Nota de Puertoricoexpresa.com

        Esta es la contestación de nuestro Director Ejecutivo a la carta del Senador Barack Obama al Gobernador Aníbal Acevedo Vilá.

February 15, 2008

VIA TELECOPIER AND REGULAR MAIL

Senator Barack Obama

713 Hart Senate Office

Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

(202) 228-4260

Obama for America

P.O. Box 8210

Chicago, Illinois 60680

Dear Mr. Obama:

            Best wishes upon receipt of this letter.  Even though I should not answer letters that have not been addressed to me, since your letter dated February 12, 2008 addressed to the Governor of Puerto Rico was submitted to him within the context of a political campaign, I feel compelled to answer it. I feel that obligation due to the public interest of the contents of your letter and because since more than 30 years ago I have been active  politically at different levels to promote the development and self determination of my country.  I then answer your letter in my personal capacity and for other Puerto Ricans who may share my thoughts.

            First of all, I want to congratulate you for your campaign and the way you are breaking ground and promoting changes in politics in the United States.  Your campaign has been excelent, your speeches inspiring,  and I wish you success  not only in the primaries, but also in the elections of November, and afterwards in the White House.

            Your letter of February 12, 2008 undoubtedly is the product of a careful political job in which there must  have been the intervention of your advisors and particular political operatives, and in the context of the  close political campaign that you face, the juncture is ideal  to make pleas to a political leader to get in exchange of an endorsement some  political commitments.  This does not mean that the product of your letter is necessarily part of an inherently corrupt process, but that is part of the political process.  That is why when political promises are looked for and offered, there must be special care with the information offered to the candidate by those who in exchange want promises, because they sometimes  make representations that are not necessarily  going to be correct, provoking such representations promises that may be based  are wrong premises.  Accordingly, I proceed to share with you certain concerns regarding your letter begining with its first sentence.

“Puerto Rico is an important  and vital part of our nation, and Puerto Ricans have made immeasurable  contributions to the United States”. 

            The contribution part is correct.  Taking notice of the number  of Puerto Ricans who have paid with their lives in the wars in which the  United States has intervened throughout the twentieth century until the present time in Iraq is enough.  But the first premise of your letter is incorrect.  Puerto Rico is not and has never been part of the United States.  Considering your experience as lawyer I suggest you examine the opinion of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 245 (1901), where  it was established that Puerto Rico is a territorial posession  of the United States not incorporated  to the United States.  Quoting directly the words of Justice Henry B. Brown in his opinion, he stated that Puerto Rico is “a territory appurtenant to  and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States...” 

            That opinion has been subject to judicial attacks,  but it has never been revoked and  despite the fact that the United States Congress imposed over Puerto Ricans the United States citizenship in 1917, and despite the fact that the legislative assembly of Puerto Rico in 1917 unanimously rejected the citizenship, from the moment  your country militarily occupied Puerto Rico as part of  the Hispanic American War in 1898 until today, Puerto Rico has been a country controlled militarily and politically by the United States,  that does not form part of the United States.  That artificial barrier created by the Supreme Court of the United States has not been limited to a juridical exclusion throughout its history.  Puerto Ricans have been treated throughout the twentieth century and until the present time in a discriminatory manner not only in the United States, just as many other Latin  American immigrants, but   from country to country, the discrimination has been enourmous to the extent Puerto Rico has always been considered by the power elites of your country as a colonial territory inhabited  by inferior beings, that are not worthy of liberty, of being able to govern themselves,  or to form part of the United States as another state.  A reading of the congressional records at the begining of the twentieth century about Puerto Rico would be eloquent proof of that reality,  just as the record throught the last one hundred years of rejection by those elites and by the Congress of the United States to all efforts by many groups, leaders and political organizations of Puerto Rico that have knocked on their doors to achieve changes in the political relation between both countries,  either to get independence, more  autonomy, or statehood.

