Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 14, 1993 TAG: 9311140174
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Sean Holton Orlando Sentinel
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Does Puerto Rico have what it takes to become a state?
Ask an expert, and you'll get the usual speech: The island has more residents than 25 states. Its land area is bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware. What is now the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico became a territory in 1900 - spending far more time in political limbo than any state did. It's closer to the mainland than the most recently admitted state, Hawaii.
Also, there's a good chance that residents will declare their desire to become a state in a plebiscite being held on Nov. 14.
But forget all that civics book stuff - all those myths about an orderly, step-by-step journey to statehood in which certain qualifications are met, Congress approves and a new star is sewn onto the flag. That's not the road Puerto Rico will have to travel.
The real road to American statehood - as opposed to the idealistic process laid out in civics class - has been anything but orderly, and the 37 states that have traveled it spawned a score of seedy subplots.
It has been a trail strewn with political expediency, fraud, land theft, racism, religious bigotry, lust for silver and gold, human bondage, genocide and war.
"There are certain principles (governing the admission of new states), but the principles are more honored in speeches than in practice," said Michael Kazin, a professor of history at American University in Washington.
"Americans want to believe that this is a nation built on ideals rather than a nation built on blood or race."
What does that mean for Puerto Rico? It might mean the island should start playing up other attributes - such as the fact that it is stolen property.
But more on that later.
First, let's consult the precise written instructions for becoming a state as outlined by the Founding Fathers.
It's all there in the Constitution. Right?
Wrong. There are no such rules.
It turns out that the United States has been assembled like a piece of Scandinavian furniture. Those few instructions that do exist are vague. The real work has been done by trial and error, with lots of swearing.
As smart as they were, the authors of a document written in 1787 could hardly have predicted the vast expansion that would take place over the next century.
At the time, the United States consisted of the 13 colonies that won independence from Britain. Many of those original states had boundaries extending far to the west of today's boundaries - all the way west to the Mississippi River.
It was in this wilderness that the founders anticipated that new states might one day be formed, either by being carved from the boundaries of the original 13 or evolving from territory ceded by the states to the federal government.
But creating a detailed process for admitting new states was not a top priority. The issue merited only a brief mention way down in Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution.
A scholar might say those "requirements" for statehood "evolved over time." To the layman, it means this country pretty much made up the rules as it went along.
It also means that Puerto Rico is not required to hold a successful plebiscite as a step toward statehood. Congress might eventually require that the people ratify a state constitution, but the results of next week's preliminary vote will carry no legal weight. Traditionally, plebiscites have been used as leverage by political leaders seeking statehood for their territory.
Only 11 of the 37 states admitted to the Union after the original 13 held similar votes. And often, the results had only marginal relevance to the eventual attainment of statehood.
In 1837, Florida residents approved statehood by a 2-to-1 ratio. But it was only after eight years - and a constitutional convention Congress did not authorize - that the state was admitted to the Union.
Colorado voters rejected statehood in their only plebiscite in 1859 and didn't make their preference known again until they voted on a constitution in 1865 (only to be rejected by President Andrew Johnson) and again in 1876, when statehood finally prevailed.
So if not the wishes of the people, what has been the overriding factor propelling territories toward statehood?
Population maybe?
Not really. There has never been a strictly enforced "magic number" of residents to either compel or forbid Congress to make a territory into a state.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 required that any new state have at least 60,000 free inhabitants. Though many statehood applications were vetoed for not meeting this requirement, several others applied for and received waivers.
The populations of newly admitted states have ranged wildly, from a low of 34,000 (Illinois in 1818) to 1.4 million (Oklahoma in 1907).
Has geographic size been a factor?
The record suggests more inconsistency. After all, Texas could have been five states - but Congress admitted it as only one. Conversely, before the Iowa Territory was admitted as a state Congress actually tried to shrink its boundaries.
Has length of time as a territory had any bearing on statehood?
Here again, there is no clear pattern. Alabama existed as a territory for only 33 months before attaining statehood. New Mexico had to wait more than 61 years.
Six of the 37 post-Colonial states never were territories. Four of the six (Vermont, Kentucky, Maine and West Virginia) were carved from existing states. California was under military jurisdiction just before statehood.
Texas, an independent republic, became a state immediately upon its annexation to the United States. (In yet another show of inconsistency, the independent Republic of Hawaii was annexed in 1898, then relegated to territorial status for six decades.)
