In the Prayer of Saint Francis,¹ which happens to have been my grandmother’s favorite prayer, there is a line that I always pray with particular fervor, perhaps in hopes of embodying it properly one day.

O Lord, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

Now, this may be a Catholic prayer, but I don’t think you have to be churched the same way I was (or at all, really) to recognize the importance of the obligations enumerated there. We don’t all need to elevate self-sacrifice to quite the same level of fetish as I do, but it shouldn’t be controversial (and I don’t think it is) to argue that, if you want to live in a society, you owe other human beings some measure of fellowship.

Speaking of obligations, why not subscribe, so you can further understand me?²

Notwithstanding the buccalingual character of the previous sentence, it seems to me that the universality of this obligation founders on the fact that some of us, subconsciously or not, are designated as people to be consoled, understood, and loved, and some of us are correspondingly assigned to be consolers, understanders and, uh, victims of a parallelism gone well askew.

Want to see this in action? Try being multilingual in the United States sometime. It doesn’t matter how few other languages you speak or how publicly you admit to rustiness in those other languages, every monolingual USian will assume that your ability to get through a two-minute conversation in anything but English without shaking and crying must mean that you were implanted at birth with a universal translator, and therefore it cannot be but child’s play for you to translate bidirectionally from (and to) their idiolect.

If that feels too personal, watch what happens every single time some semi-well-intentioned gringue with too many BlueSky followers says that DC and Puerto Rico should become states because it would guarantee³ Trump has a sad, or pokes their head into some article about the ongoing water crisis or rolling blackouts on the island to say that the government couldn’t get away with this if Puerto Rico were a state, as if the universe had somehow mysteriously severed Flint and New Orleans from their constitutionally-mandated Congressional representation.

Invariably, like their theatrical avatars, Puerto Ricans smell the ahistorical chum and swarm the replies of some poor lib poster who (whether because they are the dominant lifeform on the Twitter-That-Isn’t or due to general USian protagonism) has never for a second contemplated that they might be out of their depth. Anything less than an immediate and total apology and promise to do better only invites further response and a widening of the circle until, in some particularly dire cases, I’ll see several of my mutuals sequentially dunking on multiple posts from the same user.

You would be right to detect, in the previous paragraph, a certain annoyance with this phenomenon. My thought process went something like this: not only do I not need to see the millionth person who thinks that Puerto Ricans should be flattered to lash themselves to the USS Past-Sell-By, but dogpiling that person is not only unlikely to convince them of the truth—that Puerto Rico, the world’s oldest colony, deserves the same chance to chart its own destiny that its own imperial suzerain just got done masturbating to a month ago as of this writing—but very likely to negatively polarize⁴ everyone watching it happen against the idea of an independent Puerto Rico. If you want to be understood and supported, (so my mind went) you can’t start at the piss-and-vinegar stage.

You would also be right to detect, in the previous paragraph, that I said “my thought process went like this.” Past tense. What I began to notice is how horror and struck every one of these Good USians was to find out that Puerto Ricans exist who do not feel like fixing their mess. Not just that, these Puerto Ricans demand to sit in the expert’s chair and pontificate about something other than rum, mofongo, or good beaches.

What converted me was the soreness with which every one of these people, of every variety the US can raise up and smite down and yet pump all of them full of Main Character Syndrome, bore the apparent betrayal of their subjects, as if we should gratefully accept a wholly transactional interest in our political situation from our supposed betters.

Well, fuck that.

I intend to spend the rest of this article presenting, and then knocking down, each common argument I see in these threads. When necessary, I’ll recur to data or hard evidence, but you know what we always say around here: be for real.

If your collar’s feeling hot, it’s because no amount of hard facts will change your mind on the inherent virtue of the USA. I am more than willing to engage with you, but I refuse to give the imperialist in your head the time of day.

“Didn’t the majority vote for statehood? We should respect the will of the voters.”

Sure—if you allow for caveats big enough to attract satellites.

I could point out that status referenda in Puerto Rico have historically garbage turnout: notably, the 2017 one had fewer votes than any of the others in history, due to an oppositionwide boycott.⁵

I could tell you that statehood advocates are linked to some of the most cartoonish corruption scandals in Puerto Rican history.

If I’m feeling spicy, I could point out that pro-independence voters and activists have been on the receiving end of legislative and extralegal violence.

Here’s the thing, though: none of that matters, because you’re foggily remembering a headline or two that you saw years ago, and you’re mad that someone is resisting your West-Wing-ass quick fix plan to save USian democracy.

The majority of colonists weren’t Patriots, either, but I don’t see anyone insisting King Charles III should get to rule another Dominion.

“If we made DC and Puerto Rico states, the Republicans would never win another election.”

I won’t speak for DC (which should be a state, to be clear) but boy, have you not met enough Puerto Ricans in your life. Do you think the fat kid who kept questioning whether he was straight left because the island was too progressive?