            Moreover, in 1898, Puerto Rico was an autonomous nation, that had a treaty with the Kingdom of Spain pursuant to which Puerto Ricans  had the power, within the relationship with Spain,  to decide which Spanish laws applied to Puerto Rico, and with the power to adopt commercial treatises with other countries, and to determine which treatises of Spain with other nations applied to Puerto Rico among other powers.  Before the invasion of 1898 Puerto Rico was a country with its own language, culture,  and national identity.  But since the 1898 invasion undertaken without Puerto Ricans ever  undertaking any acts of aggression  of any nature against the people of the United States, despite the attacks against our culture by your government, it continues alive notwithstanding the fact that  our nation has never again had the powers it had in its relation with Spain.  In fact, since the moment the military occupation began in 1898 until the present time, Puerto Ricans have been at the mercy of the will of the Department of Defense, the President of the United States, the Congress,  and the federal courts without  the United States ever  asking  Puerto Ricans  their opinion in any respect, and without allowing Puerto Ricans to participate in the process pursuant to which the President is elected and without representation in Congress. 

            If as  you say in your letter as President you will pay close attention to the well being of Puerto Ricans, obligation that the United States has disregarded throughout the history since 1898 and in violation to Articles  55, 56, 73 and 74 of the United Nations  Charter, I urge you not to limit yourself to hear the professional politicians  that have exercised control over Puerto Rico in complicity  with the government of the United States and with  Republican and Democratic  elites, precisely to maintain  the colonial status  that has oppressed the nation since 1898.  I urge you to go to the root of the matters demanding to see, study, and pay attention to the history of Puerto Rico, and the experience of the United States throughout the twentieth century,  and the form it has intervened invading countries without valid reasons and just relying on its imperial motivations.  And with the lapse of time we have seen how the Hispanic American War was a made up conflict to promote the imperial interests of the United States,  because at that time Spain did not have to and did not have with  to begin a war with the United States.  You do not have to know the history of Puerto Rico, but being  now a presidential candidate,  you have the obligation to know it, and you are an educated  and inteligent person, who knows  the history of the United States; thus  you must  know what I am refering to.

            That is why  I am pleased with your interest in the self determination of Puerto Rico, but that process   of self determination in which Puerto Rico and the United States must form part of, must depart  with respect to the United States from  the recognition  of the violation by your country with respect to Puerto Rico of the principles with which the United States  was founded in 1776,  as I will point out further below.  And that acknowledgement is essential, because otherwise the aggresion to which Puerto Ricans have been subject to since the invasion  of 1898 will remain unpunished,  aggression that has included the taking of part of the territory of Puerto Rico to establish military bases, the imposition of education in English in schools since the military invasion, the involuntary military recruitment to participate in wars of  the United States without Puerto Ricans having had the right to vote for the President of the United States,  and without representation with voice and vote in Congress, the federal control over our means of communications,  natural resources,  and commerce,  and the persecution  of the advocates  of independence of Puerto Rico through political discrimination, jailings, political assasinations,  and the use of fear and terror, the purchase of the political will through political patronage and government funds, and the false association  of the independence struggle with criminal acts,  so that support for independence in Puerto Rico is reduced or inexistant, among other methods of control and repression used to keep my country tied to the will and political whim of the United States in the Caribbean and Latin America.  And the most odious and embarrasing form  of antidemocratic control exercised by the United States, in particular along the last fifty years, has been the way in which all efforts of political groups of Puerto Rico that have exercised in some measure control over the local government that have gone to the Congress of the United States to request changes in the political relation to promote statehood, different types of association with the United States, or independence, have been ignored with an insulting  response:  “when you reach an agreement among yourselves, we will sit down to resolve the status problem.”  Obviously, we are never  going to reach an agreement because who caused the problem, the United States  since the invasion of 1898, has created  a division among us, and it has maintained it precisely so that we do not reach an agreement to perpetuate  the colonial relation.

            As a result of this reality, you cannot keep during your primary campaign, or the presidential campaing, and moreover if you reach the White House, the neutrality that you promise in your letter.  You cannot remain neutral.  You must assume the responsibility in representation of your party and your government for the invasion and the colonial relationship to which your country has subjected Puerto Ricans throughout the years since 1898.  The lack of acknowledgement of these facts on your part and by your government,  would not only contribute to leaving that history unpunished, but would also perpetuate the way in which the independence as an option would continue being subject to  discrimination; and if you and your government do not make a commitment to acknowledge that fact  and to redress the grievances  caused by your government in the past, the state of affairs in which we have been since 1898 until the present time will not end with peace, and there will not be among both parties  true  selfdetermination.

