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<h1 id="reader-title">Puerto Rico’s Financial Woes Revive Calls
for Independence</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">Mary Williams Walsh -
August 16, 2016<br>
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<p id="story-continues-5" data-total-count="2536"
data-para-count="108" class="story-body-text
story-content">The party says it achieved that in 1954,
and that Puerto Rico has been an “associated free state”
since.</p>
<p data-total-count="2645" data-para-count="109"
class="story-body-text story-content">“It’s a lie!” Mr.
Cancel Miranda said in a recent interview. “We never
controlled our own country.”</p>
<p data-total-count="2935" data-para-count="290"
class="story-body-text story-content">Unusual events
this year have brought many Puerto Ricans to much the
same conclusion. In January, in a <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/politics/justices-hear-case-over-puerto-ricos-sovereignty.html">double
</a><a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/us/politics/justices-hear-case-over-puerto-ricos-sovereignty.html">jeopardy
case</a>, 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.</p>
<p data-total-count="3221" data-para-count="286"
class="story-body-text story-content">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.”</p>
<p data-total-count="3300" data-para-count="79"
class="story-body-text story-content">The party that
invented the “associated free state” was now questioning
it.</p>
<p data-total-count="3677" data-para-count="377"
class="story-body-text story-content">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.</p>
<p data-total-count="3922" data-para-count="245"
class="story-body-text story-content">When Congress
passed the <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/business/puerto-rico-debt-payment.html">debt-restructuring
law</a> 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.</p>
<p id="story-continues-6" data-total-count="4150"
data-para-count="228" class="story-body-text
story-content">“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.”</p>
<p data-total-count="4300" data-para-count="150"
class="story-body-text story-content">She said the debt
crisis had set profound changes in motion and she hoped
Puerto Rico could finally “have a legitimate process of
decolonization.”</p>
<p data-total-count="4651" data-para-count="351"
class="story-body-text story-content">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 <a
href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/Puerto_Rico_Task_Force_ExecSummary.pdf">recommendations
of a presidential task force</a> for how that might
happen. “The president remains committed to the
principle of self-determination for the people of Puerto
Rico,” she said.</p>
<p data-total-count="5007" data-para-count="356"
class="story-body-text story-content">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.</p>
<p data-total-count="5150" data-para-count="143"
class="story-body-text story-content">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.</p>
<p data-total-count="5477" data-para-count="327"
class="story-body-text story-content">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.</p>
<p data-total-count="5841" data-para-count="364"
class="story-body-text story-content">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.</p>
<p data-total-count="6296" data-para-count="455"
class="story-body-text story-content">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.)</p>
<p id="story-continues-7" data-total-count="6665"
data-para-count="369" class="story-body-text
story-content">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.</p>
<p data-total-count="6761" data-para-count="96"
class="story-body-text story-content">When the committee
reconvened and voted, Mr. Cancel Miranda said,
Washington’s view prevailed.</p>
<p data-total-count="6915" data-para-count="154"
class="story-body-text story-content">“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.”</p>
<p data-total-count="7222" data-para-count="307"
class="story-body-text story-content">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.</p>
<p data-total-count="7357" data-para-count="135"
class="story-body-text story-content">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.</p>
<p data-total-count="7488" data-para-count="131"
class="story-body-text story-content" data-node-uid="1">“You
saw what I said in 1954: ‘I’m not sorry,’” Mr. Cancel
Miranda said. “And 62 years later, I’m still not sorry.”</p>
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