Ambiguous Puerto Rico

...Most North Americans probably wish it would just go away, and do their best to help this along by remaining woefully ignorant about its people, its history and its relationship to the United States...

...Since the idea of a colony made Congress uncomfortable, Puerto Rico officially became an "unincorporated territory...

...They elect their own governor and legislature under their own constitution, yet the decisions these popularly chosen officials reach can be overruled by Washington...

...Not surprisingly, anti-Americanism on the island began to rise after Reagan took office...

...Once a showcase of development for Latin America, the island would now be happy to be able to get its jobless rate down to low double-digits...

...Statehooders argue that Puerto Rico would never have been subjected to such treatment if it were represented in Washington by the two senators and seven congressmen its population would entitle it to...

...He continued to oppose the colonial status, but as the spokesman for the impoverished peasants social welfare was his first concern...

...The concept was the brainchild of the towering figure in modern Puerto Rican history, Luis Munoz Marin, the man who for almost three decades dominated the island's politics...

...Sixty per cent of all Puerto Ricans receive food stamps...

...But a theme of Carr's book is that the existing situation is an unstable one, bound to change as a result of internal pressures from the Puerto Ricans themselves and external pressures from the international community...

...The other side of this grimy coin is welfare dependency...

...These both attract business from the mainland and relieve the inhabitants of financial obligations borne by other U.S...

...In explanation of the island's unique, and to many, unfathomable position, Munoz described Commonwealth as "sovereignty within sovereignty...

...Writers &Writing AMBGUOUS PUERTO RICO by barry gewen when the Twentieth Century Fund decided to sponsor a study of Puerto Rico, it discovered that there was no reputable scholar on either the island or the mainland sufficiently distanced from the subject to produce an objective account...

...Consequently, the Fund went to a British historian, Raymond Carr, a former professor of Latin American studies at Oxford who is now WardenofSt...

...An additional blow from the Administration is the Caribbean Basin Initiative, giving the nations of the area access to U.S...

...citizens...

...The skeptical Carr writes: "The whole enterprise that had started with Public Law 600 was a brilliant performance in psychopolitics conducted by a master politician...

...Today, all of Puerto Rico's politics revolves around the status issue, and the striking fact is that every major party wishes to alter the arrangement in some way...

...at the same time, Puerto Ricans would gain greater political freedom...

...Commonwealth was the compromise that emerged in the decolonialist postwar period...

...Puerto Rico would be a highly unusual state super poor, with a per capital income half that of Mississippi, the poorest state in the Union...

...By delineating boundaries, the lawmakers would clarify the choices open to Puerto Rico and, presumably, sweep away some of the woollier notions...

...Puerto Rico depended on its duty-free access to the North American market, a privilege that would have to be surrendered if ever independence were achieved...

...Elections teeter between these two groups in uneasy stalemate...

...During the '70s, Federal transfers increased at a rate of 10 per cent a year, and by 1980 accounted for almost one-third of the gross product...

...Because it is a Commonwealth, Puerto Rico enjoys certain tax privileges unavailable to the 50 states...

...Perhaps for this reason, Puerto Ricans have never demonstrated any great enthusiasm for statehood...

...On the central issue, the achingly intractable status question, everybody seemed to have already made up his mind...

...Under what terms would it grant statehood...

...Munoz was, among other things, an outstanding lobbyist, and in 1950 he persuaded Congress to pass Public Law 600, establishing the new relationship...

...Their most important rivals for power grumble that this will lead to independence...

...The chances are, however, that even this modest step will not be taken in the immediate future...

...Even these figures would be far worse without the mainland to serve as a safety valve for those who have given up on their prospects at home...

...The Jones Act of 1917 was supposed to resolve all difficulties by granting the islanders U.S...

...Despite Carr's excellent book, Puerto Rico is a subject that North Americans are likely to go on ignoring for as long as Puerto Rico lets them...

...Insignificant" problems especially when they involve impassioned minorities have a way of festering...

...What arrangements might be made for a transition to independence...

...markets that had previously been Puerto Rico's exclusive privilege...

...Workers on the island are being forced to compete against some of the lowest wages in the world, often less than 50 cents an hour, and Carr is not alone in pointing out that in its effort to combat Communist influence with economic incentives, the White House is weakening its own "showplace of democracy" in the Caribbean...

