Understanding Puerto Rico’s 'Existential Crisis'

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer, WNYC. In mid-March, New York city Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia Velazquez, along with new Jersey's Bob Menendez in the Senate introduced a bill that would create a process for Puerto Rican's to decide to what extent the Island will be a part of the United States. It's called the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act of 2021. The question of Puerto Rico status has been on the ballot in Puerto Rico a number of times in the past, most recently, just this past November when 52% of voters said yes, in a referendum about joining the US as a state, but that vote was non-binding.

Now these members of Congress want to give the people of Puerto Rico more of an official say. Puerto Rico's political status is one of the topics covered in WNYC's new bilingual podcast La Brega. Joining me now to discuss the topic and to take phone calls from Puerto Rican listeners are Alana Casanova-Burgess, the host of La Brega and a reporter and producer for WNYC on the media the rest of the time and Yarimar Bonilla Professor of Puerto Rican studies and anthropology at the City university of New York. Also a monthly columnist at El Nuevo Dia and incoming director of the Center for Puerto Rican studies at Hunter College.

They will also be in discussion with several other big thinkers on this topic tomorrow. You can make a note of this, right from the start. Tomorrow night at 7:00 an event you can attend virtually by heading to tinyurl.com/sancocho2, we'll give you that again at the end. Alana welcome back to the show, and Professor Bonilla, welcome back to WNYC.

Alana Casanova-Burgess: Hi Brian. Good morning.

Yarimar Bonilla: Hi Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let me start right off the bat with a listener invitation. The phones are yours in this segment in English or in Spanish or in a mix just as all those are welcome on the bilingual podcast La Brega that Alana hosts. If you're listening here or on the Island, what's your preference for Puerto Rico status going forward? Statehood, independence, continued Commonwealth status. 646-435-7280. Have you been following the news about the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act of 2021? We've been hearing about how the status question has been discussed in the same way for decades, if you're Puerto Rican you know that, so let's see how we can break out of that here. 646-435-7280.

What influences you or motivates your thoughts about status? In what ways are you ambivalent about the issue if you are? What hesitations or questions do you have about different status options. If you've just been listening to the La Brega Podcast series and want to show your love for it to Alana, or have any questions for her, give us a call in English or Spanish or any mix at 646-435-7280. 646 435-7280.

For listeners who aren't familiar with some of the history, let's start there. Alana, in the podcast, you talk about how way back in 1952, Puerto Rico adopted a new political status called the ELA, which is an acronym ELA but they say ELA, what does it stand for and what is it actually?

Alana Casanova-Burgess: Sure. It's Estado Libre Asociado which means free associated state. Which is a bit confusing because what does it mean to be associated and yet not free and yet not a state? That is the status that Puerto Rico exists under currently. It's a status that was championed by the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Munoz Marín. He is a very important figure in the history of this issue. We talk about him a lot on the podcast. He's considered the architect of this, I guess we could call it the Commonwealth status. That's another word that doesn't particularly mean much. You have the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You have the Commonwealth of Canada.

People in the States to call Puerto Rico a territory. I think those words also obscure the fact that it's a colonial relationship. The word colony makes a lot of people really uncomfortable. Some people in the States twist themselves into pretzels to use these other words. Really the word colony is being used more and more frequently on the Island by people of all different political parties. With different opinions on the status who are very frustrated by the status quo, the ELA, the Estado Libre Asociado, which is the current status.

Brian Lehrer: Let me play a clip from the podcast, Professor Bonilla in episode seven of the La Brega, you use a really interesting metaphor to describe the aftermath of the ELA. A Seinfeld reference in which George Costanza meets up with the parents of his deceased fiance and he tells them he has a house in the Hamptons and everyone knows that's not true. Let's take a listen to that clip from the podcast.

George Costanza: Two hour drive. Once you get in that car, we are going all the way to the Hamptons.

Yarimar Bonilla: They all get into a car and start driving to the Hamptons and they also all know that the others know that it's all a farce.

Speaker: Almost there. That is the end of Long Island. Where's your house.

George Costanza: We go on foot from here.

Brian Lehrer: All right, Professor Bonilla, why does the Seinfeld scene remind you of the ELA in Puerto Rico?

Yarimar Bonilla: This metaphor was in some ways the product of a collaboration with the brilliant Mark Pogon who worked on us for this episode. He asked me if there was any pop culture reference that came to mind, and I've always been a Seinfeld fan.

