INTRODUCTION
I think we might have entered into a notable moment in history for Puerto Ricans. Unlike most of the last 120 years, the current US political situation may the main driver for a change in the status of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans. I have noticed this so much in the lead up to and after the latest presidential election that I have really wanted to talk about it to my friends and see what they thought. Unsurprisingly, these current events are just the latest developments in our centurial issue … the political status of Puerto Rico.
I recently had a text exchange with a friend that started with this uptick in the discussion about Puerto Rico and then moved into my general thoughts about the status issue and some critical observations I’ve made in Puerto Rican activism in general and independence activism in particular. While this critique might be obsolete given the significant length of time away from these circles, it might still have some relevance regarding Puerto Rico and climate change. I have edited my statements to increase readability and have paraphrased my friend’s comments in line with the choice of anonymity.
EXCHANGE
José: Hey, I wanted your view. I’ve been reading and hearing Puerto Rico statehood mentioned a lot these days! So much so that I propose that if Biden wins, the likelihood of Puerto Rico statehood goes way up. It appears to part of possibleDemocrat actions to bury the Republicans. What do you think?
Friend: There’s never been as much discussion of statehood in the last 50 years!
José: I agree.
Friend: Apparently, Florida Boricua voters don’t wield the power they could, because those who have recently arrived remain unregistered due to a lack of information. Some evangelicals, on the other hand, vote for the anti-abortion candidate aka Trump.
José: I’d be interested in seeing the statistics for Florida.
Friend: Here is something else….LINK
José: Hmmm….Given the link, I can agree with the authors that PR’s status is central to this issue. However, I think the statement’s argument has weaknesses. For one thing, it’s not very strategic to direct their argument more for Boricuas than whites in the USA. Reading their piece brings to mind a more current version of my long-standing critique of independence advocacy… I’d like independentistas to please explain how a sovereign PR will deal with the increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes derived from climate change. There is even a newer version I’ll discuss later.
Friend: Your never-ending optimistic curiosity… haha!!
José: Yep. Skepticism as a way of life.
Friend: Please make an attempt to make your skepticism up-beat! Though maybe baseless, it’ll help our daily lives.
José: Hmmm…not sure that is necessarily a requirement for me. Anyway, since the group’s statement raised the status question, I’ll make a general comment about my current thinking on this issue. In my view, the whole discussion of PR’s status is really about which “means” or political status, best achieves the desired “end”. The “end” is the optimization of the quality of life of the PR people on the island.
Many years ago, I adopted the independence position not in small part because it was consistent with a larger left perspective in anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, etc which I identified with. Looking back, I realized that these reasons were not necessarily wrong, but they certainly weren’t a complete look at the issue. Further, I eventually realized that these reasons were mostly ideological, rhetorical, and leaned heavily on emotional appeals.
Those appeals, like any other persuasive enterprise, managed the info presented to further adoption of its message. For example, the appeals effectively deployed elements of history and various facts to bolster the case. I have to say that the appeals worked on me – I loved the ideology, rhetoric, emotions, and messages! That’s why for many years, I identified myself as an independentista.
However, as my critical faculties developed, and I worried less about group acceptance, cracks started to appear to me in the arguments. An important crack centered on describing the objective material basis of PR as an independent nation-state. For some time, literally, no one I knew could articulate that nor could anyone tell me where to find it. Instead, I heard silence, dismissal, or various justifications like – “I’ll leave that to others”. That perplexed me.
I now want to make a detour to a time prior to my detecting the key crack. During this time, as NCPRR activist, I noticed a phenomenon within the organization that resonated with what I was seeing in the independence discourse. In an effort to address the problematic NCPRR issue, I wrote about it dubbing a pair of syndromes I observed as.…”action-addiction” and “life-support phobia”.
Friend: Please explain what “life support phobia” and “action addiction” are. I have to ask… was analyzing this in terms of sickness and illness really necessary?
José: I did that on purpose, because, in my opinion, they ARE activism pathologies. AND illness can be diagnosed and treated!
“Action-addiction” is the compelling need to go to meetings, demos, rallies, marches, pump a fist and chant, make statements and perform the public display of progressive cred (attire, etc), etc. Thus, a key symptom of “Action addiction” is an attraction to the public performance of righteousness. Touching on something I will discuss next, is that these signs correspond with parallel neglect of other activism tasks like fundraising, child care, etc.
