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The international debate on Puerto Rico: the costs of being an agenda-taker

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Robert Pastor
Robert Pastor
Affiliation:
A Faculty Research Associate of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, College Park.
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Abstract

The United States insists that the issue of Puerto Rico was removed from the international agenda by a vote of the UN General Assembly in 1953. This insistence has not quieted the international debate. During the last decade, more nations have used more international organizations to pursue the decolonization of Puerto Rico. They have been assisted by moderate Puerto Rican leaders who are looking for a way to induce the United States to change the island's status. As an agenda-taker, the U.S. government has had to expend increasing amounts of energy, prestige, and resources—mostly diplomatic, but occasionally economic and political—each year to try to keep from being condemned as a colonial power. Agenda-setters, particularly Cuba, pay a small price but derive substantial benefits from raising the cost to the United States or increasing the number of turnstiles (actions in other international forums) through which the United States must pass each year. Other countries, whose UN vote is transformed by U.S. concern into hard currency, owe the agenda-setter a debt. Five specific changes in strategy could reduce the costs to the United States of being an agenda-taker in the United Nations

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , Summer 1984 , pp. 575 - 595
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1984

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References

1 Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S. Jr., Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), especially pp. 32–33Google Scholar.

2 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, “America in a Hostile World,” Foreign Policy no. 23 (Summer 1976), pp. 65–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, A Dangerous Place (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978)Google Scholar.

3 For a full discussion of each option and its implications for the United States, see Comptroller General of the United States, Report to the Congress: Puerto Rico's Political Future—A Divisive Issue with Many Dimensions, GGD–81–48 (Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Office, 2 03 1981)Google Scholar.

4 This was Resolution no. 23 of the Constitutional Convention. See Reisman, W. Michael, Puerto Rico and the International Process: New Roles in Association, a Report for the Conference on Puerto Rico and the Foreign Policy Process held at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in October 1973 (Washington, D.C.: American Society of International Law, 1975), p. 42Google Scholar.

5 In fact, the UN Fourth Committee rejected all petitions to testify from groups in non-selfgoverning territories until 1961.

6 For the text of Resolution 748, as well as other key UN Resolutions 1514 and 1541, see Reisman, , Puerto Rico, Appendices 4–6, pp. 173–83Google Scholar. For this vote and others at the United Nations, the following sources were used: U.S. Participation in the United Nations: The President's [Annual] Report to Congress; annual editions of Yearbook of the United Nations, in this case 1953, pp. 533–39; and for a summary of action before 26 August 1974, UN General Assembly, “Special Committee on the Situation with Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, Question of the List of Territories to Which the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples Is Applicable,” A/AC.109/L.976 (26 August 1974).

7 For a brief review of these requests and the lack of response by Congress, see Comptroller General of the United States, Report to the Congress: Experiences of Past Territories Can Assist Puerto Rico Status Deliberations, GGD–80–26 (Washington, D.C.: General Accounting Office, 7 03 1980), pp. 61–62Google Scholar. Also see the statement of Maurice Ferré, mayor of Miami, speaking as a U.S. citizen born in Puerto Rico before the UN Special Committee on Decolonization, at UN Headquarters, New York, 29 August 1978, p. 7.

8 Kay, David A., “The Politics of Decolonization: The New Nations and the United Nations Political Process,” in Wood, Robert S., ed., The Process of International Organization (New York: Random House, 1971), p. 401Google Scholar. Also see Wainhouse, David W., Remnants of Empire: The United Nations and the End of Colonialism (New York: Harper & Row, 1964)Google Scholar.

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10 For the negotiations leading up to Resolution 1514, see Kay, , “Politics of Decolonization,” pp. 403–7.Google Scholar The United States abstained because of a special request from the British prime minister to President Eisenhower. Harold J. Lidin reported that Juan Man Bras, who established the Pro-Independence Movement in 1960 and later the Cuban-aligned Socialist party, persuaded his contacts in the United Nations to insert the phrase, which I underlined (“U.N. Has Long History of Interest in Puerto Rico Status,” San Juan Star, 15 08 1977, p. 6)Google Scholar.

11 For the resolutions, see Reisman, , Puerto Rico, pp. 176–83Google Scholar. Resolution 1514 has a quasilegal status in the United Nations, almost comparable to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; this is not the case for 1541. Though the United States sometimes cites 1541, the resolution defines free association to include the right of unilateral secession, which Puerto Rico does not have.

12 The correct name of the committee is the “Special Committee on the Situation with Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries,” but for obvious reasons, people refer to it as the Special Committee on De-Colonization or more simply as the Committee of 24 (C–24). When Venezuela rejoined the committee in 1980, it became the 25th member, but the committee is still known as the Committee of 24.

13 Garcia-Passalacqua, Juan M., Puerto Rico: Equality and Freedom at Issue, Hoover Institution Latin American Series (New York: Praeger, 1984), p. 128Google Scholar. The major independence parties boycotted the 1967 plebiscite.

