[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 49 (Tuesday, April 28, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H2340-H2341]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          SELF-DETERMINATION FOR PUERTO RICO: A DREAM DEFERRED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Puerto Rico (Mr. Romero-Barcelo) 
is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ROMERO-BARCELO. Madam Speaker, 100 years ago, in 1898 the United 
States acquired Puerto Rico as a territory. Since then, every time the 
Congress has considered extending the right of self-determination to 
the people of Puerto Rico, nativists have raised their voices in 
protest. Their message is a message of fear.
  Less than 2 months ago, March 4 of this year, the House just passed a 
bill 209-to-208, by scarcely one vote, allowing the people of Puerto 
Rico to have an act of self-determination. The reason this vote was so 
close is because of the campaign of fear-mongering that was carried on 
in this House.
  Nativists fear that Puerto Rico will be asked to join the Union as a 
State. In the nativist mindset, the 3.8 million American citizens of 
Puerto Rico do not belong in this Union because they do not walk, talk 
and look like the nativist of the hour. In the mid-1800s a nativist was 
a Protestant, white Anglo-Saxon male, born in the United States of 
Protestant parents. Perhaps the profile of a nativist today is the 
same.
  Whoever they are, nativists are prejudiced. And the brand of 
prejudice they practice is the cultural equivalent of racism. Nativists 
resist the acculturation, that intercultural borrowing between diverse 
peoples which results in new and blended social and cultural patterns, 
even though America's history is a history of acculturation. How else, 
after all, did we arrive at the image of a great melting pot?
  Nativists must think this melting pot business has gone on long 
enough and it has come time to put an end to it. They are willing to 
slander people in defense of their image of American cultural purity.
  Just listen to what nativists say will happen to the United States if 
Puerto Rico becomes a State. ``Granting statehood to a land that is 
alien to us in most ways,'' declares Don Feder of the Boston Herald, 
will be a milestone on ``the road to national dissolution.'' Columnist 
George Will implies that the

[[Page H2341]]

 ``fraying of American culture'' and ``the Balkanization of society 
into grievance groups organized around race and ethnicity,'' which he 
believes is already under way, would only be exacerbated by the State 
of Puerto Rico. Others predict that a State of Puerto Rico would be 
America's own Quebec; it would be violent, it would drain the national 
Treasury, it would allow gangs to run prisons; it would promote 
political patronage, and it would rob other States of their 
representation in Congress.
  This is scary stuff, and it is meant to be. People are using fear to 
paralyze the Democratic process and to deny the 3.8 million American 
citizens of Puerto Rico the right to self-determination and the right 
to participate in the Democratic process of this Nation, a right that 
we defend on foreign soils, a right for which our people have died 
defending on foreign soils.
  Puerto Ricans did not welcome American troops in 1898 for the 
privilege of transferring our colonial status from Spain to the United 
States. Our forefathers were certain that the world's most admired 
democracy would readily confer democracy to the people of Puerto Rico, 
but it did not.
  When U.S. citizenship was extended to our people in 1917, it was 
devoid of the most fundamental Democratic right, the right of self-
government and self-determination. It was not until 1950 that Congress 
invited the people of Puerto Rico to draft a Constitution as the ruling 
law of the established local self-government. The right of self-
determination and participation in the democratic process of our Nation 
continues to be a dream deferred.
  Yet, the American citizens of Puerto Rico are devoted to this 
democracy and its ideals, and we have demonstrated our commitment 
tangibly at the poll booth and at the battlefield. Whenever an election 
is held in Puerto Rico, 80 to 85 percent of the electorate votes.

                              {time}  1315

  I challenge any State of the Union to try to match that. The fact is, 
Puerto Rico enjoys the highest rate of voter turnout of any 
jurisdiction in the world where voting is not mandatory.
  And Puerto Ricans have given their lives in defense of U.S. national 
interests. We have served honorably, in disproportionately high numbers 
on a per capita basis and in absolute numbers, in every military 
engagement our Nation has face during this century. Madam Speaker, 
48,000 Puerto Ricans fought in the Vietnam War alone, and in the Korean 
War more Puerto Ricans died on a per capita basis than in 49 of the 50 
States of the Union.
  ``When people fight for a country,'' as Senator Daniel Patrick 
Moynihan has so eloquently expressed, ``they get a claim on a 
country.'' Puerto Ricans have a claim on these United States, and we 
make that claim today. It is time for this Nation to turn its back on 
nativism and honor Puerto Rico's right to self-determination and the 
right to participate in the democratic process of our Nation.
  We beseech the leadership, the Republican leadership in the Senate, 
to allow this bill in the Senate to go forward as it went forward in 
the House, so the people of Puerto Rico, the 3,800,000 U.S. citizens, 
can exercise their right to self-determination and the right to vote.

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