U.N. Statement on Puerto Rico
June 20, 2022
Buenos días.
My name is María Isabelle Pérez-Hedges, and I am here on behalf of the Puerto Ricans in Minnesota Committee (PRIM): a collective that organizes and educates legislators locally and nationally regarding the political status of Puerto Rico. As a Puerto Rican born on the Dakota and Anishinaabe land of Minnesota, I stand in solidarity with global tribal movements for sovereignty and in support of the decolonization of Puerto Rico.
Puerto Ricans on the island and here in the US have been lied to, blindfolded from the truth of history. We have been fed a paternalistic narrative that Puerto Rico cannot survive independently without the handholding of an imperial power. This narrative, developed through the Jones Act, includes the notion that politicians in Washington, D.C., and their puppets on the island are more equipped to lead than the people of Puerto Rico themselves.
Yet, a cycle of horrific tragedies and traumatic policies have proven that the decision on Puerto Rico’s status cannot be left to anyone other than the Puerto Rican people. The Puerto Rican people are the ones who continue to endure and persevere through a failed American experiment as part of the 528 years of colonization on the island of Boriken.
We must empower, support and trust the Puerto Rican people in Puerto Rico to lead the island of our ancestors towards a just and independent future.
We are demanding that Puerto Rico no longer be the war booty for a colonial regime that has a past of sterilizing our women and experimenting on our bodies, a colonial regime that has a long history of destroying our island’s environment, a colonial regime that has abandoned the people of Puerto Rico by breaking a century of “promesas” from the Jones Act of 1917, to the military testing in Vieques, to the failure to provide the most basic fundamental emergency aid and resources as a human right throughout an environmental and humanitarian crisis.
I quote the great Boricua Eugenio María Hostos who stated “How sad and overwhelming and shameful it is to see Puerto Rico go from owner to owner without ever having been her own, and to see her pass from sovereignty to sovereignty without ever ruling herself.”
I am a second generation Boricua born in the US who carries the orgullo of my grandparent’s devotion and dedication to their flag. I am a daughter of Nuyoricans who were drafted to war and marched with the Young Lords to demand human rights, and I am an ally for my family, mentors and friends still on the island who have been organizing for peaceful transformative change for the next generation of the Puerto Rican People. I stand here to voice our stories, histories, and dreams.
Que viva Puerto Rico Libre como un encanto para su nación, para la justicia en memoria de nuestros ancestros y por la luz del futuro para la juventud Boricua.