By Victor M. Rodriguez, CounterPunch
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On Tuesday June 23, the Special Decolonization Committee of the United Nations heard 30 petitioners who came to denounce from various perspectives the colonial situation of Puerto Rico. For the 34th time the UN committee approved a resolution requesting that the United States allow Puerto Rico to exercise its right to self-determination and independence. In 1953, the U.S. and colonial administrators lied to the U.N. in order to get Puerto Rico off the list of territories which still had not achieved self-determination. They told the UN that Puerto Rico in 1952 had drafted a constitution and now was exercising self-determination. This despite the fact, as Jose Trias Monge who was the Attorney General of Puerto Rico from 1953 and 1957 and a central actor in the colonial government, revealed in his book Puerto Rico the Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World (1997) that the government of the United States, through the state department and the department of the interior said "Puerto Rico should still be considered a territory." Through political pressure in a smaller United Nations, the US petition to remove Puerto Rico from the list was approved with 26-16 and eighteen abstentions.
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