Friend: I detect some bitterness
José: Well, from where I sit, if you are committed to the patient’s improvement, a health provider has to make a diagnosis that precedes treatment. I’m trying to make things better by identifying what’s wrong.
Continuing, this neglect or “Life-Support Phobia” is the repulsion from, avoidance of, de-prioritization of “life support” or the tasks that maintain/reinforce/expand the material basis of activism. As mentioned, “Life Support” includes fundraising, stuffing envelopes, managing databases, designing and handing out flyers, keeping the books, paying bills, making copies, phone calls to members, childcare, etc.
Friend: Are there ways to treat these maladies?
José: I’ll get to that…. After almost 20 years of involvement, this is what I observed. As I see it, this is a factor in movement weakness and ineffectiveness. To be fair, “Action addiction” in many ways is indistinguishable from dedication. However, the tell-tale sign of the addiction is the presence of the other syndrome of “Life Support-Phobia”. In fact, like diabetes and heart disease, the syndromes are co-morbid. Those that are addicts suffer from phobia and vice versa. The more that “Life-Support” is downplayed, the more that the addiction is present.
Now that you know what I mean, I will bring these syndromes back to Puerto Rico’s status.
The fact that the independentistas that I knew and ran across did not articulate the material basis of political sovereignty started pushing my thinking to draw a parallel between the activism in the NCPRR and PR independence.
Friend: Have you contracted any of these illnesses?
José: I’ll get to that later as well.
I saw that what the independentistas I knew and ran across could do well is organize, attend events, present rhetoric, chant, romanticized heroes and heroines, lay out validating historical events, identify traitors, have flags, t-shirts, and various cultural and historical artifacts. What was not done as well was laying out how PR’s economy would be structured to support and maintain political sovereignty, how island politics would escape the corruption of a neo-colonial two-party system, and other important post-colonial issues.
I came to think that independentistas as I knew them, contain not a few action-addicted individuals. While certainly not all, these people subsist on rhetoric, emotion, display, passion, and belief. Their practice is frequently big on form and little on substance…rich in performance and poor on particulars. Finally, as addiction was present, I suspected that “Life-Support phobia” writ large, was responsible for the absence of an articulated material basis of political sovereignty. Life-Support for the nation was like fundraising for your organization, the last item on the agenda.
To be clear, I don’t want to take anything away from the long-time work, passion, and commitment I have seen in the Puerto Rican activist community. It’s there, it’s real and is to be admired. Never-the-less, I couldn’t help but notice that independence activists frequently overlook the material basis of what makes possible the political status they prefer.
These observations beg the question of WHY? Why do strategic and practical parts of activism so vital get so neglected?
To be fair first of all, it’s not like independentistas are the only activists in more than a few issues, that overlook key components of their politics. That said, here is one hypothesis to answer the “Why” question… generally, it’s the quality and quantity of the strategic and practical work of activism.
To be effective, activism’s strategic work likely requires in-depth reading, study, and analysis of an issue. This work is a LOT of non-trivial intellectual labor. However, it’s probably fair to say that if you’re an activist, that doesn’t necessarily make you a person who reads, studies, and analyzes your issue in depth. Maybe it IS somebody else’s job. Similarly, to be effective, activism’s practical work requires a different kind of work. The work that needs doing after all the marches etc are done… the “boring stuff”. What’s left is the tedious, un-fun, unappreciated, undramatic, unsexy but voluminous practical work of organizing. The kind of tasks that you don’t get chants or poetry about or don’t get you speaking in front of people. The kind of tasks that don’t get you recognized and admired in a movement. This work is like finding volunteers to clean up late into the night after everyone leaves a successful activity. All of a sudden, everyone is gone or has to go.
As people become MIA when it’s clean up time, so it becomes somebody else’s job to do the status strategic work. Consequently, this always made me wonder how firm the foundation of activism’s strategic and practical work actually was. If the goal is effectiveness, I’d guess that I shouldn’t be the only person who wonders this. In sum, the syndromes arise from too much hard, boring work. Unsurprisingly, this diagnosis didn’t get a lot of traction.