14 Linsley, Austin, “U.S.-Cuban Relations: The Role of Puerto Rico,” in Blasier, Cole and Mesa-Lago, Carmelo, eds., Cuba in the World (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979), p. 122Google Scholar; Ratliff, William E., Castroism and Communism in Latin America, 1959–76 (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1976), pp. 195–98Google Scholar.

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17 For an excellent analysis of the political and economic changes that have occurred in Puerto Rico in the last thirty years, see Heine, Jorge, ed., Time for Decision: The United States and Puerto Rico (Lanham, Md.: North-South, 1983)Google Scholar, Intro. The statistics on Puerto Rico's economic growth and increased dependence on the United States are from Comptroller General, Report to the Congress: Puerto Rico‘s Political Future, pp. 26–30. That report confirmed one of Heine's conclusions, that “all of the island's political parties are dissatisfied with this relationship [the current Commonwealth status]…” (p. ii).

18 Cabranes, Jose, “Puerto Rico: Out of the Colonial Closet,” Foreign Policy no. 33 (Winter 1978–1979), p. 67Google Scholar; statement of Maurice Ferré before the UN Special Committee on De-Colonization, 29 August 1978.

19 Garcia-Passalacqua, , Puerto Rico, p. 130Google Scholar.

20 U.S. Participation in the United Nations: The President's Report to Congress for the Year, 1980, pp. 314–15.

21 For the debate, see UN General Assembly, 24 September 1982, A/37/PV.4 (27 September 1982). The characterization of the lobbying campaign is by Berlin, Michael J., “U.S. Wins UN Vote on Puerto Rico,” Washington Post, 25 09 1982, p. 1Google Scholar; see also “U.N. Supports U.S. over Puerto Rico,” New York Times, 25 September 1982, p. 3.

22 Berlin, , “U.S. Wins UN Vote”; “UN Supports U.S.,” New York Times 25 09 1982Google Scholar.

23 Both cited in García-Passalacqua, , Puerto Rico, p. 134Google Scholar.

24 For an analysis of the Socialist International's impact on Central America, see Pastor, Robert, “Mirror Images: The Socialist International and the U.S. in Central America,” New Republic, 16 05 1983, pp. 13–15Google Scholar.

25 Interview with Rubén Berrios Martinez, 26 April 1983. See Vinocur, John, “Socialists' Stand on Puerto Rico Angers the U.S.,” New York Times, 05, 6 1983, p. A6Google Scholar.

26 This is the conclusion of Austin Linsley in “U.S.-Cuban Relations,” pp. 127–28, and one with which I agree, having discussed this issue several times with the highest Cuban officials, including Fidel Castro, between December 1978 and January 1980.

27 Interviews with Rubén Berrios Martinez, president of the Independence party, and with Carlos Gallisa, secretary general of the Socialist party of Puerto Rico, April 1983.

28 On her maiden speech to the OAS in 1979, Ambassador Dessima Williams of the Revolutionary Government of Grenada expressed her government's solidarity with Puerto Rico's quest for independence. See Votaw, Carmen Delgado, “Puerto Rico: A Pawn or an Option for Governance in the Western Hemisphere's Future (Paper prepared for the Aspen Institute Project on Governance in the Western Hemisphere, 06 1981), p. 3Google Scholar.

29 Prial, Frank J., “Puerto Rico Should Be Independent, Venezuela Says at the U.N.,” New York Times, 28 09 1982Google Scholar. See also, Lidin, Harold J., “CRB [Puerto Rican Governor Carlos Romero Barceló] Blasts Venezuela Role in U.N. Resolution,” San Juan Star, 28 08 1980, p. 6Google Scholar.

30 Garcia-Passalacqua, , Puerto Rico, p. 134Google Scholar.

31 Interview with Hernan Padilla, mayor of San Juan, 26 April 1983.

32 Barceló, Carlos Romero, “Puerto Rico, U.S.A.: The Case for Statehood,” Foreign Affairs 59 (Fall 1980) p. 64Google Scholar.

33 I am indebted to Juan M. Garcia-Passalacqua for his insight on the danger of voting for “three impossibilities.” For a specific proposal to resolve this dilemma and break the stalemate on status, see Pastor, Robert, “U.S. and Puerto Rico: A Proposal,” Washington Quarterly, Summer 1984Google Scholar.

34 For Ford's statement, see New York Times, 1 Janaury 1977, p. 1. President-elect Carter's response came the next day: “Until the Puerto Rican people themselves express a preference for statehood…the Congress should not take the initiative” (New York Times, 2 January 1977, p. 2). For President Reagan's statement, see Presidential Papers, 12 January 1982, p. 19.

35. Comments at the Conference on Puerto Rico sponsored by the World Peace Foundation, 20 September 1983, Washington, D.C.