Should Puerto Rico be a state? It's complicated...
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00:00Puerto Rico does not need to define its status for us to be treated as humans that deserve
00:07good health care, that deserve proper representation, and that deserve human rights.
00:12The support for statehood comes from a place of decolonization, a place of equality.
00:32We see the rights that states have, for example, the access to Medicaid, or the power that
00:41a state has to be sovereign, and we don't have that in Puerto Rico.
00:45For example, La Ley de Cabotaje, or the Jones Act, it doesn't permit Puerto Ricans to freely
00:52trade with other countries.
00:54In Puerto Rico, we have an unpayable debt, and because we are a territory, and we cannot
01:01refinance our debt as a state could.
01:18We should have equal access to health care.
01:21We should have equal representation in Congress.
01:24I want us to find unity, because when I interview people, whether they believe in statehood
01:30or whether they believe in independence, everyone here in Puerto Rico is worried about
01:34corruption, and they're worried about economy, they're worried about education.
01:38We really care about the same issues, but because we're divided by the status debate,
01:43we don't, together, demand that we get our human rights.
02:13Being Puerto Rican is really complicated, because when I was born and raised here, I
02:25was taught that I was a U.S. citizen.
02:27I learned U.S. history, I know the U.S. capitals very well.
02:31But when I moved to the United States, I was not treated as a U.S. citizen, I was treated
02:38as an other.
02:39This rhetoric that Puerto Ricans are fellow U.S. citizens, it does not appreciate the
02:49nuance of being a colonized people.
02:53I moved to the U.S. to study and to work, and when I lived in the U.S., I could vote
02:59for president.
03:00But when you're a Puerto Rican living in Puerto Rico, you cannot vote for president, even
03:05though that is the person who is our commander in chief and the person who decides where
03:11we go to war.
03:20If you compare how the response was in Harvey and how it was in Puerto Rico, you see that
03:27we did not get all the help, the aid that we needed.
03:32We're still waiting for funds, and it's three years later.
03:43In general, there are just more people in Puerto Rico that want something different,
03:48that we no longer want to be a colony.
03:50We want to have our full rights as humans in this earth.
03:55And so I think with this plebiscite, it's really important to know that a lot of people
04:01see it as a waste of money because it is non-binding.
04:04I think what Puerto Rican really, a lot of Puerto Ricans really want is a binding plebiscite
04:10that the Congress approves in order for us to truly make a decision.