The White House’s Report On Puerto Rico Says Nothing

[Editor’s Note: The following post is courtesy of the National Institute for Latino Policy]

By Victor Vazquez-Hernandez

In March 11, 2011, the report of the President’s White House Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status was made public, with little fanfare and less notice to Puerto Rican or other concerned leadership across the United States. The tone of the Report is dire and the suggestions hearken back to the Operation Bootstrap policies of the Puerto Rican government of the 1950s. While industrialization of Puerto Rico came as an outgrowth of those policies, so too did an growth in unemployment, resulting in the departure of nearly one million Puerto Ricans from the island. More of the same suggests little change or any progressive possibility that this Administration boldly promised in its campaign rhetoric of “Hope.”

This Task Force and the President make a definite commitment to increasing or providing greater parity in the federal funds the island currently receives; however, the persistent economic tsunami in the United States and raging wars in foreign countries offer little promise for significant assistance to Puerto Rico. With few US taxpayers understanding Puerto Rico’s history and forced dependence on the US for support, it is very unlikely that Congress and the President have the will or support to increase federal aid to Puerto Rico in any near future.

To the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights (NCPRR), more striking than the hollow words in the Task Force Report was its myopic analysis of Puerto Rico, including a neglectful treatment of our history and the interrelation between the 3.9 million Puerto Ricans on the Island and the 4.1 million Puerto Ricans living in the United States. In December 2010, University of Puerto Rico Professor Jorge Duany, an anthropologist and expert on demography, noted that from 2000 to 2009, nearly 300,000 Puerto Ricans fled Puerto Rico due to the impacts of prior and current recessionary economy.

The NCPRR finds it disingenuous at best, and dishonest at worse, for the Obama Administration to publish a report that not only excludes US-resident Puerto Ricans from its analysis, but barred the participation of any Puerto Rican on the Task Force, whether residing on the Island or in the United States. Our organization raised this point in a letter to President Obama over a year ago, reaching only deaf ears. Such insult would not be visited on the Cuban, Mexican or Colombian communities in this country, evident from our research on prior Executive or Congressional discussions on other matters.

On structure and substance, this Task Force and its Report are to the NCPRR best described as feckless. Take, for example, the Report’s treatment of the unchanging political status of Puerto Rico. President Obama’s “dream team” Task Force revisited the known options of statehood, independence and commonwealth suggesting all sorts of plebiscites without ever addressing the crucial issue of how to build Congressional will to take on and enact legislation to support a decision Puerto Ricans would make on the status question. The Report is pointless to those Puerto Ricans who have lived through these reports from the past, for like the others, this one is equally shallow for making no commitment to substantive change.

Why did this Report ignore any consideration of the impact a decision on the status of Puerto Rico would have on the community of Puerto Ricans in the United States? The Puerto Rican community in the United States, like the Irish, those persecuted by religious intolerance or even former slaves, did not simply come here of pure volition. There were factors of economic and political force implicit to 400 years of colonial status that caused our migration and the diaspora that is our Puerto Rican reality, and the impact of that separation stings sharply even today.

It is of critical concern that this Task Force, lacking any Puerto Rican representation, had the audacity to sell the strained reasoning that Puerto Ricans living in the United States choose to leave and, therefore, have no right to participate in any decision concerning the Island. Where is the analysis of how many Puerto Ricans in the US own, lease or share property on the Island, and whether those interests are worthy of respect or enfranchisement? Where is the analysis of the millions or billions in federal tax dollars that Puerto Ricans give the United States government, and what our investment means for the aid sent to Puerto Rico? What is the return for our investment?

The Task Force found it appropriate to cite from the Puerto Rico Democracy Act, HR 2499, a now-defunct bill that was introduced and passed in the United States House of Representatives in 2010, co-sponsored by Congressman José Serrano (D-NY) who first introduced the bill in 2007. It then conveniently ignored the Serrano Bill’s including a provision for Puerto Ricans born on the Island but residing in the United States to participate in a vote via absentee ballot.

The President’s Task Force found that too complicated and cumbersome, instead providing a weak argument alluding to how difficult it would be to include domestic Puerto Rican voices. Meanwhile Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, to name a few, have learned and consistently applied rules, to little rancor, that identifies and counts the votes of their nationals living the United States in foreign elections. The Task Force’s reasoning is flawed, its argument ludicrous and its determinations unfair and exclusionary.

The NCPRR will continue to monitor the course of these recommendations. We call upon all Puerto Rican leaders, Puerto Rican organizations across the United States and leadership from any and all communities that recognize this injustice to help us articulate a rightful vision for stateside Puerto Ricans to share in a process leading to resolution of this critical question. President Obama, we are not asking to be included, we demand it!

Dr. Victor Vazquez-Hernandez is President of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights (NCPRR). A historian, he is an Assistant Professor in the Social Science Department at the Miami-Dade College’s Wolfson Campus. He isco-editor of The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives. Dr. Vazquez-Hernandez can be reached at vvazquez@mdc.edu.