Shock over voided Puerto Rican birth certificates

WASHINGTON - Native Puerto Ricans living outside the island territory are reacting with surprise and confusion after learning their birth certificates will become no good this summer.

A law enacted by Puerto Rico in December mainly to combat identity theft invalidates as of July 1 all previously issued Puerto Rican birth certificates. That means more than a third of the 4.1 million people of Puerto Rican descent living in the 50 states must arrange to get new certificates.

The change catches many unaware.

Julissa Flores, 33, of Orlando, Fla., said she knew nothing about Puerto Rico's law.

"I was planning a trip and now I don't know," she said. "Do I need to go get a passport? If my birth certificate is invalid, am I stuck here?"

People born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth, are U.S. citizens at birth. Anyone using a stolen Puerto Rico birth certificate could enter and move about the U.S. more easily, which could also pose security problems.

Puerto Rico's legislature passed the law after raids last March broke up a criminal ring that had stolen thousands of birth certificates and other identifying documents from several different schools in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Ricans on average get about 20 copies of their birth certificates over their lifetimes, said Kenneth McClintock Hernandez, the commonwealth's secretary of state.

This is because they are regularly asked to produce them for such events as enrolling children in school or joining sports leagues. Schools and other institutions have typically kept copies, a practice prohibited under the new law since January, McClintock said.

As much as 40 percent of the identity fraud in the U.S. involves birth certificates from Puerto Rico, McClintock said he was told by the State Department.

"It's a problem that's been growing and as the need in the black market for birth certificates with Hispanic-sounding names grew, the black market value of Puerto Rican birth certificates has gone into the $5,000 to $10,000 range," McClintock said.

Thus far, there seems to be little effort by the U.S. or Puerto Rican governments to educate the 1.5 million people born in Puerto Rico and living on the mainland about the new law.

Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., has been getting a steady stream of calls about the law at his district office. Serrano - who must replace his birth certificate, too - said he is trying to provide answers without triggering a panic.

"No one has thought about what effect this could have, if any, on those of us born in Puerto Rico who now reside in the 50 states," Serrano said.

McClintock said a news conference held in Puerto Rico in December did not draw national media attention he hoped would spread the word. He noted there is no deadline for getting a new birth certificate. After July 1, the government will issue a temporary, 15-day certificate for those who need a birth certificate in an emergency.

The State and Homeland Security departments are deciding what to do for passport applicants with invalid birth certificates, State Department spokeswoman Adriana Gallegos said.

For now, Puerto Ricans are learning about the law from each other, news reports and community groups. The information isn't always correct.

Carlos Vargas-Ramos, a researcher at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York, said he found out about the new law through an e-mail from a Latino public policy group.

"You have to be plugged into networks to learn about it," said Vargas-Ramos, whose father and sisters were born on the island.

Conchita Vallecillo, 66, of Fairfax, Va., read about the new law in a Puerto Rico newspaper. She thought her age exempted her. "I didn't think we would be affected, so it's one of those things that you don't pay attention to," said Vallecillo, whose husband and four children also were born in Puerto Rico.

There is no exemption for age. The law only waives the $5 fee for a new birth certificate for people over 60 and for veterans.

Emilio Perez, president of the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce of Central Florida, traveled to Puerto Rico to gather his own information on the new law. He planned to post the information on the chamber's Web site to help get information out.

About 47 percent of people of Puerto Rican descent in Florida, or 377,000 people, and 29 percent, or 318,000, in New York - states with the largest Puerto Rican populations - were born on the island.

Author: SUZANNE GAMBOA
Source: Associated Press

Boricua Legislative Pioneer Olga Méndez Dies at 84

El Barrio, New York (UCTP Taino News) - Olga A. Méndez, the first Boricua woman elected to a state legislature in the continental United States, died last Wednesday at her East Harlem home. Méndez (84) represented "El Barrio" (East Harlem) and parts of the Bronx in the New York State Senate for 26 years.

Responding to the news from Boriken (Puerto Rico), Roger Guayacan Hernandez stated that Méndez “was well-respected both in New York and Boriken for being a true pioneer for women's issues and family rights."

Hernandez, a Liaison for the United Confederation of Taino People also noted that the former Senator “was well-versed in local history and she supported the efforts of the UCTP”.

Born in Mayagüez, Boriken on Feb. 5, 1925, Mendez moved to New York City in the 1950s. She was proud of her heritage and insisted on being known as Puerto Rican and rejected the terms Hispanic and Latino.

UCTPTN 08.04.2009

Memo to the Media: Puerto Rican Is Not a Race

Time magazine said it. So did CNN. The New York Times said it, too.

