CARTA SOBRE LA IGUALDAD
August 9, 2013
Via Priority Mail
US Senate Committee
on Energy and Natural Resources
304
Dirksen Senate Building
Washington, DC 20510
Washington, DC 20510
Re: Response to Public Hearing of August 1, 2013 of the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
by Dr. Hernán Padilla and Alfredo Castellanos, Esq.
Dear Committee,
Greetings from Puerto
Rico! By means of introduction, my name is Dr. Hernán Padilla, I am a former two term Mayor of San
Juan, Puerto Rico, our capital city, and the first hispanic President of the
Counsel of United States Conference of Mayors. The co-author of this letter,
Mr. Alfredo Castellanos, Esq. serves both as legal counsel of our organization
and constitutional and historical advisor. I currently preside over a
non-partisan, grass-roots citizen advocacy organization comprised of hundreds
of members directly, and thousands of members through affiliated supporters and
independent groups, whose sole mission is to support Puerto Rico as the 51st
State of the Union. Our organization,
and the undersigned, believes that equality of rights as well as true
individual and the state sovereignty, can only be achieved under our
Constitutional Order through Statehood.
Being that it is
evident that the time has come for Congress to act upon Puerto Rico’s desire to
become a State of the Union[1],
it behooves our organization and the undersigned to express some to our
thoughts and concerns regarding the above matter, with the aspiration that our
contribution will assist this committee in analyzing the predicament that 3.7
million American citizens face by being disenfranchised, among other compelling
realities and inequities and Republican deficiencies in our territorial
constitutional structure.
As history illustrates,
since the founding of our Republic, the aspiration of the American People is to
recognize and implement the revolutionary concept that people are capable of governing
themselves in the pursuit of their respective happiness. Unfortunately, this
noble aspiration has not been reached by numerous marginalized and
disenfranchised groups. Puerto Rico is among them.
Our Founding fathers
original conception was to create a permanent union of states and citizens so
that our nation would become the beacon of liberty and of the exercise of
democratic principles throughout the world. Unfortunately, as it pertains to
the people and the citizens of Puerto Rico our Constitution and the Supreme Court,
interpreting the same, has imposed unfounded and discriminatory “barriers of
entry “into our Union, depriving the people of Puerto Rico fundamental rights
that belong to all Americans. In 2013, with the eyes of the World watching,
Congress has an electoral mandate from the people of Puerto Rico and a moral
responsibility to end the historical segregation and patent discrimination that
have deprived our people of the fruits of our liberty rights and the vast
benefits of participating in our constituted Republican Form of Government. The
People of Puerto Rico deserve no less than the full recognition of their inalienable
rights. Only statehood can guarantee said objective and that is precisely why
our people are demanding Statehood now!
For purposes of
efficiency, we will adapt by reference a letter that was sent by Mr. Alfredo
Castellanos, Esq., in his individual capacity, on June 20, 2013, to the Hon.
Senator Wyden and members of this Committee, addressing important legal and
historical points that should serve to clarify, this committee why the people
of Puerto Rico will not settle for any other resolution of our currently
political status other than Statehood! (Attached
please find a copy of the same as exhibit A).
That is how our Founding Fathers envisioned
the future of all organized territories, and that is how the people of Puerto Rico, given
the proper orientation by Congress, desire it: Equality of law and equal
footing, as a member state under one Constitution, nothing more, nothing less.
To merely consider the
possibility of provoking an act of secession by American citizens who reside in
an organized territory, and in our opinion, by implication, an incorporated territory
of the Union, is repugnant to our Constitutional order. The above would only
serve to illustrate that our Nation is incapable of self-government within the confines
of a permanent union of citizens. Our organization repudiates any efforts that
may be considered by the Congress to destroy the fruits of the Civil War and the
President’s Abraham Lincolns’ concept of a new birth of freedom, for all citizens, ex-slaves, free slaves, blacks,
Asians and, yes, even Hispanics, among others ethnics groups; freedom and
liberty rights that belong to all Americans.
As Mr. Castellanos
stated in his communication, the “Insular Cases” and the incorporate or
incorporated territories that arose from the Supreme Court during
the era when our Nation, erroneously, believed in a racial segregation, Jim
Crow Laws, and refused to acknowledge equal protection of the law to all
persons, is a relic of the past that serves no purpose for defining the options
that the People of Puerto Rico have as to our political future. Independence is
not an option; eternal colonialism is not an option; only statehood was designed
to culminate the process of political integration in a Union where we in Puerto
Rico, through the enactments of the Governor Electoral Act of 1947, have
enjoyed all the privileges and the immunities of citizenship, as if Puerto Rico
was a State of the Union. In fact, we are the only organized territory outside
the continental United States where Congress has opted to create an Article III
Federal District Court as if Puerto Rico were a State of the Union.
It is indeed far too
late to move back the clock on time 115 years and pretend that we are an
organized incorporated territory just beginning our territorial political experiment.
That is simply not acceptable to the People of Puerto Rico and I am certain that
the vast majority of our fellow citizens in the Union support the same point of
view. In 2013, we are also a Nation full of Hispanics and Hispanic history and
traditions. Cultural considerations where never a part of our founding fathers
original concerns about the evolution and growth of our Republic (other than
matters that pertained to the institution of slavery and the rights of Native
American Indians), and they should bare no relevance whatsoever to the cause
and struggle of the People of Puerto Rico for the recognition of our full
political rights and our willingness to assume our individual and collective responsibilities
as citizens of our Union. The People of Puerto Rico are ready to join our Union
as equal partners with our member States without any further delay.
I thank this Committee
for understanding both the situation of Puerto Rico and the present
communication.
Sincerely,
___________________________________________ __________________________________________
Alfredo Castellanos Dr. Hernán Padilla
Counsel for Igualdad President
of Igualdad
cc:/ Hon. Ron Wyden
Hon. Pedro Pierluisi
[1] This is the opinion of the
undersigned that Congress does not need to wait for an expression from the
Executive Branch or the Department Of Justice for an interpretation of our
Constitution, nor for the admission of Puerto Rico as a State of Union, since Article
IV, Sec.3, of our Constitution was intentionally designed by our Founding
Fathers to bestow the above authority upon Congress. The Executive Branch can
either sign the admission bill or veto the same. This is where the President
authority begins and ends form our constitutional perspective period.
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