Why Should Puerto Rico Become the 51St State?

By Guillermo González Román M.D.

With this book, “Why Should Puerto Rico Become the 51st State?”, Dr. González attempts to answer two basic questions.
1. Why has Puerto Rico been a colony for the past 527 years?
2. How could Puerto Rico stop being a colony?
Colonialism refers to populations whose government’s sovereignty resides in another country without fair and equal representation in that government. Puerto Rico is a territory that belongs to the USA since 1898 with the signature of the Treaty of Peace between Spain and the USA after the Spanish- American War. The original book published in 2007, “The Governor’s Suits”, was a response to a book written by an ex-president of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico: “The Trials of the Oldest Colony of the World” by José Trías Monje. After years of asserting that Puerto Rico was a self-governing country, he declared that PR is a colony. He did not understand why Puerto Ricans have accepted colonialism. In his book, Dr. González explained that the experiences of colonialism have been endured because the experiences as a colony for all these years have branded the Puerto Ricans and shaped their personalities to accept and endure colonialism with stoicism. With a near future discussion coming to Congress about the status of the relations between Puerto Rico and the USA, Dr. González feels responsibility to create awareness that PR is a colony, and since 2012, in a popular vote, 54% of Puerto Ricans voted to discontinue the mutually consented colonialism up to then.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664152021

Guillermo González Román M.D.

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez-Roman was born in Puerto Rico. He studied medicine and specialized in Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of PR and practiced medicine in PR, NYC, and MA. His orientation in psychiatry is a biological perspective in interaction with our experiences and history. He is a strong believer that our experiences in life modify our biology, our brains, and our DNA. Transcultural psychiatry is his pet subject. After completing his medical and psychiatry training, he did a clinical fellowship in clinical research at the State University of New York at the Downstate Medical Sciences Campus, Brooklyn, NY, where he learned the anthropological research technique of participant observation. In his first book, The Governor’s Suits, he describes the rating scale which defines the concept of the colonized personality. This is a concept created by a psychoanalytic psychiatrist, Franz Fanon. Very different from the original creator of the concept, Dr. Gonzalez believes that the decolonization process could be achieved by peaceful means and not by war as Fanon did in Algeria. His research is based on actual interactions with the media, mostly Puerto Rican newspapers, in their public forums. These interactions have served to validate the concept of the colonized personality, that is for him the reason that Puerto Rico has been, for the past 529 years, a colony, first of Spain and now of the USA. The colonial status is something condemned by the United Nations Organization. Until 1952, PR was on the list of colonies of the Decolonization Committee of the UNO. At that time, the US allowed PR to design a constitution which supposedly allowed self government. This is totally incorrect, because we became a colony after the Treaty of Paris in 1898, when Spain ceded their colony of PR as compensation to end the war. PR belongs to the USA and is governed by Congress under the territorial clause of the US Constitution. These are the realities that Dr. Gonzalez wants the world to know. You do not have to travel to Ukraine to find a whole population that doesn’t have full self government and where the democratic right of self determination is not respected.

Book preview

Copyright © 2021 by Guillermo González Román, M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 01/14/2021

Xlibris

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Contents

Acknowledgement

Note

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 Colonized Personality Disorder

Chapter 2 A New Social Class Arises in Puerto Rico from the Colonized Personality: Colonized Politicians

Chapter 3 The Colonized Personality

Chapter 4 Beyond the Colonized Personality

Chapter 5 Predictions

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

M Y DEEPEST GRATITUDE to my wife, Sophia Gonzalez. The formulation and expression of my ideas became the written word during my interactions with her. Her skills in the Greek, Spanish, and English languages have been a great help to me. Without you, Sophia, it would have taken me another thirty-seven years to write this book.

NOTE

T HIS NEW INFORMATION to be included in the book, The Governors Suits, justifies for me the re-publishing of this book during this crucial year for Puerto Rico’s political future.

Is Puerto Rico a country? Many Puerto Ricans believe that yes, it is a country. I have not polled Americans in the USA to assess this question, but I will venture to say that most Americans believe that PR is a country. What is also interesting, and intriguing, is the fact that I have heard U.S Congress people affirming that PR is a country during public hearings about PR in the U.S Congress.

