Eric Purcell (CC BY-NC 2.0)
People hold Puerto Rican flags and signs during the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City, June 2017.
According to a recent survey conducted by El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s main national newspaper, there has been historic growth in support for political sovereignty on the island, while support for statehood appears to be trending downward.
The survey found that 25 percent of Puerto Ricans favor free association with the United States. This political status, a form of sovereignty established by the U.S. Congress, is currently held by island nations including Micronesia, Palau, and the Marshall Islands. These freely associated states, unlike Puerto Rico, have full legal and political independence but enjoy certain federal rights and benefits through a series of negotiated compacts. Another 19 percent of respondents in the Puerto Rico poll favor full independence.
That combined 44 percent may be short of an outright majority, but it is a seismic shift from the single-digit support for sovereignty expressed in previous surveys and votes conducted throughout Puerto Rico’s history. It is also tied with a 44 percent support for statehood also found by the poll. That’s a marked decrease from the 53 percent of the vote annexation received in a status plebiscite in 2020.
On November 5, Puerto Ricans will again vote on the island’s political status. The vote will take place alongside the gubernatorial and Legislative Assembly elections. (Puerto Ricans are not allowed to vote for U.S. President or members of U.S. Congress.—save for a single non-voting House delegate known as Resident Commissioner.) It will be the seventh such status vote, or plebiscite, in Puerto Rico’s history—and the fourth in just the past twelve years.
The U.S. Congress has refused to make any of those votes binding or to take action on the results, and there is little reason to believe it will do so this time. Many Puerto Ricans across the political spectrum are cynical about the ability of these non-binding elections to bring about the process of decolonization. Some have already planned to boycott the status ballot.
That said, the poll is the latest evidence that the political winds have been changing dramatically in Puerto Rico, moving the conversation beyond a choice between statehood and the status quo. A decade of man-made and natural disasters including the massive debt crisis in 2014, the botched response to Hurricane María in 2017, and the 2019 ousting of a scandal-ridden pro-statehood governor has left many Puerto Ricans craving new alternatives.
Legal and political developments in the United States have also played a role in shifting attitudes. In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that Puerto Rico did not have any meaningful degree of self-rule or a special relationship with the United States. It remains essentially a colony.
That same year, Congress established a fiscal control board to restructure Puerto Rico’s debt, exemplifying the colonial relationship between the two governments. The board is made up of seven unelected members appointed by the President (for whom Puerto Ricans can’t vote) based on recommendations from Congress (in which Puerto Ricans have no voting representative). It wields broad power to overrule Puerto Rico’s elected lawmakers.
Meanwhile, the United States continues to ignore or outright reject the push for Puerto Rican statehood, which it has not granted in the 126 years since the United States invaded Puerto Rico.
Within this context of crises and Congressional neglect, Puerto Ricans have already started to think and vote differently. The pro-statehood New Progressive Party and pro-status quo Popular Democratic Party in Puerto Rico, which together used to garner about 95 percent of the vote, only received a combined 65 percent of the vote in the 2020 gubernatorial election.
Meanwhile, the candidate of the Puerto Rican Independence Party and another pro-independence candidate from the new Citizens’ Victory Movement received a combined 28 percent of the vote in 2020. Those two parties are now allied behind PIP candidate Juan Dalmau in Puerto Rico’s upcoming gubernatorial election.
Dalmau and his electoral alliance were recently endorsed by U.S. Democratic Representatives Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two Puerto Rican members of Congress. Their endorsements marked the most high-profile declaration of support from sitting members of Congress for a Puerto Rican pro-independence candidate since the island became a U.S. territory.
This shift is, in large part, a generational one. According to the El Nuevo Día poll, the pro-independence candidate is far ahead of the field among young voters ages eighteen to thirty-four, garnering an outright majority (51 percent) in a four-way race. Responses regarding Puerto Rico’s status further reflected these sentiments: 41 percent of respondents ages eighteen to thirty-four preferred independence and another 19 percent preferred sovereign free association. Just 27 percent favored statehood.
This could very well be the most important data point in Puerto Rico’s recent political history. This young generation is Puerto Rico’s future. Their strong preference for independence, and for pro-independence candidates, is likely to become a fixture in the island’s politics.
There was a time when explicitly supporting sovereignty meant backing a fringe position held by a small minority of Puerto Ricans. It appears that time has passed, and that support for independence will only grow in the years to come. Americans, who have largely ignored the issue of Puerto Rico’s colonial status, can play a positive role in change by demanding their elected officials honor the right of self-determination.