Trump and Puerto Rico – an opportunity. Having devoted a significant portion of my life to Puerto Rico, living and working there for over forty years, I have to comment on the malicious, and inexcusable, supposed-joke by a warmup speaker at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden event last Sunday. PEOPLE, IT WAS NOT A MISTAKE, AND IT ABSOLUTELY REFLECTS WHAT TRUMP AND HIS COHORTS THINK AND ARE PREPARING TO ACT ON, SHOULD HE WIN.
Somewhat lost in the justified outrage over the comment, is the fact that the Trump campaign deliberately planned that event as a reflection (and re-enactment??) of the American Nazi Party’s similar event at Madison Square Garden in 1939. That has all sorts of implicit and planned implications if he wins the election. I have to admit, I didn’t know that the 1939 event had happened!
A PBS TV (US Public television) interview, after the Madison Square Garden debacle, also threw additional light on the strategy and tactics of the Trump campaign, all of which point in the same direction. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian who studies dictatorships and fascism, stated in that interview that Trump’s playbook is almost word-for-word taken from Mussolini, the Italian dictator. Not only the words, but also the strategic buildup and the indoctrination of the people to think that anyone who doesn’t think “like us” is the enemy, thus perfectly justifying, planned acts of violence against them in order to preserve and promote “our totally correct ideas”. Mussolini planned his dictatorship over several years in the 1930’s, alongside his compatriot, Hitler, from whom he stole some of his ideas. Trump is using this same playbook but has added Vladimar Putin to his mentor list. (That addition is almost certainly treason in most interpretations of the word).
Let me go back to Puerto Rico, and Puerto Ricans. If the outrageous scenario played out at Madison Square Garden last Sunday doesn’t galvanize Puerto Ricans to become more involved in U.S. National politics to protect their own interests and to defend their U.S. citizenship, I don’t know what will.
There are over six million Puerto Ricans living and working on the Mainland U.S. and over three million living on the Island, every one of whom is a U.S. citizen with free access to the Mainland – Puerto Ricans living on the Island can’t vote for the U.S. President, but those domiciled on the Mainland can, an historical quirk fabricated in 1952 as part of the agreement to let Puerto Rico elect its own governor for the first time; the governor had been a U.S. appointee since the U.S. acquisition of the Island as spoils of the Spanish-American war in 1898.
I kindly suggest that, after the deliberate insult of Sunday’s Madison Square Garden event, it is time for the Puerto Rican community on the Island to fully acknowledge their rights and responsibilities as U.S. citizens, and join their extended family members on the Mainland, in a movement to make sure that any such insult in the future will mean instant political suicide for any person associated with it. How to do that?
If Puerto Rico was a State instead of a Commonwealth (a supposedly temporary status given them in 1952) it would have two U.S. Senators and 7-8 U.S. Congressional representatives. That would be the largest ethnic voting block in Congress, and would give Puerto Ricans enormous power and influence.
It’s too much to hope that an Hispanic movement in the U.S. would be galvanized to address the Puerto Rican issue highlighted by Trump’s Army on Sunday. The Hispanic community, in my opinion, is too diverse to speak with a common voice – that may change since they will be 30% of the entire U.S. population by 2050, if not sooner – but, for the moment, Puerto Ricans have to defend themselves. They need a charismatic leader, possibly not a politician, who can pick up the banner, and fight. The ridiculous nonsense played out last Sunday is an opportunity to capitalize on the outrage that event produced. I hope someone in the Puerto Rican community, either on the Island or on the Mainland, will hear the siren call and begin acting.
I am too old and, more importantly, I am not Puertorican, otherwise I might be tempted!
