From: "J. van Baardwijk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
So, you pay taxes to the US government, but you don't get a say in who will be in that government, and you don't get a say in how your tax dollars are spent. No insult intended, but this sounds like Puerto Rico's primary function is that of a milk cow for the US government -- something like "pay up and shut up". :-(
This calls for revolution!
Jeroen "Political Observations" van Baardwijk
Our current status was meant, originally, as an intermediate step in the political evolution of the island. While I explain this, I may sound like this is an island with delusions of grandeur, but the status of the island has cost elections and won elections for a lot of our governors.
We are a commonwealth. This status came after 40 years of a colonial government from the USA and was conceived by FDR and a very visionary governor (who happened to be related to FDR's wife, btw). Our constitution was ratified by the vote of the people in the mid-fifties, but it's meant to be an intermediate step.
When the island of PR was handed over as war bounty to the USA in 1898, the primary intention of the American government was to turn at least a third of this island and its' surrounding smaller sisters into a major military center of operations. It is a matter of historical fact that whoever controls PR, controls access to the Caribbean and Central/South South America.
The purpose of the commonwealth, as originally formulated, allowed an unprecedented amount of progress to take place in the economy of the island. Let's face it: after 300 years under Spanish rule, PR was the only remaining colony of the Spanish crown, and the state of affairs, financially, politically and socially was awful and dismal.
Our governor at the time was able to obtain FDR's support and channel reforms that made it possible for the multinationals to start working full-swing with local employees. PR then became available as a powerful alternative as work force for those multinationals that wanted to come down here and invest in our economy.
The citizens of the island are supposed to eventually come to terms with the fact that the commonwealth is not the ultimate step in our evolution, and eventually we must choose between statehood or independence. The status quo will not hold either in Congress nor in PR for 50 more years.
Independence for PR is an ill-conceived dream, and it has been a poorly executed political ideal. I see that sometime in the future, PR will formally petition Congress for admission as a state of the nation. Our political party system is bipartite: it's always the two sides of the coin that are in conflict. One side: pro-statehood. The other side: pro-commonwealth. It's also a pendulum style of government. One election or two are won by one party, then another election or two are won by the other party.
Right now, the party in control of the House, Senate and Governor seats is pro-commonwealth. And this is costing us plenty.
JJ
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