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.]

Let a Thousand Secession Petitions Bloom: The U.S. Balkanized, but Perhaps Only on the White House Website, Nowhere Else—but Most Importantly: What Does All This Have to Do with Topless Car Washes and the State of Jefferson?

Since the day after Barack Obama’s re-election on November 6th as president of the United States, “Let’s secede from the Union!” has become conservative Republicans’ equivalent to liberal Democrats’ refrain after George W. Bush prevailed (“won” is too strong a word) in the 2000 and 2004 elections: “I’m moving to Canada!”  In both cases it’s mostly bluster and the venting of steam—or is it?  As discussed in detail in a blog article here three days ago, the Obama administration provides a “We the People” feature on its WhiteHouse.gov website, where any individual can start a petition, and the administration commits itself to giving at least some sort of a reply to any which garners 25,000 signatures in the space of a month.  This has inspired a proliferation of petitions for individual states to secede from the Union.  Louisiana and Texas (Texas has more separatist sentiment than any other state—though Louisiana was a surprise here) led off within the first 24 hours.  The Southern states were early adopters of the idea and have made the strongest showing.  Three days ago, only four states, and arguably the most liberal four—Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Vermont—had no petitions, but since then that has ceased to be the case (though their numbers are still laughably low).  Now there are petitions from all 50 states.

Among over a million signatures in all of the secession petitions, seven have reached the 25,000-signature thresholds: Texas, with 113,120 signatures as of the morning of November 17th, Louisiana (36,094), Florida (33,617), Tennessee (30,133), Alabama (29,468), North Carolina (29,446), Georgia (31,135, plus two identical petitions with an additional 19,906 votes)—all Southern states.  Another Deep South state, South Carolina, would be at the threshold if its effort were not divided between two petitions, with 23,321 and 14,762 votes.  This is also true of Missouri (34,244 signatures spread among three petitions) and Oklahoma (26,576 in two petitions).  Four additional states have over 20,000 and seem poised to exceed the 25,000 mark: Arizona (22,313), Arkansas (22,196), Colorado (21,288), and Indiana (20,600).  Others may reach it as well; there’s plenty of time left.  Other strong performers like Pennsylvania, California, Mississippi, and Kentucky may well reach it, as well: there’s plenty of time.

A University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill study produced this map showing the density of secessionist sentiment after an analysis of this week’s online petitions.  Compare to this map of how the election went ...

There have also been counter-petitions: ones to keep the U.S. united, ones to keep individual states in the union (pretty weak showings there), some to strip citizenship from secession petitioners or to say a brisk “sayonara” to secessionist states.  Austin, Texas (with 7,817 signatures), and Atlanta, Georgia (with 1,436), are petitioning to stay in the U.S. if their states secede—which would be tricky, since they are landlocked capitals.  Likewise El Paso, where 1,130 residents wish to stop being part of Texas—though whether they want to stay in the U.S. as a separate state or become an independent nation themselves is not specified.

Even the State of Jefferson—an old idea to cobble together a new state out of rural counties in southern Oregon and northern California—has gotten a boost with 611 votes.  The Jefferson idea has lots of Tea Party fans, but it is not clear if these petitioners want to stay in the union in case California and Oregon secede, or want their own separate country, or are merely hopping on the bandwagon with their own, pre-existing idea for a 51st state.

So how will Obama react to these petitions—since he has already indicated he will respond to those that reach the 25,000 threshold?  Probably by invoking the fact that there are theoretically procedures in place for states to pursue secession.  It is only folklore that Texas has a special constitutional provision allowing it to secede at any point.  Though legally untested, probably departures from the union, like admissions to it, will need to be ratified by Congress.  The State of Alaska, famously, once brought its Alaska Independence Party to court and prevailed, exempting it from any obligation to hold a plebiscite.  But this could change—and each state would have to pursue its own course.  Theoretically, of course.  These numbers may be reaching surprisingly high numbers, but they are still low as popular movements go.

Here, by the way, are some other reactions to the secession-petition wave ...

Rick Perry “Shares Frustrations” but Won’t Back a Split; Ron Paul Warm to Idea.  The office of the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, who took flak during his run for the Republican nomination for the presidency for favorable comments on Texan independence, tamped down talk of secession this week, with a spokeswoman saying, “Gov. Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it.  But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government.”  The governor’s office was responding to the nearly 100,000 signatures on the online petition—started by Micah Hurd, a U.S. Marines veteran University of Texas–Arlington freshman.  Meanwhile, Cary Wise, membership director for the Texas Nationalist Movement (T.N.M.), reported a surge in interest in his group, adding, “We’re not gonna start a revolution; we’re not gonna go shoot anybody.  We’re gonna politically and peacefully, through the pressure of the sovereign people of the State of Texas, we will change this.  People ask if Texas independence will really happen.  Folks, it is inevitable.”  The president of the T.N.M., Daniel Miller, said that this month’s presidential elections proves that “ a majority of the people in the United States ... esteem the principles of Karl Marx.”

