In a letter signed by 47 members of recognized universities in the United States, academics condemned the draft status for Puerto Rico proposed by Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, which seeks to hold a constitutional status assembly.
The letter was sent today to the president of the federal House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosy; the majority leader in the Senate, Charles Schumer; and Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell.
Instead, they showed their “strong support” for the bill presented by resident commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez and Puerto Rican congressman Darren Soto, in which they seek to ratify last November’s result in which the state of affairs goes get 52.5% of the vote.
“Like all Americans, we support self-determination. But unlike supporters of the Self-Determination Act, we believe that genuine self-determination requires the United States to offer Puerto Ricans a real choice. For ‘real’ we are referring to constitutional and non-territorial Puerto Rico’s options for self-determination must be constitutional, for the obvious reason that neither Congress nor Puerto Rico has the power to implement an unconstitutional option, and they must be non-territorial, because territorial choice is not self-determination, ”the letter reads.
The paper was signed by professors at Yale, Kent State, Columbia, Duke, Berkeley, Washington State, Cornell, Princeton, NYU, Harvard and more universities.
“There are two, and only two, real options for self-determination for Puerto Rico: statehood or independence. (…) For decades, proponents of” ALS “argued that it was not territorial. They argued that when Puerto Rico made the transition to the Associated Free State in 1952, it ceased to be a U.S. territory, became a separate sovereign, and signed a mutually binding pact with the United States, but they were wrong. “Congress simply does not have the power to create a permanent union between Puerto Rico and the United States except by admitting Puerto Rico as a state,” they continued.
Scholars emphasized that the division among Puerto Ricans has “always” come to the conclusion that they reject the current territorial state but want to remain American citizens.
In addition, they point out that the project proposed by the resident commissioner “respects the result of the referendum by responding with concrete actions, ensuring that Puerto Ricans have the first and last word on their future.”
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