Puerto Rico votes for Statehood in 1967

In 1967, with a voter turnout of 65.9%, Puerto Rico voted against becoming a US state 39 - 60.4.

However, the pro-statehood Puerto Rican Statehood Republican Party told its members not to involve themselves in the referendum. What if, due to the Statehood Republicans not ordering their members to abstain and because of better campaigning on the statehood side, Puerto Rico voted to be a state by a 53-47 margin with +70% voter turnout?
 
It could force the federal government to pay more attention to the territory, and the Hispanic vote would be more important than it is OTL. I think the Warsaw Pact and other communists would denounce the referendum as a farce "justifying American imperialism", and start funding communist insurgents there. A yes vote would mean temporary death for pro-independence parties but they would resurge by the 2000s. I think something like this would also encourage other western countries to do repeat this action with their territories. For example, UK could demand a vote on Hong Kong remaining it's sovereign territory. Spain could ask for a vote in the Western Sahara. South Africa could probably isolate the majority black population in the north of South West Africa to their own states (80% of Namibian blacks live in the far north), and then ask the whites/coloureds of the mandate whether they would like to join South Africa.
 
It's hard to refer to Puerto Rico as a colony though. They have US citizenship, can run for mainland office, and have self-government and in exchange for less federal representation they don't pay as much Federal taxes. I'm not sure it'd have much of an impact on colonialism any more than elevating Alaska and Hawaii to statehood did.

There'd be 5 Puerto Rican members of congress and 7 electoral votes to be won however. I imagine they'd be very pro-trade (the Jones Act harms PR quite a bit). I don't think they'd be very pro-immigration considering how much anti-immigration sentiment in PR there is against Dominicans.

There'd be more army core of engineers focus on PR here.
 

kernals12

Banned
It could force the federal government to pay more attention to the territory, and the Hispanic vote would be more important than it is OTL. I think the Warsaw Pact and other communists would denounce the referendum as a farce "justifying American imperialism", and start funding communist insurgents there. A yes vote would mean temporary death for pro-independence parties but they would resurge by the 2000s. I think something like this would also encourage other western countries to do repeat this action with their territories. For example, UK could demand a vote on Hong Kong remaining it's sovereign territory. Spain could ask for a vote in the Western Sahara. South Africa could probably isolate the majority black population in the north of South West Africa to their own states (80% of Namibian blacks live in the far north), and then ask the whites/coloureds of the mandate whether they would like to join South Africa.
Would they really be willing to fund insurgents within what is sovereign United States territory? Imagine what the Americans could do in retaliation, they could start arming rebels in the Baltics.
 
The question is in 1967 would the US Congress be willing to vote PR in? This is a place full of brown people, most of whom don't speak English, are Catholic and likely to vote "liberal" in most ways. The Civil Rights struggle is still going full force, there are race riots (Watts, Detroit), and the southern political establishment is going Republican from Democrat. The absolute last thing the southern politicians in Congress would want is a new state full of nonwhite minorities that would send the bulk, if not all, of their representatives to the Senate and House to sit on the wrong side of the aisle and vote the wrong way on all sorts of issues. There would also be a reasonable number of politicians outside the south who would feel the same way. IMHO the real obstacle to Puerto Rico becoming a state has been less the people of Puerto Rico asking for it but more the Congress not offering it - from 1898 to the present.
 
These are no-agenda questions:
  1. Could the US Congress grant (impose?) independence unilaterally on Puerto Rico?
  2. What are the advantages of Puerto Rico's neither-fish-nor-fowl status as a commonwealth, as opposed to statehood or independence? I understand that the Cold War boosted the inclination for the US to keep Puerto Rico (didn't want another Cuba, after all) but now that the Cold War has been over for all these years, what is the impetus to maintain the status quo?
I would have thought that by now, either the statehood or independence movements might have gotten the upper hand.
 
These are no-agenda questions:
  1. Could the US Congress grant (impose?) independence unilaterally on Puerto Rico?
  2. What are the advantages of Puerto Rico's neither-fish-nor-fowl status as a commonwealth, as opposed to statehood or independence? I understand that the Cold War boosted the inclination for the US to keep Puerto Rico (didn't want another Cuba, after all) but now that the Cold War has been over for all these years, what is the impetus to maintain the status quo?
I would have thought that by now, either the statehood or independence movements might have gotten the upper hand.

As of now, Puerto Ricans have the advantage of free movement with the mainland, can vote in mainland elections, can hold office in the mainland, get social security (I think, I could be wrong), and are protected by the United States. They also don't have to pay various federal taxes because they are not a state.

Very few people in Puerto Rico support independence. The political divide is between commonwealth status and statehood.
 
It could force the federal government to pay more attention to the territory, and the Hispanic vote would be more important than it is OTL. I think the Warsaw Pact and other communists would denounce the referendum as a farce "justifying American imperialism", and start funding communist insurgents there.

>Funding Communist insurgencies in a US territory.

Why yes, that is an amazingly good way to get the US to buy up all that surplus Warsaw Pact gear from Israel and wherever else it can get it and then dump the lot into partisan groups in Eastern Europe. Guess which one is going to hurt more? The last things the Soviets need is a sucking chest wound in Poland and the Baltic States and East Germany soaking up men, equipment, and money like a sponge, and providing the West with plentiful propaganda opportunities. "Look, we get fired at from a village in PR, we go door to door trying to find the shooter. In Poland? The Russians back off and lob sarin gas shells at the village."
 
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