OPINION
Muñoz the American
I borrow the title from the excellent book by my friend Gregorio Igartúa de la Rosa, Muñoz el americano, which correctly cites the many times that the founder of the PPD defended the values of the people, which includes the institutions of the federal government and our citizenship: “The moral and profound meaning of the citizenship of the United States is that it contains an inherent devotion to freedom, the consecration of democracy, and profound respect for the dignity of the human being.”
On September 30, 1943, at the height of the Second World War, he wrote a letter that has gone unnoticed: “… I have thought it necessary to call the attention of all Municipal Committees to the effect that in all cases—now it is observed only in some—the custom of placing the flag of the United States in addition to that of our party in all our public events, as well as in local and rural organizations, should be observed.”
Since the 1940s, Luis Muñoz Marín’s political thinking has been one of complete rejection of Puerto Rico’s separation from the United States. During the Constitutional Convention, he was emphatic in defending the values of the people and the legal and political figures representing the federal government that coexist here. He had no qualms about saying at the end of his work that: “We are not pro-American, we are American citizens. We are not protected by American citizenship. We carry American citizenship within us.”
We must emphasize that Luis Muñoz Marín was the president of the Preamble Commission of the Constitutional Convention. Therefore, he also has a father-son relationship with the lapidary sentences of said preamble: “We consider determining factors in our life the citizenship of the United States of America and the aspiration to continually enrich our democratic heritage in the individual and collective enjoyment of its rights and prerogatives; loyalty to the postulates of the Federal Constitution; the coexistence in Puerto Rico of the two great cultures of the American hemisphere.” With this, biculturalism acquired constitutional character.
With the Commonwealth Constitution, Puerto Rico began to operate as a state in internal affairs. Although the United States Congress still has control by virtue of Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 of the Constitution—the well-known territorial clause—there was a change at the internal level. It was the first time in history that Congress legislated for one of its territories to have a constitution with a bill of rights and a republican government.
Some jurists called this change the “embryonic state.” (See Efraín Rivera Pérez, Puerto Rico – three paths to the future: legal analysis). In other words, a foretaste of statehood. For his part, Rafael Hernández Colón, in his book Estado Libre Asociado: Naturaleza y Desarrollo, understands that what was achieved in 1952 fully complies with the requirements of an enabling act for the formal entry of Puerto Rico as a state of the Union.
On the fourth anniversary of the “law of bases” —as José Trías Monge sometimes called the ELA—, the poet of the state-liberalism gave a speech in evident homage to the citizenship of the United States. With this, Luis Muñoz Marín reaffirmed himself as the greatest defender of American citizenship in the entire history of Puerto Rico. I believe that he and Rafael Hernández Colón —more than any leader of the PNP— are the ones who have defended it the most. His phrase “diversity within unity,” which is the reality of the American nation, was brilliant, and it explains the phenomenon of the love of Puerto Ricans for this legal figure with characteristics of cultural value. It is a metaphor that can be extrapolated, without problems, to the alternative of statehood.
In 1960, during congressional hearings to amend the United States Constitution so that American citizens in Washington DC could vote for their president, Luis Muñoz Marín stated that every citizen should have the right to vote regardless of their place of residence. He also spoke out for the 1967 plebiscite.
At the end of their days, he and Fernós stipulated that because they were American citizens, the United States was also our country. (See Héctor Luis Acevedo, Ed., Dr. Antonio Fernós Isern: from doctor to constituent). A true truth, since our nation begins in the Caribbean islands and ends in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, although the current leaders of their party do not recognize it, since they threw the political ideology of their founding father into the trash.
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