In a column published by Fox News Latino under the headline “Puerto Rico, the 51^st State?,” Rivera argues that Gov. Luis Fortuño is a driving force heading up to the November plebiscite.

The Puerto Rican journalist and part-time island resident characterizes the upcoming vote as a “who are we” moment.

Puerto Ricans will vote on the status issue on Nov. 6. The plebiscite ballot will consist of two questions. Voters will first be asked whether they want the current territory status to continue. Regardless of how voters answer that question, they will then be asked to express their preference among the three alternatives to the current status: statehood, independence and nationhood in free association with the United States.

There is no guarantee that Congress, which ultimately has the power to solve the status problem, will act on the results of the non-binding plebiscite.

Puerto Ricans previously have voted to remain a commonwealth in referendums issued in 1967 (60 percent) and 1993 (48 percent). In a 1998 plebiscite, the “none of the above” option won with 50 percent of the vote, followed by statehood at 46 percent. The “none of the above” option was added by the commonwealth supporting Popular Democratic Party to protest the definition of “commonwealth” on the ballot.

Below is the full text of Rivera’s column for Fox News Latino:

We drive south past Caguas on Highway 52, as the scenic, modern, multi-lane road cuts through the island’s cordillera, the mountain spine of Puerto Rico.

Sitting in the front passenger seat, I admire the familiar view as if for the first time. This can be a place of utter beauty, especially in May.

The island is deep green from rain. Flamboyán trees shock with their leaves, red and yellow explosions of color. Erica and Sol are looking out the windows from the back seat.

“So how’s (Gov. Luis) Fortuño doing,” I ask my old friend José Cuevas, who is driving our still reliable five-year-old Ford Escape. Views aside, in Puerto Rico 90 percent of conversations between men are of sex, sports or politics.

We drive past the Jibaro statute that towers over the highway just as it cuts through the pass and the southern half of Puerto Rico spreads out before us. The open expanse of rolling green hills framed by the Caribbean Sea is breathtaking signal that we are almost home.

“He’s doing better,” José answers my political question with a shrug that looks like a major concession.

José is a strapping, shaved head, tattooed, pierced and confident 50-year-old local business/fisherman. He built and takes care of our place here, and he is a great sounding board about island politics.

Way down on the governor after the pro-statehood Republican won by a record margin in 2008, José and his pals were angrier when the island’s recession persisted, and Fortuño aggravated the downturn by firing a bunch of state workers. José’s party, the pro-commonwealth Popular Democrats, howled in protest.

But since, Fortuño has impressed even many opponents with his fiscal discipline and a relatively transparent, pragmatic, reasonable approach to governing in tough times. A member of the Republican National Committee and an ally of Mitt Romney, Fortuño has forced on Puerto Ricans a rare moment of national introspection.

We are having a “Who are we” moment.

Blame or credit Fortuño.

For generations, we have comfortably postponed the reckoning of whether we are conquered or assimilated, taken or absorbed.

Encyclopedias have been written on the subject.

Not a Sunday newspaper is published or newscast aired without a sincere and impassioned debate on the status issue. But now Fortuño’s popularity is enhancing statehood’s prospects. His party has engineered a vote this coming November on what Puerto Rico is going to be.

There have been periodic referenda on Puerto Rico’s status before — namely in 1967, 1991, 1993 and 1998.

On all four occasions, the small but vocal and energetic independence parties joined forces with those advocating the status quo to preserve the unsavory result that we are still “a territory appurtenant and belonging to the United States, but not a part of the United States.”

Puerto Rico is a step-child in the family of nations.

Our children are deemed “natural-born citizens” of the United States. They can run for president, but they can’t vote for president as long as they live on the island.

However unsatisfactory, a bare majority of Puerto Ricans have supported this hybrid existence in previous plebiscites. Those advocating statehood have lagged two or three points behind inertia.

This time may be different.

On November 6, 2012 islanders will vote on whether they want to stay a territory or become something else.

If they choose to finally shed the yoke of benevolent colonialism, then the second question will be: what do they want to be, a country, a state or have some enhanced phony semi-independence from the United States?

As we arrive in Salinas where we live, José tells me statehood finally has a chance.

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•   Opciones  Abdiel VP  
  Fotos del muro

  El ex Gobernador de Puerto Rico Anibal Acevedo Vilá estará esta noche en Ponce, en la Galeria del Lcdo. Pedro Ortiz Álvarez la cual ubica en la calle Salud, donde estará presentando su nuevo libro. La entrada será de $50.00 dolares y al pagar se le entregará el libro. La actividad comienza a las 7:00 p.m.

