Return to Table of ContentsApril 1998
Puerto Rican Leader Visits Campus
One Day After Congressional VoteTiming could not have been better for the March 5 campus visit by Rafael Hernández Colón, a former governor of Puerto Rico, law professor and leader of the island's Commonwealth movement.
The night before Colón's visit, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would let citizens of Puerto Rico determine their political status. If the bill is passed by the Senate, Puerto Ricans will vote on whether to become an independent country, the 51st state, or maintain or alter their commonwealth status.
"This is an unfair bill. You must let your senators know it's an unfair bill," Colón told a packed Small Science Auditorium. "The bill that was approved last night by [a margin of] one vote was not a democratic bill," he said.
The commonwealth issue is being defined by the statehood, he said, blaming the bill's disagreeable definition of "commonwealth" on longtime rival and congressional Delegate Carlos A. Romero-Barcelo, a statehood proponent.
Throughout his lecture, Colón stressed that Puerto Rico was a nation when the U.S. invaded. "One hundred years later we are still suffering the consequences of the Spanish-American War," he said. "We were people with our own history, with a common culture ... .
"We Puerto Ricans want to maintain our American citizenship, and we want to remain Puerto Ricans and maintain our Puerto Rican citizenship," he told the audience, several of whom carried Puerto Rican flags and wore stickers denouncing statehood.
"We Puerto Ricans must recognize that we are divided in this issue," Colón said. "If we were of one mind, I am certain we would have resolved this problem with the United States a long time ago."
Colón's lecture was part of the Joiner Center's 1998 lecture series titled "The Spanish-American War of 1898: The Puerto Rican Experience" and co-sponsored by the Gastón Institute and the College of Public and Community Service.