In today's episode I'm going to be talking about a recent Trump incident that has been covered as a joke
but really reveals a little bit of truth.
Let's begin.
Hi, my name is Andrew Mercado-Vazquez, and welcome to the PRF Review, a show based on the podcast "Puerto Rico Forward,"
which you can listen to on all major platforms --
like Spotify, like iTunes -- and you can continue supporting through Patreon. Thank you so much.
Everyone that helps, every cent, goes to this project and
furthering our ultimate goal of placing the Puerto Rico issue forward into the limelight, into the political limelight.
So let's get straight to today's subject.
Last week, I believe it was in "The New York Times." Let me just go ahead and
confirm --
yes, "New York Times." (Let me
move this to the other screen.) They issued an
article, they published an article, on the 21st of August.
It's titled "Trump's Interest in Buying Greenland Seemed Like a Joke. Then It Got Ugly."
Okay, so you're reading this article and you're thinking this is about Greenland; this is about Trump's
outrageous proposal of buying, or trying to acquire,
Greenland. Okay, but then you start reading through it, and
more or less at the middle of the article,
while they're talking about President Trump's
thought of trying to cover Greenland, or acquire Greenland,
they say, they write, the following. And I'm going to quote. And they're talking about President Trump here, quote:
"He has been talking privately about buying Greenland for more than a year and even
detailed the National Security Council staff to study the idea. At one point last year, according to a former
official who heard him, he even joked in a meeting about trading Puerto Rico for Greenland --
happy to rid himself of an American territory whose leadership he has feuded with
repeatedly." End of quote. Okay,
so,
that's interesting, and it seems like it's ridiculous --
right? -- and the press is covering this like if it's a ridiculous thought. And that has
caught my attention. And the reason why it's caught my attention is because
it's really not as ridiculous as people think. The idea of selling off Puerto Rico is a real
probability. It's a real option for the US Congress.
Why? Okay, so
let's talk about that really quickly. In Episode 5 of the Puerto Rico Forward podcast, which you can listen to, I
cover
an event that happened in 2000. Now, I'm going to go ahead and read from my notes:
On December 23rd of the year 2000, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 13183,
titled "Establishment of the President's Task Force on Puerto Rico's Status."
As the title itself implies,
this is a task force that was designed in order to study the different avenues for Puerto Rico, outside of colonial condition.
Now, further down the road, five years later after the establishment of this task force, they issue a report.
It's a pathetic report.
It's ten pages long.
But it does contain something that's very important for today's episode. And I'm going to quote straight from the report:
"The Federal Government may relinquish United States sovereignty by granting independence or ceding the territory to
another nation." End of quote. That's Page 6 of the report.
The report
is
online; you can look it up : 2005 report from The President's Task Force.
They literally are saying that they could give us away.
Okay? So when President Trump jokes about, or apparently jokes about, the idea of trading Puerto Rico for Greenland,
it's a real possibility. That --
although it seems like it's from the realm of crazy -- it really is a possibility. And that's the insanity that is
fostered by a
colonial condition.
Okay?
And that's why we're fighting that here in Puerto Rico Forward, and that's why we need your help to fight this, because this is the type of
outcomes that could happen, or that are possible. Now,
what I want to highlight is the following: Despite the fact that the media seems to downplay
this as a joke of poor taste on behalf of the president, the US
government has already looked at the option, or at least has acknowledged the option, of
ceding Puerto Rico to another nation-state. This information, as I said, was in the report 2005. It's 2019;
what does that mean? This information is 14 years old. It was over a decade ago.
We already have an official statement from the US government
indicating that they have analyzed, and that they understand, that they would have the power
to give Puerto Rico away, to cede it to some other nation-state.
So,
what I want to highlight is the following:
If
you were triggered by this
language by President Trump, or if you were offended by it, or if it offended your sense of, your sense of
self-righteousness, I have news for you:
You are the problem.
Okay,? This information is 14 years old,
it's out there, it's in a report. The fact that so many people are shocked by the idea, that President Trump jokes
about the idea of giving away Puerto Rico to some other nation-state, is a testament to how much
work we have ahead of us. We really need to inform the general population of the US about what the colonial condition
allows, of the injustices that are fostered under such a colonial condition. The ignorance of the US
voting population is one of the main contributors to sustaining Puerto Rico's colonial situation. And
that type of ignorance needs to be eradicated, it needs to be attacked, it needs to be eliminated.
We need to educate as much as we can. We need to be proactive.
We need to be aggressive when it comes to
questioning the way that the voting population in the US
sees Puerto Rico. And we need to make sure that they see it for what it is: a colonial
territory, a property of the US. And as property, it can be sold off or it can be given away. And
that's not my opinion. It's the President's Task Force's opinion from 2005.
Okay? So
Donald Trump's joke? It actually contains a bit of truth. And that in itself should be scary --
scary enough to make us read a book, get informed, and take action. So that's going to be it for today.
Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for your time. Thank you for listening.
Y que viva Puerto Rico.