Puerto Rico’s political status is often portrayed as a problem that is up to the island’s residents to resolve. The reasoning seems to be that since it is their choice, it is their problem.
At the heart of such reasoning is that Puerto Rico is viewed by many as foreign to the United States. Hispanics in the States face a similar misperception. Karl Rove once stated before The National Council of La Raza that the debate over immigration reform had “clouded the views of some people in America and led them to fail to understand that Hispanics, and all immigrants, are real Americans.”
The idea that Puerto Ricans are not “real Americans” has deep historical roots going back to a time when racial segregation was constitutional. In 1922, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Balzac v. Porto Rico that the island is an “unincorporated” territory — a possession that is separate from, rather than a part of, the United States.
As unthinkable as it may seem, the application of the Constitution to Puerto Rico was decided on the basis of the race or ethnic origin of its inhabitants. The worst thing is that Balzac is still “good law” today.
When in 1917 Congress granted American citizenship to the residents of the island, it was generally understood that Puerto Rico had been made a part of the United States. After all, how can a person become an American citizen by birth in the soil of any country but that of the United States?
However, in Balzac the Supreme Court decided that an American citizen residing in Puerto Rico did not have the right of trial by jury under the Sixth Amendment because Congress could not have intended to incorporate into the Union “these distant ocean communities of a different origin and language from those of our continental people.”
In the case of Puerto Rico, the Supreme Court was referring to Spanish language and Hispanic origin. But it also mentioned the Philippines. Ironically, Congress granted American citizenship to the inhabitants of Puerto Rico after having put the Philippines on its way to independence.
Chief Justice Taft, who had been governor of the Philippines, wrote the opinion of the court. As governor, Taft had reported to President McKinley that Filipinos — to whom he once referred as our “little brown brothers” — would need “fifty or one hundred years” of close supervision “to develop anything resembling Anglo-Saxon political principles and skills.” Clearly, what mattered to Taft in determining the application of the Constitution was not that Puerto Ricans were American citizens but that they were not Anglo-Saxons.
Balzac offends me not only as a Hispanic-American, but as also as a conservative Republican. The Supreme Court disavowed Congress and departed from the precedents of Louisiana and Alaska in which granting American citizenship to its inhabitants resulted in incorporation. Moreover, it legislated from the bench by creating a category of territories that appears nowhere in the Constitution. The people of the United States did not give the Supreme Court the authority to rewrite the Constitution — only to interpret it.
Balzac is to Hispanics, and especially to the residents of Puerto Rico, what Plessy v. Ferguson was to African-Americans. Plessy was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education, but the American citizens of Puerto Rico are still subject to segregation.
As unpleasant as it might be, it is time for the nation to recognize that Puerto Rico’s territorial unincorporation is a form of segregation. Unsurprisingly, territorial unincorporation was born of the juridical thinking that once upheld the segregation of African-Americans.
It is the responsibility of all Americans who value our Constitution to help bring territorial unincorporation to an end once and for all. Inexplicably, Hillary Clinton’s position is that Puerto Rico’s current political status should be included as a choice in a plebiscite.
A political status that subjects a community of 3.5 million Hispanic-Americans to political disenfranchisement and unequal treatment by Congress should be a national issue. Rather than their problem as Puerto Ricans, it should be our problem as Americans.
The nation owes to itself to put an end to the disgraceful category of unincorporated territory. Our Constitution deserves no less. Irrespective of race or ethnic origin, all Americans are part of “We the people of the United States.”
José Rodríguez-Suárez, a Puerto Rico attorney, served as deputy secretary of state under Gov. Pedro Rosselló and Gov. Luis Fortuño.
