Puerto Rico and Ukraine from a Bird Two Wings- Self Political Determination Missing

By Guillermo González Román M.D.

This book is written from my perspective as a psychiatrist in relation to my experiences of being an American born in Puerto Rico. This may sound cognitively dissonant but is not. There are fundamental differences between being an American and an American born in PR. The intentions for this book are to denounce the hoax of the century in USA- that the Puerto Ricans govern Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has no sovereignty of its own. Since 1898, PR has been governed by the US Congress and the President of the USA. With the Foraker Act of 1900, we were ordered to organize ourselves in a limited version of a republican type of government, with only one chamber and a governor appointed by the President of the USA. This civil government would replace the military government present since the invasion of our lands. With the Jones- Shafroth Act of 1917 we became American citizens, and the new government was going to have two chambers - Senate, and House of Representatives. The Act made it clear that the US has full control in matters of the economy, immigration, defense, and the type of government for us in PR. Government organization was designed by the USA and not by us. Even our famous Commonwealth Constitution was ordered from the US Congress and was modified at their will without consent of the Puerto Ricans. Until 1952, PR was on the list of colonies of the United Nations Decolonization Committee. The people of PR were allowed to elect a governor in 1948 for the first time since total control of the US. We were ordered to write a constitution subordinated to the US Constitution, as approved by Congress, and this act was presented to the United Nation as a proof of self government. It proved unnecessary supervision by the UN- they considered it a domestic manner and not an international matter; it seems that they forgot the Treaty of Paris. The US ambassador asked for PR to be stricken from the list of colonies and for the requirements to present reports for the decolonization and self government development. We have never had full self government and much less self determined government. This hoax has led many to believe that PR is a Latin American nation. We are a non incorporated territory that belongs to but is not part of the federation of states government. As a territory that belongs to the USA, they discriminated regarding which rights of their constitution extends to us. For the past five years, a board of seven members designated by the President and the House and the Senate of the USA has superseded our elected officials. And they have the discretion and the power to change whatever they feel necessary, including the constitution, so we can pay the debt with Wall Street. Seven Americans, not Puerto Ricans, have the full control of our monies. Where is the self government? Maybe it never existed and was just the hoax of the century for the US government.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669834359

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.

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Copyright © 2022 by Guillermo González Román, M.D.

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Rev. date: 06/16/2022

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1     The Spanish American War between Spain and the United States of America and the Treaty of Paris

Chapter 2     Puerto Rico a Spain colonial territory possession since November 19, 1493, until 1898

Chapter 3     Foraker Act of 1900

Chapter 4     SCOTUS and the Insular Cases

Chapter 5     Jones-Shafroth Act March 2, 1917

Chapter 6     Puerto Rico Federal Relations Act of 1950-81-600

Chapter 7     A new social upper class emerge in Puerto Rico- the political parties

Chapter 8     15-108 Puerto Rico v. Sanchez Valle June 9, 2016-SCOTUS

Chapter 9     Puerto Rico v. Franklin California Tax- Free Trust- June 2016

Chapter 10   Puerto Rico Oversight Management and Economic Stability Act June 30, 2016, US Congress President Obama

Chapter 11   Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment, LLC June 1, 2020-SCOTUS

Chapter 12   United States v. Vaello- Madero, April 21, 2022, SCOTUS

Chapter 13   The Puerto Rico Status Act draft June 22, 2022

Conclusions

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T O STENY HOYER, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nydia Velazquez, Jenniffer Gonzalez, Darren Soto, Ruben Gallego, Juan Torruellas, Gustavo Gelpi, and Sonia Sotomayor for their contributions for bringing Puerto Rico’s issues of colonization and self political determination into the world’s public arena.

