Of Colonies and Empires

Joel I. Colón-Ríos

Victoria University of Wellington

Imagine that there is a colony and an empire. The colony is a colony because it is subject to imperial laws, and the empire is an empire because it enacts and applies its laws in the colony. One day, someone in the empire suggests that the colonial subjects should be asked whether they want the colony to become part of the empire and that, if they reject the offer, they would remain a colony. And suppose a group of scholars describes this as a process of self-determination. This is not a charitable analogy to explain the support the Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Act (SAA) received in a recent letter signed by several colleagues. But it is not an analogy, it is exactly what happened. I found this surprising. I attributed it to the fact that the letter did not provide the necessary context to understand why a simple offer of statehood to Puerto Rico is highly problematic from a self-determination perspective, and decided to write a post about it. Professor Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus, the author of the letter, has now written an interesting response to my post. The response attributes to me some views that I do not hold and seems to misunderstand some of the points I made. In this brief rejoinder, I will try to clarify my position while addressing what I think are Professor Ponsa-Kraus’ main claims. 

Supporting the SAA 

Professor Ponsa-Kraus argues that for me, her letter reflects a “misguided ‘U.S. centric’ perspective” to the question of Puerto Rico’s political status. She notes that I omitted the fact that, in addition to having been signed by 44 U.S. law professors, the letter also has the signatures of three Puerto Rican academics. In so doing, I apparently intended to “frame the disagreement in Puerto Rico-versus-United States terms: as if no Puerto Rican did or could agree” with the letter. As a matter of fact, I am certain that the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans who support statehood would be happy to sign Professor Ponsa-Kraus’ letter if given the opportunity. That support, as the support of the three Puerto Rican law professors who signed the letter, is not relevant to the point I was making, which was this: if the U.S. law professors (or some of them) who signed the letter did so without being aware of the context in which the Puerto Rican status debate takes place, they would have engaged in a less than ideal scholarly practice. (Note that this point does not rest on a critique of statehood as a status option, but of the SAA as a mechanism of self-determination).  

Professor Ponsa-Kraus also refers to what she calls the “inhospitable environment” in the island’s academic institutions “for anyone who dared express support for statehood”. There is some truth to that statement and there is a historical explanation for such a state of affairs. However, it does not have any bearings on the merits of the SAA or of the - in my view superior - Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act (SDA). In the initial part of my post, I also noted that statehood is generally seen as a progressive cause in the U.S, while that is not the case in Puerto Rico. Since the SAA advances statehood above any of the other status options (namely independence and free association), it may seem that in supporting the SAA, one is supporting a progressive cause. In response, Professor Ponsa-Kraus writes that “progressive opposition to statehood does not make Puerto Rican enfranchisement any less progressive”. That is definitely true, but my point was simply this: if one is a progressive U.S. law scholar intervening in Puerto Rico’s status debate, one would probably want to know that most progressive law scholars in Puerto Rico oppose both statehood and the SAA and, more importantly, to learn about the reasons for that opposition.  

Puerto Rico’s Decolonization 

Professor Ponsa-Kraus devotes a section of her response to explain why free association is a form of independence and, accordingly, why it does not need to be considered a separate status option. She summarizes my position on this issue as follows: “Colón-Ríos’ point here seems to be that we should have included free association because Puerto Ricans across the political spectrum, whether for or against statehood, care deeply about ensuring U.S. citizenship for their posterity, and many of them believe free association might come with birthright U.S. citizenship”. That may be part of the reason why some Puerto Ricans support free association, but it is not why its exclusion from a ‘self-determination’ referendum is objectionable. The problem is that free association is a non-colonial option that could be supported by a majority of Puerto Ricans in a self-determination process. In fact, as I explained in my post, support for free association (or, in Professor Ponsa-Kraus’ terminology, ‘independence’) has grown dramatically in the last two decades: from less than 1% in 1998 to 33% in 2012 (which is especially surprising given that it has not been formally supported by any political party).  

That is part of the context that I explained in my earlier post, and part of the reason why a formal offer of statehood is problematic at this point. Here, I think, there is a genuine disagreement between Professor Ponsa-Kraus’ position and mine. She thinks that “the November 2020 referendum was a legitimate and accurate indication that a majority of voting Puerto Ricans favor statehood”. In my post, I explained that, partly because of the low turn-out in the 2020 referendum and partly because of the results of recent electoral events on the island’s status, such a view is unsustainable. Professor Ponsa-Kraus focuses on the latter point, claiming that “[t]he validity of a yes-no vote does not depend on whether the option on the ballot won an earlier vote”. In the context of a self-determination referendum, it does. In order for there to be an exercise of the right to self-determination, electors must be able to end their colonial situation by freely choosing among legitimate status options. The SAA provides electors with two options: statehood or an indefinite continuation of colonialism. In other words, a rejection of the offer of statehood would effectively require a majority of Puerto Rican electors to vote in favor of their own political subordination to the U.S. 

Consider, for example, a Puerto Rican free association or independence supporter who opposes both statehood and colonialism. The SAA would put that voter in an impossible position: she either abandons her preferred self-determination option and accepts the offer of statehood (in order to end colonialism) or rejects the offer (and implicitly supports the continuation of colonialism). Perhaps the rational thing to do for a voter in that position would be to vote ‘yes’ in the SAA referendum. At least that way colonialism would formally end, and colonialism is worse than any non-colonial political status. Imagine that some fraction of the voters who oppose statehood behave in that way and that, as a result, the statehood option results victorious and Puerto Rico is admitted as a state of the U.S. I find it very difficult think that Professor Ponsa-Kraus and the letter’s signatories would say that those voters would have freely exercised their right to self-determination. However, if prior to a statehood offer, statehood prevails in a referendum where voters are able to freely choose between non-colonial options, such a problem would be significantly ameliorated, if not superseded. Indeed, the 2017 referendum, as initially conceived, was designed to provide that opportunity. But for the reasons I explained in my earlier post, it failed to achieve its purpose.  

Nonetheless, if the SAA was adopted, it is very likely that a majority of the voters who support free association or independence would reject the offer of statehood in the hope that, sometime in the near future, a true self-determination process takes place. Many others, confronted with two options (i.e. statehood and colonialism) that they are not willing to support, may decide not to participate in the process. It should be uncontroversial to say that a low turn-out in an SAA referendum could seriously affect the legitimacy of the island’s admission as a U.S. state. Based on the history of the relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico, it is also safe to predict that a rejection of the offer of statehood would lead directly to stagnation. I think Professor Ponsa-Kraus knows this is an important problem. She, thus, sensibly ends her post by writing that in the event Puerto Ricans reject the offer of statehood, “Congress should pave the way for their independence, and bring a long-overdue end to the island’s colonial ordeal”. If the SAA had formally embraced such an approach, it would not be objectionable from a self-determination perspective and its support in the island would go well beyond the statehood movement. Or, like the SDA, it could have attempted to set in motion a process that would continue until decolonization was achieved. But it did not. 

Joel I. Colón-Ríos is a Professor of Law at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. 

Suggested Citation: Joel I. Colón-Ríos, ‘Of Colonies and Empires’, IACL-AIDC Blog (1 June 2021) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/2021-posts/2021/06/1of-colonies-and-empires.