On Monday afternoon, The Special Committee on Decolonization approved a draft resolution calling upon the Government of the United States to expedite a process that would allow the Puerto Rican people to exercise fully their inalienable right to self-determination and independence.

The above news that came into my inbox (gracias Jo Boriken) comes from Puerto Rico’s pro-independence party (PIP). A few thing right away caught my attention. One, the fact that this happened in a Committee on Decolonization, formally known as the Special Committee on the Situation with Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, reasserts what many have refused to say or covered up through semantics. Puerto Rico is a colony.

Second, I can’t be the only one who finds in strange that one country needs to request action from another in order to determine it’s own future. Pero maybe that’s just the radical in me.

By the terms of that text, which the Special Committee approved by consensus, the decolonization body… requested that the President of the United States release all Puerto Rican political prisoners serving sentences for cases relating to the Non-Self-Governing Territory’s struggle for independence -– including two who had been imprisoned for more than 28 years. It expressed serious concern about actions carried out against Puerto Rican independence fighters and encouraged rigorous investigations of those actions, in cooperation with relevant authorities.

The Special Committee, also known as the “Committee of 24”, urged the United States Government to complete the return of occupied land and installations on Vieques island and in Ceiba to the Puerto Rican people; respect their inhabitants’ fundamental human rights to health and economic development; and expedite and cover the costs of decontaminating the areas previously used for military exercises.

Introducing the draft resolution, Cuba’s representative said Puerto Rico was a Latin American and Caribbean country with its own national identity, and its long struggle for independence was deeply rooted in a sense of identity. Notwithstanding 27 resolutions and decisions approved by the Special Committee and the General Assembly, the people of the Commonwealth were still unable to exercise their legitimate right to genuine self-determination and independence due to continuing economic, political and social domination by the United States, the colonial Power.

A catch phrase that I am seeing all over the place and is especially being used by Latino advocacy organizations asking for health care reform and or comprehensive immigration reform, is “The Time is Now” or “We Can’t Wait”. Except that as these words are written or said, there is a lot of damn waiting. 2010 marks the end of the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism, as well as more than 200 years of emancipation and independence in the rest of Latin America and yet within the stricture of the U.S. there are millions of people who may be protected by “citizenship” but in order to properly exercise all the rights of that status cannot live in their own country. Once in the United States, we get distracted by the trappings of the “American” Dream (and seriously if peeps don’t get that I am not talking about Americo Vespucci then don’t bother reading anymore) and try and pretend that we are not othered.

You can read more information on the hearings which included representatives advocating for other resolutions to Puerto Rico’s status here.