20 June 2016

Mr. Chairman and Members of the UN Decolonization Committee:

My name is Jose Nieves Seise and I am the president of the Reunification of

Puerto Rico with Spain Movement (Movimiento de Reunificacin de Puerto
Rico con Espaa in spanish), also speaking today on behalf of the Insular
Committee and all the members of the reunification movement.

The Reunification of Puerto Rico with Spain Movement is a political and civic
movement that favors the reunification of the island with its motherland
Spain. We are a new movement in the policial landscape of the island that
seeks to rescue the historical memory of Puerto Rico. We are claiming the
natural right that we have to exist as one of the historical nationalities of the
Spanish nation-state. A historical nationality of Spain is what we were before
the foreign invasion, what we are today and what we will continue to be.
The island of Puerto Rico was discovered in the year 1493 and was conquered
in 1508 by the Kingdom of Spain. This is the main event that gave birth to
Puerto Rico, it was not before that event or after the foreign invasion of 1898.
We are Puerto Ricans because we are the sons and daughters of our
motherland Spain, nothing more and nothing less. This needs to be well
understood by this honourable committee and we are here to point out this
irrefutable fact. The intermingling and intermarrying of the indigenous people

with the Spaniards is a fact in our history that it is also shared with our sister
islands of the Canary Islands located in the Atlantic Ocean, which today is one
of the Autonomous Communities and one of the historical nationalities of
Spain.

Our history is intertwined with the development and growth of Spain as a

nation-state. We are not something apart or different. We have been, as a
historical nationality of Spain the Caribbean, an integral part of the Kingdom
of Spain since it's early days. This is the reason why the people of Puerto Rico
have reaffirmed time and time again that their language is the Spanish
language, that the Catholic church is still the major church by far and that
their culture and traditions are still predominantly Spanish. That is the truth
about the archipelago of Puerto Rico.

In 1809 we became an overseas province of Spain. In 1812 the first

constitution of Spain was signed by a Puerto Rican, Ramn Power y Giralt,
who then became the vice-president of the first national sovereign assembly
of Spain. The following spanish constitutions reaffirmed what was our political
reality, we were the Province of Puerto Rico and all Puerto Ricans were
Spanish citizens by birth. We were an integral part of Spain, not a colonial
outpost. For many decades, Puerto Ricans asked for a special treatment due
to the island's geographical distance from the nation's capital. A reminder that
in the 19th century they did not have the communications technology that we
enjoy today. In 1897 Puerto Rico achieves provincial autonomy granted by a
Spanish charter called Carta Autonmica and then democratically elects an
autonomous provincial government which is lead by Luis Muoz Rivera.

Puerto Rico became Spains first autonomous province, today there are
seventeen and the Canary Islands and Balearic Islands are two of them.

While Cuba was since 1895 fighting an independence war against Spain,
Puerto Rico was celebrating the accomplishment that was achieved with the
provincial autonomy in permanent union with the Spanish nation. That
accomplishment meant greater economic powers for the province, powers
that we do not have today under the present colonial status as a US nonincorporated territory. It is said that Puerto Rico was Spain's most loyal land in
the Americas. Unlike Cuba, we did not want independence from Spain, the
sense of loyalty to our Spanish nation was deeply ingrained in all of us.
In the Caribbean, Puerto Rico was at peace in the same way that in the
Atlantic Ocean the Canary Islands was also at peace. We were at peace
because we were content to be a part of the Spanish nation and that reason
alone explains why we never grew apart from our motherland Spain unlike the
rest of the Americas. You can find examples of this loyalty throughout our
history, for example, the victory against the British in 1797, the heroic Battle of
the Asomante and the memory of all the Puerto Ricans who defended with
great honour the Spanish flag in 1898.

On 25 of July 1898, we are invaded by the United States of America even

though Puerto Rico was not involved in the War of Cuba. The invasion
separated us from our motherland Spain against our wish and without our
consent. At that moment the self-determination of a province that wanted to
remain permanently united with its nation and that was achieving economic
and social prosperity was shattered. Sadly we are still living and suffering the

results of this historic trauma in 2016. Spain was forced to cede the island
after negotiations to keep Puerto Rico failed.

The Treaty of Paris was a monumental violation of the human rights of each
and every one of the inhabitants of the Province of Puerto Rico. The Treaty of
Paris treated one million of spanish citizens as a piece of furniture or object,
not as citizens who belonged to a sovereign state. The Treaty of Paris
snatched an overseas province of Spain which was at peace and had an
elected government. The Treaty of Paris stripped Puerto Ricans from their
nationality of origin and exposed them to a cultural genocide. Puerto Rico
was not an uninhabited archipelago when the US invaded in 1898, it was part
of the sovereign territory of the spanish nation. The invalidity of the treaty
concerning the Province of Puerto Rico has been widely discussed and
studied for over a century. From being an integral part of the sovereign
territory of Spain as a province we ended up being a colony of the United
States . We were invaded by an Anglo-Saxon nation who did not speak our
language and which had a different religion, different customs and traditions.
Right after the invasion the anti-spanish propaganda was planted strongly in
the school system to alienate Puerto Ricans from their motherland, and tried
unsuccessfully to remove the Spanish language in the schools forcing
teachers to use English as the language of instruction in all the state schools,
a language no one understood and which was eventually rejected by the
population. They tried unsuccessfully to erase important Spanish holidays, for
example, the celebration of the Three Kings Day. They wanted Puerto Ricans
to completely forget their past and their real identity. We were forced to
admire George Washington instead of Ramon Power y Giralt. The spreading of

this colonial propaganda had a purpose: to erase Spain from the history of
Puerto Rico. They did not want Puerto Ricans see themselves as Spaniards or
as part of the Spanish nation any more. With the passage of time this had an
effect in some part of the population but never reached a majority. The
attempt to separate motherland Spain from its own citizens in Puerto Rico has
been a constant goal of US colonialism since 1898.