In fact, without exception, every major United States media outlet has, in one way or another, reported on Republican (and other) fears of Supreme Court justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor's potential for "racial bias," given her Puerto Rican ethnicity and her now infamous comments about a "wise Latina" making better choices than a "white man."

I've watched it all as I watch so much of what passes for journalism in my beloved, forgetful country - which is to say with a mixture of concern, annoyance, and indigestion.

Astoundingly, not one media outlet has bothered to report what, to me, is a glaringly obvious omission in the discussion about Sotomayor and race: Puerto Ricans, like all other Hispanics/Latinos, can be of any race, and are. Latinos/Hispanics are not a racial group, according to our own Census Bureau, which, incidentally, created the amorphous (and many might argue, false)category in the 1970s.

The term Hispanic can be applied to anyone with any ancestry of any "race" in any place in the world where people either once spoke Spanish (like the state of Colorado) or currently speak Spanish. Latino encompasses all of that, and also adds to the mix anyone else in Latin America, where there are nations that speak Portuguese, Dutch, English, French and dozens of Native American tongues.

In Sotomayor's case, this unfounded fear of reverse racism is patently absurd when one considers the history of Puerto Rico, the land of her ancestry. Cheek swabs from the local population reflect what history illustrates, which is that Puerto Rico is one of the most racially diverse places on earth. Just as there is no single Hispanic/Latino race, there is no Puerto Rican race, either; there are many.

When Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus to some of us) landed on the island that is now known as Puerto Rico in 1492, he "discovered" at least 60,000 Arawak or Taino Indians already living there. According to Columbus's own diaries, he and his European cohorts were mortified by the nakedness of the Indians, and by their generosity and unwillingness to understand the concept of, you know, owning stuff. Their lack of Catholicism proved problematic, too. In short order, nearly all of the Indians in Puerto Rico were enslaved and slaughtered in thename of Jesus; most died.

The European settlers (aka white men) then imported slaves to the island from West Africa, though to a lesser extent than in Haiti and Jamaica, where as much as 90 percent of the population by the 19th century were of African descent. The census in Puerto Rico in 1834 showed that 11% of the population were African or Indian slaves, 35% were colored freemen and 54% were white.

The subsequent history of Puerto Rico was, therefore, not all that different from the history of, say, Louisiana, or Alabama, except that the genocide and slave-owning happened in the European language of Spanish rather than the European language of English or French. Spanish, contrary to the pontificating of Lou Dobbs and Michael Savage, is not native to Latin America.

But somehow, in the magical world of American identity politics, all of this history is conveniently forgotten - or worse, never learned - in the discussion of Puerto Rico, Sotomayor, and race. Suddenly, in the scary America inhabited by most Republicans and worried white men, we have a Latino/Hispanic "race" that, in addition to being hot, spicy and, oh, I don't know, passionate and volatile (keywords often employed by the media in discussing us), is magically removed from the white, black and Indian races that make up the history of all of the Americas. Suddenly, white male Republican types fear that a Puerto Rican woman is going to be racist against white men, even though white men were the very people who colonized Puerto Rico, and even though it would be difficult to find a racially whiter man than, say, Ricky Martin, and even though Puerto Rico is full of white men, and black men, and brown men, etc.

Sotomayor's own ignorant comments - and I am pleased to see she recanted this week for the idiot statement about "a wise Latina" - seem to have been steeped in the myth of a single Latino/Hispanic race or, for that matter, ethnicity. I can only assume that one as educated and wise as Sotomayor makes such remarks to appease ignorant masses of Americans, Latino and otherwise, who simply don't know better and wouldn't understand it if you explained it all to them. For every American who is terrified by the mythological notion of a Latino/Hispanic race, there is another American who is proud of it. In America, as elsewhere, erroneous perceptions, repeated enough times, can unfortunately become the dominant understanding of a misunderstood reality, in spite of history and all the ghosts who wish to tell us their stories.

Puerto Rico, like the rest of the Americas, is a complex, multiracial, multicultural place. The people there have a complex and fascinating history, including a difficult relationship with the United States that, if anything, should be the one issue giving any Republican true pause.

That Sotomayor might harbor some bias based upon her Puerto Rican-ness is not an unreasonable thought; we all harbor some biases based upon our backgrounds - it is just that certain people's biases get to be called "truth" while others' getto be called "militancy". But a Puerto Rican bias would not necessarily be a racial one. Colonial? Perhaps. Economic? Maybe. Nationalistic? Perchance. But not racial.

There is no more a Puerto Rican race than there is an American one.

Author: Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Source: http://www.alternet.org/