Going full circle recently, I then surmised that if independentismo has a high incidence of phobic-addicts, there would be consequences. Here are two examples. Given climate change, I suspect that plans would be hard to come by that lay out how a Puerto Rican nation would manage repeated, increasing category hurricanes. The same can be said of changing infectious disease patterns that will likely result in recurring viral outbreaks. Given Hurricane Maria and Covid-19, this void does little to add credibility to the independence position.
To be fair, this is not to say that pandemic or climate change resiliency plans don’t exist, it’s just that they haven’t been shared with me, talked about, or cited by people I’ve known or come across in atoms or bits. This absence feeds my skepticism. Truth be told since I don’t frequent those circles much, I hope to be surprised. Thus, I remain open to new data.
Friend: So….what about my questions?
José: OK, I’ll try to answer your questions regarding these maladies. To paraphrase…”Have I contracted these maladies…am I afflicted?” I think I should say YES and NO.
YES, because in my history of involvement, I started out with the exact same diagnoses and maladies for years. As I said earlier regarding addiction, I loved the ideology that inspired and motivated me. I had all the symptoms of a full-blown case. Regarding the phobia, early on, while I didn’t avoid analysis, I didn’t love the boring tasks either.
There is a No as well. Only slowly did my faculties and intellectual sincerity start taking note of things and push me to try to break the habit and get over the phobia. Eventually, I wanted to put my money where my mouth was. An immediate result for me was having more work. Unfortunately, if you’re recognized as a person who’ll do the “menial”tasks, you end up doing them fairly often. One interesting observation is the over-representation of women in these tasks, not unlike what happens in churches, etc.
The lack of support for people who did this work didn’t help to make me want to keep doing it. However, I tried to find areas of work I was interested in to make things less onerous. Ultimately, things changed with me doing more grad school and less activism. Never-the–less, I tried to contribute how I could to on-going efforts.
Since time changes all things, I’m generally not involved in activism much these days. Accordingly, while addiction’s ideology, passion, rhetoric, and imagery have their place in my psyche, my case is MUCH milder now. Experience has even tarnished my view of ideological positions and revealed vacancies where before I only saw fullness. However, I try to maintain a balance between my earlier fervor and my later cynicism. Regarding phobias, my involvement renders that mostly irrelevant. Never-the-less, I just did Biden phone banking for 350.org, a decidedly un-glamorous activity. Generally, for some years now, as my participation diminished, my critique intensified. Not how I want to continue, but it’s a work in progress.
These thoughts color my interpretation of current events regarding PR as a weapon against the Republican party. Statehood likely has advantages and disadvantages towards our ends as does Independence. Unfortunately, I have not heard much about the future material advantages of independence. There is only one person I know who lives on the island who rose somewhat to the occasion. I remain agnostic as to the best means as I think it likely that I lack data. Never-the-less, I contend that those who are serious about their positions have the responsibility to present the arguments and evidence to would-be allies.
Friend: and treatments?
José: For starters, one step is to recognize the illnesses. That’s hard as people like their “health” status to remain private… Few like to admit what’s wrong with them. If we can get past that, then there are things to do. That’s for another day.
Friend: Honestly, your reasoning lacks profundity since it’s restricted to your perceptions and experience. If you post this for the masses, I think you should augment your perspective with multi-disciplinary information, or hide your identity to avoid public shame.
José: If you would be so kind, I would appreciate you explaining more of what you mean. As for identifying myself, I absolutely will put my name to what I write. Mortification requires someone identifying my errors or carelessness, both of which I largely lack! :) I’d even say that the day this writing’s reasoning is surpassed is the day Trump makes an apology :).
Friend: Post away if you’re ok with your unsurpassable reasoning. Again, your perspective seems largely psychological. Adding social or historical info or examples in literature, music, philosophy, art, culture would help. You should include quotes by different poets involved in movement activism. You base your opinions on your subjective experience and don’t seem to state that you may be biased by various factors.
José: Thanks for your responses! – it’s very helpful to understand your meaning.
Friend: It would help to jazz up your points as they are lacking in sizzle. I hope you’re not offended.
José: No worries. However, I think my points, such as they are, will bear scrutiny by those with experience and objectivity.
Friend: My points are the most enlightening parts of this exchange! HA!
José: Well, of course!
Friend: I hope you understand that you’re as influenced by colonialism as all other Puerto Ricans are.
José: While I don’t disagree, I’d prefer it if you were more straightforward with the point your making.
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