For me, the ELA is a game of chicken because if you look at the way historians have written about it. Luis Munoz Marin the architect of the ELA, he was trying to will this into being, even though he knew that the United States was not really ready for decolonization, was not willing to give up Puerto Rico in terms of independence and was also not interested in any way of making it a state. In fact, the United States government went out of its way to create an entire new category of unincorporated territories to make it clear that Puerto Rico was not on the path to statehood, that it was not an incorporated territory.

Despite that, they came into this agreement, suggesting that Puerto Rico was going to have self-government. I feel like both parties were pretending that this was true and pretending that they were duping each other, but everyone was in on the con in a way, everyone knew that there was no real decolonization happening. There was no real house in the Hamptons that they were ever going to arrive at and yet that we all get in this car and head that way. When the road ends, it's like, well, we go on foot from here. We keep pretending that there is this thing that is not really there.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe that even relates to another clip we're going to play from the podcast where Alana, you say every couple of years we undergo these performative votes on status that are described as plebiscites or referendums. That this issue of statehood has been coming up for decades. Sure enough, here's an archival clip that you featured in the podcast from the CBS news report in 1975.

Speaker: 60% of Puerto Rican families are living on income below the federal government's poverty level. 60% of Puerto Rico's inhabitants need food stamp help. Whatever the past virtues of the Island's relations with the United States, today's troubles raised some basic questions about this system in the future. Some argue flatly if no longer works.

Brian Lehrer: 1975. Why that clip Alana and why do you describe all of these previous referendums as performative? Is there one that could not be?

Alana Casanova-Burgess: Well, there's that clip and we have another one too that's also from the '70s. Part of the ELA status was supposed to promise prosperity to Puerto Rico. Their relationship with the United States was going to mean more wealth, more investment. Even in the 1970s, you can hear it in that clip, 60% of Puerto Rican families were living on incomes below the federal government's poverty level. Even just a couple decades after the status gets introduced, that promise of wealth and prosperity is already falling flat.

Then you have these, as you say, performative plebiscites where people are voting and yes, there was just one a couple of few months ago where 52% of people voted for statehood. The conversation about what these different status options will mean in practice has never been fully resolved. There are a lot of questions and what you mentioned about the AOC Self-Determination Bill that is aimed at getting some of these answers on the table. Like what would it mean for public pensions? What would it mean for the language that we all exist in. Yarimar, can you think of any other questions? You have a bunch of in your episode?

Yarimar Bonilla: Part of what's really great about this act too, is that it forces the proponents of different status options to also develop a transition plan, because the previous plebiscite votes, which I think Judith Butler would not like us to call them performative. Because that means that it actually brings into being what is performed. It's more like performance art. These kinds of rituals, we were presented with these options like statehood, yes or no, but we don't really know what's behind that. Would this yes the statehood include some reparations or some truth and reconciliation plans. Think about the harm that has been done to Puerto Rico due to its colonial relationship.

It will be important to have that transition plan, and it also includes a plan for education on the different status options. That will be really important as well, particularly given the way in which the political option of independence has been repressed on the island and criminalized. We've been told our whole lives that that is treason and illegal to support independence. There's a lot of reeducation that needs to be done.

The other part that's really important about this bill, is that it also allows for the creation of something new. Puerto Ricans keep being presented with the same options, statehood independence. The only time that there had been a truly landslide vote in a plebiscite was when we were presented with the option of none of the above. Then people flocked to that option because the truth is that none of the ones that exist, really speak to what we have now.

One concern that I do have about it is that a lot of people have been talking about the bill, there was an article in Jacobin recently, et cetera, they suggest that what Puerto Rico's desire is going to be immediately enacted, and that's not quite the case. Congress still has the right to reject whatever we come up with. The other part is that it's not going to be entirely Puerto Ricans figuring this out. There's also going to be a bilateral negotiation commission, that is going to involve representatives from the US.

History tells us that in the past things, and I know that there's something Alana is passionate about. The models that Puerto Ricans have come up with and the different for example when the constitution was created locally. The US government intervene, then took out a lot of the progressive measures that would have been included in there.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get a few phone calls in here. John in the Bronx, Born in Puerto Rico, he says. Hi, John, you're on WNYC.

John: Oh, great, great. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What do you got?

