Posted on 02/01/2006 5:48:44 AM PST by cll
yeah, and we have Texans and Carolinians, New Englanders ... the list can go on and on.
Here. Is. The. Newsflash...
R u ready???...
Boricuas are AMERICAN.
True, Puerto Rico holds a unique position; citizenship in our Nation comes from an act of Congress, and thus has applied to any American born on the island. Is that citizenship somehow different from you & I (you ARE a native-American, I assume???) who were born here?
You may believe so, I don't. In fact, your distinction based on geographic origin is just the good old socialist "let's define 'em by what makes 'em different" group model.
Hyphenated Americanism doesn't work, dude! Haven't you ever read what Teddy Roosevelt said about this same thing 100 years ago?
CGVet58
(USCG, 1976-2000, full-blooded AMERICANO con raizes de Acero Boricua)
Interesting point! I didn't really think of that.
The problem is that I don't see 75% of Puerto Ricans voting for statehood. We may have to lower the threshold to 60% or 65%.
One way or another, this matter has got to be resolved for the benefit of all sides. Puerto Rico should either go their own way or be part of the United States. The commonwealth or territory status that we have doesn't seem to be working.
If more than 25% of the population is opposed to it, it will never work.
If you admit a state with 40% irreconcilables, you are asking for trouble.
"The commonwealth or territory status that we have doesn't seem to be working."
Alas, the crux of the problem. I am not the only one that says that statehood will fix these problems, the very problems that many highlight as a roadblock to statehood. What comes first, the egg or the chicken? Commonwealth/ELA worked for the immediate post-depression period. The model now is outdated.
My position is that Puerto Rico is already a de facto state and we just need to take care of some final paperwork. But if it comes to a vote between statehood and independence I'll bet you a case of premium Puerto Rican rum that statehood would get over 90% of the vote.
a fine summary with a good dose of common sense. Thank you, sir.
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Apples and peaches. The Filipinos in WW2 were fighting to free their own country. Filipinos can't be drafted (how many died in Korea 1950-53 or VN 1963-73?). Filipinos are not dying in US uniforms in Iraq. How many Filipinos are currently at WRAMC learning how to walk again?
Also, most Hispanic Catholics, just like most white Catholics, are only nominally Catholic.
Let us ALWAYS honor those brave men and women who served in the past and the present. My point is that even though Filipinos, Samoans, Puerto Ricans, and Chamorro (aka Guamanians) have taken bullets for Uncle Sam, and should be thanked, they are not culturally American.
The problem is that the Statehood movement has always tried to sell Americans on the idea that Puerto Rico is "no different from Ohio as Ohio is different from California." Anyone who has spent time on the island or has dealt directly with folks on the island (as you have and I, to a lesser extent have), knows that this is far from the case.
The bravery of the Puerto Rican soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine cannot be questioned. Nevertheless, they are only Americans in a political sense, not a cultural sense.
The Boricua are not CULTURALLY American. I have been to PR three times, talked with many folks, from all social classes down there, and have observed Puerto Ricans who have moved from the island to the mainland.
PR's watch Univision/Telemundo (y las novelas), love to dance salsa, speak Spanish, THINK Latin. In other words, not American. As I stated before, the kids I went to college with from San Ignacio Prep all told me that they realized that they WEREN'T Americans/Gringos once they actually came to live on the mainland.
Puerto Rico has more culturally in common with Cuba (albeit with less immigration from Spain the last century) and DR than it does with the United States. You can say all you want about a dollar currency, American fast food joints, and consumerism, but Panama has all of those and no Panamanian would consider themselves an American.
If Puerto Rico became a state with nice tropical weather wouldn't hundreds of thousands of anglos move there and overwhelm the locals just like Florida or Hawaii?
They could do what the Haolies do in Hawaii and settle in their own Gringo Ghetto. In the case of Hawaii, we must remember that everyone is a minority and the native language died out a long time ago. This is not true with Puerto Rico.
"Northern Mariana Islands (English, Chamorro, and Carolinian)."
What I believe will matter when I write to my senators and rep telling them I have no interest in having Puerto Rico become a state.
I have no time for them, Puerto Rico joining the US does nothing to benefit us and everything to benefit them.
I say cut them loose and cut our losses at the same time.
They sealed their fate when they chased the Navy away. Since then I could not care less what happens to it and have no interest in having it become a state.
Not only was I born here but my family helped make this country what it is by having someone fight in the revolutionary war, civil war and WWII.
We have enough leftist crybabies, we don't need any more.
Do you really believe that everyone who votes against statehood is an "irreconcilable"? Are you aware that voting for statehood means voting for the imposition of federal income taxes? While I think that's a small price to pay for voting representation in Congress and the right to vote for President, many people vote with their pocketbooks. But those are the same people who might decide to move to the states to work for NASA.
When Nebraskans first voted on whether to become a state, in 1860, the question was defeated by 53.1%-46.9%. A few years later, the Republican-controlled territorial legislature petitioned for statehood anyhow, opposed by the Democrats, and Congress approved an Enabling Act setting forth the conditions for, and treatment of Nebraska under, statehood. The legislature submitted a constitution for the new state of Nebraska to the people for ratification, which was one of the conditions for statehood. The constitution was adopted by only 50.6% to 49.4%. Soon thereafter, Nebraska was admitted as a state. I do not believe that the large percentage of the Nebraska population that opposed statehood became "irreconcilables" after statehood was granted.
