Fortuño has jokes!

Just this past week as I sat and browsed through various news stories I ran across one that not only made me laugh but had me asking "are they really surprised?" Here the they are the FBI and the the surprise refers to corruption in Puerto Rico as being rampant. If anything, the FBI should know as they have, in many past events, had their hands in the cookie jar for a very long time. Their involvement in Puerto Rican politics goes so far back that they should readily have all sorts of corruption information. As for corruption, no difference there between corrupt politicians in Puerto Rico and those in the U.S. Especially within a government which seems to be so desperately in want of being a part of the U.S. that they (some Puerto Rican politicians to put it nicely) U.S. politicians ways (corrupt).

So I stop laughing and move on to the HMIC (Head Moron in Charge). Excuse my foray into harsh wording but when I see the current Governor of Puerto Rico giving a speech (he does show eloquence), especially as he did recently on the economy, I begin to smell a rat. Again, he captures the listener with eloquence and has one believing that 1+1 can equal 4. With an unemployment rate at 17 percent, Luis Fortuño (I'll refrain from using a title) is a bit premature to say that improvement is occuring. The stark reality is that there is nothing to celebrate about. He might just be planning to balance the budget on the $500 plus lunch he had at the Sheraton Hotel during the recent UPR student strike.

To add, his political aspirations, which... he should have aspirations, include a pro-statehood interview in which he talks to Newt Gingrich. That's correct, pro-statehood interview, Fortuño will have you believing everything is fine under the sun and that he has saved the economy. Like Run-DMC said many years ago in their song Peter Piper, "and if I lie, my nose will grow, like the little wooden boy named Pinocchio", Well, hats off to Fortuño and while your at it.....duck for his nose may just poke you in the face. To the language question his answer is, "All of us as parents want our children to be totally fluent in English. That is an aspiration that every single parent has in Puerto Rico." He fails to mention that only 20 percent of the island's residents speak English fluently, even after 112 years of U.S.-Puerto Rico relationship!

By the way, he also states that Latinos are republicans! I laugh....yet again. Fortuño has jokes.

Read the latest post at EdMorales.net...."Huffs and Puffs, Blowing the Story" and enjoy
his review of Silvio Rodríguez' recent Carnegie Hall show, "The Man Who Wasn’t There"

Las Hormigas by Rosalinda Vargas de Tejas

Las Hormigas

Siempre muy ocupadas
No las molestes sino se enojan
Mi hermana las deja apachurradas
Yo nomás les quiebro una pierna
Ayer vi dos peleándose y me recordé
Cuando yo y mi hermana sufrimos los pleitos
De aquellos mas cercas de nosotros al diario
Y me enojo y hago más que quebrar algo frágil
Con un palo aviento una a un lado
Y a la otra la despedazo con ganas
Que triste ver las demás muy ocupadas
Siguen su camino y no se dan cuenta
Días después visito el hormiguero
Y no me dan ganas ni de ver las hormigas
Me siento en una piedra y no siento nada
Cuando mi hermana las ahoga con agua
Usando la manguera que marco sus piernas
Yo lo vi enojado y rojo como una hormiga

Poesía escrita por Rosalinda Vargas de Tejas

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Puerto Rico: Statehood and Strike

Thursday, 16 June 2010
Press Release: Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Puerto Rico: Statehood and Strike

by COHA Research Associate Krista Scheffey

The Spanish American War ended in 1898, but one aspect of the conflict remains unresolved: the status of Puerto Rico. Despite the importance of the issue, it is rarely an agenda priority in the continental United States. Recently, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2499 (“The Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2010”), a bill sponsored by Puerto Rico’s Representative Pedro Pierluisi. As the Act awaits its fate in the Senate, however, the White House refuses to voice its opinion on the matter. The Obama administration seems to be stalling until October, when the Presidential Task Force is scheduled to release its official report on the status of Puerto Rico.

While the administration remains tight-lipped pending the release of the Task Force Report, unrest in Puerto Rico may speed up the tempo as to when the international community will take an interest in the island. This spring’s student strikes at the Universidad de Puerto Rico (UPR) threaten to shut down the public university system, and the strife has become multi-generational as unions and students’ relatives join the ranks of the protestors. The scale of the UPR strike and the goals it advocates are effectively bringing light to very serious economic problems that must be addressed. The strike began as a protest against government plans to cut the university’s funding by more than $100 million, a devastating budget reduction that would considerably reduce the scope of financial aid available to students. The announced budget cut follows a number of other unpopular austerity measures implemented by Governor Luis Fortuño since he began his term in January 2009.

Although the strike began as a movement against the UPR administration, the demonstration, which has been carried out by thousands of students and sympathetic Puerto Rican workers, highlights tensions in Puerto Rico that will not be easily resolved. As Congress and the Presidential Task Force individually work to resolve Puerto Rico’s future status, they must take into account the economic problems and political issues facing the island. An honest assessment of the island’s status must take into account its historical, contemporary situation. Any change in the island’s status—be it a move towards statehood, independence, or an expanded commonwealth relationship—will come with its share of difficulties and conundrums. However, the price of inaction is a continued and intolerable neo-colonial relationship that benefits neither Puerto Rico nor the mainland United States.

A History of Colonialism

Christopher Columbus landed in Puerto Rico in 1493, and the native inhabitants of the island were soon enough replaced—by conquest, disease, and violence—with Spaniards and imported African slaves. The island remained a Spanish colonial possession, making small but significant progress towards independence until the Spanish American War. In July 1898, the United States invaded the island; Puerto Rico, along with the Philippines and Guam, were ceded to the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris, signed by the U.S. and Spain at the conclusion of the war in December of that year. As Pedro Albizu Campos, a leading figure in Puerto Rico’s independence movement, explained, the U.S. was “interested in the cage, not the birds.” The U.S. wanted control of the land, but had little interest in the inhabitants of the island. The United States was already invested in the idea of constructing a canal through Panama, and securing the Caribbean was a key component of the U.S.’ plan.

The U.S. military ruled the island until the Foraker Act (also known as the Organic Act) was passed in 1900, which established Puerto Rico’s civilian government. The Foraker Act and subsequent Jones-Shafroth Act (1917) established separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches to handle Puerto Rican local affairs, while the island continued to follow U.S. federal laws. Notably, Puerto Rico received a non-voting representative in Congress (the Resident Commissioner) and a Governor to head the executive branch. The Jones-Shafroth Act also granted legal American citizenship to Puerto Ricans. In the 1950s, Puerto Rico’s status as a “commonwealth” was officially established. According to Richard Pildes, professor of Constitutional Law at NYU, the commonwealth status initiated in the 1950s represented a “creative intermediate structure” between independence and statehood that was designed to give self-governing autonomy to Puerto Rico and move it away from a colonial status. Public Law 600, passed in 1950, empowered Puerto Rico to directly elect their Governor as well as to draft a constitution (based on the United States’), which was ratified in 1952. Because of its status as a commonwealth, the island receives transfer payments from the U.S. government—including welfare and federal grants. Puerto Ricans also routinely serve in the U.S. military.

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This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Krista Scheffey