Puerto Rico Libertarian Proposes “Micro-Independence” and Partition of Island

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has held several referenda—including major ones in 1967, 1993, 1998, and 2012—on the question of its future status.  Today, the island nation is as self-governing as any of the 50 United States of America, but it has no voting representatives in Washington and Puerto Ricans cannot vote for U.S. president without relocating to one of the fifty states.  Most of the previous referenda have offered Puerto Ricans three choices: (1) admission as the 51st state—61.13% opted for that in the 2012 vote; (2) “free association” (the status currently enjoyed by three former U.S. colonies in the South Pacific, which rely on the U.S. for defense but have United Nations seats) (33.33% in 2012); or (3) independence (5.54%).  (See a previous article for a fuller discussion.)  The 2012 referendum was non-binding, so while most national politicians advocate statehood in principle, it is essentially blocked by the divisiveness and intransigence of the U.S. Congress, whose job it is to approve the addition of any new stars to the flag.

Puerto Ricans have their own Olympic team, but can’t vote for their own president
(you know, just like Cuba).

But Puerto Rican independence—an idea which was buoyed in the 1950s and ’60s by Cuba’s revolution not far to the west and has traditionally been associated with leftist radicalism and thus demonized and suppressed by the U.S. government—is persistent in the Puerto Rican consciousness, despite its low numbers.  But this does not mean those not choosing independence would be happy with statehood or the status quo.  In the 1998 poll, 46.6% voted for statehood, but the fourth option, “none of the above,” got 50.5%.  Since the U.S. snagged the island in the Spanish-American War, there has been discontent in Puerto Rico, and a feeling of nationhood, but nervousness about its viability as an independent state (the most prosperous Caribbean nation-states are tiny, low-population tax havens; no one wants to be the next Haiti).  The Puerto Rican electorate also worries about the political consequences of a long, divisive push for secession—especially if it ends up failing.

One Puerto Rican, Frank Worley-Lopez, founder of the Libertarian Party of Puerto Rico, has a proposal for a way toward more self-determination that mixes some of the benefits of the others.  In a recent editorial, he calls the idea “micro-independence.”  It involves giving something to different camps in the status debate by partitioning Puerto Rico, with one half becoming a U.S. state and the other half becoming an independent nation, with or without the “free association” apron-strings currently loosely tethering the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia to the mother country.  But if you’re picturing a bisected island which mimics the line that runs through neighboring Hispaniola to separate Haiti from the Dominican Republic, the partition wouldn’t need to be exactly into halves.  As Worley-Lopez puts it, “Even if the portion that becomes an independent ‘micro-nation’ is only a handful of the island’s 78 municipalities, it would still allow those who truly support independence to achieve their stated goal, while allowing others to reach theirs.”  (Puerto Rico does not have counties or the equivalent.)

Frank Worley-Lopez

But is this idea viable?  For one thing, it would not eliminate the problem of getting a statehood bill through Congress, or the trickier problem of how to negotiate independence.  President Barack Obama, after all, in 2012 gave a firm thumbs-down to the idea of secession in the wake of a tsunami of post-reelection secession petitions uploaded to the White House website.

Secondly, there is the question of how to draw the new border.  Worley-Lopez seems to suggest asking each municipality to pick a side.  In reality, this may not end up creating a very clean line.  It might be a wild gerrymander, with lots of exclaves.  This could lead to disruptions at the administrative and economic levels; it could also prove to be more divisive at the community level than even the multiple-choice referenda have been.

Referenda in Puerto Rico do not follow clear regional patterns.

Finally, we can look to places where something similar has been done.  In Switzerland, the seven districts of the contested Jura region of the Canton of Bern each had a chance, in 1979, to choose whether to stay in Bern or form a new canton or join the neighboring Basel-Land.  But the referendum was so designed because the divide was both geographical and linguistic and would not create a difficult border—though Switzerland already has plenty of crazily wiggly lines dividing its cantons, including lots of exclaves.

Switzerland’s Jurassians had to leave some territory behind
when they seceded from Bern in 1979.

