José E. Serrano: “Mr. Speaker, I think the President did the right thing. As I said before during the rule debate, he did it, or he wanted…”

“Mr. Speaker, I think the President did the right thing. As I said before during the rule debate, he did it, or he wanted to do it, actually, right before we had that horrible situation with the impeachment situation. He wanted to do it then as part of the observance, if you will, of the 100th anniversary of the invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States. He wanted to do it as a first step towards a national reconciliation, a national reconciliation which we support in other parts of the world but we do not support here. We may not like to hear it, but the fact is that Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. The fact is that since 1898, the American government has held Puerto Rico as a possession. As long as Puerto Rico remains a colony of the United States, we will have demonstrations, we will have lobbying, we will have plebiscites, we will have discussions. I can almost assure that we will not have these kinds of discussions anymore because the people who came to Congress once and used violence here who were pardoned in 1979, with the support of Members who are still in this Chamber today, those people have renounced all forms of violence and now admit that the way to bring about the change in the political status in Puerto Rico is through the democratic process. There is no democratic process in Puerto Rico.”