America's Colony: The Political and Cultural Conflict Between the United States and Puerto Rico.

Vol. 15 No.1 (January 2005), pp.74-77

AMERICA’S COLONY: THE POLITICAL AND CULTURAL CONFLICT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND PUERTO RICO, by Pedro A. Malavet. New York: New York University Press, 2004. 352pp. Cloth. $40.00. ISBN: 0814756808.

Reviewed by Javier A. Couso, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. Email: javier.couso@udp.cl .

Even before the political cataclysm produced by the terrorist attacks of September 11^th, 2001, the question of the persistency of imperial power in the era of globalization was the source of preoccupation for a large number of social scientists and legal scholars. In a paradigmatic example of the literature addressing this problem, Hardt and Negri, in EMPIRE (2001), stressed the non-territorial, de-centralized nature of contemporary forms of imperial power. In the aftermath of the U.S. response to that tragedy – which included the very territorial attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq – the question of imperialism is now even more pressing.

It is within this context that the book under review, AMERICA’S COLONY, by Pedro Malavet, represents a contribution to a debate that it seems it will be with us for a long time. As the author points out, with its nearly four million inhabitants, Puerto Rico represents by far the most populated territorial possession of the United States – which also include the Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Marianas, and American Samoa. More importantly, its current status leaves the population in a sort of political limbo, due to the diminished U.S. citizenship of those who live on the island. By contrast, the 2.7 million Puerto Ricans residing in the U.S. “properly” (that is, on the continent) enjoy the same rights as the rest of the American population.

Although Puerto Rico is officially a “free associated state” of the United States, this apparently autonomous status hides the fact that the final word regarding the fate of the island ultimately lies with the American authorities, which makes the expression “colony” a proper label for the island. In this work, Pedro Malavet offers an account of the historical origins and evolution of Puerto Rico’s subordination to the United States, as well as the options available to end this political treatment of what is truly a nation without sovereignty.

The book is organized in seven chapters, in which the author analyzes the four hundred-year period of Spanish colonization (1493-1898) and the century-old U.S. dominance (1898-2004) through the lenses of the so-called “Latino(a) Critical Race Theory” – “Lat-Crit” – a branch of what the author calls “contemporary critical jurisprudence.” In addition to this, the book also analyzes some of the jurisprudence issued from the U.S. Supreme Court (the “insular cases”), which in the early twentieth century gave legal legitimacy to U.S. congressional action instituting the peculiar citizenship status of Puerto Ricans living in the island. Finally, the [*75] author makes what he calls a “pluralistic communitarian” proposal for ending the current colonial status of Puerto Rico.

Malavet, a Puerto Rican academic lawyer living in Florida, starts his work with the historical background of Puerto Rico’s current plight, telling the sad story of a “cultural nation” that has never been able to enjoy full political sovereignty. As Malavet persuasively argues, Puerto Ricans have seen themselves as a national community for almost two centuries, which explains attempts to gain independence from Spain as early as the mid-nineteenth century, and resistance to U.S. attempts to assimilate them to Anglo-American values and language during the first decades of the twentieth century. In addition to this national sentiment, it could be added that the cultural attachment of Puerto Ricans to Spanish American traditions makes them an integral part of the Latin American community of nations.

Another important section of the book provides an account of the trajectory of political debate within Puerto Rico concerning its national status since1898, the year the United States assumed control. Reading the chapter on the evolution of the Puerto Rican political discourse concerning its national status, one realizes how complex and multifaceted the island’s domestic politics have been; thus, the author should be complemented on his effort to make comprehensible a debate that at times seems Byzantine and full of ambiguities, and in which political leaders speak in coded-language and never seem to mean what they say.

The same must be said about the clarity with which Malavet presents the options concerning Puerto Rico’s status: a) full independence from the U.S., which will make Puerto Rico a completely autonomous nation-state; b) full statehood, which will end the current “non-incorporated” status, making it the fifty-first state; c) a “nonassimilationist form of associated state,” in which a sovereign Puerto Rico enters into bilateral association with the United States, much like the members of the European Union; and d) the current “commonwealth” status, in which the “free-associated state” label belies the fact that the U.S. retains final decisional authority.

As Malavet notes, Puerto Rico’s current status is the least acceptable, because it perpetuates “second-class citizenship” of Puerto Ricans living on the island, who for that sole reason are deprived of the political right to participate in presidential elections and have no representation in the Federal Congress, which has the last word about their destiny. For this reason, any of the three alternatives would be preferable to the current status quo.

Although the author seems open to any of the “status” options listed above (with the exception of continuing as a “commonwealth”), he rightly insists that Puerto Ricans be allowed to make the decision unconstrained by its current dependency on the United States. This will necessitate that Puerto Rico first be recognized as an independent state, and only then can its citizens freely decide what to do next. This is particularly important, given the tradition of suppression of the pro-independence movement and political parties since [*76] U.S. occupation, which seems to indicate that it might be better to let the United Nations oversee a process of fully autonomous political deliberation by the Puerto Rican people about their future.

Going to the shortcomings of the book, it is unfortunate that a work purporting to explain the “political and cultural conflict between the United States and Puerto Rico” (as the subtitle reads), focuses so much on Puerto Rico and so little on the U.S., a bias that leaves the reader wondering about the nature of the politics of the “Puerto Rico question” inside the U.S. In fact, aside from a few isolated judicial cases, some outrageous statements by U.S. governors of the island, and scattered remarks on the military relevance of a few islands belonging to Puerto Rico (such as Vieques), we learn very little about the incentives that the American government has had over the last century for keeping Puerto Rico under colonial control, particularly in view of the fact that the Philippines and Cuba (the other two territories that the U.S acquired after the Spanish-American War of 1898) were allowed to become independent nations. In this regard, it would have been very enlightening to learn more about the evolution of the debate concerning this issue inside the U.S. political system, at least in order to contrast it with the case of the two other former colonial territories.

Another problem with this otherwise interesting book is the author’s unnecessary over-theorizing. Indeed, Malavet devotes two full chapters (Chapter 1, “Race, Culture, Colonialism, Citizenships, and Latina/o Critical Race Theory,” and Chapter 5, “Theorizing a New Reality of Citizenship and Nation”) to explaining and then stressing the crucial role that Lat/Crit race theory and “pluralistic communitarian” thought should play in the analysis of Puerto Rico’s colonial status. The trouble with this theoretical excursus is that it is not only utterly unnecessary to the main goal of the book, but it also misrepresents American political liberalism, which the author claims is at the root of current Puerto Rican colonial status. Indeed, and contrary to what the author so adamantly claims, there is nothing in the most articulated and updated version of American political liberalism (such as John Rawls’ latest work, or Jeremy Waldron’s) which would prevent Malavet from engaging in his analysis of the history and conditions surrounding the island’s status. In fact, only a very narrow understanding would attribute responsibility to American political liberalism for the plight of Puerto Rico. Here the author seems to confuse the theory proclaimed by a particular state as its guiding principle, with the actual practice, which seems to have been the case with regard to U.S. policy toward Puerto Rico. If this is so, it is a mistake to attack political liberalism as such for the political oppression of Puerto Rico by the U.S.

REFERENCES:

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. 2001. EMPIRE. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Rawls, John. 1995. POLITICAL LIBERALISM. New York: Columbia University Press. [*77]

Waldron, Jeremy. 2002. GOD, LOCKE, AND EQUALITY : CHRISTIAN FOUNDATIONS IN LOCKE'S POLITICAL THOUGHT. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

************************************************************