José M. Umpierre
Confessions of an Aged Anti-imperialist.
Two powerful nations flirting with the notion of empire.
The recent meeting between Trump and Putin in Alaska has been seen as the management of two powerful nations that flirt with the notion of empire. The term fuels a torrent of memories, it takes me back to 1976 when I defended my doctoral thesis: Imperialism and Structural Domination in Puerto Rico at the Autonomous University of Mexico. It was an effort to understand the way in which the insidious phenomenon intervenes in our culture, ideology, institutions, social behavior and personal character.
A lot of rain has fallen on Puerto Rico since then. The negative resonance of imperialism in our colony in a time of recalcitrance has led me mediate the term and search for footing in areas more fitting to my consciousness. And this, not at all to the renunciation of my thesis. On the contrary, how curious that imperialism reappears now, no less than in the New York Times headlines.
In my old age I am still convinced that contradiction is the most explanatory part of human nature and that aspiring for congruence is a noble desire, even though I don’t know if it is categorically possible. The United States of North America has been, by its own decree, the champion of democracy, world police, promoter of freedom and civil rights, which should be the denial of imperialism. Its origin was the first revolution in the world against the imperial rule of Great Britain. And yet, here we are; Puerto Rico, along with its other territories, are irrefutable testimony that colonialism lives, disguised as a non-associated territory.
The Imperial mentality (Gerard Libridian) describes a feeling that prevails in the psyche of nations that encourage the nostalgia of greatness and the right to dominate smaller neighboring nations. And that’s what became evident in Alaska. Putin is not at all shy in his management of subjugating territories (Crimea, Ukraine and the threat of Poland); Trump from the start was scandalizing with his notions on the idea of Canada, Panama and Iceland.
The Paris treaty in 1898, no one consults the conquered.
Here we have had six centuries of imperialism, the recent event confirms what we have always known in Borinquén: the conquered are not consulted. The Treaty of Paris in 1898 agreed to the peace of the Spanish-American War, Spain, handed over the remains of its empire and the United States acquired its own without Puerto Rico reaching the table.
The empires are as old as the reign of civilization, they preceded 3500 years before Christ, they achieved a peak with the Romans that extended almost 500 years later AD. Then came those of Spain, England, France and Holland, which began to give way to that of North America who formally began in 1898. The foundation underlying imperialist ideology is racism, that some are better than others, that some (superior) have the capacity to govern and others (lower) to be governed. And of racism in the North we have ample evidence of its powerful validity.
In Puerto Rico, after a first year of military government, it was administered by civilian governors appointed by the president, until 1952 when the Commonwealth Constitution was approved. The new order authorized the election of a government for interior affairs, with a resident commissioner who has a voice, but no vote, in Congress.
Such were conditions until the debacle of public debt in 2017, when a federal board of proconsuls was appointed to make fiscal decisions on the Island above an elected government. That board, which has been in charge of the financial control of the country for 8 years. That board received a forceful blow with the removal of 6 of its seven members at the behest of Trump minions Laura Loomer and Justin Peters because their positions were not very favorable to the bondholders.
The prisons are flourishing with the arrest of the persecuted.
What is very worrying is that that nostalgia for the conquest and dominion as the essence of greatness, at present, is accompanied by a high dose of authoritarianism, exclusion and intolerance. It is evident in the intensification of militarization and repression; at the moment the city of Los Angeles and the District of Columbia have interventions and their prisons are flourishing with the arrest of the persecuted. The defense of diversity has become an anathema and intelligence centers are paying for it. Proof that neo-fascism lacks humor is that even the comedy shows of the night on TV (Stephen Colbert) have been put out of commission for aggravating the leader.
Scandal and deception have also been normalized here, with a government that pays more attention to talk than to the substance of the state and the economy. The deterioration of Puerto Rico’s infrastructure due to lack of maintenance is patent. The light comes and goes, more due to the Luma energy company than to the sun. The supply of drinking water shows signs of similar scarcity. The prices of basic necessities do not go down, nor of medicines. The cuts in funds will make health and education services scarcer and tariffs even more expensive.
At present, oceans of ink have been spent to denounce the undemocratic course that Northern politics is taking with its president, and it is somewhat uncomfortable to be one more. But, it’s a drop that overflows the glass, a hair that breaks the camel’s back and if it were dumb, I would burst. The imperial eagle is a bird of prey that flies as high as imperial delusions will allow it. We wait for its inevitable fall from the sky.
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Copyright by José M. Umpierre. All photos used in this blog are in the public domain.