this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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You think the people that vote are the ones that count, but you were insulted by a domestically initiated internal referendum asking you to vote on the future political status of your community, so you didn't vote..? Without a clear mandate from Puerto Rico itself, you seem to be saying you'd prefer congress to decide the status of Puerto Rico for Puerto Ricans.
If so, you got exactly what you asked for, and I see little room for complaining about it.
It's a complicated situation, many people were upset due to the status consultation process being used as fear mongering for some national concerns and as leverage to have people vote a certain way to "guarantee the right choice" by multiple political parties.
This reason is why so many people abstained from voting in these last two.
I personally don't believe Congress will ever grant statehood to Puerto Rico, but my opinion is hardly relevant to this particular situation.
Tldr of why I didn't vote is very simple. If Congress won't acknowledge the multiple results of past referendums and the local parties use the referendums for fear mongering...not a worthwhile effort.
But that's my point. I think you have the order of operations wrong. The multiple results of past referendums have been, in general, against statehood. The most recent showed a bare majority. Without an unquestionable majority of Puerto Ricans making clear what they want for Puerto Rico, asking congress to take unilateral action on the political status of the island -- whether it's statehood, commonwealth, or independent nation -- is just a rehearsal of the same domestic-dependent imperialism that made Puerto Rico a commonwealth in the first place. The fact that congress not doing anything means PR stays a commonwealth is a result of that being the current status quo. If the people of PR want a change in the political status of PR, they need to initiate that and make it clear.
You can't say that the referendums don't count, that internal politics influences the results, and that it's just fear-mongering because PR wouldn't be able to be economically stable as an independent nation -- all internal problems that don't need congress's involvement to be remedied -- and then simultaneously criticize congress for not doing anything. That's a wildly colonized mindset. Not doing anything is precisely what congress should be doing, if they have any respect for the self-governance and desires of the Puerto Rico itself.