On February 20, 2012, Puerto Rico decided to celebrate President's Day by unveiling life-sized bronze statues of President Barack Obama and former President Lyndon B. Johnson to its "Avenue of Heroes" just outside San Juan's neoclassical Capitol Building. These two new additions become part of an exhibit which aligns the avenue with bronze statues of previous U.S. Presidents who have visited Puerto Rico dating back to Theodore Roosevelt. President Obama becomes the ninth U.S. President to grace our island with a visit.
The Associated Press covered the story of the ceremony (which was picked up by many other prestigious news outlets) and was presided over by Pedro Pierluisi, Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico (a non-voting and Puerto Rico's only member of Congress), Kenneth McClintock, Secretary of State for Puerto Rico and various other Puerto Rican officials. Ceremony speeches gave mention to Puerto Rico's political status and lack of voting power in electing the very Presidents that were being honored that day, despite being Americans. This caused quite a backlash of negative comments on the website the article appeared in and the main reason I am writing about this topic today.
Actually the ignorance, racism, intolerance and just plain ugliness of the comments displayed by my fellow Americans caused me pause and I decided to wait a while before commenting on the whole issue. There was no way I could have written this post before today without becoming as calculating and callous as most of the commentators who spread their hate that week. I decided a long time ago, I would never stoop down so low as to any bigot's level; I pride myself on accepting people by their character and not much else.
The article itself was a tribute to President's Day. Originally celebrated in the month of February as Washington's and Lincoln's Birthdays but combined, appropriately in my opinion, to commemorate all U.S. Presidents.
That the simple act of honoring President Obama with a statue can evoke such fierce personal racists attacks shows a lack of respect, commonality and unity. Disrespecting not only our President but also the people that honored him. The fact that both of these Presidents happen to be Democrats gave some the excuse to label Puerto Ricans "leftist liberals" among other choice words I will not stain my blog with. I understand that we are in an economic crises. I understand that we are war weary. I understand that we feel "used and abused" by our elected officials; but must we regress to pre-Civil Rights mentality in the process? We, all of us, are better than that.
For those that erroneously believed that we have only honored "weak Democrats", below is the list of Presidents that are enshrined in our beloved city of San Juan with a bronze statue, political affiliation and date of visit:
1. Theodore Roosevelt, Republican, November 21, 1906.
2. Herbert Hoover, Republican, March 24, 1931.
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Democrat, July 7, 1934.
4. Harry S. Truman, Democrat, February 21-22, 1948.
5. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Republican, March 4-7, 1960.
6. John F. Kennedy, Democrat, December 15-16, 1961.
7. Lyndon B. Johnson, Democrat, March 2-4, 1968.
8. Gerard R. Ford, Republican, June 27-28, 1976. (For the G6 Summit).
9. Barack H. Obama, Democrat, June 14, 2011.
I am proud that my little island celebrated President's Day in such a grand way and I personally apologize to Lyndon Johnson for the delay but money is tight right now. :)
For me, it is hard to accept that we are still "red headed step children", my humorous way of saying, not yet allowed to sit at the Master's table, with the big boys, yet Puerto Ricans can still make a marvelous meal out of almost anything. We will wait patiently and work diligently, for the time will come when our contribution will be acknowledged and appreciated. After all, after over a century of weaving together the great fabric that is America, it is going to be difficult to determine which thread is yours and which is mine.
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