Puerto Rico's fight for self-determination revs up after latest US election

San Juan, Puerto Rico - Election season is always a difficult time for many people in Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island and unincorporated United States territory. Though Puerto Ricans are US citizens, they are not permitted to vote in presidential elections unless they are on the mainland.

So every four years, the first Tuesday of November typically reminds the Puerto Rican people of the forlorn disappearance of their voice and vote, amid their struggle for self-determination.

But this Election Day, some of the citizens of arguably the oldest colony in the world took a historic stand in pursuit of independence.

This was made apparent in the results of the gubernatorial race. Many believed Puerto Rican "Independista" candidate, Juan Dalmau, showed exceptional promise.

Though the establishment pro-statehood party, the New Progressive Party (PNP), ultimately won around 39 percent of the vote on the island and secured the governorship by plurality, Dalmau secured nearly 33 percent of the vote–an unprecedented victory in and of itself for the Puerto Rican Independence movement.

The Puerto Rican Independence Party allied with the Citizens’ Victory Movement, another third party that secured a substantial percentage of the vote in 2020's general election.

Now, combined as Alianza de Pais, they prove capable of being a major player on the Puerto Rican political stage–perhaps for the first time in the many decades since the Independence party's inception.

Lacking control

Puerto Ricans have struggled with prolonged austerity since the early 2000s. For young people on the island, economic hardship and social welfare degradation are all they know of their country.

Many who feel deeply connected to their homeland are reluctantly leaving the island, seeking educational and employment opportunities in the mainland US because opportunities are few and far between on the island.

"Exile is a terrible punishment when you love your country," Puerto Rican Senator-at-Large Maria de Lourdes Santiago told TRT World.

According to Santiago, the vice president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party and the first woman to be elected to the island's Senate in 2004, political and social conditions there are currently nothing short of colonial.

For the past eight years, the country has been, in her words, under a "virtual dictatorship." Congress approved the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (acronymed PROMESA, or promise, in Spanish) in 2016, which led to former US President Barack Obama's instalment of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico–known colloquially as La Junta de Control.

It was established to allegedly support the island's response to its rising debt, and has since become the supreme decision-making body in Puerto Rico. "This board of non-elected officials, all appointed by the US government…actually have veto power (over) the decisions made here by the Puerto Rican legislature," Santiago lamented.

But the board has done little to halt, and has perhaps exacerbated, the American government's complicity in dismantling and devaluing many of Puerto Rico's social infrastructures.

'We really suffered a lot'

Puerto Rico has been experiencing a budget crisis since 2006, and one of the first targets of cuts was the education system.

According to a 2020 research report authored through the University of California, Berkeley, 44 percent of Puerto Rico's schools have been shut down since 2007—about 673 public schools.

More than half of these school closures have taken place in rural Puerto Rico, disproportionately affecting lower income families who struggle to find effective means of transport for their children to attend schools further from their homes.

Longer commute times generally cut into student’s studying habits and overall productivity, and Puerto Rican student drop-out rates have tripled between 2015 and 2020.

In addition to the island's educational crisis, a 2024 Harvard public health report identifies attrition in the medical profession as one of the major issues impacting Puerto Rico's healthcare crisis.

The report found that over 8,000 doctors "closed their medical practice in Puerto Rico from 2009 to 2022," with many leaving due to poor working conditions and the immense bureaucracy present on the island.

Another important catalyst for a newly realized fervour for independence was the abject suffering Puerto Ricans endured in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.

The central leadership of Puerto Rico at the time initially announced a 64-person death toll. But in reality, the actual number of hurricane-related casualties was closer to 3,000.

"During the last decade or so, we've really been through a lot. The despondent attitude of the United States, in particular of then-president Donald Trump…that hurt a lot of people here. We really suffered a lot," said Santiago.

"And after that, we had a really important collective experience (in 2019) when the people took to the streets, calling for the renuncia, the resignation of then governor Ricardo Rosselló."

Santiago drew attention to the successful efforts of Puerto Rican protesters in demanding and obtaining the resignation of Rosselló, who came under harsh scrutiny for being caught in multiple corruption scandals that put him on the hook for impeachment.

"I think there was some sort of confluence of both the sense of despair provoked by the hurricanes…and the sense of empowerment that we developed after the summer of 2019. And then there is the bankruptcy, the policies of austerity of the country's fiscal board…it (was) like the perfect storm," she added.

Quashing independence

Like Santiago, Puerto Rican constitutional law professor Carlos Gorrin Peralta describes his homeland as a mere possession of the United States, an ongoing project of colonisation the US should be held accountable for in the eyes of international law.

Peralta highlighted to TRT World several instances throughout the history of the Puerto Rican people in which the mainland worked to suppress the cause of independence legally, economically, and culturally.

"The United States made all Puerto Ricans citizens of the United States in 1917…That decision of Congress, when they adopted the Organic Act of 1917, was against the unanimous decision of the House of Delegates, which was the only body elected by the people of Puerto Rico," he said.

