I am from a place of many anthems, many ancestors, many histories. I am from a place of many opinions, political and otherwise; a place that is geographically small yet big in the hearts of its natives. A place that, for so long, has been made to follow laws and customs and traditions dictated by those who don’t even live here — who, chances are, haven’t even visited our little island.
I am from what some call the best of both worlds. I am from the eternal colony.
***
Puerto Rico is considered the world’s oldest colony, yet the official term for the island’s status is “U.S. territory.” The island has been ruled by one global power after another, as Spain passed the colonial baton to the United States in 1898 after the end of the Spanish-American War. Although now a U.S. territory, the island remained in a limbo of sorts until 1917, when the Jones-Shafroth Act granted American citizenship to Puerto Ricans, which made it easier for the United States to recruit Puerto Ricans to serve in the U.S. Army during World War I. It wasn’t until 1948, however, that Puerto Rico was able to elect its first governor, granting the island commonwealth status. As a result, Puerto Rico supposedly gained a more highly developed relationship with the U.S. federal government, but still remained economically and politically dependent on the U.S.
Little did Puerto Ricans know that this first taste of self-determination would be their last.
***
Growing up in the eternal colony, I didn’t really think about, nor did I understand, why I had been born with American citizenship and the benefits that such a designation gifted me. For most of my childhood, I was elated whenever I left home. I loved to travel as a kid, and I self-assuredly claimed that once I left Puerto Rico for college, I would never come back, except for holidays and family reunions.
I would watch Disney Channel sitcoms and strictly read in English. I would tell my parents that I wanted to move to New York City, or wherever the characters in the books I read and TV shows I watched lived. But, at the end of the day, this was all just a far-off fantasy, an American Dream.
However, when my family was almost uprooted to Boston after my dad lost his job when I was in the third grade, I suddenly didn’t want to leave the eternal colony after all.
***
What is most ironic about Puerto Rico’s current political status is that it was never meant to be permanent. Lack of change and conviction of action from both the U.S. federal government and the local Puerto Rican government have led to the development of three principal ideologies — statehood, commonwealth status and independence. The existence of differing ideologies eventually gave shape to the multiple political parties that now run for the governorship, as well as other government positions each election year. Whether it’s statehood, independence or the free-associated state a candidate favors, it is undeniable that Puerto Rico has been, and continues to be, in a perpetual struggle for self-determination. Puerto Ricans exist in a constant push and pull between the fervent passion we feel to cultivate and defend our national pride and cultural identity while also needing to define the island’s status and mediate the relationship with those up north.
Almost every election year, the governor of Puerto Rico changes, and with this transition typically comes a change in the political party in power.
But there is much, much more to the eternal colony than what meets the eye.
***
Leaving the eternal colony meant leaving my friends. It meant leaving my school and teachers, my extended family and the house I’d lived in my entire life. My naïve, eight-year-old mind even thought I would have to leave my dogs. The move to Boston meant leaving everything I’d ever known. Suddenly, the lives of the characters in those Disney Channel sitcoms I loved and the books I devoured one after the other didn’t seem so appealing after all.
When I found out that my dad was considering job offers in both the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico, however, a lost sense of hope reignited within me. I was living the best of both worlds once again. Now, I could watch my sitcoms and read my books and imagine the life these characters led without having to live it myself just yet. I could stay in the comfort of my little island and visit those up north as I pleased, not having to worry about abandoning one or the other forever.
A month later, my dad signed a contract to work for a bank in Puerto Rico. He had bought me more time. The best of both worlds was still within reach.
***
In 1947, the Industrial Incentives Act was implemented by Luis Muñoz Marín, who would become the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, with the help of the U.S. federal government as part of a larger policy initiative known as Operation Bootstrap. After being amended in 1948, this law established a tax exemption program for private firms from the United States, aiming to help these firms establish themselves on the island to boost the economy. Never was it a priority, or a goal, to provide these tax exemptions for individual investors — until 2012.
In 2012, the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico enacted Act 20 and Act 22. Act 22, specifically, aimed to attract new residents to Puerto Rico by providing total exemption from income taxes on interest and dividends that result after individuals become residents of Puerto Rico. This thus reduces their federal income tax to zero. With the implementation of Acts 20 and 22, the goal of these tax exemptions shifted from the business level to the individual level. In simple terms, these acts have invited investors from the continental U.S. to move to Puerto Rico and have stripped benefits from an economy that is already in shambles. The local taxpayer is left to pay for the brunt of the taxes that these high-net-worth investors are exempted from.
