At the recent Puerto Rico Equality and Statehood Summit held in Washington D.C., Governor Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon reiterated her commitment to statehood for Puerto Rico, emphasized the clear majorities for statehood in all the plebiscites held in this century, and said that she intends to work with Congress to introduce another statehood bill. “Statehood is for the people,” she said, “and as governor, I will support it. I will make it happen.”
Gonzalez-Colon has been a firm advocate for statehood throughout her career in public service. She introduced four status bills for Puerto Rico, including both statehood admission bills and the Puerto Rico Status Act. The PRSA was a compromise bill aimed at providing a permanent non-territorial political status for Puerto Rico. While there is talk of reintroducing this bill in the current Congress, Gonzalez-Colon said at the Summit that she would favor a yes/no vote on statehood like the ones that led to the admissions of Hawaii and Alaska in the 1950s.
Previous governors also supported statehood
Previous Puerto Rico Governors Pedro Pierluisi (2021-2025) , Wanda Vázquez Garced (2019-2021), Ricardo Rossello (2017-2019), and Luis G. Fortuño (2009-2013) also called for statehood. In 2017, under Governor Rossello, the territorial government voted to implement the Tennessee Plan for statehood after the 2017 plebiscite saw 97% of voters choose statehood. Rossello led an elected delegation to Washington and made a formal request for statehood.
Former Puerto Rico Governor Luis Ferre (1969-1972), also a legendary business leader and philanthropist, said in 1997 Congressional testimony: “In 1949 — and many of you were not born then– I testified before a Committee of Congress, a subcommittee in Congress, on the subject of statehood for Puerto Rico. And at that time I said we are behind in our economic development because we are not a State of the Union. You have to give us our full – all the instruments that the States have to be able to bring Puerto Rico up to the same level as the rest of the nation. We don’t want gifts, but we want the tools so that we can do it…We are not a Latin American country anymore. Cuba is, [but] we changed, we took a different route. We became part of the United States. And we … want to work up to the same level of dignity and equal rights as the rest of the country.”
Some governors did not support statehood
While most recent governors have fought for statehood, there have been some governors in the past who championed an “enhanced commonwealth” version of the territorial status quo. For example, Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla claimed that Puerto Rico was “not a mere territory” and attempted to convince the U.S. Senate in a Senate hearing on Puerto Rico status that Puerto Rico already was an enhanced commonwealth, though he was unable to define that status when asked to do so. Gov. Rafael Hernández Colón, grandfather of the current resident commissioner, was another governor who supported “enhanced commonwealth.”
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