Election Day: Euphemism for Doomsday for most of us. The country stands on the edge of its seat today as we await the results of perhaps the most important election of our generation. This comes after last week’s few closing rallies, meant to help those who are still undecided to establish a stance that can at the very least back a vote at the polls. Whilst Vice President Kamala Harris’s rallies continued on their message of hope and progress, former President Donald Trump’s rally last Monday left many groups with a sour taste in their mouths.
At this rally, roast comedian Tony Hinchcliffe performed what was supposed to be a comedy sketch as an opening speaker for Trump. However, it instead turned out to be more of a hate mongering squabble of multiple groups than an actually funny set. Amidst the insults against African Americans with comments about watermelons and the entire Latino population with the “can’t stop making babies” nonsense, one comment in particular stood out amongst all others: “I don’t know if you guys knew this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the ocean right now. Yeah. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.” And with those simple words, Hinchcliffe single handedly became public enemy number one of an entire nationality.
With the known fact that us Puerto Ricans are very proud of our Puerto Rican-ness, it won’t surprise anyone to know that in the aftermath of the comments Hinchcliffe was faced with the collective middle finger of the entire island, being both insulted and memed to death on the internet. And even then he had the audacity to tweet and double down on his comments, claiming that the left took the joke out of context because he loves Puerto Rico solely because he vacations there – to which, if you check the comments under that post – made people even more angry at him.
As a result of this, the topic of PR’s relationship to the United States has come back into the national spotlight. For context, Puerto Rico has been an unincorporated territory of the U.S for the past 125 years – a fancier way of saying we’ve been a colony for the past 125 years. Our island is completely dependent on the United States federal government on a military, economic and political standpoint. While we have our governmental system and its respective divisions and powers, we are still heavily reliant on the legislation that comes out of the White House. Every decision that is decided by Congress and the President massively affects Puerto Ricans’ livelihoods, but we can’t participate in these decisions because we are not treated like a part of the mainland since we can’t vote on any legislation and our only voice in Congress, the resident commissioner, holds no vote and therefore, no power.
To what will piss off many Republicans, I do not and have never considered myself an American, because I am not. I am a Puerto Rican, a puertorriqueña, a boricua and each of the million other names we’ve devised to call ourselves. I acknowledge my U.S citizenship, but that does not warrant me calling myself an American. I should not have to be proud of being a citizen of a country who has my people under colonial hold just because I study here. I should not have to fit the image of what an American is just to appease an egocentric, misogynistic, racist candidate who wants to destroy the country’s democracy only to empower himself.
Now I speak to my 300,000 Puerto Rican brothers and sisters here in Connecticut: I know you’re angry too. We as Puerto Ricans share the same love and passion for our island, its culture and its history and we have now seen how Republicans such as Trump see us; to call our home garbage is not only disgusting, but it’s a blatant slap in the face as citizens. It is simple, blatant racism, but we do not have to stand for it. You can help to prove that we Puerto Ricans deserve to be treated with equality under the U.S government and that, no matter how many times we are beaten down over our identity, we will fight back and show just how proud we are to be Boricua, and to you, reader: please think about us as you cast your ballot today, because you hold our futures in your hands too.