A question for Puerto Rican readers: Ever wonder why more and more people around you are speaking in English on the island? The history and the policies above are your answer.
***
At the end of my senior year of high school, the foreign possibility of moving from the eternal colony to the continental U.S. was about to become a reality. I had gotten into my dream school, and I was excited to embark on this new journey.
Once I fully committed to the University of Michigan, I began reaching out to the other Puerto Ricans who would also be on campus in the fall. I joined any and every group chat I could find to meet students from other Latin American countries. Contrary to my third-grade self, this time around, I was enamored by the possibility of moving to the United States and finally living out the fictional life that I had spent years seeing in modern media. Yet, I also wanted to make sure I maintained a tie to my culture. I knew what the best of both worlds tasted like and I was going to do everything I could to keep that feeling within my grasp once I left home.
Upon arriving at the University, the intensity with which I desired to keep the best of both worlds a reality in my mind intensified. I joined a few different student organizations that allowed me to meet people from all over the United States and the world. At the end of these long days, I would always go back to my dorm to find my Puerto Rican roommate falling asleep as we both told each other about our respective new lives. I would face the world-altering reality of having to speak English in class, but it soon became fun, rather than an arduous and emotionally taxing task. After those long days of speaking only English, I knew I could always call up my other Latino friends to have lunch at the nearest dining hall and debrief about our “gringo” classes loudly in Spanish, convinced that no one sitting at any of the tables around us could possibly understand what we were saying.
However, after a few months of living in Michigan, a feeling that I didn’t entirely recognize began to overpower the rest of my thoughts. I no longer felt like keeping the best of both worlds was all that feasible, and this was coupled with an unanticipated desire to move back home once I was done with college. As a kid, I looked at the world outside of Puerto Rico as an opportunity — getting on a plane represented the possibility of getting to know something outside the little bubble I had grown up in. But now that my little bubble had burst, there was nothing I wanted more than to go back to the way things were before I left my island.
***
You might be wondering why it’s insulting or hard to reckon with the reality of being from a colony. Or, more specifically, what’s so bad about being a U.S. colony? You get the privileges that come with American nationality while also keeping your culture intact. On the surface, it seems like Puerto Rico literally benefits from the best of both worlds.
But, if you look beyond the surface, venturing into the murky waters of the underlying effects of colonialism, you begin to realize that it is not all that simple. Some resent the way our culture is being stripped from us bit by bit as more mainland Americans and investors take over our home. Some are insulted by the fact that we have a voice, but not a vote in Congress. Some are still reeling from the way the U.S. federal government sent little to no relief aid after Hurricane Maria. Most resent the second-class citizenship we were reluctantly given in 1917. We all have one thing in common, though. We just want to feel free.
***
Over winter break during my freshman year of college, contradictory and overwhelming thoughts brewed in my mind. I was mad that I had somewhat failed to cultivate that feeling of living in the best of both worlds when I moved to Michigan. I thought I had taken all the necessary precautions. Where had I gone wrong?
After many conversations with family and friends who had already gone through, or were also currently going through, the bursting of the bubble that was living in the best of both worlds, I was reminded of my third-grade self. They all shared memories of feeling scared and unprepared to abandon one of the worlds for the other, much like third-grade me. She had cowered in the face of change, scared about what she might encounter if her dad did take that job in Boston and she had to say goodbye to everything she had ever known. Even though moving at 18 years old isn’t the same as when you’re 9, it’s still hard to process the change.
It’s even harder when your home is changing with it, and not into a place you particularly like or even recognize.
Every time I come and go from college now, I exist in a perpetual state of fear. I fear going back to a place where I am unable to honor my culture to its fullest extent, just to come back home to an island I barely recognize. I won’t lie and say I hadn’t anticipated changes in my nuclear family or within high school friend groups upon leaving for college. But I felt that, if there was one thing that would remain stable, one thing that I would be able to count on to remain the same forever, it would be my little island.
It feels as if the Puerto Rico I remember vanished with my childhood, leaving me with memories of times long past. Instead of being from two worlds, of existing in the push and pull between these two worlds, I no longer belong to any of them. How sad, and perhaps even naïve as I look back on years past, that my home never even belonged to me, or to any native islanders, in the first place.
***
I am from a place that used to feel like home. A place I feel I have to defend — against what, I’m not sure. A place that lives in a state of insecurity that bleeds into the psyches of its natives. A place that has never truly belonged to its people.
I am not from the best of both worlds. I am from the eternal colony.
Statement Correspondent Graciela Batlle Cestero can be reached at gbatllec@umich.edu.
The post On living in the eternal colony appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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