The Press Still Doesn’t Get Puerto Rico

Press coverage of the upcoming Puerto Rico primary continues to disappoint. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post repeated the claim that Hillary Clinton was expected to win on the island because she has done better among Hispanics on the mainland. Clinton does, in fact, have a leg up on Obama in Puerto Rico, but that is because any Senator from New York will be involved in issues important to her stateside constituents, many of whom hail from the island. The dominant political issue in Puerto Rico is the political status of the island. Both Obama and Clinton were asked about the colonial status of Puerto Rico and Clinton made an obvious ploy for the pro-statehood vote saying that she thought Puerto Ricans should be able to vote for president in November. The Supreme Court has twice ruled that such an arrangement is unconstitutional: only states get to vote for President. The Twenty-third amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1961, gave the presidential franchise to voters in the District of Columbia but not to voters in the territories. The largest daily newspaper mocked Clinton with the headline: "Hillary entrega larga lista de promeas" – "Hillary’s long wish list." Clinton also made a bold play for the evangelical vote by attending Protestant church services on Sunday. Most Puerto Ricans are Roman Catholics, of course, and while church attendance rates on the island are low, Catholicism is a part of the culture in a way that most Americans have difficulty understanding. There is a small minority of evangelicals on the island, and they are highly organized, so perhaps Clinton’s gambit will pay off. But the evangelicals on the island that I have met still bring their children to the priest to be baptized and they have both Catholic and evangelical funeral services for their dead. Recently, the archdiocese of San Juan has had to begin an RCIA program, the first in Latin America as far as I can tell! The indictment of the island’s governor has gotten some coverage but the press misses the important context. It doesn’t matter that he endorsed Obama and there will be any kind of guilt by association. What matters to Puerto Ricans is that a popularly elected governor was indicted by a federal court. Federal judges are appointed by a president they do not elect and confirmed by a Senate in which Puerto Ricans are not represented. So, on the island, the indictment of the governor is seen as another intrusion by the colonial power. In fact, many advocates of Independence and more left-leaning members of the governor’s party have suggested boycotting the primary election to highlight the unfairness of their colonial status. Finally, there is the matter of race. Puerto Ricans are almost universally mixed-race and consequently, race is not a critical part of their cultural identity. They never really understood the "people of color" classification. Religion and language are much more important sources of Puerto Rican identity than race, whether they live on the island or in the states. The tensions between the blacks and Hispanics in some U.S. cities do not exist on the island. So, this could provide an opening for Obama to do better than expected in next Sunday’s primary and, subsequently, among the critical Puerto Rican communities in central Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Michael Sean Winters