US Non-Incorporated Territories in the Caribbean: Factors Contributing to Stalemate and Potential Political Change in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands

• Author: Angel Israel Rivera
• Pages: 45-60

45

- US NON-INCORPORATED TERRITORIES IN THE CARIBBEAN -

US Non-Incorporated

Territories in the Caribbean:

Factors Contributing to Stalemate or to

Potential Political Change in Puerto Rico and

the US Virgin Islands

INTRODUCTION

This chapter aims to portray some of the most important

contemporary factors leading either to change or to stagnation in the

current territorial status of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, the

two non-independent countries still under United States sovereignty

in the Caribbean region.

We are dealing with two very different situations here. Although

the general constitutional framework is the same, given the pre-eminence

of the application of the United States (US) constitution's territorial

clause to both jurisdictions, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are

very different on most counts. The US obtained Puerto Rico in 1898

as war booty based on terms laid out in the Treaty of Paris, which

ended the Spanish-American War. It is an archipelago composed of a

relatively larger island (Puerto Rico), two small adjacent island-

municipalities (Vieques and Culebra to the East) whose inhabitants

compose a Latin American and Caribbean nation of about four million

people. For most inhabitants, Spanish and Latin culture are still

predominant after four centuries of Spanish colonial domination and

more than one century of US sovereignty (Duany, 2002; Morris, 1995;

Rivera, 2007).

The US Virgin Islands on the other hand were bought by the US

from Denmark in 1917. They constitute a smaller archipelago

composed of three main islands: St Thomas, St Croix and St John.

Their 108,600 inhabitants (2000 census) are not as well-defined a

national entity as the inhabitants of Puerto Rico.

ANGEL ISRAEL RIVERA

3.

46

- GOVERNANCE IN THE NON-INDEPENDENT CARIBBEAN -

In Puerto Rico, notwithstanding US presence and sovereignty since

1898, and the indigenous Puerto Rican population, the two main

immigration groups during the twentieth century and beyond have been

both Spanish speaking and Caribbean-based: Cubans and Dominicans

(Duany, 2003). At the same time, US mainland Americans have been

decreasing in numbers. Whilst the US census of 1960 identified more

than 90,000 Americans residing in Puerto Rico, the 2000 census revealed

only little more than 30,000. There are more Cubans, Dominicans,

Spaniards and other Spanish speaking Latin Americans living in Puerto

Rico today than people from the metropolis.1 In the Virgin Islands, Puerto

Ricans are an important immigrant group, particularly in the island of St

Croix, as were previously the Irish.

Although both Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands had importance

for the US as military outposts, the latter have been mostly, since the

beginning of US domination, a naval territory similar to Guam in the

Pacific. On the other hand, Puerto Rico has been more important than

the US Virgin Islands for metropolitan economic purposes, first as an

agrarian export economy providing sugar and tobacco for the metropolis

during the first half of the twentieth century and later on as a tax haven

and high profits area for US industries, particularly pharmaceutical and

electronic enterprises. More recently, the US Virgin Islands has been

important as a US commercial outpost in the Caribbean and for oil

investments of oil corporations. (Ramos Bonilla, 2008).

Symbols are important signals revealing crucial differences between

Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands as US territories. Whilst the Puerto

Rican flag is one of the symbols of Puerto Rican national pride and was

influenced by Cuba’s struggle for independence from Spain (the Puerto

Rican flag has the same form as the Cuban flag but with inverted colours),

the flag of the US Virgin Islands prominently shows the American Imperial

Eagle. Whilst car licence plates in Puerto Rico announce in Spanish that

you are riding on la Isla del Encanto (‘the Island of Enchantment’), US

Virgin Island car licence plates proclaim a different sort of pride: ‘American

Paradise’. And a comparison of the official coat of arms of the governments

on each territory clearly shows that Puerto Ricans are proud of their Hispanic

heritage whilst US Virgin Islanders do not relate as strongly to their Danish,

English, French or Spanish past.

The US Virgin Islands have a few characteristics that may hinder

their smooth transition to independence of statehood: the lack of a