  De: NOTICIAS DE PONCE

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  •   Opciones  Luis Anthony
    

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    Texas:

    > Sources: https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/annexation/index.html
    > >
    > > Texans voted in favor of annexation to the United States in the first election following independence in 1836. However, throughout the Republic period (1836-1845) no treaty of annexation negotiated between the Republic and the United States was ratified by both nations.
    > >
    > > When all attempts to arrive at a formal annexation treaty failed, the United States Congress passed–after much debate and only a simple majority–a Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States. Under these terms, Texas would keep both its public lands and its public debt, it would have the power to divide into four additional states «of convenient size» in the future if it so desired, and it would deliver all military, postal, and customs facilities and authority to the United States government. (Neither this joint resolution or the ordinance passed by the Republic of Texas’ Annexation Convention gave Texas the right to secede.)
    > >
    > > In July 1845, a popularly-elected Constitutional Convention met in Austin to consider both this annexation proposal as well as a proposed peace treaty with Mexico which would end the state of war between the two nations, but only if Texas remained an independent country.
    > >
    > > The Convention voted to accept the United States’ proposal, and the Annexation Ordinance was submitted to a popular vote in October 1845. The proposed Annexation Ordinance and State Constitution were approved by the Texas voters and submitted to the United States Congress.
    > >
    > > The United States House and Senate, in turn, accepted the Texas state constitution in a Joint Resolution to Admit Texas as a State which was signed by the president on December 29, 1845. Although the formal transfer of government did not occur until February 19, 1846, Texas statehood dates from the 29th of December.
    > >
    > > Opposition to Texas’ admission to the United States was particularly strong in the North during this period. If a challenge to the constitutionality of the move could have been made successfully at that time, there is little doubt that the leaders of the opposition would have instituted such a suit in the Supreme Court.
    > >
    > > Narrative by Jean Carefoot
    > > Texas State Library and Archives Commission April 1997
    > >
    > > This page last modified on August 24, 2011.

    Abajo, La Guerra de 1845: Causas y Efectos

    Sources:http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=316

    Fifteen years before the United States was plunged into Civil War, it fought a war against Mexico that added half a million square miles of territory to the United States. Not only was it the first American war fought almost entirely outside the United States, it was also the first American war to be reported, while it happened, by daily newspapers.

    It was a controversial war that bitterly divided American public opinion. And it was the war that gave young officers named Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Thomas («Stonewall») Jackson, William Tecumseh Sherman, and George McClellan their first experience in a major conflict.

    The underlying cause of the Mexican War was the movement of American pioneers into lands claimed by Mexico. The immediate reason for the conflict was the annexation of Texas in 1845. After the defeat at San Jacinto in 1836, Mexico made two abortive attempts in 1842 to reconquer Texas. Even after these defeats, Mexico refused to recognize Texan independence and warned the United States that the annexation of Texas would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

    In early 1845, when Congress voted to annex Texas, Mexico expelled the American ambassador and cut diplomatic relations. But it did not declare war.

    President Polk told his commanders to prepare for the possibility of war. He ordered American naval vessels to position themselves outside Mexican ports. And he dispatched American forces in the Southwest to Corpus Christi, Texas.

    Peaceful settlement of the two countries’ differences still seemed possible. In the fall of 1845, the President offered $5 million if Mexico agreed to recognize the Rio Grande River as the southwestern boundary of Texas. Earlier, the Spanish government had defined the Texas boundary as the Nueces River, 130 miles north and east of the Rio Grande. No Americans lived between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, although many Hispanics lived in the region.

    The United States also offered up to $5 million for the province of New Mexico–which included Nevada and Utah and parts of four other states–and up to $25 million for California. Polk was anxious to acquire California because in mid-October 1845, he had been led to believe that Mexico had agreed to cede California to Britain as payment for debts. Polk also dispatched a young Marine Corps lieutenant, Archibald H. Gillespie, to California, apparently to foment revolt against Mexican authority.

    The Mexican government, already incensed over the annexation of Texas, refused to accept an American envoy. The failure of the negotiations led Polk to order Brigadier General Zachary Taylor to march 3,000 troops southwest from Corpus Christi, Texas, to «defend the Rio Grande» River. Late in March of 1846, Taylor and his men set up camp along the Rio Grande, directly across from the Mexican city of Matamoros, on a stretch of land claimed by both Mexico and the United States.

    On April 25, 1846, a Mexican cavalry force crossed the Rio Grande and clashed with a small American squadron, forcing the Americans to surrender after the loss of several lives. On May 11, after he received word of the border clash, Polk asked Congress to acknowledge that a state of war already existed «by the act of Mexico herself…notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it.» «Mexico,» the President announced, «has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil.» Congress responded with a declaration of war.

    The Mexican War was extremely controversial. Its supporters blamed Mexico for the hostilities because it had severed relations with the United States, threatened war, refused to receive an American emissary or to pay the damage claims of American citizens. In addition, Mexico had «invaded our territory and shed American blood on American soil.» Opponents denounced the war as an immoral land grab by an expansionistic power against a weak neighbor that had been independent barely two decades.

    The war’s critics claimed that Polk deliberately provoked Mexico into war by ordering American troops into disputed territory. A Delaware Senator declared that ordering Taylor to the Rio Grande was «as much an act of aggression on our part as is a man’s pointing a pistol at another’s breast.» Critics also argued that the war was an expansionist power play dictated by an aggressive Southern slave owners intent on acquiring more slave states.