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Ron Paul, the several-times Libertarian and Republican presidential candidate who represents part of southern Texas for the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, said that Paul “feels the same now” as he did when he recorded a controversial 2009 video on YouTube in which he said it was “very American to talk about secession.”  The right-wing talk-show host Alex Jones proposes a secession-oriented “second American revolution” led by Paul.  And Bob Smiley (his real name), a former research assistant for the gratingly effete crypto-fascist William F. Buckley, Jr., and author of a new comic novel about a separatist Texan governor titled Don’t Mess with Travis, is reiterating this week that Texas would be quite viable as a separate nation.

“Didn’t We Try That Once Before?” Dixie Governors React to Secession Petitions.  The Republican governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, called the petitions “silly,” adding, “We are proud to be part of the greatest country in the history of the world.  Whatever our political differences, we are American first.”  Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Haslam, said on November 13th, “I don’t think that’s a valid option for Tennessee.  I don’t think we’ll be seceding.”  The governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, another Republican, said of the petitions, “Didn’t we try that once before?  I love this country.  I’m going to fight for this country.  I’m going to do everything I can for this country, and this country is going to be great.”  However, she did not specify which country she meant: the U.S., the Confederacy, or South Carolina.

South Carolina’s governor, Nikki Haley

The same day, a spokeswoman for Robert Bentley, Alabama’s Republican governor, poured cold water on attempts to stoke separatism in that state, saying, “Governor Bentley believes in one nation under God.  While there is frustration with the federal government, Governor Bentley believes that states can be great laboratories of change.”  Alabama’s secession petition was started by Derrick Belcher, a 45-year-old truck driver who calls himself “an absolute Libertarian.”  Belcher said, “If you look at a map of the red states, we have all of the oil and we produce all of the food.  We’re the ones that are carrying the rest of the nation.”  Belcher is the former owner of a topless car wash in Mobile which was shut down by the authorities in 2001 on obscenity charges.  Of those events, he says, “The government ripped my business away, and now they’re choking America to death with rules and regulations.”

The former career path of Alabama’s separatist revolutionary Derrick Belcher.

Meanwhile, in a quiet northwestern corner of the nation, secession plans that were already underway are proceeding apace ...

New Hampshire Separatist Foundation Established, with Libertarian Links.  Five citizens of New Hampshire have registered a new non-profit organization called the Foundation for New Hampshire Independence.  Neal Conner, a technology consultant originally from Florida who lives in Manchester, N.H., and who is treasurer of the Foundation, told media, “This nation has grown too large to be represented by a few people, a few bureaucrats, in Washington.”  Conner is affiliated with the Free State Project, a libertarian initiative to encourage libertarian-minded individuals to move to low-population U.S. states so as to create the conditions for greater autonomy and libertarian-style government.

Watch this space for more updates.  If the United States breaks up like Yugoslavia, we’ll be the first to know.

One liberal’s vision for the future

[You can read more about these 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.]

Obituary: Russell Charles Means (1939-2012)

Russell Means, the Lakota Sioux political activist, separatist leader, actor, author, and even United States presidential aspirant, died October 22nd at his home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, at the age of 72.

Russell Means is on the far left.

Born on Pine Ridge in 1939, he grew up in California and in the late 1960s and early ’70s gained prominence as an early member and leader of the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.), the premier voice of the “Red Power” movement.  He was a central figure, along with Leonard Peltier and Dennis Banks, in actions such as the Trail of Broken Treaties, the occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (B.I.A.) offices in Washington, D.C., and, in 1973, the months-long occupation of wounded Knee, South Dakota, which riveted the nation and became the most important act of American Indian resistance in the 20th century.  In it, an Independent Oglala Nation was declared and protesters demanded that the U.S. adhere to treaties which, if adhered to, would create a gigantic autonomous region for Sioux people in the northern Plains.  Two people were killed, and President Richard Nixon suppressed the uprising with the military, the only time since the Civil War that the U.S. military has used violence against U.S. citizens on U.S. territory.

Means confounded categories of political left and right.  Though he railed against American imperialism, he also cooperated with Ronald Reagan’s administration in documenting atrocities against Miskito Indians to demonize the Communist dictatorship in Nicaragua, and in 1987 he ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, losing the nomination to Ron Paul, then an unknown.    He saw parallels between the libertarian cause and the Indian one, saying at one point, “So Indian policy has become institutionalized and the result has been that American people have become more dependent on government and that the American people have become more dependent on corporations.”

Politics makes strange bedfellows.

In 1992 he played Chingachgook opposite Daniel Day-Lewis’s Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, and he also appeared in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and in numerous other roles in film and television.  His 1995 autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread was a best-seller.  

Means as Chingachgook, third from left

[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.]