Last month, a small group of Puerto Rico independence supporters, spearheaded by an individual living in Washington, D.C., drafted an executive order (EO) calling for independence. They sent the document to key Trump administration officials for their consideration to make the EO their own, and they shared the document with members of Congress as well.
The document entered into overflowing and often ignored mailboxes, with no sign of traction or even intrigue, but prompting a British tabloid to report that a draft executive order was “in the possession of” at least two congressional offices and several Trump officials, and that President Trump had been “pressured to make Puerto Rico independent.”
The headline as well as the reporting represented a huge leap beyond the reality of the fledgling attempt to push for Puerto Rican independence, and the initiative has since died. A follow up story quoted the EO’s author pulling back the curtain on himself as “the man behind the push to get Trump to free Puerto Rico,” and proclaiming with an air of apparent desperation as to “why [Trump] should take me seriously.”
Follow up coverage also explained that “Puerto Rico’s total independence is not a widely popular initiative within the island territory community or in the U.S. In recent elections, Puerto Rican voters have overwhelmingly shown preference for statehood over secession and 59 percent of Americans say they support it becoming the 51st state.”
Raphael Cox Alomar, a former candidate for Resident Commissioner who is now a professor of law in Washington D.C., shared his perspective on this initiative in a March 17 El Nuevo Dia opinion piece in which he took a hard look at the separatists’ proposal.
Begging for sovereignty
“The strategy of begging Donald Trump to grant sovereignty by decree is, at the same time, intellectually dishonest and contrary to the dignified democratic tradition that informs the historical trajectory of much of the sovereignty movement,” Cox Alomar wrote.
“That upon independence, Puerto Rico would enter into a free trade agreement with the United States. That Puerto Rican products would enter the American market tariff-free. That our bonds would retain their triple exemption. That the Federal Reserve would guarantee the monetary stability of the new republic. That Washington would persuade its geopolitical allies to open their markets to Puerto Rican products and services. That there would be an orderly transition in the transfer of existing federal funds. That citizenship would be retained and there would even be room for a dual citizenship regime.”
This is consistent with the fantasy of independence proposed by separatists over the years.
“And do the proponents of this scheme really think Trump is going to concede all these things? The same one who daily removes and imposes tariffs? The one who hates free trade? The one who ignores dual citizenship? The one who seeks to dismantle the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? The one who doesn’t respect the sovereignty of Ukraine or Canada The one who threatened Denmark with taking Greenland? The one who’s crazy about nullifying the 1977 Carter-Torrijos Treaty to steal the Panama Canal?” he asks. “What could happen here is that Trump will grant independence in the worst possible way—much worse than under the punitive Tydings Bill of 1936. And some will counter that Congress, under the Territorial Clause of the Constitution, is the only one who can dispose of Puerto Rico. The problem is that under the new constitutional (dis)order currently prevailing in the United States, nothing prevents Trump from acting and the Supreme Court from ratifying his actions or simply sitting back, sheltered behind the convenient doctrine of the political question.”
A direct appeal
“Gentlemen: Flirting with Trump is playing with fire,” Cox Alomar concludes his essay. “Let us fight for our right to self-determination and sovereignty, anchored in transparency, dignity, and decorum. For Puerto Rico.”
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