Editor’s note: This story first appeared on palabra, the digital news site by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

By Antonio Mejías-Rentas | Edited by Pilar Marrero

Juan Dalmau Ramírez, Puerto Rico Independence Party (PIP) candidate for governor, traveled nearly 4,000 miles from San Juan to Seattle to meet with members of the boricua diaspora in Washington state, in the Pacific Northwest.

That’s likely the furthest a Puerto Rican candidate has reached to speak with his compatriots, but Dalmau didn’t just travel there to get out the vote for his gubernatorial bid. He sought support for a political project that is much more far-reaching than a simple election.

During a speech last month at Seattle University School of Law, Dalmau discussed the political status of a country invaded by the United States in 1898 during the Spanish-American War and converted in 1952 to a “commonwealth” or Free-Associated State (Estado Libre Asociado in Spanish). This status gave Puerto Rico its own government but not control of its defense, borders, coin, or diplomatic relations.

The candidate went on to describe Puerto Rico as a colony subjected to the whims of Congress and the Puerto Rican people as a nation with a history and characteristics of its own, deserving of sovereignty.

Later, at a “junte” or social gathering with a small group of the 48,000 Puerto Ricans living in Washington state, Dalmau appealed to the few boricuas who are registered to vote in Puerto Rico’s November elections, to those who can have some influence over how their relatives vote in the island, and to those who could make a financial contribution to his Patria Nueva (New Homeland) campaign.

But perhaps the most important purpose of his recent visit to Seattle and other U.S. communities has been to solidify bonds with a Puerto Rican diaspora that now almost doubles the island’s population and that – given its ability to elect members of Congress ofavorable to the cause – the independence movement recognizes as a vital force in the process of self-determination and eventual decolonization of Puerto Rico.

“I believe that there is a great political force in the diaspora that favors independence and sovereignty and the defense of our Puerto Rican nationality, our own identity,” Dalmau said in an interview with palabra.

Despite the U.S. citizenship obtained in 1917, he insisted that “we are American citizens by law, but we are not Americans. We are Puerto Ricans, Latin American, Caribbean.”

Boricuas in the diaspora may be able to “educate the U.S. political class about the fact that Puerto Rico is a colony, meaning that it is an anti-democratic regime controlled by Congress,” Dalmau added.

According to Dalmau, Democratic and progressive legislators are those most likely to support the idea that “reparation to the harm done by colonialism is not annexation.”

His message counters the argument of those on the annexation side who say that for Puerto Ricans, who cannot vote in U.S. presidential or congressional elections, the only way to reach equity is to become a state.

Jenaro Abraham, a professor of political science at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, says that Puerto Ricans in the diaspora have a “great responsibility” regarding decolonization because of the “privileges of living in the ruling country,” with more access to political resources and power.

“We have the power to move members of Congress … all the power to push the political buttons on this side of the pond, in that direction,” said Abraham, who serves as vice president of Diáspora PIP, a U.S. affiliate of Puerto Rico’s independence party.

According to census data, there are nearly 6 million Puerto Ricans living in the 50 states and Washington, D.C., (practically twice the population of Puerto Rico), largely concentrated in Florida, New York, and other northeastern states, where their votes could be decisive in some races.

According to the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York (CUNY), more than 4 million boricuas were eligible to vote in the U.S. in 2019. Boricua voters represented 1.7% of the national electorate, but their presence was higher in states like Connecticut (7.9) or Pennsylvania (3.2).

In Pennsylvania, a key state in U.S. presidential elections, almost 500,000 Puerto Ricans comprise the third-largest concentration in the diaspora. Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has increased efforts in that community, which traditionally voted Democratic.

In Florida, with more than 1.2 million Puerto Ricans, Biden received 68% of the boricua vote in 2020. But in the state’s central region, which has the largest concentration of new Puerto Rican residents, Trump received 32%, an impressive increase of 11 points compared to 2016.

Florida is key to a Republican triumph, and this year, in what is expected to be a close race, the Puerto Rican community’s influence there may be more decisive than ever.

