It is nothing new for a member of Congress to travel to Puerto Rico.
In the early 20th century, the Island’s business and political elites bestowed their visitors with the title of Cangrimanes. A Spanish slang term describing a person of influence.
In October, two of New York’s Cangrimanes endorsed the Puerto Rican Independence Party’s candidates for governor in San Juan.
“Today, with our faces to the sun, we give our endorsements to Juan Dalmau for governor,” proclaimed Congresswomen Nydia Velazquez (D-NY-7) and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez (D-NY-14) ahead of the November 5 elections, according to The San Juan Star.
The U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned this congressional bigotry in Harris v. Rosario (1980) when it ruled that Congress can treat Puerto Rico differently “as long as there is a rational basis for doing so.”
Velazquez, AOC and their constituents are shielded from this Jim Crow era discriminatory conduct because they live in a state protected by the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
“Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Velazquez came of age as a passionate defender and acolyte of the Popular Democratic Party of Puerto Rico (PPD). The PPD created, sustains and protects the unequal, undemocratic and discriminatory political status that is the cause of many of the Island’s fiscal woes.
Velazquez rose to statehood power as an elected official in New York under the sponsorship of PPD Governor Rafael Hernandez Colon in San Juan. Colon laid the ground work for her political career when he appointed her the director of his government of Puerto Rico office in NYC in 1986.
From this PPD-sponsored patronage position, she publicly opposed the status options of statehood and independence, while functioning as an ex-officio PPD ambassador to Congress.
It was from this perch, established by a political party overseeing a system of apartheid on the Island, that she won election to a congressional seat representing Brooklyn and Queens in 1992.
Orlando Parga called Alexandra Ocasio Cortez’s “meddling” in Puerto Rican elections a real-life essay reflecting ignorance.
“The young congresswoman from the Bronx justifies her support for candidates who favor political independence for Puerto Rico by citing a hard-core socialist philosophy that has no place or roots in the thinking of the people of Puerto Rico,” Parga wrote in El Nuevo Dia.
The San Juan Star called the phenomena of American congressman and women urging independence for Puerto Rico while living as statehooders a paradox.
The hypocritical thing about this endorsement is that it was conferred in a U.S. territory with zero electoral power in Congress by two elected officials from a state on behalf of candidates advocating for political independence for Puerto Rico. A status option that has been consistently rejected by that Island’s electorate.
“That these two ladies would advise the American citizens of Puerto Rico to vote for candidates representing an ideology that would distance us from enjoying the same opportunities, equal rights and prerogatives that they are enjoying as federal legislators from the state of New York is mind blogging and unbelievable,” declared statehood advocate Orlando Parga in El Nuevo Dia.
As an unincorporated territory, the 3.1 million U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico live under a system of legally-sanctioned political apartheid. They cannot vote for president, have no voting power in the House or Senate and must abide by all federal laws.
This unequal treatment extends to how the feds allocates taxpayer money to Medicare, Medicaid and Nutrition Assistance programs on the Island. Congress can and does treat Puerto Rico worse than it does the residents of a state, according to the Center of Policy and Budget Priorities.
Roberto Guzman of the University of Puerto Rico castigated these congresswomen a bit more directly in an essay in The San Juan Star.
“It seems somewhat hypocritical for someone who is living the American dream to the extent that you are to deny the same dream to millions of Puerto Ricans who call this Island home,” Guzman wrote. “Please stop undermining our struggle for equality. You are not our elected representatives.”
Gene Roman lives in the Bronx and works as a freelance reporter wherever there is a good story.