"So it was imposed as a sign that we are here to stay, and you will be subject to our sovereignty—without ever deciding that Puerto Rico would be part of the United States. It's a contradiction of modern constitutional law."

Peralta brought attention to the lasting legacy of one of the United States' first exercises of colonial domination of Puerto Rico through the Organic Act of 1917, also known as the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917.

An infamous piece of legislation among the Puerto Rican people to this day, he noted that it was codified in the same span of time the US entered World War I.

At another turning point in the 20th century, in 1948, the US-appointed governor of Puerto Rico at the time implemented a "gag law" banning the Puerto Rican flag and Puerto Rican nationalist speech and song.

"People were jailed because they put the Puerto Rican flag (up) in their homes. The Puerto Rican flag was illegal," he said.

The attacks on Puerto Rican human rights and dignities extended beyond these measures.

The US also engaged in eugenics-fueled initiatives on the island, where they collaborated with medical professionals to encourage and coerce women into testing birth control pills and undergoing forced sterilisation procedures without properly informing patients of their irreversibility.

What's more, the island of Vieques, a part of the Puerto Rico archipelago, was used as a test site for the US Navy.

There, officials spent over six decades devastating the small land mass–turning it into a "de facto war zone" and dropping up to 3 million pounds a year of "napalm, depleted uranium, lead, and other toxic chemicals," according to the Guardian.

Vieques holds the archipelago's highest rates of cancer–40 percent above average, according to the USC Center for Health Journalism. Public health officials are presently investigating potential links between the chemical contamination of the island and the significantly higher prevalence of cancer.

These historical tactics of identity suppression and desecration have historically worked in tandem with the pro-statehood (rather than pro-independence) cause.

Statehood or independence?

Peralta noted that in addition to these calculated and dehumanising modes of colonial subjugation, "the US has been able to convince the people of Puerto Rico, through economic dependence…that, if it were not for the US, we would be a miserable place."

These targeted and multi-prong attacks on identity, he claims, has led-–until very recently—to an overwhelming majority of Puerto Ricans affiliating with the pro-statehood party and pursuing an eventual annexation into the United States.

However, both Peralta and Paul Figeuroa, a member of the Independence Party who ran for a seat in the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, point out that the US has shown no intention or initiative to annex the island as the 51st state of the union.

Figeuroa discussed how the referendums on self-determination held every four years in Puerto Rico, which some Independistas boycott so as to not validate what they see to be a political performance, are an attempt by the pro-statehood movement to maintain a solid voter base.

Approximately 45 to 55 percent of Puerto Ricans who take part in that referendum are pro-statehood, however unrepresentative of the true electorate of Puerto Rico it may be.

"The United States has never shown interest in acting upon any of the results in any of these referendums," Figeuroa told TRT World.

He adds that "In any colonial system, colonialism only continues when there is a class of people that benefits from it. We've seen that… through the distribution of federal funding… going into the hands of the political elite that uses it for their own personal gain."

"I think the irony of it all, is that these same people misusing federal money…are the people who say they want to become a state of the US union. These people say they want statehood, but they have a total disregard for the government they say they want to feel a part of," Figeuroa said.

"By creating that binary, where people feel that they need to depend on the United States for money, it's much easier for the political class to continue extracting that money, staying in power, and using it again for their own gain," he added.

'We are not Americans'

In the middle of TRT's conversation with Santiago, the electrical grid crashed and the island suffered a total power outage. The halls of the Puerto Rican Senate building, where we spoke with Santiago, would remain dark until after we said our goodbyes: the outage even prevented the stoplights on the roads we drove on in San Juan from moderating traffic.

But nothing was out of the ordinary about this outage. In fact, such power trips affect the Caribbean island everyday. They are a testament to the precarious circumstance this island of US citizens–not all by choice–must endure as they continue to tolerate an existence characterised by a civic, infrastructural, and economic second-class status.

The Puerto Rican message to the world is as simple as an adage Figueroa quoted: "none of us are free until all of us are free."

Expressing outrage over the Puerto Rican condition, Santiago calls on the world to pay attention to her people's plight. "There is no justification, at this point in history, to have a country dominating another country. We are Puerto Ricans; we are not Americans, (and) we don't want to be Americans."

The Independence Party's position holds firm that the road forward will require a democratic, unaltered process by which the Puerto Rican people can present all possible options for their self-determination––via a constitutional status assembly, as was posed by Peralta.

The tides are changing––the island's reinvigorated pursuit of tangible steps toward self-determination, identity reclamation, and sovereignty are manifest now more than ever.

The US government's moral obligation (and responsibility under international law) must be to sit down with leaders from the island and negotiate a resolution that effectively carries out the decolonisation of the nation––on the terms of the people of Puerto Rico, the longest lasting colony in history.