BTW, the Puerto Rico Independence Party received only 2.7% of the vote in 2004, which is about one quarter of the percentage of Alaska voters that voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Puerto Ricans who favor independence will be no more problematic if Puerto Rico becomes a state than are Alaskans who favor Nader's socialist policies.
(glad I can be so entertaining...)
seriously, Clemenza, everything you have said is true, and I know it from deep and personal experience. I lived the other side of the coin.
I was born here in NYC - Dad moved us down to PR when I was 15. I knew spanish and all (though it did get much better down there) but it was really a shock. How much of a shock? Let's put it this way; this is in the '70's, and before I knew what a "spic" was, I learned I was a "gringo".
I went through a lot of life's lessons in PR and elsewhere - for a variety of reasons and ponderings, I see something else besides the cultural aspects you mention, because yes, they are there and what you wrote is true. Along the way, I myself went through an ID period where in the back of my head I wondered what/who I was. Afterwards I realized that even though I didn't turn out to be a little-minority-socialist-imprinted-Rican-who-the-knight-in-shining-armor-from-the-local-dhimmicrat-chapter-could-always-count-on-to-vote-for-him, I was subject to so much bullshit in education, social life, expectations, etc., that I could have turned out different from who I am today.
Take for example the Puerto Rican stateside population - whether island born or - as is the case up here in the northeast - identifying themselves by their ethnic separateness - and imo this identification process has more to do with the embedded socialistic core beliefs (in groups, in what makes me/we/us different from you/yours/them). I see that of the stateside group, most are concentrated in the northeast, and subsequently most tend to vote democrat, believe in big(ger) government, statist solutions, and I see the effects of a declining education system on this group.
I ask myself then, how much of the difference is cultural and how much is environmental? I haven't yet gotten a good answer for that one, but when I look at the political landscape in Puerto Rico, where the dhimmicratic wing of the local Puerto Rican political landscape (los "Populares"... who else???) work their crowds with that same bullshit that the pelosi-reid-kennedy-kerry-clinton-dean pendejos use up here... well, Clemenza, I'm just not so sure the answer is entirely cultural.
I see historical effects in not quite the same way as others - take a Luis Munoz Marin, for example, who upon becoming the first Puerto Rican governor faced the challenge of improving the lot of a poor agrarian-based island whose people used to "immigrate" to the mainland pineapple fields back in the 1940's & '50's (just like the Mexicans & Central Americans do today) and working with the FDR-TRUMAN-JFK-LBJ administrations to improve the standard of living and conditions on the island. He was governor from 1949-1965, he saw it all. Big Democrat Government, Operation Bootstrap, LBJ's Great Society. I believe the democrats have had a grand time using Puerto Rico as their experiment for what big government can do... and to see this as strictly cultural is not the entire answer.
Because of the above, I do not think your first sentence "the Boricua are not CULTURALLY American" is completely true. I honestly believe that for lots of Ricans - especially many living in the northeast/NYC area - they define themselves as Puerto Rican and not American because everyone else around the northeast uses this same mode of thought. And when I see a kid ID himself as a "Boricua" but who has never lived in the island, who doesn't speak Spanish, doesn't have the beautiful Spanish cultural-linguistic imprint that obliges him to use the "usted" when addressing his elders with respect... this is not a "cultural" expression, it's more like a self-defense mechanism for someone who doesn't know better. In other words, environmental.
I don't find fault in your explanation, nor disagree with your process. I know there aren't many folks who think like me, but that's nothing different. Perhaps there will be a day when there won't be a democratic governor who cravenly sucks up to anti-Navy sentiment over a tragic death (being hoorahed by the usual leftist suspects and MSM) and then punks out when the jobs supporting that base are removed... but like in the rest of our Country, we're not the only ones with problems like this.
I think there's more of an environmental and political aspect to these differences. I think they're played upon by the left, because that is what they're good at, playing the groups against each other.
I used to be pawn in that game, Clemenza, but I learned. I'm more than that. I'm an American. E Pluribus Unum... all these separate identities inside of me that the Gramsci's of the world tried to work, with really only one goal; to ensure that I would emphasize my life as surely as I was supposed to emphasize my identity, as a PUERTORICAN-american. Have you ever noticed that, Clemenza? How, when people so commonly nowadays refer to themselves as "1/4 this; 1/8th that..." the emphasis is always on the first identity in that hyphenation? Well, I reject that. Categorically. Soy Americano. Sono Americano. I am an American.
ok, enough of this stream of consciousness. Like I mentioned above, your comments are true. It's just that I believe they are not conclusive. There's plenty yet to write about the story of the People of Borinquen. It is my prayer that my fellow countrymen from the land of my father will write their tale as Americans.
A dissenting minority opinion that flew in the face of practice and law going back to the original founders, signers and authors of the Constitution.
My pleasure, sir.
The Puerto Rico question always seems to be debated with emotion, not logic. I hope to see the day when we move beyond that for everyone's good.
So, you're saying that the Constitution of the United States provides for the federal government to acquire territories anywhere upon the earth, by conquest or treaty, and to hold them as mere colonies or provinces, - the people inhabiting them to enjoy only such rights as Congress chooses to accord them? Isn't that like a despotic or monarchical government? Didn't the founding fathers have a dust up with a certain King george in the 18th century about precisely that? Isn't government by consent of the governed key to the American experiment in democracy?
Could you please point me to the article of the Constitution that allows this?
Thanks to both. But I'll still refer you to Justice John Harlan's dissenting opinion in post number 1. How do we fix that?
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