Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández Rivera is working to make Constitution Day 2025 a real celebration. Or, as the San Juan Daily Star puts it, he “is gearing up to champion a revitalized and robust commonwealth status for Puerto Rico during the July 25 holiday.” he will be a guest speaker at events at the Recreation and Sports Palace in Mayagüez.
In the same article, Rep. José Aponte Hernández expressed irritation with this point of view. ““The commissioner prefers to ignore the issue of status, the inequality we experience, and the lack of political power that forces things to be imposed on us, in order to try to sell abstract lies to the people,” said Aponte Hernández, chair of the House Government Committee. “The people have already transcended the lie of the best of both worlds, but apparently he hasn’t. We don’t want the colony, we don’t want the Junta [oversight board], we don’t want our veterans to lack the same benefits as those who reside in the states, we don’t want our people with special needs to continue without the benefit of the Supplemental Social Security program. Unfortunately, Hernández does want that and only wants to govern the colony, nothing more, regardless of the discrimination that represents for the people.”
So should we celebrate the constitution?
“Celebrating our Constitution must go hand in hand with a firm and collective commitment to complete the unfinished work of our democracy,” George Laws Garcia wrote in El Nuevo Dia.
“July 25 is a date steeped in history for Puerto Rico. On that day, in 1952, the Constitution of the Commonwealth came into force, an important milestone in our political life by establishing a structure of local self-government,” Laws Garcia explained. “However, it is essential to understand that the Commonwealth is not an autonomous political status or a bilateral pact. It is simply the formal name of the territorial constitution, approved by the United States Congress under the plenary powers granted to it by the Territorial Clause of the federal Constitution. As the United States Congress and Supreme Court have made clear in recent decisions, Puerto Rico remains, in legal and political terms, an unincorporated territory under the sovereignty of Congress.”
What did the constitution accomplish?
Laws Garcia pointed out that the 1952 constitution represented a milestone in local governance, but that the colonial relationship was demonstrated in 2016 by PROMESA, which set an unelected oversight board above the territorial government, and the Supreme Court decision on Sanchez Valle, which confirmed that Puerto Rico does not have the sovereignty of a state.
It is part of the process toward statehood for a territory to develop a constitution, which must be approved by Congress. Puerto Rico has already done this. Congress demanded changes to the original Constitution of Puerto Rico, but has approved it. That is a step closer to statehood, but it did not turn Puerto Rico into some new entity called a “commonwealth.”
“That is why, although the Constitution of Puerto Rico deserves to be recognized as an exercise in self-government and an important step in our democratic history, we must not fall into the illusion that its approval eliminated our colonial condition,” said Laws Garcia. “Nor can they allow Puerto Rico to be sold again the illusion that the Commonwealth can be ‘improved.’ Those fictions have served, for too long, to delay honest debate about our political future.”
Puerto Rico’s constitution is a strong statement about human rights and dignity. It is worth celebrating. But it did not change the status of Puerto Rico. It did not change the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. It did not and cannot end the inequity faced by Puerto Rico.
How should we celebrate?
The Resident Commissioner says that neither independence nor statehood is actually possible. He would have us settle back into the fantasy of an “enhanced commonwealth” and the reality of an unincorporated territory, celebrating the constitution as though it changed the lives of the people of Puerto Rico.
“On this July 25, let us honor our history and our achievements, but also courageously face our reality,” Laws Garcia says. “It is time to leave behind colonial fictions, to reject half-hearted solutions. It is time to raise our voices as one people to demand what is rightfully ours: full equality, the dignity of self-determination, and justice. It is not enough to commemorate. It is time to demand. To participate. To build, together, a complete and true democracy.”
Reach out to your representatives, and join us in taking action toward statehood. We can’t go back. Join us moving forward.
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