Word: rican
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...sounds of Spanish could be heard last night as approximately 20 of Harvard's Puerto Rican students assembled in a Lowell House room to watch and debate returns from the plebiscite on the future status of their homeland...
...being forced to learn all subjects in English years ago," says Ricardo Alegria, executive director of the Center for Advanced Studies in San Juan. Those memories, he speculates, cause many to resist learning English even today. Insular identity remains sacrosanct. Last week, after Madonna caressed herself with the Puerto Rican flag during a San Juan concert, politicians of all stripes raised angry criticism. Local clerics even pressed a campaign of hanging black ribbons on trees in protest...
Then there is the issue of Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code, which permits U.S. companies to shelter the profits of their Puerto Rican subsidiaries. Now worth about $3.4 billion a year, this huge tax break was intended to create industry and jobs. To the statehooders, both the commonwealth and its chief economic prop, Section 936, are obsolete because they no longer produce much economic growth. Rossello argues that Puerto Rico can go forward only with "full participation, with all the rights, all the privileges but also all the responsibilities" of statehood. While he makes the transition sound easy...
...statehood wins, the Hispanic caucus in Congress and sympathizers in the Senate will sponsor legislation to admit Puerto Rico into the Union. But if the winning vote is slim, the island's case may be marooned in committee for an extended period. Congress fears that a Puerto Rican application would revive the District of Columbia's bid for statehood -- an issue that the body has assiduously avoided. New states mean new political math. The island, for example, would get two Senators and six Representatives, taking away seats from other parts of the country and expanding the Hispanic bloc on Capitol...
Chou responded that Asian-American literature is a "subdivision [of American literature], analogous to Puerto Rican-American, Jewish-American, or Italian-American literature...