I must give credit to Senator Elizabeth Warren when discussing the problem of PR’s insolvency asserted in the U.S Senate that because PR is not a country, it could not benefit from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to face the insolvency problem. She is the only Congress person that I have heard affirm that PR is not a country. It will be interesting to research this question in Congress to see how many know the truth.

The ignorance about the correct answer to this question among Americans in the U.S is not a surprise because here in PR the most popular newspaper, El Nuevo Día, consistently through its reports and editorials refers to PR as país/ country. It is my opinion from what I have researched as a participant observer in my frequent commentaries in the news media that most politicians believe that PR is a country. There are some prominent news commentators that defend the notion that PR is a Latin American country that was militarily invaded by the U.S in 1898. Are we a Latin American country?

This notion is reinforced with the fact that Puerto Ricans constantly debate that Spanish and not English is the official language. The attempt to make English the official language of PR by the initial U.S military and civil government appointed by the U.S has been resisted and treated as treason by some politicians that state that PR is a country. Speaking Spanish and not English has been offered as proof by some that PR is a country. This confusion of seeing PR as a country permeates all spheres of the U.S and PR societies.

Throughout many years, the fact that PR participates in the Olympic Games as a group separate from the U.S delegation and with only the Puerto Rican flag has reinforced the notion of PR as a separate country from the U.S. The Miss Universe Beauty Pageant has had quite a few Miss Universes from PR. Sports and beauty contests are perceptions of Puerto Ricans asserting proof of PR being a country.

But the most reinforcing fact to the feeling of PR being a separate country from the U.S is the thousands of miles of distance that separate mainland U.S and PR. As described by President Trump after hurricane Maria, PR is an island in the middle of the ocean far away from the U.S, which according to him, explains the delay of help by the U.S to PR during the second longest blackout in the world and the longest in the history of the U.S suffered by the Americans living in PR after hurricane Maria, a category 4 storm.

In 1948, for the first time in history the U.S allowed Puerto Ricans to elect their governor instead of being appointed by the President of the U.S, which was the norm until then. The most winning election party (Partido Popular Democrático- PPD), in collaboration with the Pro- Statehood Party, elaborated a Constitution for PR (Estado Libre Asociado – ELA) in a Constitutional Assembly subjected to the approval of the U.S Congress. Clearly stated in this Constitution, the ELA is subordinated to the U.S Constitution and does not constitute an independent sovereignty.

Notwithstanding this legal document, the PPD lied to the people and asserted that it was a bilateral compact not revocable unilaterally; something that happened in 2016 with the creation of the Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA) – when the U.S Congress created an independent body of 7 managers who were not federal or state officials and not elected by Puerto Ricans, who were appointed by the President with the advice of both U.S chambers- Senate and House of Representatives, who would have powers over the local government in the creation and elaboration of a fiscal plan conducive to balanced budgets that will provide for offerings of essential services to the community, payment to the retirees and payment of the $125 billion of debt by the ELA.

In this act, the Puerto Rican government is provided a defense against insolvency. In 2016, the Governor of PR, Alejandro García Padilla, expressed that PR was incapable of paying their debt and had no legal defenses against the multiple suits for payment of debt the debtors were presenting in Court.

This PROMESA law was created specifically for the U.S territories because only the federal government has the power and responsibility to restructure the debt of the territories with Wall Street, as decided by the Supreme Court of the U.S (SCOTUS) in the case against the bankruptcy law created by Puerto Ricans, Ley de Quiebras Criollas. This situation of the insolvency of the territory and lack of legal defenses against debt collection has cascaded into revelations of poor micromanagement of PR by the U.S, as asserted in the SCOTUS case by the U.S lawyers.

In first instance, PR could issue debt in the U.S municipal market of bonds with the privilege of triple exemption of federal, state, and municipal taxes, with a poison pill in the language injected into the Puerto Rican Constitution which prioritized the payment of the debt before paying for the essential services to the community and to retirees. In case of insolvency, no money for the Puerto Ricans and all the money for Wall Street.

The problem of micromanagement by Congress of their territories got even worse in