Dalmau may have not encountered a huge diaspora in Seattle, but he was greeted in the city by one of the country’s most liberal and progressive societies. His stay included a visit to the office of Democratic Representative Pramila Jayapal, who leads the Progressive Caucus and who voted for the first version of the Puerto Rico Status Act in 2022.

Stuck in a committee with little to no possibility of getting a vote in this congressional session, the bill proposes a “binding” plebiscite, which would force the United States to adhere to the voters’ decision. Although Puerto Ricans have voted on their status six times since 1967, this would be the first referendum called by Congress and not the Puerto Rican government. In the proposed plebiscite, Puerto Ricans would choose one of three options: independence, sovereignty in free association with the United States, or statehood.

In a 2021 interview, Dalmau said he met that year with Democrats Nydia Velázquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two prominent boricua members of Congress from New York who worked on the bill. Although Dalmau gave his tacit approval, he warned in an editorial the following year that the binding plebiscite destined the bill to fail.

The clause that forces Congress to accept the plebiscite’s result “constitutes the proverbial poison pill,” he wrote.

The decolonization plan proposed by the PIP is a “status assembly where Puerto Ricans choose delegates to represent non-territorial and non-colonial status formulas,” Dalmau told palabra.

The delegates would go to Congress, and the legislative body would speak on the viability of each of the options and determine what each side would be held to in all of the possible scenarios. “Once Congress responds to our call to action,” Dalmau went on, “Let Puerto Ricans decide on a status, with full understanding, once and for all.”

Luis Ponce Ruíz is co-founder of Boricuas Unidos en la Diáspora (BUDPR), an organization created in 2017 to kindle a discussion of Puerto Rico’s colonial status in the United States. The group organized Dalmau’s Seattle visit, along with Diáspora PIP.

Ponce believes that participation in U.S. politics by diaspora Puerto Ricans is essential to the decolonization process.

“The more we speak to politicians and participate from within the inside of the monster, and we do it from a pro-independence or sovereignist point of view, [the more] we’ll be knocking down myths, changing narratives, impacting a very powerful group of people who, at some point, will decide on the future of Puerto Rico,” Ponce said.

“To pretend that the future of Puerto Rico will be resolved without the interference of Congress, which has plenary powers over Puerto Rico, is a fantasy,” he concluded.

In Seattle, Dalmau emphasized that neither of the two parties that have governed Puerto Rico since the second half of the 20th century received more than 33% of the vote in 2020. That year, the PIP obtained almost 14% (a dramatic increase over the 3% Dalmau got in 2012) and the Citizens’ Victory Movement (Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana MVC) party got a similar percentage.

For this electoral cycle, the PIP and MVC have forged an unprecedented alliance in which both political parties will rally behind a single candidate in several races. That makes Dalmau the pro-independence candidate in almost seven decades most likely to win.

“Our moment has arrived,” Dalmau proclaimed to applause during his Seattle speech.

But a win for Dalmau depends on much more than just the total of the PIP and MVC votes, argues island academic and analyst César J. Pérez Lizasuain. “Politics don’t allow simplistic arithmetic,” added Pérez, explaining that the MVC’s support has eroded since 2020 for a number of reasons. He also said that some of that party’s most liberal proposals are rejected by the most traditional sectors of the PIP.

“It’s imperative that if the PIP wants to present itself as a true winning option – which I think it can be – it has to also transcend the limited borders currently drawn by the alliance with the MVC,” he added. “It must also look for a way to appeal to other sectors of the electorate, to which Victoria Ciudadana does not.”

Dalmau’s Seattle visit is the latest in a series of trips that the charismatic, 50-year-old politician has taken to communities with boricua presence in the United States. In recent months he’s met with diaspora groups in Illinois, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and Dalmau’s agenda includes marching in New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade in June.

Dalmau’s reaching out to the diaspora contrasts with Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to Puerto Rico in March, a clear intent to sway Puerto Rican voters in the diaspora towards the Biden-Harris campaign.