Another example is Quebec, where Anglophone opponents of the province’s separation from Canada have reacted to independence pushes by suggesting different parts of Quebec choose whether to stay in or out.  In fact, indigenous groups staged their own counter-referenda in remote parts of Quebec in parallel with the failed 1995 independence vote.  But Puerto Ricans should take note that such talk was designed specifically to divide the Québécois nation and stifle national aspirations.  Some would say it worked.

Quebeckers, too, have had to contemplate what their independent state
might look like it if they couldn’t secede with all of its territory.

Perhaps the closest example is the curious path taken by some municipalities in Spain’s separatist autonomous region of Catalonia.  Starting with San Pere de Torelló in 2012, more than 200 jurisdictions within Catalonia have now declared themselves independent of rule by Spain and part of what they call Territori Català Lliure (Free Catalan Territory).  Since it is not just municipalities but sometimes whole districts as well taking these measures, by now about a fifth of Catalonia’s land has this status—at least by self-declaration.  But no one wants Catalonia divided.  This is a mostly symbolic gesture, seen as a strategy to be used on the way to independence for the entire country.

Scattered bits of Catalonia have already seceded—but not as a final goal.

On the whole, if you ask Chinese and Taiwanese, and if you ask Koreans or Germans—or Ossetes, to take a more extreme example discussed in this blog—none of them would say that there is anything inherently desirable in having a nation divided into two different state entities.  Albanian nationalists in Kosovo, Azeris in northern Iran, and Inner Mongolians in China tend to feel the same way.  And so do Ukrainians, of course.

I love Azerbaijan so much, I am happy that there are two.

Worley-Lopez writes, “The idea of allowing independence supporters to retain a small portion of the island is not new.  It’s been proposed multiple times by multiple people, including myself in the past. Yet so far, the Puerto Rico Independence Party has steadfastly—and curiously—refused to take the idea seriously.”  But I’ll reckon that most Puerto Ricans, and most Americans, find Worley-Lopez’s micro-independence idea highly problematic, and there is nothing “curious” about that at all.  Yes, nations and communities should be allowed to choose their own destinies, and, yes, referenda are for the most part the best way to do it.  But turn on the television, and you will see city halls in various parts of Ukraine ringed by burning tires and barbed wire while masked men with machine guns wave separatist flags.  Right now, this week, a town-by-town, village-by-village plebiscite does not strike most people as the way to peaceful co-existence—or freedom from colonialism.  Puerto Rico deserves a better solution to its problems; “micro-independence” probably isn’t it.

One face of “micro-independence”: a “People’s Republic of Donetsk”
separatist posing in his Archie Bunker chair.

Related articles from this blog:
“Venezuela’s President Maduro Urges Puerto Rico to Declare Independence, Join Latin American Bloc” (Jan. 2014)
“Puerto Rico Votes for Statehood—or at Least for Some Kind of Change” (Nov. 2012)

[You can read more about Puerto Rico, Jura, Quebec, Catalonia, South Azerbaijan, and other separatist and new-nation movements, both famous and obscure, in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

Venezuela’s President Maduro Urges Puerto Rico to Declare Independence, Join Latin American Bloc

Nicolás Maduro Moros, the president of Venezuela, used the occasion of the 55th anniversary of Cuba’s Communist revolution on January 9th to call on Puerto Rico to secede from the United States, so that it can join the community of Latin American nations, and in particular the 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Comunidad de Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños, or CELAC).

Venezuela will be hosting the annual CELAC summit later this month, and with that mind, Maduro said, “I have asked Foreign Minister Elías Jaua Milano to prepare a document to propose, in the name of Venezuela, the incorporation of Puerto Rico to CELAC.  May Puerto Rico take the path of Latin America.  ...  One day we will see the birthing of a Republic of Puerto Rico and we will go together to consolidate its independence.  It would be our greatest homage to the giants: to Bolívar, Martí, and to Chávez. ...  If we really consider ourselves sons of Bolívar, sons of Chávez, let us never let go from our hearts the cause of Puerto Rico’s independence.”

Maduro used Venezuelan and Cuban flags as a backdrop to make his point.

