George Laws Garcia, Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Statehood Council, sat down for a conversation with Julio Ricardo Varela.
George talked about being born and raised in Puerto Rico and then heading to Chicago for college. There he met Puerto Ricans who were born and grew up in Chicago, as well as brothers in a Latino fraternity. “So I I kind of began to understand that my identity has different layers to it,” he said. “Yeah, I’m Puerto Rican. I’m an American citizen and I’m American, but I’m also Latino and Hispanic, right? I’m part of this kind of bigger group of people here within the US.”
Puerto Rico’s population is 98% Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census, so being Hispanic doesn’t feel like a defining characteristic for someone growing up there.
“I feel you when it comes to the whole like, wait a minute, I’m Puerto Rican, but I’m hanging out with all these Latinos in a college campus, and wow, I have a lot more in common with some Mexican kid from the Southwest than I thought I did,” Julio responded. Then he asked , “Where do you stand politically when it comes to political status for the future of the island?”
“Where I stand is that I firmly and wholeheartedly believe that the United States has a moral, political, and value-based obligation to end this relationship that is just completely against America’s own founding values. Right? Okay. So, America was founded on this idea of government by consent of the governed. It was enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution and kind of everything that’s flowed therefrom have been attempts to try to create a government that tries to live up to that in some way, right? Some ways very successfully and some ways very flawed.”
Reviewing the history of Puerto Rico with the United States, he concluded, “We were made a part of the United States. We’re made citizens of the United States. But then we were left in this dead end where basically we have unequal rights and we have no representation at the federal level and that needs to end.”
Status choices
Julio noted that there is increasing frustration with Puerto Rico’s political status, and brought tin a historical perspective, beginning with the 1952 constitution. “The first set of issues that were brought up to Congress [was] about people being unsatisfied with that because they were sold on this myth of the Commonwealth, which ended up really just being a fancy name for continued territory status. So the first referendum was like 1967 and it already started to show that some people wanted independence and statehood. But the version of the Commonwealth that was presented on the ballot at the time was also like a complete exercise in wishful thinking. It doesn’t actually exist within the US Constitution. That was a real problem.”
A lively discussion of subsequent referenda followed, culminating in Julio’s comment that the 2024 plebiscite was the fourth vote for statehood. Where we’re at now is obviously we have a Congress that has not wanted to take this issue on either in the House or in the Senate in any way and we have a president that just been focused on other things and honestly is just not interested in addressing this issue in any way whatsoever as far as I’ve seen. How does that make you feel as you advocate?”
Progress
“Well, you know,” George answered, “it’s frustrating but there’s a saying, it’s always darkest before dawn. Looking at it from my perspective, where we’re at now is in anticipation of the next legislative window of opportunity that is going to open up because at some point the current Congress is going to change, right? November’s right around the corner. At some point, the current president is no longer going to be in the White House. And at some point, all of the learning that we’ve done about how to work this process through, the relationship building that we’ve been doing between different movements that are not aligned on status, but all fundamentally love Puerto Rico, care about Puerto Rico, want it to do better, and know that part of doing that is dismantling the structure of colonialism.”
“All of those things are going to converge,” he went on. “And where we’re at now is continuing to create the conditions for that to occur. And we’rereally focusing on that citizen advocate connection and that connection to the broader American public.”
The common ground expressed between Julio and George, the common ground we’ve seen between Puerto Rican voters and the larger group of Hispanic voters, and the increasing awareness of the American people in general are signs of the coalescence that will allow the statehood movement to seize upcoming opportunities to move, finally, to action in Congress.
The discussion concludes with a reminder that divide and conquer is a favorite tactic. As long as colonial powers can count on advocates of different approaches to sovereignty to become distracted by attacks on one another, they can ignore the repeated demands for sovereignty.
Listen to the whole conversation in English or in Spanish. Then think about how everyone who loves Puerto Rico and everyone who loves the founding values of the United States can work together to end the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. Vote, call your senator, reach out to your legislators.
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