John: Well, I just want to remind people that Puerto Rico has like 3.5 million residents, which is more than 17 states in the US. It has more people than Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, all of them, 17 states. If I were a senator representing one of those states, and I had a choice to make Puerto Rico states, I--

Brian Lehrer: Whoops, I think your line dropped out. I assume you are leading toward, you would vote against it if you represented one of those low population western states, right?

John: Of course, because they would have more representatives. If you have 3.5 million people, versus a state that has 200,000 people, why would I give that state power over me?

Brian Lehrer: I hear you, and Professor Bonilla, this is what we hear from the Republicans all the time. In terms of math, they have a point that the Democrats have a motivation to make Puerto Rico a state because that would be another big state voting likely for Democrats most of the time.

Yarimar Bonilla: Well, that is an assumption. There are a lot of folks in Puerto Rico who caution against that idea and say that, in fact, a lot of Puerto Ricans are more conservative on a variety of issues, and that Puerto Rico would be more of a swing state. I think in the end, is that really what should decide whether or not Puerto Rico should be decolonized? Is it whether it's convenient to the Democratic party, or the Republican party?

That is one of the problems with the current public debate about Puerto Rico statehood, and conflating it with Washington, DC statehood. Is that this isn't a matter of what's good for the Electoral College. This is a matter of decolonization and human rights. That's one thing that I do think is missing in this act is that, aside from educating in Puerto Rico about the different status option, there needs to be an education campaign in the United States about its Imperial history. So that US folks, including these congressmen and senators, who often are deeply ignorant about Imperial history, so that they can get a sense of what's really at stake here.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go to Maliksa, in Deerpark, Long Island. Maliksa you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Maliksa: [Spanish] Puerto Rico, for those of you who understand. I'm going to say it in Spanish because I learned Puerto Rican politics in Spanish, so I'll go back and forth. I think a couple of things. [Spanish]

Brian Lehrer: Let me get Alana to translate a little of that for the monolingual English speakers in the audience. We've just got a couple of minutes left of the show, Alana.

Alana Casanova-Burgess: Well, she was saying that she feels a little bit like a traitor because she was born in Puerto Rico, she went to the University of Puerto Rico, she sees herself as an independent, but came, moved to the states, married a gringo, lives in the suburbs. [chuckles] Also a lot of the issues around status are really complicated, and she sees the complications in a different way now that she lives here. I had a question, which is, I wonder now that you're a member of the diaspora, what role do you see for yourself and for the diaspora in general in [Spanish]

Brian Lehrer: Maliksa, very briefly in like 20 seconds.

Maliksa: Okay. The last one aside from the class issue with our governors is the lack of good leadership within the pro-independence, political groups of trying to create a good process and include the people who sympathize towards that ideology. To say in English so everyone will understand. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very very much. All right. I'm going to sneak in the last clip here because Professor Bonilla, the oversimplified narrative surrounding statehood, or sovereignty, often focuses on a generational split. Let's see, in the summer of 2019, after the ouster of Puerto Rico's governor and in the wake of an election, a new influencer emerged. Her name is Bad Manse and here is one of her viral videos just eight seconds worth because that's what we have time for which I see you recorded. So here's eight seconds of Bad Manse.

Yarimar Bonilla: [Spanish]

Brian Lehrer: Do I see, correctly the Bad Manse the political Instagram influencer is your grandmother.

Yarimar Bonilla: That's my 93-year-old grandmother, yes. [laughs] Who has her own Instagram account and a huge following and was visited by one of the gubernatorial candidates right before the election, indeed. I interview her in the podcast and we talk about her political transformations.

Brian Lehrer: What did you learn from your grandmother Instagram? Nobody can use Instagram influencer and grandmother in the same sentence except you I think, but 15 seconds for last word.

Yarimar Bonilla: Well, we talked about how she went from being the daughter of one of the first populares who voted for the PPD to now being interested in seeing radical change in Puerto Rico even if that doesn't necessarily mean independence. For her it's kind of none of the above, but she's had huge transformations. Just the chance to listen to a 93-year-old saying that by me and talk about her life, I think is worth taking a listen.

Brian Lehrer: Alana Casanova-Burgess, post the podcast La Brega from WNYC, and Professor Bonilla is the-

Yarimar Bonilla: San Kocho dosis tommorrow.

Brian Lehrer: -Director at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College. They will be in discussion with several other big thinkers on this seven o'clock tomorrow night. tinyurl.com/sancocho2. tinyurl.com/sancocho2

 

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