...The heirs of Munoz call for "culmination," which would extend autonomy still further...

...Carr reports that after an expert with the Tariff Commission spelled out precisely what nationhood would mean in dollars and cents, Mufioz sat down and wept...

...tie would bring economic disaster to his people...

...Since 1952, Puerto Rico has been a "Free Associated State" of the United States, or "Commonwealth," an ambiguous formulation with no foundation in the American Constitution...

...According to Carr, "outbreaks of terrorism, both on the island and in the cities of America, will almost certainly be a consequence of statehood...

...Which changes would it accept toward "culmination...

...In 1960, the Bureau of the Budget calculated that statehood would cost Puerto Rico $188 million in new Federal taxes...

...acquired Puerto Rico by accident in 1898, as an afterthought of the Spanish-American War...

...Anthony's College, and an excellent choice he turned out to be...

...The United States will be confronted with the situation that it has not encountered in any other state of the Union: a state in which a determined minority committed to the achievement of separation by terror may well be able to count on enough support for it to operate...

...If there is a single reason for the general disenchantment with the status quo, it is a disastrous economy...

...Another of his themes is that any change in the island's status will bring a newand perhaps more perplexingset of problems...

...But this solution has at least as many drawbacks as the others, starting as always with economics...

...They hold a Democratic Party primary every four years, yet do not have the right to vote for President...

...Profit Island USA,' " says Carr, "threatens to become'Welfare Island USA.' " Reaganomics, with its budget cutbacks and basic hostility to transfer payments, has hit Puerto Rico hard...

...Scratch a Puerto Rican," these groups insist, "and you will discover an independentista under the skin...

...In Commonwealth status, Munoz found a solution promising the best that could be obtained from both worlds: the crucial economic connection would be retained...

...and culturally separatist...

...What is more, assuming a substantial majority did rally around the idea, Congress might not be willing to oblige...

...Munoz called it "a new road to old objectives...

...Part of the trouble stems from America's ambivalence about its imperialism...

...Although there were two obvious options at the time, statehood or independence, the former was unthinkable to Congress and the latter was blocked by the Navy...

...There is a strong argument for doing nothing...

...Puerto Ricans are full citizens of the U. S., yet, except for a resident commissioner who may speak on the floor of the House of Representatives, have no voice in Congress...

...Psycho-politics or not, Puerto Ricans in 1967 reaffirmed their decision in a plebiscite giving them a choice among Commonwealth, independence and statehood...

...After examining each of the options, a reader might conclude that the situation is hopeless but not serious...

...Spanish-speaking, at a time when language tensions in the U.S.show signs of erupting into a full-scale crisis...

...Meanwhile two small independence partiesone liberal, the other Cuba-oriented also wield influence, especially among intellectuals...

...His Puerto Rico: A Colonial Experiment (New York University Press, All pp., $25.00) is an exemplary workthorough, evenhanded, provocative, and a good read...

...citizenship and a measure of autonomy...

...The U.S...

...Over 20 per cent of the workforce is unemployed, and one out of three Puerto Ricans lacks a steady job...

...If a few hawks like Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan coveted the island as a valuable naval base, to most citizens it was an indistinguishable dot in the Caribbean...

...Beginning as an independentista in opposition to the more conservative statehooders, he came to realize that cutting the U.S...

...Puerto Rico, after all, is hardly one of the world's trouble spots, and Commonwealth, for all its ambiguities, has the virtue, as Carr notes, of at least not forcing the issue...

...Puerto Ricans then voted in a plebiscite to " freely associate" with the United States, and in 1953 Washington announced to the United Nations that Puerto Rico was no longer a colony...

...Yet as a historian, Carr is aware that for years the British were too busy to bother about the minor nuisance of Northern Ireland, and that generations of Canadians dismissed the question of Quebec...

...Instead, tensions over status increased, especially during the 1930s when Puerto Rico's economy collapsed...

...they wish to reverse direction by making Puerto Rico a state...

...Almost two-thirds of those who participated opted for Commonwealth, although abstentions ran to 33.7 percent...

...Carr's own recommendation is that Congress should grasp the nettle by making its intentions clear...

...Neither an independent nation nor the 51 st state, Puerto Rico exists in a kind of jurisdictional limbo that obsesses its population and satisfies no one...