The new statements are the latest volley in a rhetorical and diplomatic war between Venezuela and the United States that continues the clash between the two countries’ former leaders, Hugo Chávez and George W. Bush, respectively, in the 2000s.  Last year, Maduro succeeded the wildly popular Chávez, who in his 14 years in office took inspiration from Cuba’s 1959 revolution and from its hero, Fidel Castro, in blazing a path toward redistributionist economic policy and charismatic left-wing populism.  He also leaned slightly in Castro’s direction when it came to his relationship to democracy—using his popular mandate to grab more power for the presidency and to jail political opponents.  Genuinely committed to economic inequality, he redistributed wealth and responded to food shortages through price ceilings and the nationalization of large sectors of the economy—which only worsened his country’s economic crisis, in a kind of parody of the carefully managed command economy in Cuba, which for all its faults is at least stable.  But it was Chávez’s nationalization of the oil industry that threw the U.S. into a complete tizzy.  Venezuela is the world’s fifth-largest oil producer, and its untapped reserves are now thought to be the world’s largest, exceeding Saudi Arabia’s.

Me and Mini-Me: Maduro (right) rode to power on Chávez’s coattails.

For Maduro, who was Chávez’s vice-president and has modeled his presidency on Chávez’s, the idea of advocating separatism within the U.S. is not a strategy that comes out of the blue.  Chávez had also called for Puerto Ricans to free themselves from “U.S. imperialism,” as had Fidel Castro and as does Castro’s brother and successor as Cuban president, Raúl Castro.  In fact, in 2011 the Italian-American, Puerto Rican writer Giannina Braschi published The United States of Banana, which depicted Chávez, Castro, and three other populist left-wing Latin American leaders—Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner—leading a campaign to “liberate” Puerto Rico.  For Latin Americans bristling at two centuries of the U.S. “Monroe Doctrine,” Puerto Rico is Exhibit A.

Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, and Evo Morales in 2011

More to the point, Chávez and Maduro had long accused the United States of pursuing its own economic goals in Venezuela by fomenting separatism in the country’s westernmost state, Zulia.  Known as “the Texas of Venezuela,” Zulia has 40% of the country’s oil.  It has always been the least “Venezuelan” part of Venezuela and for much of the 19th century had a sort of semi-autonomous status—an independent streak which the discovery of oil only widened.  In 1925, an American oil speculator from the Texas of the United States—you know, Texas—named William F. Buckley, Sr. (yes, he was the father of that William F. Buckley, Jr.), tried to stir up a separatist rebellion in Zulia as part of his attempt to corner the market on Venezuelan oil.  He had bought up valuable tracts of land in Zulia and was also trying to convince the government in Caracas to develop a port on the Paraguaná Peninsula, in Falcón state just to Zulia’s east, in order to make it the country’s one transshipment point—convenient for whoever controlled Zulia’s oil reserves.  But Buckley was elbowed aside by other competitors, like Gulf Oil.

Today in Zulia, a political movement called Our Way (Rumbo Propio) is pushing for a devolved parliamentary government for the state along the lines of Catalonia’s within Spain and Scotland’s within the United Kingdom.  But during the 2000s Chávez accused Bush outright of covertly supporting alleged Zulian separatist militants.  This was never substantiated, and in fact full-on Zulian separatism seems to barely exist.  But it did not help when a joint NATO military exercise in the Caribbean in 2001 called Plan Balboa simulated an invasion of Venezuela and the “liberation” of Zulia—or when Bush’s ambassador to Venezuela in 2005 referred to the province as “the independent western Republic of Zulia”—or when, that same year, the right-wing extremist American evangelist Pat Robertson, a confidante of Bush’s, called for Chávez’s assassination.  Bush’s military probably did have an “if we ‘have to’ invade Venezuela” plan on the shelf, but the idea that he would further stretch the U.S. military at a time of war in Iraq and Afghanistan by “liberating” Zulia, and thus diplomatically alienating every single other country in the hemisphere, is ludicrous even by Bush standards.  But Chávez, in his increasingly bombastic and paranoid later years, was convinced.  Even in the Barack Obama era, Maduro might still be convinced that such an invasion is imminent.