PREFACE

May 29, 2022

To: US Congress Representatives,

Raúl M Grijalva, Nydia Velázquez, Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, Jenniffer González

Dear Representatives:

I AM WRITING THESE words to congratulate all of you for making history with the process of decolonization and self-political determination for us, the People of Puerto Rico. This is the first time in our five hundred twenty-eight years, and running, as a colonial possession that our real government- Chief of State of PR is Joe Biden- asks the people living in their territory how do we feel about it, and which are our wishes and goals for our common relationship. It’s like living with your wife for years and never talking to her. Four hundred and five years under Spain’s control and one hundred twenty-four years under USA control. Nobody during the signing of the Treaty of Paris, to end the Spanish American War, asked us, the Puerto Ricans, our opinion of the property transfer of ownership of the land in which we were born and live. Living in a colony is like living as a test tube baby- you do not own your habitat.

My name is Guillermo Gonzalez Roman, aka, Guillermo Gonzalez MD for my writings. I was born in Santurce, PR in 1949. I am a retired physician, specialized in Psychiatry and Neurology. Now living back in PR after 30 years of medical practice in the states of New York and Massachusetts. I have read and fully agree with the draft of The Puerto Rico Status Act.

It is my opinion that the USA has been dodging its responsibility, as assigned by the Treaty of Paris, which was signed in 1899, to determine the political future of the relationship of the US with PR. None of you before has talked to us expressing your divided and conflicting opinions regarding the future of our relationship. You have mascaraded your ambivalence to us, as described in the Insular Cases and the recently decided case of Vaello Madero by the US Supreme Court, by using the excuse that there is no consensus between us and not you. How could there be consensus among us when there are multiple mutually excluding possibilities, which are not defined, and we have no power to decide? We are requested consensus on issues that only you have the power to enforce, and you have never defined which are the possibilities. Are you playing with us blindly tagging the donkey?

It is always easier to blame the weakest and defenseless. Article IV, Section III, Clause II of the US Constitution gives you unilateral rights to legislate the rules for our lives and society- in a unilateral unquestionable and irrevocable way. To the point, based on monetary claims that we are poor and do not pay enough taxes to receive equal treatment under the Constitution, you allow the SSI benefits assigned from you to the poor, except not for the poor people of PR. In 1984, the US Congress took away the federal bankruptcy protection to us during insolvency. You also put for cheap sale the triple tax exemption Commonwealth bonds in their portfolios, which by 2015 over 70% of the Mutual Funds in the US had Commonwealth bonds with excellent and above average interest rates, and they were Joker bonds that anybody could buy them, tax exempt, especially for states with high taxes. All of this, in conjunction with our financially incompetent and irresponsible local government that is still two years behind in submitting audited consolidated financial statements, lead us to insolvency and incapacity to defend ourselves from Wall Street. It may sound paranoid, but the path was set for Wall Street to take over all the actives of our local fictitious government. We were defenseless people with no political power in our real government- the federal government- left to face the mammoth of Wall Street alone.

The Russians are invading Ukraine and not respecting their right for self-political determination. US Congress has been doing this to us for all these years; ignoring our will and democratic right for self-determination. For some of you, it is an issue of not wanting PR to be a purple or swing state that will decide presidential elections. For us, it is a request for our sovereignty, residing today with you in the US Congress, ending the unilateral control from you on your colonial territory possession. Maybe, to the surprise of some of you, I believe that with our sovereignty we will successfully survive in both possible scenarios- statehood or independence.

For the past 16 years I have been writing about the colonization process of PR and the effects on the Puerto Rican personality. I have published six books on this topic, and I am in the process of writing my seventh book in support of The Puerto Rico Status Act- Puerto Rico and Ukraine from a Bird the Two Wings- Self Determination Missing.

It is my opinion, based on my experience, that you are not the only ones to blame for the persistence of the colonial situation of PR for all these years - we have also contributed. Experience, biology, and personality interact, being cause and effect of each other. The Colonized Personality has evolved from years of colonialism, creating dependence in the metropolises, and inferiority feeling and insecurities about a future of our own, with the responsibility of a government that could support its own structures and facilitate the self and financial support for all of us Puerto Ricans. Habits are difficult to change and at times we are our own worst enemy.