Just like residents of Puerto Rico can influence how their relatives in the diaspora vote, Puerto Ricans living in the United States can help determine who wins the island’s elections.

There are no hard numbers of how many diaspora boricuas are eligible to vote in Puerto Rico. An electoral code adopted in 2020 says that a voter must have permanent residence in Puerto Rico and not be registered to vote in any other U.S. jurisdiction. According to data from Puerto Rico’s State Electoral Commission (CEE, in Spanish), there were 6,806 absentee ballot applications in 2020.

Jo Cosme, 35, is a multidisciplinary artist who moved to Seattle in 2018 after being “displaced by the hurricanes” of the year before. She said that she already voted for Juan Dalmau in 2020 and, along with a small group of compatriots with which she lives, plans to return to Puerto Rico to vote for him again in November.

“He’s the only one offering a change,” said Cosme, who added that she believes her vote is more useful in Puerto Rico than in Seattle. “We’re all tired of the same old thing, and Dalmau is speaking about all the things that we have been thinking about; that need to change.”

According to Mayra Rodríguez, an accountant from San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, who has spent the last 10 years in Seattle, Dalmau’s speech was an “excellent” form of explaining Puerto Rico’s “colonial problem.” The 62-year-old, pro-independence “leftist,” said that Puerto Rico’s status influences how she looks at U.S. politics. Although she voted for Biden in 2020, this year she is considering Cornel West’s independent bid.

“We have to break with [old] structures and seek candidates who are positioned with our suffering and our colonial problem,” Rodríguez said.

Nathanyel Nieves is a 28-year-old musician, the son of a Puerto Rican father and an African American mother, who has lived with his family in Tacoma, Washington, since he was a child. He said he will not vote for Biden, given his support of the Israeli government in the Gaza conflict. Nieves used an obscene term to refer to Trump.

Nieves said he is “one hundred percent” pro-independence and a member of the Diáspora Pa’lante collective, which proposes sovereignty and a socialist government. The musician arrived at the “junte” dressed in the colors of the Puerto Rican flag and recalled how, as a child, he held on to his boricua identity to survive in an environment where he was the only person of color.

The best thing that Puerto Ricans in the diaspora can do, says Nieves, is to educate Puerto Ricans on the island about the social ills suffered by many of their compatriots in the United States.

“Those on the island who may not know how things work, how this country is run,” he said. “Why we cannot be the 51st state. It’s up to us to really uplift the voices on the island, to show that.”

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Antonio Mejías-Rentas is a longtime Puerto Rican and bilingual journalist who has lived and worked in Los Angeles for more than 40 years. As a Hispanic Link columnist and entertainment editor at La Opinión for two decades, he chronicled the booming U.S. Latino arts and entertainment scene. As managing editor at Boyle Heights Beat during the last 10 years, he mentored teen journalists and managed the web page for that community news outlet in an East Los Angeles barrio. He is a former NAHJ board member and former NAHJ-LA president. Retired in February, he still has some stories to tell. @lataino

Pilar Marrero is a journalist and author with extensive experience in covering social and political issues in the Latino community. As a disinformation monitor for the National Conference on Citizenship’s Algorithmic Transparency Institute, she has been tracking COVID-19 misinformation, the anti-vaccine movement, and politics. Pilar is also an Associate Editor for Ethnic Media Services in San Francisco, a Spanish-language content partnerships adviser for The Marshall Project, and a consulting producer for “187, the Rise of the Latino Vote,” a documentary by the Public Media Group of Southern California which premiered in 2020. @PilarMarrero

Chloe Collyer (they/them) is a nonbinary photographer, journalist, and 5th-generation Seattle resident whose work is deeply connected to the history and marginalized communities of the Pacific Northwest. Chloe is a natural documentarian whose toolkit includes 15 years behind the camera, an AA in Commercial Photography, and seven years of experience working as a photojournalist and photo editor. For the past decade, Chloe has taught photography to all ages while freelancing for editorial clients across the United States. @Chloetry