In 1952, the US Ambassador made a request to the United Nations to take

Puerto Rico out of the list of colonies. The UN was clearly deceived and that is
why we are here today at the Decolonization Committee discussing the
colonial case of Puerto Rico along with other organizations and political
parties. The Island is not self-governing because the sovereignty of Puerto
Rico is being held by the US Congress, which officially admits that we are a
colony as an unincorporated territory belonging to the United States. On 6 th
of November 2012 there was a referendum in which 54 percent of Puerto
Ricans voted against the current US colonial unincorporated territorial status
(called Estado Libre Asociado in spanish) and the government of the United
States has completely ignored the democratic will expressed in the polls by
the people.

We urge voters in the Spanish nation-state to promote within their

respective political parties the issue of the reunification of Puerto Rico with
Spain, the same way it has been done with the colonial case of Gibraltar. The
voters have the power in the Spanish nation-state to influence their present
local and national government and to place the reunification issue on the
national agenda. It is the Spanish nation-state the one that can invoke the

Principle of Territorial Integrity. This principle is endorsed by the UN

Resolution 1514 (XV) and I quote paragraph 6 of the resolution ''Any attempt
aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial
integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the
Charter of the United Nations''. Puerto Rico was not a colony or a territory
occupied by Spain, Puerto Rico was an integral part of the Spanish nation.
Puerto Rico was not the ''Casus Bellis'' of the War of Cuba. The invasion of
Puerto Rico by the United States in 1898 broke the territorial integrity of
Spain. The invasion of Puerto Rico has been without a doubt one of the most
tragic events in Spain's history and it is up to this new generation to raise the
reunification issue.

The Principle of Self-Determination is the principle that this honourable

committee has insisted on the colonial case of Puerto Rico. We remind you
that Puerto Rico, being loyal to Spain, self-determined itself more than a
century ago when the people of Puerto Rico endorsed the provincial
autonomy charter in 1897 and elected its own provincial government. That
self-determination was shattered by the invasion. That said. we present the
following: In 1951, 53 years after the invasion. they called for a referendum
and in this referendum it was denied the right of Puerto Ricans to reunify their
island with its nation, also was denied the fundamental right to hold their
nationality. In the second referendum (1967) for the second time it was
denied the right to reunify the island with its nation, for the second time in a
referendum it was denied the fundamental right to hold their nationality. The
same happened in 1993, 1998 and finally in 2012. It is not fair and reasonable
to talk in this honourable committee about Self-determination if reunification

is ignored as a natural right. Self-determination can not be used to deprive

citizens of their nationality, to deny them their right to be reintegrated with
their nation. Self-determination can not be used to endorse and promote
colonialism and the product of that colonialism. It is not fair and reasonable
that in this honourable committee we can consider the annexation to the
United States, a free association between those being colonised and the
coloniser or the island's sovereignty as decolonizing options when the
fundamental and unique right of all Puerto Ricans is ignored: the right to
belong to its nation, Spain, and to hold their nationality of origin, the Spanish
nationality. There is no greater decolonization process than to reintegrate the
Island with its nation from which it was separated by an invasion. Without
reunification as an option there can be no real and serious decolonization
process for Puerto Rico.

Reunification is the only status option that really belongs to Puerto Ricans.
Puerto Rico as the eighteenth Autonomous Community of Spain and as part
of the European Union guarantees economic prosperity and political stability
to the Island and the region. Failure to include Reunification as an option in
the resolution of this honourable committee would perpetuate the outrage
committed against Puerto Ricans by the Treaty of Paris. It would deny basic
human rights to all Puerto Ricans. It would obliterate the Province of Puerto
Rico and it would obliterate the nationality of Puerto Ricans. It would make
invisible more than 400 years of history and would disregard the spanish
nation and its people. Today we say respectfully but firmly: We have the right
to exist as one of the historic nationalities of Spain and the right to return to
our one and only nation which is Spain!

Finally, Puerto Rico's colonial case is not a domestic issue of the United
States, it is an international issue. On the 9th of June 2016 the Supreme Court
of the United States said that Puerto Rico does not have any sovereignty, the
sovereignty of the island is owned by the US Congress. That same day the US
Congress passed a bill that could impose a Fiscal Control Board on Puerto
Rico, this Board would consist of 7 people who would have complete ruling
power over the elected government of Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico's colonial case
needs to be discussed again in the UN General Assembly in an urgent
manner and the archipelago of Puerto Rico needs to be included again (it was
removed in 1953) in the list of Non-Self governing colonies.

The people of Puerto Rico deserve to be free from this historical injustice, it
is time for Puerto Ricans to return back to their home which is the spanish
nation, to the motherland's bosom.

Thank you