Thank you for providing me, as a private citizen living in PR, an opportunity to express my opinion about our political future and our future relationship with the USA. The Puerto Rican self-determination process is a common responsibility, and we will fight for it as united people in a democratic and peaceful way, different from the Ukrainian people that have been forced to fight fearfully for their self-political determination process.

Sincerely,

Guillermo González Román

INTRODUCTION

A T FIRST SIGHT, it is difficult to find similarities between Puerto Rico and Ukraine. Both territories have been invaded by an act of war. PR was invaded by the US Navy on July 25,1898. Ukraine was invaded by Russia’s Putin on February 24, 2022. In both instances, Russia and the US were trying to expand their territorial control. Neither population provoked an invasion from their aggressor. Russia took possession of part of Ukraine’s territory and the US took all of PR’s territory.

With the Treaty of Paris of 1898 to end the Spanish American War, Spain ceded to the US their colonial possession of Puerto Rico, which they held for 405 years. The territory of PR, since then, belongs to the USA and the USA has full power to decide our political future without our input. Article IV, Section III, Clause II of the USA Constitution authorizes Congress to enact all rules over PR they consider necessary. The traditional republican division of their branches of government - executive, legislative and judicial - checking and counter acting each other does not apply to PR. Congress could exert all legislative powers over PR without our input. Recently, the approval of the bankruptcy law PROMESA, with its fiscal supervisory control board over the government elected by the Puerto Ricans, has been the extreme dictatorial unilateral power conferred to Congress over us. The similarity between Congress and the Kremlin is not a mere coincidence.

For the past 124 years of US possession of PR, neither Congress nor anyone in the federal government has surveyed our stance to this unfair antidemocratic type of government. Although we are a peaceful population, a small group of Puerto Ricans, during the 1950’s, were in violent protest of this situation and tried to kill the US president and Congress people. Most of us believe in solving our problems peacefully, but we do not hesitate to fight in US wars against other countries. It is ironic that we defend the tyrant of our land when they get in trouble with others. This nondemocratic micromanagement of PR by the USA has caused that the majority of Puerto Ricans have decided to relocate to the US looking for a better quality of life. Today, there are double the number of Puerto Ricans living in the USA than in PR.

Ukraine needs respect from Russia for their democratic right of political self-determination, as well as does PR from the USA. Recently, Congress published a draft of a law that will recognize Puerto Ricans’ right for self-determination and decolonization – The Puerto Rico Status Act. This book is written as an endorsement to such historical humane action by some members of Congress to the Puerto Ricans and to Puerto Rico.

I will provide details in this book of this reality and provide information explaining why this inhumane, colonial unilateral condition has persisted for 124 years as a mutual consent of colonialism. In 2012, in a plebiscite celebrated in PR, 54% of Puerto Ricans voted in repudiation of the territorial status and we have been ignored. We do not want to continue being a territorial possession of the US without fair and proportional representation and voting privileges in the federal government, but in lieu of this, we will love to have our full sovereignty as an independent country.

The Puerto Rico Status Act is a fair way to solve the 529 years of colonialism and lack of self-determination for Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans.

CHAPTER ONE

The Spanish American War between

Spain and the United States of

America and the Treaty of Paris

E UGENIO MARIA DE Hostos’ concept of nation is an idealistic definition without substance of The Treaty of Paris (TP) done by a Puerto Rican. The TP of 1898 is a valid legal treaty, no matter that we Puerto Ricans didn’t have a say. The TP was signed in 1899 due to disagreements between the Spanish and American governments regarding the terms and conditions established thereof. The TP makes a distinction between the territory and the population of the territory. The territory became the sole possession of the United States, with the power to decide its political future. It also provides that the United States committed to give humane treatment to the population that decided to stay in the Island after the transfer of the territorial colonial territory of Puerto Rico from Spain to the USA. Many were the Spaniards who took the juyilanga in a mass exodus.

