State 'hood: bringing Puerto Rico into the Union would in some ways help Puerto Rico, but in no way help the Union

National Review, August 11, 1997 by Jorge Amselle

Opposition to both English and statehood runs high among cultural leaders in Puerto Rico. Renan Soto Soto, president of the Puerto Rican Federation of Teachers, testified against the restoration of official bilingualism in 1993, claiming, "Since that Sunday, July 25 of 1898, when we were invaded by the North Americans, Puerto Rico has been the victim of constant cultural aggression and intense publicity directed toward eliminating our language, Spanish." Ricardo E. Alegria, founder of the Center for the Advanced Study of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, told the New York Times Magazine: "We weren't Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, or New Mexico. We weren't some sparsely settled frontier. We were a nation when the United States arrived. The United States could never eliminate Spanish here. There will always be ethnic tension here if they try to make us a state."

Rep. Young's bill does have some English requirements; for example, all Federal Government and judicial affairs would have to be conducted in English. However, there is no similar requirement of state courts and government. According to Jim Boulet, executive director of English First, "I can easily foresee a situation in which non-Spanish-speaking American citizens would be forced to hire their own translator in order to receive justice in an American court of law in a state of Puerto Rico."

Even if Congress works through all these concerns there is one small issue which remains: terrorism. On March 1, 1954, four armed pro-independence Puerto Rican terrorists opened fire from the visitors' gallery in the House of Representatives, wounding five members of Congress. Only four years earlier two like-minded terrorists had attempted to assassinate President Truman; they did succeed in killing a policeman.

Today's Puerto Rican Independistas are just as violent and have had more than forty years to improve their aim. Puerto Rico is the leading source of domestic terrorism in the United States and a far greater threat than militias, neo-Nazis, or Ku Klux Klan. One group alone, the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional (FALN), has been responsible for more than 120 bombings since the mid Seventies both on the island and in Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C.

Other Puerto Rican terrorist groups include Comandos Armados de Liberacion (CAL); Movimiento Independista Revolucionario Armado (MIR); Fuerzas Armadas de Resistencia Popular (FARP); Comandos Revolucionarios del Pueblo (CRP); and Los Macheteros (literally, the machete wielders). They have been responsible for attacks on military installations (including the destruction of several National Guard fighter jets worth over $50 million), federal buildings (including a rocket attack on the FBI offices in San Juan), and armed robbery of over $7 million to finance their criminal activity. Carlos Ayes, a suspect who was later acquitted in this robbery, told the New York Times Magazine in 1990 that "Statehood will mean war. If the United States wants its very own Northern Ireland let them continue this farce."