De mi amigo Edwin Melendez, Universidad de Puerto Rico. Interesante propuesta.
Shortening
the gap between the two Puerto Rican camps
Héctor Meléndez
According to the
last census there are now more Puerto Ricans in the United States than on the
island. How could this demographic change provide for an original electoral
action linking the two camps of the Puerto Rican people, that of the island and
that of the mainland? Could it be possible a network devoted to elect US
congressmen and state legislators familiar with Puerto Rico and able to
contribute to a new relation of political forces both on the island and in US?
Luis Gutiérrez, a
Puerto Rican and congressman for Illinois, has intervened in Puerto Rico’s
public debates denouncing the gas pipeline project and violations of civil
rights by the police in the island. Could more congressmen/women be elected,
and, like Gutiérrez, take a stand on the problems of the Hispanic island? It
may be a new means to relate Puerto Ricans on the island with those living in
the States.
New waves of
migration have modified the Puerto Rican community in the US. Many of the new
migrants bring to the US labor market new levels of productivity, manifested on
academic degrees and intellectual-technological work. Traveling back and forth
is common among Puerto Ricans, thereby constituting, as some authors put it, a
commuting nation. In the meantime the island increasingly lacks an economy of
its own.
Young in average,
Puerto Ricans share features of the so-called global postmodernity: a fluidity
of empirical and material life vis a vis old solid structures which used to
organize time and space universally; “vaporizacion” of society or “liquid
modernity” given a reduction of the weight of institutions on individuals and a
declining moral legitimacy of the ruling classes and government; individualism
and even narcisism rooted in consumption and technology; submission to image
and telecommunications; and integration into a new globalized, inter-ethnic,
skeptical, and more insecure and exploited proletariat.
But Puerto Ricans
also share a specific tension of their own, related to the frustration of their
nationhood. They want to put forward a common historical existence, and thus
impulses for collective action and civic mobilization come out, if often
short-lived. Perhaps a silent feeling of orphanhood, so to say, exists among
Puerto Ricans: a need of love and a stable community of their own, the want of
a home. This absence may provoke discontent, even rage, which in its turn seems
to relate to daily social violence.
American citizenship
was granted in 1917 to individual Puerto Ricans, not to a collective nation or
a Puerto Rican community. Citizenship reinforced US rule on Puerto Rico and
formalized rights and obligations of Puerto Ricans insofar they were
individuals taking part in the US market and armed forces. In the so-called
insular cases of early 20th century, the Supreme Court maintained that Puerto
Rico belonged to, yet it was not a part of, the US. Thereby it insisted on the
subordinated (colonial) status of Puerto Rico, while recognizing rights of Puerto
Rican individuals. For the US government, then, Puerto Rico is not a body
politic. It is a social and cultural body only in so far is an object of
federal bureaucratic, strategic or budgetary decision-making.
Now, the US
government prevents Puerto Ricans living in the US from voting in the island’s
elections. (They will not vote in the upcoming plebiscite, President Obama
stated in 2011.) By contrast, many other countries facilitate the vote of their
emmigrant nationals. The Dominican Republic, for instance, last year approved a
law not only reassuring the right of Dominicans residing in foreign nations to
vote in the Dominican elections, but also granting their right to elect
representatives of their communities in the US, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, etc.
to the Santo Domingo parliament.
Preventing Puerto
Ricans on the island to vote in the US elections indicates the federal concept
that the island is not a part of the US. Preventing Puerto Ricans living in the
US to vote in the island’s elections indicates the federal concept that Puerto
Ricans, including their huge migrant mass, do not constitute a social-political
community in their own right.
This mechanical and
disdainful approach from the American government is partly made possible by the
gap created between Puerto Ricans of the island and those living in the States.
Puerto Rican
migration into the US mainland was stimulated by US policies from early 20th
century onwards. It may be said that the conservative aspects of Puerto Rican
nationalism, as it emerged historically, and a culture of localism and “criollismo” daily promoted on the island
by the media, have contributed to the gap between Puerto Ricans in the US and
those in the island. These factors, however, fit into Washington’s policy, which
assumes “Puerto Rico” is the island alone.
In US law, then,
rights exist for Puerto Rican individuals but not for Puerto Rico. It is a big
contrast with the American continuous celebration of its own national
collective ego. Discussing Puerto Rican issues in Congress and the states
legislatures could be a means to approach the diaspora-determined reality of
the Caribbean country.
(The author teaches social sciences
at the University of Puerto Rico.)
Published 8 January 2012 in the Puerto
Rico Daily Sun.
