When Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, Washington exploited Article IX of the agreement — breaking a historic precedent by omitting the collective naturalization guarantees that had accompanied every prior U.S. acquisition from Louisiana through Alaska.
This calculated exclusion instantly manufactured a tier of second-class American nationals, legally stranded with neither Spanish citizenship nor the protections of the U.S. Constitution. Eventually, Congress retained absolute discretion over their political future — a colonial reality later cemented when the “Insular Cases” established an unincorporated-territory status that no one has ever reversed. While residents eventually became statutory U.S. citizens via the Jones Act of 1917, they never became organically incorporated Americans. As a result, the legal and cultural distance engineered by Article IX remains the governing reality of the relationship today.
Culturally, 95.5% of the population aged 5 and older speaks Spanish at home, underscoring this gap. English, by contrast, functions only as a secondary official language, confined to federal offices, tourism, and court proceedings. Years of on-island observation reveal that while overt anti-American rhetoric is rare, deep cultural identification with the mainland is equally nonexistent — the relationship is fundamentally external, not domestic. Economically, this detachment has bred systemic dependence on Washington, with federal transfers swallowing 13.8% of GDP and 20.2% of GNP in fiscal 2024. Yet, despite these massive influxes, roughly 40% of residents languish below the poverty line while labor-force participation sits near a stagnant 44%-45%. Local support for the current territorial status or statehood is therefore transactional, driven mainly by the need to safeguard nutrition assistance, Medicaid coverage for 1.5 million people (in a population of only 3.2 million), and federal transfers that sustain households where working-age adults do not work.
Furthermore, this distinct national identity also crystallized rapidly after the 2019 “Ricky Renuncia” protests and Bad Bunny’s subsequent global cultural dominance. Through his role in the protest anthem “Afilando los Cuchillos” (“Sharpening the Knives”; a motto mirroring that of the local Macheteros separatist terrorist group, which carried out deadly attacks against Americans), his massive Spanish-language reach, and his public emphasis on island-specific history, this malicious character has helped normalize the idea of Puerto Rico as a separate nation. This cultural shift manifested politically in the 2024 election, where the pro-independence candidate surged into second place with roughly 31% of the vote. Concurrently, local attitudes toward the island’s strategic value as a Caribbean military site have curdled into open resentment. Rather than viewing basing access as a shared defense interest, residents treat it — like during the 1975 Culebra exit and the 2003 Vieques crisis — as an external imposition, framing U.S. military installations as hostile symbols of metropolitan control. Strikingly, mainland Puerto Ricans who ironically identify as part of “the diaspora” increasingly echo this demand for independence; a University of Central Florida Puerto Rico Research Hub survey found a mere 13% support for statehood among the Florida community, compared to 27% for independence and 9% for free association.
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The archipelago’s linguistic and political structures explicitly reinforce this national consciousness. Puerto Ricans routinely call the territory “el pais” (the country) — a nationalist designation virtually absent in the U.S. Virgin Islands or Guam, where residents readily view their relationship with Washington as internal governance. Tellingly, even pro-statehood leaders themselves frequently refer to Puerto Rico as a “country” rather than the unincorporated territory defined by federal law. Moreover, local elections completely bypass the traditional American layout, featuring no Democratic or Republican parties. Instead, the New Progressive Party combines pro-statehood-leaning Republicans and Democrats, the Popular Democratic Party defends the current territorial status, and the Independence Party competes entirely on the platform of absolute sovereignty. Meanwhile, the local Republican organization operates merely as a social networking club for the rich families of the island and refuses to field candidates.
Ultimately, shifting electoral dynamics trigger an urgent countdown for Washington. A Democratic Congress after 2028 could easily pair District of Columbia statehood with Puerto Rico admission, instantly engineering four additional Democratic senators and roughly 10 safe House seats. To block this structural power grab, the Trump administration must negotiate independence or free association now — while it can still secure residual basing rights and economic linkages on strict U.S. terms. To rectify the $30 billion net fiscal drain, Washington must also condition this divorce on an unprecedented sovereignty exit fee, dismantle the automatic use of the U.S. dollar, strip federal judicial jurisdiction, and permanently extinguish statutory birthright citizenship for future generations born on the island. Allowing an unintegrated, transfer-dependent population to become a permanent left-wing Senate bloc is an unacceptable risk. Fortunately, the Trump administration retains full constitutional authority under Article IV to execute this separation before the window slams shut.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American-Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the Israeli special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees and is completing a doctorate in intelligence and global security in the Washington, D.C., area.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
