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Puerto Rico - a colony of the United States.

Speaking of "History"
President William McKinley presided over a ceremony that completed, as if it were a real-estate closing, the deal between the United States and Spain. The pact, negotiated by France because Spanish officials were too embarrassed to show up, made the United States the sole owner of Puerto Rico. Plenipotentiaries from Spain, France and the United States had just given away the island, including its men, women and children.

Boriquén, or Puerto Rico, had been a colony of Spain since 1493. Boricuas (Puerto Ricans) endured 400 years of brutal occupation, and in the end merely traded one imperialist for another.

Now what? Was this beautiful, sun-drenched, island paradise to become an American state, to be granted all the glorious rights other states had? No. It was to become, and still remains, a colony. A cash cow, a supply region with the sole purpose of profiting its owner.

Puerto Rico had been systematically denied the right to statehood. In fact, according to its own laws regarding territories, the United States decreed that all annexed lands, like those of the Louisiana purchase, Alaska or Hawaii, would be given the twin rights of citizenship and statehood.

The truth was the United States never intended for Puerto Rico to be a state. The sole reason for its annexation was to be a colony.

The Foraker Act of 1900, later replaced by the Jones Act of 1917, which would govern Puerto Rico well into the 20th century, boldly stated that “Porto Rico” (Puerto was spelled incorrectly in government documents to mock the Spanish-speaking people) and its population “belonged to the United States.”

In 1952, the island was granted false autonomy when it was granted commonwealth status by the U.S. Congress. However, Congress made it very clear to Puerto Rico’s new governing body that “any act of the Puerto Rican legislature in conflict with the Commonwealth Act, or the Constitution of the United States, would be null and void.”

This legislative statement, saturated in racist rhetoric, essentially said the U.S. Congress, the very symbol of democracy, had supreme rule over the island. And even worse, Puerto Rico had no representation in Congress because it was not a state.

Congress had set them up to fail. And this cruel joke is carrying into the 21st century.

Courtesy Fortaleza Alex Rafael Roman Fortaleza
Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi, President Obama, and Gov. Fortuño discuss cabotage laws, Tuesday.

So, when President Barack Obama took a quick political junket to Puerto Rico on June 14, 2011, there were those who welcomed his visit but there were those rightfully so "in protest" to the "cabotage" (legal restriction) colonism law that still remains in place and a Call for the Elimination of the Jones Act.

For more about the visit, go to:
http://www.prdailysun.com/index.php?page=news.article&id=1308102578

For more about "Puerto Rico example of modern colonialism" By Mark Anthony Torres
Journalism Senior 1998, Michigan State University Independent Voice, June 8, 1998; go to:
http://www.independencia.net/ingles/mat_pr_ex_modern_colonialisml.html#n1

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