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73
la convocatoria de una semilla:
fundamentos y dinámicas del desarrollo constitucional de puerto rico
de Puerto Rico se redactaría en San Juan por manos puertorriqueñas.
123
La concesión de la ciudadanía norteamericana a los puertorriqueños
estuvo presente en todos los años desde 1900 a 1917 en varias piezas
legislativas y en los mensajes de los presidentes de Estados Unidos
que promovían su extensión. Con esta se aspiraba a definir diferentes
rumbos de Puerto Rico y las Filipinas y significar la permanencia de la
Isla en su relación con Estados Unidos. Su concesión inició un «diálogo
de ambivalencias», como ha dicho Morales Carrión.
124
El profesor José Cabranes, destacado juez de Apelaciones de Estados
Unidos, ha expresado:
The collective naturalization of the Puerto Ricans one year after the Filipinos
were promised their independence was a watershed in American colonial
history and quite probably the turning point in Puerto Rico’s political
development. Having agreed in 1916 to grant independence to the larger and
more intractable of the new insular territories, it is significant that Congress
then chooses to assert the permanence of the existing relationship with the
smaller and more loyal territory
.
125
La iniciativa del presidente William Howard Taft de proponer la
ciudadanía norteamericana para los puertorriqueños en 1912, aunque
no fue la primera, fue la más articulada. En su Mensaje Anual del 6 de
diciembre de 1912 al Congreso, Taft endosó calurosamente el proyecto
para la extensión de la ciudadanía norteamericana, aprobado hacía poco
por la Cámara, pero tuvo cuidado en separar tal acción de promesa alguna
123 Trías Monge lo cita: «As nearly all the essential concessions looking to a larger measure of self-government
for the island are granted in this bill, which if passed will constitute their new constitution, it is confidently
believed that the dream and desire for independence will not be longer indulged or cherished, and that
Porto Rico may become a great and prosperous self-government Commonwealth, which if not independent,
will maintain its association with the United States because of its desire to continue such association, and
because it will be mutually beneficial to Porto Rico and to the United States to continue it. I venture the
prediction that the next constitution of government for Porto Rico that will be formulated will not be
drawn in Washington, but it will be formulated in San Juan by the people of Porto Rico and sanctioned and
approved by the congress of the United States. As the present constitution of Canada was formulated at
Ottawa, as the present constitution of Australia was drawn at Melbourne, and as the constitutions of the
great self-governing Commonwealths were approved without change by the parliament at London, so will
the future constitution of Porto Rico be drawn by her own people and approved without modification by the
Congress of the United States».
Ibíd.
, p. 79.
124 Arturo Morales Carrión,
Puerto Rico and the United States
,
supra
, p. 51.
125 Véase: José Cabranes,
Citizenship and the American Empire
,
supra
, p. 5. «United States citizenship thus
inevitably was considered a means of acknowledging the special place of Puerto Rico among the new colonial
territories and of expressing the virtually universal expectation of a permanent relationship». Íd
.
, p. 53.