For Democrats who want to stop the right-wing assault on democracy, statehood for Puerto Rico can seem like a simple fix — one so enticing it may be easy to forget the will of the Puerto Rican people.
As a Boricua journalist who covers the insurrectionist right and comes from a pro-statehood family, I'd love to see Puerto Rico become a state. But Puerto Rico's fate is not for any person stateside to dictate.
Congress is considering two bills that aim to change Puerto Rico's status as a commonwealth, which has enabled decades of economic predation and devastation compounded by COVID-19 and natural disasters. Recent islandwide blackouts are just the latest example of neglect. The bills are the Puerto Rico Statehood Admission Act and the Puerto Rico Self-Determination Act. Only the latter, co-sponsored by New York Reps. Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is truly democratic.