Things improved, exponentially, in my absence; five years ago, violence against transgender people in Puerto Rico merited a state of emergency.⁶

Things then got worse, like they did everywhere else: there is now a homophobic, transphobic, anti-choice, anti-porn, pretty much explicitly Christofascist party in Puerto Rico with a mayoralty and a seat in each legislative chamber. Just over a year ago, Puerto Rico became one of a couple dozen US jurisdictions to ban gender-affirming care for anyone under 21 and threaten doctors with fines and delicensing for providing the service. The current governor of Puerto Rico, a statehood supporter who has remade herself fully in MAGA’s image, went from a cosponsor of the Equality Act to appealing to the social and religious views of the worst people you and I know. Do you think noted moral invertebrate Jenniffer González would be doing that if there weren’t votes to be gained?

Again, though, if you’re saying this, you’re making some pretty big assumptions based on how you think Latine voters behave. Puerto Ricans are just as capable of voting for and supporting Republicans as any other ethnicity, especially when those Republicans, like Rick Scott, make a point of talking to them, instead of assuming they’re in the tank.

“Puerto Rico can’t survive on its own. It’d become a banana republic / tax haven / [insert other new term for “Third World country”].”

I’ll be the first to tell you that an independent Puerto Rico would face a hard road towards self-sufficiency. Such is the fate of expansion teams, especially ones that come into being long after everyone else’s figured out how to protect their assets.

But look at the situation right now: Puerto Rico hemorrhages money through laws like the Jones Act and Act 22, which should be considered a crime against humanity simply for foisting Jake Paul on my people. Puerto Ricans suffer under predatory contracts with companies like Genera PR and LUMA while the federal government does its best impression of a small-market MLB owner and pretends they can’t rebuild the crumbling infrastructure that exacerbates water and power crises on the island. Constitutionally public lands get handed over to developers to turn into luxury resorts. Young Puerto Ricans who seek to help their country achieve food sovereignty find themselves fighting their own government.

In other words, even if this hypothetical argument is correct . . . in what way, exactly, is Puerto Rico not currently those things?

Any scenario under which Puerto Rican independence is possible would also create an immediate and inescapable obligation for reparations. Smart and good-hearted pro-statehood lefties recognize the need for these, and advocate them as part of a framework for putting a Puerto Rican state on even footing—but I don’t think they realize that, to their fellow USians, becoming the 51st star is supposed to be reward enough.

After all, this is the country that thought 12 years of reconstructing an economy built on slavery and rape was enough.⁷

“What about Puerto Ricans with US passports? Wouldn’t they lose them? It’d be hard to visit family stateside.”

To me, this one’s more a reflection of living in a country that has continually abused immigrants while wanting them to form part of the national myth. Earlier this year, Italy decided to treat USians the way USians treat everyone else for about six months and CNN lost its goddamn mind.

Anyway, the point is: you know that multiple citizenship is a thing, right?

“There’s no actual support on the island for independence. It’s all diaspora people.”

This one’s pretty funny to me personally: I left Puerto Rico as the only non-independence supporter in my generation of the family.

It happens to be untrue, of course. The same 2024 gubernatorial election that gets trotted out as proof Puerto Rico is slavering at the mouth to become permanently lashed to the sick man of North America also saw a pro-independence candidate win 30% of the vote. You can’t have it both ways.

Again, though, this isn’t coming from a place of subject-matter expertise. This is a person looking to impugn the independence movement not because of its political program, but because of perceived deficiencies in its supporters. While I think that can be a legitimate tactic (after all, that’s what I’m doing right now), I submit that it’s not exactly a knockout punch to say that people who left to find better opportunities and who have lived in the monster and know its entrails might want to see some real change in the system.

“Who cares? They’re too white to be actual revolutionaries.”

This is a real argument I’ve heard, in various degrees of strength: sometimes it’s “you never see BIPOC supporting independence,” sometimes it’s more a champagne socialist look, but in either case it’s an attempt to say that independence isn’t wrong because it’s bad policy, but because the wrong people support it.

Such an argument should be laughable on its face. Even if Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín, Antonio José de Sucre, and Bernardo “Congratulations, Professor” O'-fucking-Higgins had all been of pure Indigenous stock, thereby apparently investing the rebellions of Latin America with the proper historical rectitude, I shouldn’t have to provide a bunch of links here to remind you that the Continental Congress was made up of a bunch of white guys, many of whom owned human beings.

Given that people make it despite this immovable fact, I can only surmise that they’re not even willing to put in real effort to argue against us.

I’m sure there are plenty of silly arguments I’ve left out, and I’d be glad to address them in the future, but the main thing is this: if you’re surprised by the fervor with which some Puerto Ricans respond to your suggestion that our cultural and historical distinctiveness be added to your own, perhaps consider whether you are, subconsciously or not, expecting us to be the human spackle that allows you to plug the holes in your democracy. Ya basta.