So where, in the midst of this historical hodgepodge, does a common thread emerge?
That brings us back to the fact that Puerto Rico is stolen property. You won't see that highlighted in many position papers favoring statehood, but it is probably the single factor that is common to every other successful statehood drive.
Puerto Rico has actually been stolen twice. First, way back in 1493, Spain stole it from the indigenous population upon its "discovery" by Christopher Columbus. Spain was just about ready to give the island back in 1897. But then, in 1898, the United States stole it as a prize of the Spanish-American War. It has belonged to the United States ever since.
"Of course, that's the history of empires," says Kazin of American University. "America is not unique. These are all countries that are built up by conquest. That's the history of the world. We're not any worse, and we're not any better. There are no pristine nations."
Even after Europeans stole American land from the Indians, they couldn't stop stealing it from each other, and this has been an integral feature on the road to statehood.
American Colonials, of course, stole the original 13 states from Great Britain. The 14th state, Vermont, sprang from a long-running dispute involving New Hampshire claims to New York lands.
Later, Michigan tried to steal Toledo from Ohio but was rebuffed. As a consolation, Michigan got to rip off what is now called the Upper Peninsula, which until then had been sensibly attached to Wisconsin territory.
White settlers stole Texas from Mexico. The federal government took note and proceeded to steal California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and parts of Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming in the Mexican-American War.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, West Virginia stole itself from Virginia and pledged allegiance to the North.
Three decades later, U.S. settlers known as "Sooners" stole Oklahoma back from the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes" of Indians - Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw and Seminole. The land had been given to those tribes in the 1830s as consolation for the government's having stolen their lands in the Southeast and marching them across half the continent on the Trail of Tears.
After theft and war, human subjugation has been probably the most common theme in the successful formation of states. Putting aside for a moment the displacement, rounding up or outright extinction of whole tribes of Indians, this brings us to the slavery issue.
Slavery established a time-honored pattern for the admission of new states that would survive even after slavery itself had been outlawed. The road to statehood literally became the highway to the swap meet.
From the very beginning - when the 14th state, Vermont, was traded for the 15th state, Kentucky - slave states and free states entered the Union in alternating pairs as part of the price of admission. The practice was formalized with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which swapped Missouri for Maine and struck a 12-to-12 balance between North and South.
Later on, Arkansas was swapped for Michigan. Florida was swapped for Iowa. Texas was paired with Wisconsin.
Of course, the whole swap meet eventually fell apart in the 1860s. The North had pulled ahead 19-to-15, the South started feeling cheated, and war between the states broke out.
The tradition of swapping states didn't end with the Civil War. It survived in the form of later horse-trading between Democrats and Republicans for various Western states sympathetic to their political parties.
The final example of this proved just how crazy politics is. Democrats thought admitting Hawaii would increase Republican strength in Congress. They insisted that Alaska, thought to be a Democratic hotbed, be admitted first. Today, don't ask one of Alaska's two Republican senators or Hawaii's two Democratic senators to explain that one.
The notion of new states as political footballs is still around. Some Republicans think admitting Puerto Rico would give their party two new senators, and they talk about swapping it for admission of the heavily Democratic District of Columbia.
Miss Manners might be alarmed at another strategy that many successful statehood drives have had in common: Plain rudeness.
In 1796, Tennessee virtually barged into the Union by drafting a constitution, electing two U.S. senators and declaring itself a state - all without congressional permission. The strategy worked. Congress admitted the state in short order.
Six future states would use this "Tennessee plan" to gain admission. Another four, including Florida, would draft constitutions without congressional permission, but not take the extra step of electing representatives to Congress.
The federal government hasn't always been so polite itself - particularly in the area of religious and cultural diversity.
Before admitting Utah, the United States disincorporated the Mormon Church, seized its property, abolished female suffrage, outlawed the practice of polygamy and required citizens to take loyalty oaths.
One of the principal factors delaying statehood for New Mexico was what one Senate committee at the time called its "un-American" character, including the extensive use of Spanish and the widespread practice of Roman Catholicism.
So what is Puerto Rico to make of all this baggage that litters the road to statehood?
On the one hand it makes clear that even after 93 years as a territory and decades of debate over statehood, next week's vote is just a beginning.
On the other hand, opponents of statehood or continued commonwealth status might be able to fashion it into an argument for something else: independence.
After all, what self-respecting island would want to join such a motley crew of states?
by CNB