The Catch-22 of Puerto Rico's 2024 Status Referendum | TIME
This November, the U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico will go to the polls, just like their fellow U.S. citizens. But unlike their fellow citizens, they will not be able to vote for Senators or Representatives or the President. A U.S. territory since 1898, Puerto Rico has its own constitution and government, but it has no representation in the federal government except for one non-voting “Resident Commissioner” in the U.S. House. Euphemisms aside, Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States.
In the coming election, the island’s voters will have a chance to express their desire for decolonization. In a non-binding plebiscite, they will choose among three options that would result in a new, non-colonial status for Puerto Rico: statehood, independence, or free association under international law (a status in which a former colony achieves the separate sovereignty of independence while entering into a revocable power-sharing arrangement with a larger nation). But Congress, and only Congress, has the power to make their choice a reality.
Puerto Rico cannot become a state of the Union unless Congress admits it. It cannot become independent unless Congress agrees to it. It cannot enter into a free association arrangement unless Congress provides for it.
In other words, for Puerto Rico to cease being a colony, Congress must do its part.
Read More: Puerto Rico Is Voting for Its Future
Puerto Ricans have been demanding decolonization for a very long time. Before the United States annexed Puerto Rico in 1898 at the end of the Spanish-American War, the island was a colony of Spain. During the final century of Spanish sovereignty, Puerto Rican political leaders debated whether the island should become an equal province of Spain or instead achieve a constitutional status they called “autonomy.” A small minority called for independence.
The Spanish government stonewalled until the eve of the U.S. invasion of the island, when Spain belatedly granted Puerto Rico a “Charter of Autonomy.” It had barely gone into effect when a defeated Spain ceded temporary control over Cuba and full sovereignty over Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam to the United States.
U.S. General Nelson