The Spanish were in Puerto Rico trying to expand their possessions in the discovered lands inhabited by the American Indians. The Spaniards enslaved the Indians and then exterminated them and kept their lands. The rise of the US and in its expansionist actions, like the Putin-style eagerness in Ukraine, provoked a war with the intention of kicking the Europeans in the butt, letting it be known that a New Empire emerged in the New World.

Puerto Rico has never been a country and never in contemporary history it has had sovereignty of its own. Many in PR speak of us as a nation and as fiscally independent, but they do not speak of economic independence and property rights. It is an independence of ideas, good to share on a bohemian night. Puerto Rico is a US territory, and the TP provides that those who do not like it can leave, but they must leave the land behind. Spain lost the war and still many on the island do not throw the blow. We can speak Spanish, but PR belongs to the Americans of the USA.

There is no worse blind person than the one who does not want to see – Puerto Rico is not a Latin American country. It is only a territory that belongs to the U.S. and Puerto Ricans live on the fence – like the jibaro in the Spanish latifundia. Insular cases establish these property rights, as stipulated between Spain and the USA in the Treaty of Paris of 1898.

In that same Treaty it was stipulated between the parties that the United States undertook to treat humanely the population that remained in PR after the inauguration. It was stipulated that those who did not like to be in an American territory had the freedom to go wherever they liked, including Spain.

The Insular cases solved by SCOTUS have historically achieved that most Puerto Ricans did not move to Spain, but to the USA. In search of a better quality of life, within a social framework of real democracy and free enterprise (based on competition and merit, not political shovels), already six million Puerto Ricans live in the United States, including my children and grandchildren. In PR we are already below three million inhabitants- PR is emptied in the absence of democracy and free enterprise. PR has become a socialist community with U.S. money. With the COMMONWEALTH we have ceded our sovereignty, and this is the greatest impediment to decolonization – the COMMONWEALTH subordinated territorial status.

There are a large number, some millionaires, who are pro colonialists in PR, and prefer that the US control us because they do not trust each other here. They don’t think about production and work, but about federal aid and subsidies. The mission of local government is to raise federal money – not to produce wealth and work. The taxes returned by the USA to PR for rum under Commonwealth status are very powerful and interfere with decolonization. The colony only benefits a few who prefer maintenance of the status quo rather than to work.

Talking about economic freedom in the colony reflects the ignorance of what colonialism is – a population (Puerto Rico) governed by another larger and more powerful population (Spain, USA) – where the natural and human resources of the small population are benefits for the largest and most powerful. The Spaniards came for gold and agriculture. Americans have a captive market and already about 5 million Puerto Ricans living and working in the United States. The local government had the freedom to manage the finances (dependent on the USA), with all federal subsidies and aid, without paying federal taxes, until our rulers led the government into insolvency, bankruptcy, and a mass exodus of our young workforce to the USA in search of a better quality of life.

Puerto Rico has never had sovereignty of its own – where the power of its rulers originates in the People, not in the metropolises. During the short time that constitutional versus monarchical rule lasted, Spain retained the appointing power of some of our rulers. The federal government does not elect state governors. All state officials are elected by the people of each state, by their vote. That has never happened in PR. We have a governor, two chambers and a constitution by order of Congress and presidential appointments. The Financial Oversight Management Board (FOMB) is a good example of whom really rules in PR.

With the Treaty of Paris signed in 1899 between Spain and the USA, Puerto Rico ceased to be a colony of Spain and became a colony of the USA. Clearly that treaty states that it is Congress that has the power to decide the political future of PR. This condition was ratified by SCOTUS in cases of double exposure and Creole bankruptcy law cases. Anyone who denies this reality and insists otherwise is covering up colonialism for conveniences that have nothing to do with reality.

The case has gone to the United Nations (UN) year after year with inconsequential resolutions because the UN is not a body that controls the relationship between countries and their territories. The best example is the war between Russia and Ukraine. The US regards PR’s status as a domestic matter and international law does not require the US to get rid of its