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What this ultimately fails to acknowledge is the reason why Islanders support statehood in a yes/no referendum is that the conditions a of colonization have made it supremely difficult to imagine a scenario other that subjugation to American imperialism. https://twitter.com/jenniffer2012/status/1299750803096457217
Independence for Puerto Rico would make it much more difficult for Puerto Ricans to carve out a future for ourselves because the whole of Latin America remains subject to the USâs imperialist foreign policy.
Statehood is the most viable option for a land colonized for over 500 years by different oppressive actors. Full citizenship, though be it in an undeniably racist nation, would provide access to rights and privileges presently unavailable.
Access to these new rights and privileges, an the potential of economic growth with the lifting of limitations, restrictions, and suffocating economic polices placed on a colony, seem much more lucrative and incentivizing than the present situation, and...
the unknown dangers of independence. We have not been free for 5 centuries. over centuries we have developed a complex racial, ethic, cultural, and civic identity that makes imagining anything other than subjugation or full absorption into the imperial state virtually impossible
The bill introduced by Reps. @NydiaVelazquez and @AOC calling for a status convention is a summons for actual debate and imagination about the future of Puerto Rico and itâs people, both on the Island and in diaspora.
While the European and American legal and philosophical traditions will ultimately fail anyone who is not cis male, white, straight etc., the assertion of the right to self determination as a natural right mustnât be dismissed as a red herring
Is what Republican @Jenniffer2012 or others like @RitchieTorres afraid of is the people of Borinquen engaging in robust and nuanced debate about the future of our people free from imperial influence?
We are a people who have suffered and struggled and survived and thus we are also a people with the capacity to imagine and create beauty out tragedy. If we could have the opportunity to engage deeply in dialogue instead of deciding a future out of the place of trauma..
what might we create?
