Maduro calls for invasion of… Puerto Rico?

Yep, you read it right.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has called for a campaign for the “liberation” of Puerto Rico from the United States. Newsweek

We know that Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States, and most of us should know that Puerto Rican citizens ARE U.S. citizens, right? They don’t officially vote in the US and they don’t get a lot of Federal benefits like Supplemental Security Income but they do get Social Security. They don’t pay US income tax, which is nice for them. Democrats want PR to become a state, probably because most Puerto Rican voters vote Democrat or Democrat-equivalent. (In a symbolic election, they voted 73% for Harris. That’s a higher percentage than most states she carried.)

Maduro invoked Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan soldier who liberated much of South America from Spanish rule, as he spoke about Puerto Rico.

“Just as in the north they have a colonization agenda, we have a liberation agenda,” Maduro said during the closing of the International Anti-Fascist Festival in Caracas on Saturday. “And our agenda was written by Simón Bolívar. The freedom of Puerto Rico is pending, and we will achieve it with Brazilian troops…leading the way.” Newsweek

Brazilian? Maybe I missed something. So, too,  did the Brazilians.  Or maybe Maduro did – back last fall there was a non-binding referendum on becoming a state, and Puerto Rico voted for it almost 57%. Maybe he thought it was to become a Venezuelan state? But:

While Puerto Rico’s pro-statehood party (PNP) declared victory, much of the island saw the result as a sham.

Pablo José Hernández Rivera, Puerto Rico’s newly elected Resident Commissioner, who holds a nonvoting seat in the House of Representatives, did not recognize the validity of the referendum “because it did not include the option of maintaining and improving the Commonwealth.”

Every other major political party on the island had instructed their members to boycott the vote.

As a result, more than 165,000 Puerto Ricans left the ballot blank, and almost 13,000 damaged the ballots in protest.

Adjusting for blank and damaged ballots, statehood’s share of the vote declined to just 47.6%. NY Post

And re-note that the option of leaving the status quo as is, with Puerto Rico remaining a commonwealth, was not available. Ah, those Democrat referendums…

Christina Ponsa-Kraus, a professor of legal history at Columbia Law School, told Newsweek: “The Puerto Rican people have never—not once—voted for independence. For more than a century, they have been united in their desire to remain part of the United States one way or another, whether through statehood or some other form of association.

“And this past November, statehood received 57 percent of the vote. While support for independence did rise, reaching a little over 30 percent, that still leaves a supermajority opposed to independence. In other words, President Maduro is just another in an endless line of politicians who are happy to ignore the will of the Puerto Rican electorate and instead to exploit the issue of Puerto Rico’s status for their own political gain.”Newsweek

Last I heard, Venezuela was trying to annex a region to its east from Guyana, with several nations pledging to jump in to support Guyana if Venezuela gets froggy. Think that one is down to money, a large oil find in the area stimulated Venezuela to claim the area as their own – given their impoverishment, anything of value they can claim, they probably will.

Or maybe they could invade Haiti. Probably the only economy in the western hemisphere is actually WORSE than Venezuela’s.

Category: "Teh Stoopid", International Affairs