Congresswoman Jenniffer González-Colón’s statement on “Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act of 2020”

Congresswoman Jenniffer González-Colón's statement on "Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act of 2020"

San Juan, Puerto Rico "Today, two of my fellow Puerto Rican colleagues, Rep. Nydia Velazquez and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who reside in New York, have proposed that Puerto Rico create a "Status Convention" authorized by Congress. This proposal rejects the equality of Puerto Ricans and our desire to become a state. What my colleagues are proposing is to live as a colony permanently.

The bill by the two representatives of New York demonstrates a lack of respect for the people of Puerto Rico and the democratic process in the territory. But this action is not surprising coming from the person who got the votes needed in Congress to impose the undemocratic PROMESA Board on the territory's elected government.

How is it possible that these congresswomen who do not live the problems that day by day we live in the colony, and who enjoy all the privileges of a first-class American citizenship, want to impose a totally undemocratic process in which a small minority of people decide over the direct vote of the majority of Puerto Ricans? A process that our people have rejected over and over again. This is not only unacceptable to the people I represent, but highly reprehensible.

Our people have demonstrated through all the plebiscite processes that we cherish our American citizenship and a permanent relationship with the United States. Unfortunately, my colleagues don't want the people who I represent to enjoy what the two of them enjoy every day, they don't want the statehood for Puerto Rico.

What they intend with this measure in Congress is to put hurdles to turn the matter around so that our people do not achieve the equality they have claimed in the 2012 and 2017 plebiscites. The territory has voted twice to be on equal footing with the United States in plebiscites that included all available options, and now the Island's elected representatives have convened a new plebiscite that will take place in nine weeks to ratify the option of statehood.

Why don't my colleagues favor a process where our people are allowed to decide statehood yes or no? The answer is evident: because they intend to continue to leave our land in the colony, without the full equality of American citizenship that they both enjoy. Enough is enough! Our people have already voted in the direction of full equality, in democratic processes where the entire electorate was able to participate.

Our people have never favored independence or sovereignty or outside of a permanent relationship with the United States, so why do my colleagues want to include independence or sovereignty as options? The agenda to separate Puerto Rico has always been in place by the factions that push for a status convention because they cannot win in a democratic process of broad participation. The bill they have proposed is an evident attempt to help their friends on the Island who oppose equality, to undermine and interfere with the people's vote nine weeks before the plebiscite.

We do not need an unlikely federal-territorial negotiation to define other non-territorial status options. Non-territorial options (statehood, independence, and sovereignty with the United States that can be terminated by either party) are already defined in the U.S. Constitution and international law, as Democratic and Republican administrations and Congressional Committees have said for a quarter of a century.

The bill would delay resolving the fundamental issue of the territory - and the economic benefits that equality would bring - for years. I do not conceive of this bill being passed or replacing the federal-territorial process established in the Obama Administration and Serrano- Pierluisi bill. It's a political trick against equality.

Let me be clear to my two colleagues, I will not delegate my right, nor that of my people, to full equality. Nor do our right to be American citizens to groups with an evident separatist agenda. Much less when at the end of the road it is Congress that has to decide, and I have no doubt that they will decide to give the people of Puerto Rico, the equal rights and responsibilities that our people have always urged for."