Spanglish

Picture Courtesy of Latin American Herald Tribune


Pedro Pierluisi, the Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico to the United States Congress, is asking for more federal funding for Puerto Rican schools in an effort to make the younger generations bilingual. Spanish and English are the official languages of Puerto Rico but only 85 percent of the population says they only have basic knowledge of English.

The hope is that with this measure, students will be able to preform proficiently in both Spanish and English upon graduation. In addition, public school students will be afforded the same opportunities of private school students.

Yolanda Rivera, director of the Linguistics Program at the University of Puerto Rico, believes that there should be the opportunity of free choice language learning, not dictated by political interests.

Click here to read the full article at the Latin American Herald Tribune

Poisoned People of Paradise

A small community of 9,000 American citizens are getting sick at an alarming rate due to decades of Naval testing on the land that they live. The residents of Vieques, a small island just a few miles to the east of the main island Pueto Rico, are presenting with a host of problems. These include cancer, especially in young children, hypertension affecting a large population, and 80 percent of the residents test positive for heavy metals like lead, mercury, and arsenic in their hair.


Video Courtesy of CNN.com

Some weapons that are known to have been tested on the island include napalm, depleted uranium - heavy metal used in armor-piercing ammunition, and Agent Orange - used in Vietnam and later linked to cancer and other illnesses in veterans.

Although they lack the right to vote, all the citizens of Vieques, and Pueto Rico, are United States Citizens by birth. Residents of Vieques are suing the U.S. Government to return to their Island to clean up the mess they left behind (The Navy left in 2003 after mounting public pressure). In addition, they are also asking for they medical treatments to be paid for.

Puerto Rico to Determine Their Own Fate?

Picture Courtesy The Washington Post

The House Natural Resources Committee approved the Puerto Rico Democracy Act last July. This would create at least one plebiscite in the Caribbean territory to survey the population about what they want their status to be. The bill will come up to the floor for a vote this year.



Both the Democratic and Republican parties are trying to charm Hispanics in this election year.


"Every Republican president in the last 50 years has supported this process," Fortuno said in an interview. "President Reagan was a strong supporter of this process, and actually of statehood as well."


The pending legislation will not be finite. It will simply allow Congress to conduct an official suvey of Puerto Rico citizans to discover their desires for statehood or not. Congress would then proceed how it sees fit.

Click here to read the entire article at Hotline On Call

51st State?

Picture courtesy of CIA World Factbook

The Caribbean island of Puerto Rico off the coast of the Dominican Republic has undergone many historic changes, especially in the last 100 years. Puerto Rico became a property of America in 1898 as a result of the Spanish-American War and is now an U.S. commonwealth. Plebiscites were held in 1967, 1993, and 1998 yet their political status as a commonwealth has remained the same. There is equal support for the pro-statehood party, Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP), and the pro-commonwealth party, Partido Popular Democrático (PPD) in Puerto Rico today. It has been a question of great debate whether or not Puerto Rico will some day become the 51st state of the United States of America.