By The Star Staff
A pro-statehood advocate says local Republicans failed to stop the national GOP from excluding statehood for Puerto Rico in its draft platform for the fall elections.
Gregorio Igartúa’s remarks come after Puerto Rico Republican Party Chairman Ángel Cintrón García denied that the GOP excluded statehood from its platform.
“In the case of the status of Puerto Rico, it clearly establishes that Puerto Rico and the territories, because Puerto Rico is the only territory that aspires to statehood, [...] that we can aspire to the maximum of our political capacity, which is statehood,” Cintrón García said. “In addition to that, in the regulations of the Republican Party that were approved last Thursday, the regulations in article 5 mention twice that when Puerto Rico becomes a state, it will have such treatment, [which means the party] continues to recognize statehood as an alternative for Puerto Rico.”
Cintrón García noted that the Puerto Rican delegation at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee will explore establishing a better relationship with former President Donald Trump, the GOP candidate for president, and in promoting the archipelago as a “strategic element for the development of the United States [policy] toward Latin America.”
Igartúa, a pro-statehood lawyer, said even though the GOP cut down its platform, it could have expressed in a single sentence its support for statehood.
“They failed in allowing that to happen …” he said of local GOP leaders. “They did not present substantive or credible arguments. We should not have been lumped with the other territories because we are different and they can’t ignore us. We are the only territory with the required population to become a state [640,000 for each elector].”
Igartúa noted that Puerto Rico is not a simple minority in the mainland U.S. and its size can decide elections in Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania and New York.
He also said they could have included territorial incorporation.
“By marginalizing us, they are discriminating against us,” he said. “I would have done more due diligence in something so serious.”
Igartúa advised the island Republican Party to try to “woo Trump” to rebuild trust, because he will be the president, he said.
In April, the STAR published a letter from Trump thanking a group of island Republicans for supporting him, and promising to stand by Puerto Rico.
The letter appeared to be a change from Trump’s past views about Puerto Rico. In 2020, Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief of staff under Trump, said the former president asked him and other officials in 2018 whether the U.S. could swap Puerto Rico for Greenland. The exchange, Taylor said, happened in August 2018 before DHS officials went on a disaster recovery trip to the island after it had been devastated by hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.
In September 2020, three years after Hurricane Maria’s devastation, Trump approved nearly $13 billion in federal disaster funding for Puerto Rico to repair the island’s electrical and educational infrastructure.
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