A poet friend of mine invited me to join a Facebook Group called , “AMERICA” is not U.S.A. AMERICA is the name for a whole continent”. This US-centrism has been a peeve of mine for at least ten years now, specifically from when I lived in Chile and found myself in the very difficult position of defending my Latina/Puerto Rican identity (Yes, Kai I’m talking about being Rican again, sigh).

Now the idea of who is “America” comes up again against the context of The Summit of the Americas, which started yesterday in Trinidad. Love him or hate him, President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua raised a good point at the start of the Summit, saying:

“It is not of the Americas , because Cuba is missing, Puerto Rico is missing,”

So how can you have a Summit of the Americas without two nations facing important challenges rooted in colonialism?

Easy, you let the colonial power set the agenda.

Yes, I know I come off as sounding a little like Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez here (by the way President Obama will not be meeting with President Chavez during the Summit). Pero love them or hate them, they too have a point.

It is no accident that President Obama made an announcement about changing certain travel and remittance regulations for Cuban-Americans before the Summit of the Americas. It is no accident that Ortega’s comments were met with an announcement in Puerto Rico.

There was no immediate direct response from Washington to Ortega’s words, but the Resident Commissioner, Pedro Pierluisi, said that although the case of Puerto Rico is not on the agenda of the hemispheric meeting, any of the presidents could raise it, and “if our topic comes up, I will deal with it.” Pierluisi, who is part of a delegation of members of Congress who will accompany President Obama, also announced that in the middle of next month he will file in Washington the project to convene a process to resolve the political situation of Puerto Rico.

And what if Puerto Ricans themselves want to raise their nearly 111 year colonial status? They are arrested. A delegation of Puerto Rican activists, including Tito Kayak, were detained, had their materials on the colonial status of Puerto Rico confiscated, and were deported from Trinidad where they planned to attend the Fourth Peoples’ Summit happening at the same time as the Presidents’ Summit. When their plane arrive in Puerto Rico following the deportation Homeland Security further detained the group, in a continuation of U.S. harassment of independence advocates in Puerto Rico.

President Obama has said that he would like to resolve Puerto Rico’s staus issue. He also says that he wants to deal with immigration reform and yet, actions on his part have been reserved, to put it gently. While he treads lightly, inside the U.S., including the colonial border of Puerto Rico, people live in the shadows of the privilege of U.S. citizenship.