Politics of Puerto Rico
The politics of Puerto Rico take place in the framework of a democratic republic form of government that is under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the United States Congress[1] as an organized unincorporated territory.
In contrast, Roman Baldorioty de Castro, had been the leader of another faction inside the Autonomist Party, supported a territorial governance for Puerto Rico under Spain, similar to the Canadian model developed by the British.
The Incondicionales accepted whatever Spain had for Puerto Rico and the Crown duly recognized their support by giving aristocratic titles to their party's leaders.
The new government of Puerto Rico, organized under the Foraker Act of 1900, was a mixture of the British and the American system, somewhat similar to that established for the territory of Orleans after the Louisiana Purchase.
The House of Delegates was elected directly by the voters (male, propertied) and the equivalent to the Senate was the Cabinet appointed by the Governor and by the President of the United States.
Rosendo Matienzo Cintrón, Manuel Zeno Gandía, Luis Lloréns Torres, Eugenio Benítez Castaño, and Pedro Franceschi started to organize the Independence Party in 1912,[citation needed] which paved the path for similar movements.
The Union Party quickly gained the attention of the colonial governors, all Republicans, who were willing to work closely with them because of their control of the House of Delegates.
Differences between Barceló and Tous Soto and Félix Córdova Dávila, the resident commissioner of Puerto Rico in Washington, as to the goals of the alliance became apparent.
The PNP began to grow with the leadership of Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, who was later jailed by the colonial regime under charges as a subversive leader.
The march turned into a bloody event when the Insular Police[10] ("a force somewhat resembling the National Guard of the typical U.S. state" and which answered to governor Winship[11]) opened fire upon, what a U.S.
The party favored independence from the United States in its initial stages but social and economic reform were priorities in their political agenda.
In the 1950s, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party denounced the Constitution and Muñoz Marín support as a sham, and staged a series of uprisings in 1950, known as the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party Revolts of the 1950s, of which the most notable were the ones in Jayuya, Utuado and San Juan, plus the attack on Blair House, and the United States House of Representatives in 1954.
In 1980, Romero Barcelo was reelected Governor by a controversial 0.2% margin, but lost control of the Senate and, a year later, the House of Representatives to the PPD.
In 2000, Sila María Calderón (PPD) was elected, becoming the first female governor of Puerto Rico, also gaining control of the Senate, presided over by Antonio Fas Alzamora and the House of Representatives, headed by Speaker Carlos Vizcarrondo.
In 2004, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá (PPD) was declared the winner by the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico as governor by about 3,000 votes, but his party lost control of the Senate, which elected PNP Senator Kenneth McClintock as its president, and the House of Representatives, which chose the PNP's José Aponte as Speaker, and Puerto Rico's seat in Congress, due to the election of Luis Fortuño.
On the PPD side, Acevedo's rocky relationship with the PNP-controlled Legislature was compounded with Federal investigations and unsuccessful indictments of his past political fundraising by grand juries in Philadelphia and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
In 2008, Luis Fortuño (PNP) was elected governor, giving the New Progressive Party its largest victory in history and beating incumbent Gov.
[citation needed] The convention adopted a translation into Spanish of the term, inspired by the Irish saorstát (Free State) of "Estado Libre Asociado" (ELA) to represent the agreement adopted "in the nature of a compact" between the people of Puerto Rico and the U.S. literally translated into English, the phrase means "Associated Free State."
[27] On November 27, 1953, shortly after the establishment of the Commonwealth, the General Assembly of the United Nations approved Resolution 748, removing Puerto Rico's classification as a non-self-governing territory under article 73(e) of the Charter from UN.
[citation needed] In August 1977, the Chairman of the Democratic Party of Puerto Rico, Franklin Delano López, testified before the UN Decolonization Committee denouncing the colonial nature of the Commonwealth Status.
[30][31][32] Other fundamental rights like the Due Process Clause and the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment was expressly extended to Puerto Rico by the U.S. Supreme Court.
[32][33][34] President George H. W. Bush issued a memorandum on November 30, 1992, to heads of executive departments and agencies establishing the current administrative relationship between the federal government and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.
Although the Republican Party and Democratic Party chapters in Puerto Rico have selected voting delegates to the national nominating conventions since the early 1900s, public interest in these processes heightened as a result of the efforts of a group of Democratic statehooders led by Franklin Delano López in 1976 to elect delegates supporting former Georgia Gov.
Franklin Delano López was elected Chairman of the New Democratic Party of Puerto Rico by the direct votes of 374,000 American citizens residing on the Island.
[47] Recent examples include Vice President Dick Cheney's whirlwind two-hour visit to collect $300,000 in 2006 and Senator Barack Obama's 50% longer three-hour trip in November, 2007 to collect $200,000[48] Speculation, which began in late 2009 by a national media blog[49] and by Grover Norquist, a well-known Republican commentator, mentioned Gov.
The Popular Democratic Party (PPD) challenged[52] the task force's report and committed to validating the current status in all international forums, including the United Nations.
[51] It stated that the U.S. Justice Department in 1959 reiterated that Congress held power over Puerto Rico pursuant to the Territorial Clause[54] of the U.S.
Nonetheless, the aforementioned U.S. Presidential and Congressional Reports state that the current prerogatives assumed by the Puerto Rico government are delegated by the U.S. Congress and may be amended or eliminated at its sole behest.
[72] In September 2023, Roger Wicker reintroduced legislation in the United States Congress on the territorial status of Puerto Rico.
The executive order follows the U.S. House of Representatives' approval in 2022 of a bill to help Puerto Rico move toward a change in territorial status.
