Political Science and Law

Ponencia presentada en el panel "Puerto Rico y el Caribe", del 1er Congreso de Relaciones Internacionales de la Asociación Puertorriqueña de Relaciones Internacionales (APRI). Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, Viejo San Juan, 1 de octubre de 2016.

This panel puts forward a considerable conceptual challenge, that is to link and prospect the role of Latin American and Caribbean diasporas in United States' foreign policy-making towards Latin America and the Caribbean. Within the study of US international relations and foreign policy the influence of ethnic groups in US foreign policy has been analyzed. What is totally new to this debate is the hemispheric context, a XXI century where US policy towards the region limits itself to bilateral free trade agreements and contestation strategies against left-wing governments. Rodolfo O. De la Garza (2000) book Latinos in US Foreign Affairs, Jorge Dominguez's essay Latinos in US foreign affairs (2003) and the report of the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs on the matter have elucidated key aspects of the Latino involvement and mentalities regarding US engagement in world affairs. Now, the scope of our questions, hypothesis and possibilities of action today in 2015 must change to analyze Latinos' impact in US foreign policy towards Latin America and the Caribbean in times of increasing political coordination among sub-regional multilateral institutions, projection of regional institutions as entities with international juridical personality, new alliances, strategic regionalism and the role of regional powers in an emerging multipolar world. We will briefly explain the determinant phenomenon in the region's international relations to understand the regional landscape and how it works; first, a regional space formed by superimposed regional integration and regionalist schemes; and secondly, the role of the leadership of regional and secondary powers in the political and institutional makeup of some of the multilateral regional and sub-regional institutions. The books presented today will help us in this effort. The book " Breve Historia de la integración de América Latina y el Caribe: Un sueño bicentenario " by Sergio Guerra Vilaboy is a detailed work that scrutinizes the power and development of the Latin American and Caribbean integrationist thought. The work is an exhaustive account of region-building and the ways its citizens have been defining themselves and carving their aspirations based on values and interests from the XIX century to the XXI century's post-liberal and post-hegemonic regionalism. It explains in a succinct and clear way the legacy of the so-called conceptual capacities of the Latin American and Caribbean region and the conceptual tools the region has built over time to face structural and regional challenges. In the chapter about ALCA, the book analyses the hemispheric project of the US in the post-Cold War era based on free market multilateralism. A project designed to create a single market on goods and services for the entire Western Hemisphere (Free Trade Area for the Americas) within the norms of the WTO, a concept that was later replicated at the sub-regional scale by CARICOM, the Andean Community and others in the form of a CEPAL's sponsored model called open regionalism.

El caso colonial de Puerto Rico es el más antiguo en la región latinoamericana y caribeña, y en el sistema internacional. Incluso, de la resolución del emblemático caso se vincula en gran medida la posibilidad de una comunidad internacional axiológica y normativa. Aunque es uno de los casos históricos del derecho internacional por las resoluciones 748 (VIII) de 1952 y 1.514 (XV) de la Asamblea General de las NNUU, EEUU ha defendido históricamente que el tema es doméstico, por ser Puerto Rico un territorio no incorporado dentro de la Cláusula de Territorios de su Constitución. Como veremos, se trata de una relación colonial de legalidad dúctil que se ha definido y negociado en Washington según sus intereses y la correlación de fuerzas políticas del momento en San Juan y en Washington

This oral history interview elucidates US foreign policy from the perspective of the first Puerto Rican to work in the US foreign service within the Department of State as a Desk Officer, in UNESCO, National Endowment for Democracy and as Ambassador (Chile, 1994-1998). His views and actions as a citizen from an unincorporated territory owned by the US sheds light on the particular mentalities, visions of the world and agendas that peripheral citizens and ethnic minorities promoted within US hegemonic foreign policy during the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's.

If the needed international humanitarian aid, UN agencies and international vessels cannot enter freely into Puerto Rican ports, it is only because the White House, the Department of State and Defense do not allow them to do so. As we will see, these seemingly disjointed obstacles, amongst others, have been disconnecting Puerto Rico from the world, problematic because it forbids Puerto Rico’s engagement in the kind of multilateral humanitarian cooperation that could have in fact, saved it from the horrific Maria after-math it is now so crudely and inhumanely suffering.

Comments to Geoff Borrows, Raymond Laureano and Joanna Camacho's work on Puerto Rico's paradiplomacy in the XX century, for the panel "Perspectivas históricas sobre la paradiplomacia contemporánea: La gestión internacional de los gobiernos subnacionales en el Caribe con enfoque en la experiencia de Puerto Rico", in American Historical Association (AHA) 132nd Annual Meeting: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism in Global Perspective Washington, DC, 4-7 January 2018

El pasado 20 de abril, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Brasil, Paraguay y Perú le anunciaron a Bolivia, presidente pro tempore de la Unión de Naciones Sudamericana (UNASUR), su decisión de " no participar en las distintas instancias hasta que no se garantice el funcionamiento adecuado de la organización ".

El pasado 20 de abril, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Brasil, Paraguay y Perú le anunciaron a Bolivia, presidente pro tempore de la Unión de Naciones Sudamericana (UNASUR), su decisión de “no participar en las distintas instancias hasta que no se garantice el funcionamiento adecuado de la organización”.

Por lo novel que pueda parecer el intento de cambio de régimen del 23 de enero de 2019 en Venezuela —ejecutado y apoyado por la oposición venezolana y 13 países del hemisferio— lo cierto es que no lo es. Cambios de régimen han sucedido en América Latina y el Caribe, siempre apoyados desde Estados Unidos, y en ocasiones por la Organización de Estados Americanos.
Lo que sí es un precedente es que casi un tercio de los países latinoamericanos y caribeños, unilateralmente, han desconocido al presidente incumbente y reconocido al presidente de la Asamblea Nacional, Juan Guaidó, como presidente en funciones.