            I am thankful for the promises that you make in your letter regarding Vieques and the economic development, but I have to be sincere in saying that they appear to be a list of promises offered in exchange of an endorsement, and already the professional politicans of Puerto Rico are making use of your letter for all sorts of partisan political claims .  Notwithstanding, I hope you are honest and sincere in your proposals and that your interest in Puerto Ricans  and Puerto Rico is legitimate,  and not an immediate political necessity to add strength to your primary campaign.  Unfortunately,  history is not on your side, because all of the past promises of presidential candidates until today with respect to Puerto Rico have remained breached, and the attention you may give to the economic problems of Puerto Rico and to Vieques will be worthless  if once and for all in a frank and honest way the colonial problem is not confronted,  admiting the guilt for the aggresion to which Puerto Ricans  have been subject to since 1898.  Your opinion in the February 12  letter with respect  to the respect of the White House Presidential Task Force reports  of December 22, 2005 and December 21, 2007 regarding the fact that the sovereigty of Puerto Rico cannot be unilaterally transfered by the United States to other countries  gives us hope and a good starting point to get out  of the colonial crossroads.  If that is the way you think, then you must also conclude that the Kingdom of Spain could not have transfered the sovereingty of Puerto Rico to the United States in 1898,  and the United States could not have  accepted  it  because Puerto Rico in 1898 was not a parcel of land. It was what it continues being today a nation.

            Thus, it is a forgone conclusion, if that is your honest opinion, that the power exercised by your country over mine since 1898 has been ilegal, even if some groups in Puerto Rico may have opted for political, economic, and social convenience to accept that reality, because in natural law null acts and those undertaken that are  contrary to international law,  and to  the rules that govern the relations between the nations of the world, and to the  morals and public order,  cannot be legitimized by the consent of those who are subject to control by  one of the parties. That is just like asking minorities to consent to discriminatory treatment.   And if you have any doubts regarding those moral and juridcal principles,  I bring to your attention the history of you own country,  focusing on the Declaration of Independence that states and I quote:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundantion on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.(Emphasis added)

            In the year 1776, a group of men of different parts of the thirteen  colonies and that  represented a minority of the populations of those colonies, subscribed on July 4  the Declaration of Independence in which they made a series of claims against  Great Britain to justify their demand  for independence precisely because of the arbitrary  limitations imposed by Great Britain over the colonial communities.  A reading of some of their demands reveals dramatic parallels with the present reality in the relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. Let´s see:

            a) He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. // Throughout our history, there have been many examples  of laws that have been declared unconstitutional or rejected by the government of the United States disregarding the interests of Puerto Rico.

            b) The judges appointed by the British Crown were  nominated by the metropolis  will and subject to its  laws, and that has also been the case in Puerto Rico with the federal judges.

            c) Offices have been established to intervene and interfere in matters pertaining to the daily lives of the colonitsts, and that has also been our case, without having an opportunity to participate democratically in the process pursuant to which the laws and publiuc policies of those government agencies are approved.

            d)  He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures // that has also been our case considering the military bases that the United States has had in Puerto Rico.

            e)  For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:// that has also been our case.

            f)  For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: // That has also been our case.

            g) Arbitrary control over our natural resources and coasts has been exercised // That has also been our case.

            h)  In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. // That has also been our case.

            If you are really going to do what you say you will do in your political campaign, an agent of change, for which you cannot remain neutral, I urge you  to be also an agent of change in the process to put an end to the colonial relationship, having the courage that no political leader in the United States has had to acknowledge the truth of the state of war and colonial submission to which your country has subjected Puerto Rico since 1898, having the courage  to apologize in representation of the United States for that violation of the human rights of the people of Puerto Rico, having the courage  to make a commitment to redress all of the damages caused to the people of Puerto Rico for all of the years of colonial rule, and having the courage to sit down with the Puerto Rican people, nation to nation, as equals, so that once and for all, with  respect to our political relationship our countries can  live in peace. Otherwise, if you come to Puerto Rico with the promises made in your letter disregarding the facts of the history between our nations, your promises will be empty, your attempt to get the support of second class United States citizens who cannot vote for the President of the United States will be a sham, and you will be betraying your message of change and hope, and the basic principles relied on by the founding fathers of your country, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

Sincerely,

Roberto O.  Maldonado-Nieves
Harvard B.A. Class of 1982
Harvard J.D. Class of 1985
Stanford M.J.S. Class of 1987