose were people Congress considered “negroes and of mixed blood [that had] nothing in common with [mainland Americans] and were impossible to assimilate” granted citizenship, even in a second-class sense. On the eve of what would be the century of overseas conflict in the United States, Puerto Ricans were granted U.S citizenship under the Jones-Shafroth Act. While this allowed Puerto Ricans to move freely between the continental United States, it also gave the federal government license to send Puerto Ricans to unknown parts of the world and fight until their inevitable deaths for causes they did not even support. World War II, Vietnam, and Korea ended up claiming enough Puerto Rican lives that one would think equal treatment and protection under the law would naturally follow. This proved not to be the case. Injustice towards Puerto Rico has been propagated since then and comes in various forms that are impossible to overlook. The most pressing disparity for Puerto Ricans is that of voting rights for both the residents of the island and Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner. As simply as it can be stated, if a person lives in Puerto Rico, then that person is unable to vote for president of the United States. Absurd proposition for a country that prides itself on being the paragon of democracy. This leaves over 3.2 million Puerto Rican-Americans without the ability to vote for a president that will not just use the island as a publicity stunt after a massive natural disaster. The Resident Commissioner, Puerto Rico’s sole representative in Congress, also faces great challenges in the bicameral legislature. While she has to represent her Puerto Rican constituents, she has absolutely no vote to cast towards upcoming legislature. The job effectively requires her to sell and barter for the interests of the island; swindling and selling as an effective lawyer does. For Puerto Ricans, the law is a set of abstract principles that are in a completely esoteric realm, impossible to logically interpreted as they are simply imposed upon them without even an illusion of choice or agency. We are therefore limited to involuntarily experiencing the law of the United States and living through some of its benefits, but mostly hardships. Even though Puerto Ricans cannot vote for the president or for legislation, the laws that do inevitably leave Congress’ chambers and wash up on the island’s shores come in a different form from how they are in the mainland. Seemingly, the laws lose provisions and thresholds when they are applied to the island. For example, Puerto Rico exhibits a debt of over $74 billion, comparable to other mainland states. However, Puerto Rican cities and municipalities are not offered the luxury of filing for bankruptcy under Chapter IX Bankruptcy Code to alleviate economic strain. What the island does receive to manage its debt is the imposition of an Financial Oversight and Management Board by the federal government, propagating deeper strands of colonialism and providing an illusion of certainty and promises of future repose that never seem to materialize. So, what is the solution when the status quo requires a drastic shift? Should the island fight for its independence such as Haiti did from the French, ending colonialism and starting anew with the support of our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean or should Puerto Rico assimilate to the national power and join the democratic Union? This question is one that unravels into a sea of nuance and complexity within the island. Some Puerto Ricans question whether the island will be able to survive economic independence from the mainland, while others worry of it becoming another token of American exceptionalism and have the Latino-Caribbean culture wiped out by rapid Americanization as it happened in Hawaii. The reality is that this question is beyond the Puerto Rican people. As long as Congress does not know with certainty whether Puerto Rico will be a Democrat or Republican state, they find no reason to even consider the issue of status. What is within the agency of the Puerto Rican people is their voice and ability to protest. While armed conflict such as El grito de Lares and the Capitol shooting of 1954 have proven that violent conflict will not bring about radical change in this scenario, political mobilization within the island and among diaspora Puerto Ricans, who can vote for president, has brought about a wave of sentiment towards adding a new state to the Union and breaking the “doctrine of pure judicial invention, with absolutely no basis in the Constitution and one that is contrary to all judicial precedent and territorial practice.”You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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