[News] Rafael Cancel Miranda - Puerto Rico’s Financial Woes Revive Calls for Independence

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/business/puerto-rico-rafael-cancel-miranda.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0 



  Puerto Rico’s Financial Woes Revive Calls for Independence

Mary Williams Walsh - August 16, 2016

The party says it achieved that in 1954, and that Puerto Rico has been 
an “associated free state” since.

“It’s a lie!” Mr. Cancel Miranda said in a recent interview. “We never 
controlled our own country.”

Unusual events this year have brought many Puerto Ricans to much the 
same conclusion. In January, in a double 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/politics/justices-hear-case-over-puerto-ricos-sovereignty.html>jeopardy 
case 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/politics/justices-hear-case-over-puerto-ricos-sovereignty.html>, 
the United States Supreme Court held that Puerto Rico had no independent 
prosecutorial authority — just the authority bestowed on it by the 
United States Congress.

Few on the mainland may have paid attention, but in Puerto Rico, the 
decision prompted the Popular Democratic Party’s president, David 
Bernier, a candidate for governor, to call for “an urgent review of the 
structure of the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States.”

The party that invented the “associated free state” was now questioning it.

Next, Mr. Obama’s administration invoked the territories clause of the 
Constitution as it pushed for a law allowing Puerto Rico to restructure 
its big debt. The clause gives Congress the power to enact “all needful 
rules and regulations” for United States territories, and its use sent a 
strong signal to Puerto Rico that the island had no power to carry out 
its own law.

When Congress passed the debt-restructuring law 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/business/puerto-rico-debt-payment.html> 
in June, it placed Puerto Rico’s financial affairs under federal 
oversight, handled by a seven-member board. This was widely seen as 
proof that “associated free state” was a meaningless term.

“Seven unelected people are going to be controlling our lives,” said 
María de Lourdes Santiago, a senator from the Puerto Rican Independence 
Party who, like Mr. Bernier, is running for governor. “It’s a dictatorship.”

She said the debt crisis had set profound changes in motion and she 
hoped Puerto Rico could finally “have a legitimate process of 
decolonization.”

A White House spokeswoman, Brandi S. Hoffine, said it was clear that 
“the people of Puerto Rico want the issue of status to be resolved,” and 
referred to the recommendations of a presidential task force 
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/Puerto_Rico_Task_Force_ExecSummary.pdf> 
for how that might happen. “The president remains committed to the 
principle of self-determination for the people of Puerto Rico,” she said.

In an interview at his home, Mr. Cancel Miranda said the previous 
decolonization — the one carried out by the Popular Democrats — had been 
a sham, and had provoked the attack on Congress. He played grainy 
black-and-white video footage of himself as a young man, refusing to 
apologize for the shooting during questioning. Then he filled in some 
details.

The United Nations had declared the 1950s a “decade of decolonization,” 
he said, and Puerto Rico was put on a list of colonies to be freed.

But, he said, Washington had merely appeared to go along with the 
proceedings — its main preoccupation was the Cold War. It wanted to 
remove Puerto Rico from the list of colonies, but not give it full 
autonomy, Mr. Cancel Miranda said, which might have meant losing the 
island’s ports, airfields and other strategic assets.

Historians say United States officials helped to draft Puerto Rico’s 
first Constitution, adding a provision — now in dispute — that 
general-obligation bonds be paid before everything else if money was 
tight. Washington also poured money into infrastructure on the island 
and offered tax breaks to American companies that came to Puerto Rico 
and created jobs.

For better or worse, those programs won over some elected island 
officials who had previously favored independence. They devised the term 
“associated free state,” which was said to mean that Puerto Rico was a 
sovereign coequal of the United States, pursuing common interests by 
mutual agreement. The term in Spanish, “estado libre asociado,” is used 
in Puerto Rico’s Constitution. (The English-language version calls 
Puerto Rico a commonwealth.)

In 1953, a United Nations special committee held hearings on whether 
Puerto Rico’s name could be removed from the list of colonies. Mr. 
Cancel Miranda said he was there, listening as American delegates 
testified that Puerto Rico now had free elections, a Constitution and 
other essentials of self-government. Other witnesses, however, said it 
was all window-dressing.

When the committee reconvened and voted, Mr. Cancel Miranda said, 
Washington’s view prevailed.

“That’s when the nationalists said, ‘We have to send a message,’” Mr. 
Cancel Miranda said. “That was the reason for the attack on Congress.”

Their message was silenced for decades by long prison sentences. Over 
the years, memories of the attack faded on the mainland. And in Puerto 
Rico, the ballot replaced armed insurgency. The Independence Party is 
respected but has not earned many votes — though its popularity is 
growing, Ms. Santiago said.

Now, it seems that most Puerto Ricans believe the associated free state 
was a sham, even if it is not clear what they will do about it.

“You saw what I said in 1954: ‘I’m not sorry,’” Mr. Cancel Miranda said. 
“And 62 years later, I’m still not sorry.”

-- 
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