In 1998, the United States marks one hundred years of colonial domination of Puerto Rico. I continue to believe that Puerto Rico should be independent, a free country, and I support the right of the Puerto Rican people to self-determination. Within the United States, we have a special responsibility to continue to struggle for Puerto Rico's independence and for the freedom of political prisoners who are still in prisons for fighting for a free Puerto Rico.

A Puerto Rican writer from New York is doubly dislocated: first, there is dislocation from Puerto Rico; secondly, there is Puerto Rico’s dislocation from itself. Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. It may be a truism that you can’t go home again, but it’s especially true when home is an occupied territory. A Puerto Rican writer from New York, like myself, is twice alienated. I never forget that in this country I belong to a marginalized, silenced, even despised community; yet, in Puerto Rico, as a “Nuyorican” poet, I am marginalized again, for reasons related and unrelated to the island’s colonial status…

I think you can’t talk about Puerto Rico without saying the colony of Puerto Rico and the colony of the United States. What is the purpose of having a colony? Historically, you own property or you own a colony because you exploit it. That’s not a benevolent relationship and it has not been a benevolent relationship historically, so that the United States still owning a colony in 2016 is horrific. The exploitation by the United States of Puerto Rico is horrific, and therefore the financial condition that Puerto Rico finds itself in is horrific. It’s a direct result of being a colony of the United States.

Puerto Rico is Spanish American in its past, Anglo-Saxon in its present, and, I trust, in the deepest sense Pan-American in its future

The island of Puerto Rico is a small but complicated place. It's the only place in the world, I think, where you have a Latin American culture and you're an American citizen. I wrote a paper published by the University of Oklahoma's Department of Psychology about Puerto Ricans being like adopted citizens. I describe myself as an adopted citizen, much like a child who has been adopted by a family. He or she doesn't look like that family and longs to know who his or her parents really are. I was taught in the schools that Americans adopted Puerto Rico, it is not a real country. So, am I supposed to be forever grateful because someone adopted us and took us in? The Spaniards first, and then the United States? How does a child, then, form an identity?

...Within international rights Puerto Rico was a sovereign nation on the date in which the Treaty of Paris was drawn up, and Spain could neither give away Puerto Rico nor could the US annex it, nor the entire world disown it. This sovereignty is irrevocable and when the United States, through its cannons, forced the Spanish plenipotentiaries to sign the so-called cession of Puerto Rico it was committing a typical North American stick-up. And this co-action against the Spanish had no part of the Spanish American war, it was never a belligerent against the US or anyone else, and here the Yanquis have been at war for 52 years against the Puerto Rican nation, and have never acquired the right of anything in PR, nor is there any legal government in PR, and this is uncontestable, one would have to knock to pieces all the international rights of the world, all political rights, to validate the invasion of the US in PR and the present military occupation of our national territory.

it stands to reason-it stands to common sense-that we must be a free nation in order to survive as a people. The future of those not yet bom depends on respecting the independence of Puerto Rico. That respect alone-the respecting of Puerto Rico's independence-is what Puerto Rican nationalism is all about.

We stand today, docile and defenseless, because, since 1868, our political and economic power has been systematically stripped away by the United States for its own political and economic gain. We stand as a nation forced not only to demand our liberty, but to demand reparations for having our political and economic liberty taken away. We stand as a nation surrounded by industry, but with little of it belonging to our people. The business development in Puerto Rico since the United States intervention should have made the island one of the most prosperous islands in the world, but that is not the case.

Puerto Rico is being turned into the "showplace colony" of the united states. American corporations are everywhere, all over the island, using Puerto Rican people as cheap labor. Everything that cannot be sold in the states is dumped in Puerto Rico-plastic palm trees in people's homes instead of the real thing that grows outside, makeup that is not needed, wool maxi-skirts and boots to be worn in 80 degree weather. And the people are brain-washed into buying this shit. The radio blasts American music and advertisements-"radio San Juan-turns me on." We turned it off. You get better service if you speak English, the tourists act like they owned the island and the Borinquenos are just there to be servants and part of the scenery.

Many independentistas who write or speak about Puerto Rico, fail to mention these two realities that are vital in order to understand our history-the period of slavery, during which one part of our nation treated another part as if they were not human; and the division of the nation when the yankees deceived us and forced us to go the u.s.

being Puerto Rican is more than speaking and writing a language, and more than a language. It is a culture and a way of thinking; an environment; customs; food; a very complex context.

Let's get one thing straight. Puerto Rico was parda, negra, mulata, mestiza. Not a country of Spaniards at all. We outnumbered them, year after year.

Yes, I would object to that. I don't have any objection to any analysis of the question, but I think my own statement and the statement of all the leaders of our country that whatever Puerto Rico'<nowiki/>s people want t° do is acceptable to me. If the Puerto Rican people want to be a commonwealth, I will support it. If the Puerto Rican people want to be a State, I will support it. If the Puerto Rican people want to be an independent nation, I would support it.

Not only are Puerto Ricans citizens by birth, but one would be hard-pressed to find a Puerto Rican without a sister in New York or a son in Chicago, a cousin in Orlando or a daughter in Honolulu or Oklahoma City.