Zulia, Venezuela’s westernmost state

But back to Puerto Rico.  Unfortunately for Maduro, a referendum in Puerto Rico in 2012 came out with only 5.5% supporting independence for the territory (a referendum discussed extensively at the time in this blog).  The great majority of Puerto Rican voters—61.13%—wanted to become the 51st U.S. state.  Almost no one there is happy with the status quo: though it has had its own Olympic team since 1948, Puerto Rico is firmly under U.S. jurisdiction, but Puerto Ricans are represented in Washington only by one non-voting observer member of the U.S. House of Representatives and have to move to the mainland if they want to vote for president.  During the 2012 presidential campaign, with its crucial Hispanic vote, every candidate seemed to like the idea of Puerto Rican statehood, but the reality is that the U.S. Congress would need to approve any additions to the Union—and, in a tradition dating at least as far back as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, it is really only politically feasible to admit two states in tandem, one in the column of each of the two major political parties.  And that is a low priority nowadays on Capitol Hill, where Republicans and Democrats can barely agree on emergency budget measures to keep the government functioning.  There’s the added problem of whether Puerto Rico would be a blue state or a red state.  It is traditionally Republican but, like most of the U.S. Hispanic population, went heavily for Obama in 2008 and 2012, in what may or may not be a permanent shift.  A surer bet would be the simultaneous admission of the hardcore-Democratic District of Columbia alongside one of the many Republican 51st-state proposals going right now, in places like northern Colorado, western Maryland, and northern California.

A rare pro-independence voter in the 2012 Puerto Rico referendum

The cause of Puerto Rican independence has become much more marginal since its heyday in the 1960s and early 1970s, when it was energized by the popular revolution in neighboring Cuba and inspired by the Civil Rights movement and by the Black Power and Red Power movements in the mainland U.S.  Puerto Rican separatism has always had a left-wing flavor, its infiltration and near “neutralization” by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) at the time, plus, more recently, the end of the Cold War and a general American political shift rightward in the 1980s and ’90s, have left the movement rather moribund.

Puerto Rican independence activists in the 1960s

However, an even third of voters opted for a “free association” status, similar to that enjoyed by three former U.S. colonies in the Pacific: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau.  Those three nations have something significantly more than quasi-independence; they are members of the United Nations General Assembly.  (Other examples of “free association” states are the New Zealand territories of Niue and the Cook Islands and the United Kingdom satellite states the Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey—none of those five being U.N. member states, however.)  Perhaps once Puerto Ricans realize there is a third way—with some of the advantages of statehood, nearly all the advantages of independence, and none of the diplomatic isolation that has plagued Cuba—then that current 49% approval of either independence or “free association” status could coalesce into a serious movement.  Perhaps.  But if so, it will have to come from below, and it won’t be because Maduro and Castro’s thundering paranoid rhetoric convinces them of what they are supposed to want.

This is actually the flag of the Venezuelan state of Zulia ...

... which is allegedly not inspired by the American superhero the Flash.

[You can read more about Zulia, Puerto Rico, and other separatist movements both famous and obscure in my new book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas just published by Litwin Books under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements and Aspirant Nations, from Abkhazia to Zanzibar.  The book, which contains 46 maps and 554 flags (or, more accurately, 554 flag images), is available for order now on Amazon.  Meanwhile, please “like” the book (even if you haven’t read it yet) on Facebook and see this special announcement for more information on the book.]

El Salvador Grants Recognition to Kosovo as Haiti Cuts Ties with Sahrawi Republic

It’s been a week of one step forward and one step back for partially recognized states in the Old World trying to solidify diplomatic support in the Americas.  The Republic of El Salvador became the 105th sovereign state to recognize the independence of the Republic of Kosovo, but the Republic of Haiti surprised observers by revoking its diplomatic recognition of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (S.A.D.R.) (a.k.a. Western Sahara), the former Spanish Sahara mostly occupied by Morocco.

The October 4th announcement on Kosovo came via the Twitter feed of Enver Hoxhaj, the country’s foreign minister, who learned of El Salvador’s decision through the Kosovar embassy in New York.  Kosovo had most recently received recognition from Libya, Grenada, and Thailand.  The former Serbian province, still claimed by the Republic of Serbia, has been steadily gaining diplomatic partners following the signal moment in December 2012 when the Commonwealth of Dominica, a former British colony in the Caribbean, became the 97th United Nations member-state to grant recognition, which pushed Kosovo over the 50% mark (as reported at the time in this blog).

