Word: statehooder
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like last summer, when he didn't notify Governor Rafael Hernandez Colon about his plans to invite heads of state for a summit conference at the Rockefellers' resort, he caught even statehood's advocates by surprise. So it seems unlikely that Ford simply meant to pay off Governor-elect Carlos Romero Barcelo, a statehooder and a closet Republican, for the convention votes Puerto Rican delegates gave him. A day or so after his pronunciamento, Romero's Washington commissioner Baltasar Corrada del Rio held a press conference to say that statehood now would be premature...
Right after Ford's announcement came a second surprise, the publication of a poll conducted by Gallup in the United States, in which 59 per cent of the Americans interviewed said they favored statehood for Puerto Rico. Now the question was phrased as follows: "Puerto Ricans recently elected a pro-statehood governor. Do you favor statehood for Puerto Rico?" Only an enemy of democracy could have said no. And in other polls, about a fifth have said they favored independence, with an equal number who had never heard of the island. Many Americans do not understand, for example, that Puerto...
...hard to argue, if anyone does, that statehood would profit the rest of the United States. The system of tax incentives and cheap labor that has attracted investors up to now would have to go; there are no grounds for supposing the economy would improve, except through some massive welfare program. Per capita income in Puerto Rico is about $2300, while in Mississippi, the poorest state, it is over $4000. Though every state contains pockets of misery that are worse off, no single administrative unit is so depressed. The island's geographic isolation would make any renewed private investment unlikely...
...recent election of a pro-statehood candidate, Carlos Romero Barcelo, did not send Washington a mandate for statehood. The vote was probably more a rejection of the incumbent's failure to solve the economic problems, than a positive reaction to Romero's talents. In fact, despite the deep penetration of American styles and institutions and goods into Puerto Rico, there was a minority majority against statehood in the plebescite ten years ago, and there has always been a sizeable majority of intransigent opponents of any association with the United States...
THIS SPECULATION leads to the prophecies of a Cassandra, but the prospect of statehood does evoke ghoulish images. The cruellest trick for exterminating coyotes on the western ranges is to freeze a compressed spring inside a chunk of horsemeat. When the greedy animal gulps it down, his body heat melts the ice and the spring expands, piercing his stomach. It may seem expedient now to offer statehood to Puerto Rico rather than be discredited internationally as colonialists; to many Puerto Ricans it seems equally comfortable to be swallowed by the wealthiest best on earth. Ford could go down in history...