Puerto Rican Statehood letter

One hundred years ago today … the Herald printed a letter advocating Puerto Rican statehood, signed “Jose A. Poventud. Ponce, Porto Rico, March 30”; this might have been José Ángel Poventud Torruella, born 1884, Ponce native and sometime New Yorker.

Poventud’s letter argues: 

“Incorporation of the noncontiguous Territories of Hawail and Alaska clearly evinces the policy of the American Government and of its congress to admit, some time in the future, as additional States of the American Union such of its outlying Territories as Congress may in its wisdom determine.  Besides,lPorto Rico is now a fully organized though as yet unincorporated Territory of the United States, and all Territories look forward to ultimate Statehood.

(“Porto Rico's Future.” New York Herald, 8 April 1921, p. 10.)

Poventud also proposes a large degree of self-governance (“our own theories’) for the island:

The question at once arises whether large concessions ought not to be made for a time that ultimately our own theories may be carried out and the blessings of a free government under the Constitution extended to them. We decline to hold that there is anything in the Constitution to forbid such action. Hence it is unquestionable that Porto Rico may constitutionally become a State of the American Confederacy whenever in the future Congress shall see fit so to determine.

– Jonathan Goldman, April 8, 2021

TAGS: Puerto Rico, Porto Rico, territory, colonialism, Latinx history, Caribbean