"Babel" in Schools
After Prop. 227
Puerto Rico and Official English
"In Puerto Rico they
have Spanish as their official language, and rightly so."
– Rep. Toby Roth (R-Wisc.), August 1, 1996
Puerto Rico is part of the United States –
a fact that some members of Congress tend to forget. The island would be
directly affected by any English Only law at the federal level. H.R. 123, for example, would have a significant impact
on federal government services there, even if Puerto Rico retains its "commonwealth"
– i.e., colonial – status. It would be even more signficant if Puerto Rico
became the 51st state of the union.
Spanish remains the native tongue of the vast
majority of Puerto Ricans. While English is taught in the island's schools,
less than 20 percent of its residents have learned to speak, read, and write
English fluently, according to some estimates. So English Only legislation
has become a cause for alarm in Puerto Rico, as well as a factor in the political
rivalry between Statehood, Commonwealth, and Independence forces there.
In 1902, four years after Puerto Rico became
a U.S. "dependency" in the Spanish American War, the United States declared
the island officially bilingual. Public business would be conducted in both
Spanish and English. In practice, however, the latter predominated. Until
Puerto Rico was granted a measure of political autonomy in 1948, colonial
officials rarely bothered to learn the language of the colonized. Meanwhile,
they sought to impose English on Puerto Ricans through a variety of coercive
practices in the schools. Yet half a century of English Only instruction
did not succeed in displacing Spanish – only in depriving generations of
schoolchildren of a meaningful education.
In 1991, as Congress seriously considered
both statehood for Puerto Rico and English Only legislation for the federal
government, the island's legislature voted to repeal Puerto Rico's official
bilingualism and replace it with Spanish as the sole official language. The
new law was not intended to discriminate against English speakers, whose language rights were largely
safeguarded. Rather, it sought to guarantee Puerto Ricans' language rights
should they decide to join the Union. It also served to create a political
barrier to statehood – an effective ploy by pro-commonwealth and pro-independence
parties. Largely out of worries about the language question, a U.S. Senate
committee blocked a plebiscite on the island's status.
In 1993, when statehood advocates regained
the upper hand, Puerto Rico's legislature reinstated the policy of official
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