Relaciones internacionales.indb - HOMINES

SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW AND THEORY OF SUBORDINATE INTEGRATION...
tion” and “dependence” on the United States economy. The relations of
integration that have been produced in Puerto Rico have been compulsory
as a result of their originating from a prolonged military invasion and occupation,
where there never existed acceptable conditions for integration.
It is our understanding that integration is a harmonious and voluntary
process with enduring benefits for its members.
First of all, the requirement that the level of economic development
of the participants be similar was not met in the past nor in the present.
With integration into the United States, the Puerto Rico economy was
removed from its historic course and totally disarticulated.
Second, Puerto Rico never has had a clearly (sovereign) “State apparatus”
which could play a voluntary and dynamic role in the process of
integration negotiation. Puerto Rico’s “colonial government apparatus”
has very little input in the country’s economy; therefore no appropriate
“political organization” exists that has the effective legal power to protect
the interest of Puerto Rican social groups. Puerto Rico has not been able
to negotiate within NAFTA.
Third, the United States does not belong geographically to the region
of the Antilles. More accurately, it is its intention to control a region separate
from its own. It will never be possible to separate Puerto Rico from
the Antilles. Puerto Rico along with Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama,
Central America, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the other Antilles
are not a bridge between the Americas, nor a wall nor a trench; they are
more adequately described as the natural borders of Latin America. 18
Latin America is a region which includes countries that are geographically
in South, Central and North America.
The fourth requirement of integration is that the economic systems and
the social structure of participating countries should be of the same type.
In this sense, in the United States, as well as Puerto Rico, the capitalist
mode of production predominates with its respective social relations of
production. But, in the case of Puerto Rico, it is a colonial and dependent
capitalism that has taken place. This is the only requirement that could be
used as a basis for justifying this process of integration; but the colonial
capitalist structure does not allow for the harmonizing of these efforts.
This occurs principally because the very colonial process has deformed
the development of the capitalist social class structure in Puerto Rico. As
a result, in addition to a very diverse historical and cultural process before
1898, Puerto Rico has produced a new type of colonial social structure,
product of the 20th century, and that has never existed in the United
States.
18
Ianni, Octavio, “La Metáfora de la Quinta Frontera en el Caribe,” El Caribe
Contemporáneo, No. 17, Mexico, July-Dec. 1988, pp. 63-73.
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Vol. XX, Núm. x - xxxxx de 2005 • HOMINES •