LA CHULETA CONGELÁ’:
A blog about Puerto Rico’s walk to self-determination and created to shed light on the topic of Puerto Rico’s democratic trials and tribulations over the past 112-year relationship with the United States.
The name is supposed to be metaphorically illustrative of Puerto Rico’s unique history and political status in the world. While Puerto Rico enjoys a higher standard of living than most of the countries in the Caribbean and Latin America, it barely matches half of the poorest American state’s per capita income. Home to the Western Hemisphere’s longest-serving executive mansion, Puerto Rico could be a power broker in Latin America on behalf of the American Union, but, instead, it is relegated to the basement of national political affairs. For over half a century, American companies have been given multi-billion dollar tax incentives to establish residency in Puerto Rico with the aim of revitalizing the economy, but the achieved growth peaked in the 1960s and was stagnant by the 1980′s, but the special tax incentives continue to this day.
Overall, 97 percent of Puerto Ricans on the territory condition any permanent status solution on their ability to retain American citizenship, yet roughly half of those same persons continue to believe there is some better permanent status option that simply has not been defined. Puerto Ricans’ daily lives operate under the rules of status politics, not those of ideological politics. Ironically, their search for equality would deliver them into ideological politics, which are the purview of sovereign states. Puerto Rican voters have one of the world’s highest voter participation rates, but one of the lowest rates of worker participation in the world.
Growing up in Puerto Rico, people grow accustomed to putting a positive spin to their financial misery based on the abundance of “meat” in the freezer. The sight of a freezer full of frozen pork chops promises much wanted hope but delivers ostensibly undesired resignation. The same could be said about the status issue and some Puerto Rican’s hope that there are more options for them (aside from statehood and independence) because if they can fill their “political freezer” with as many “status pork chops” as they can, perhaps they will never have to make the dreaded decision of choosing something that is, by its very nature, permanent.
This blog will provide commentary on and illustrations of the day-to-day decisions made by Puerto Rico’s leaders on all sides and how those decisions affect the lives of over four million American citizens on the island colony, and how those decisions contribute to or take away from the daily progress toward citizenship equality.