Countries that recognize Kosovo are shown in green.

But Kosovo’s membership in the U.N. General Assembly is still blocked by two of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, both for reasons of paranoia about their own internal fissions and Russia for the added reason of an emotional pan-Slavic, and thus pro-Serbian, ideological allegiance.  Currently, Western allies of Kosovo are attempting at least to convince some of the holdouts among Kosovo’s immediate neighbors, in particular Romania and Greece.

In the case of Greece, Kosovo’s secession still brings up ugly memories of the predominantly-Slavic Republic of Macedonia’s emergence from the wreckage of Yugoslavia in 1993.  Athens still points out that Macedonia is historically a culturally-Greek region lying mostly within Greece (Alexander the Great was Macedonian, for example).  Greeks also seem unable to shake memories of the Second World War, following which a new Macedonia within Yugoslavia—with the current republic’s borders—was founded by partisans of a fascist insurgent army which had connived in Nazi-allied Bulgaria’s invasion of Greece and had tried to seat an Aromanian nationalist as voivode (prince) of an independent Slavic state in the Macedonia region that would be a refuge for Greece’s Aromanian minority as well.  (Aromanians speak a language related to Romanian.)  Romania itself, a staunch European Union and NATO member, will probably come around.  (See more detail on Kosovo’s status in my blog article from last year on the subject.)

The dotted line shows the approximate extent of the traditional Greek region of Macedonia.

Other European holdouts include Spain, which has its own internal Basque and Catalan separatist movements, and Slovakia.

Countries that recognize the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic are in green.  Dark grey are those, including Haiti, that have withdrawn recognition over the years.  The S.A.D.R. itself is in red.

A bit less understandable than Kosovo’s successes and setbacks is the recent move by Haiti, announced this week, to withdraw its 2006 recognition of the Sahrawi republic.  The S.A.D.R. claims all of Western Sahara but the “black,” sub-Saharan Sahrawi people are at the mercy of the brutal repression of (Arab) Moroccan occupation forces.  The S.A.D.R., which administers only a sliver of land behind a series of sand berms erected by Morocco, is recognized by 49 countries, only just over a quarter of U.N. member states, including most of Africa and a considerable number of Latin American countries as well—also by the African Union (A.U.).  Haiti follows a few other Caribbean nations in withdrawing membership—mostly as a result of buckling to diplomatic pressure from Morocco, which is something of a diplomatic pariah nation within Africa but which for countries farther afield is a more promising economic partner.

In red is the territory controlled by the partially recognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

But in Haiti’s case it is disappointing because of the country’s symbolic role for African anti-colonialists.  In 1804, after a successful slave revolt, Haiti became, in terms of the modern system of nation-states, the second independent modern state in the Americas (after the United States) and the first Black republic anywhere.  In the late 1960s, Haiti was also the only non-African state among the five that recognized the Republic of Biafra before that nation was crushed by a brutal siege by Nigeria.

Haiti symbolizes freedom from colonialism for many sub-Saharan Africans—
but this week not so much.

Pan-African unity is supposed to be a big deal for Haiti.  Perhaps it will before long come to its senses and put ideals before economics and convenience.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it some time in 2014.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]

Breaking News: Dominica Throws Hat in Ring, Now More than Half of Countries Recognize Kosovo

Following last month’s establishments of diplomatic relations by the Republic of Fiji (as reported at the time in this blog) and, the following week, the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis, another Caribbean island nation, the Commonwealth of Dominica this week became the 97th independent state to recognize the Republic of Kosovo.

This officially tips the balance, so that now just over one-half of the United Nations’ 193 member states now recognize Kosovo.

States that recognize Kosovo are shown in green.

Neither of the U.N. General Assembly’s two non-member observer states, the State of Palestine (recognized by 131 out of 193 U.N. member states) and Vatican City, recognizes Kosovo.

Kosovo is also recognized by the Republic of China (Taiwan), which itself is recognized by only 22 U.N. member states, plus the Vatican.

Dominica’s bitchen flag

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]