La Brega: Isabel González v. United States — Episode Transcript
Alana: Isabel González was doing what so many Puerto Ricans have done. She was going to New York, and asking her family to pick her up.
Belinda Torres-Mary: I think she thought it would be simple. Like, oh yeah, I’m gonna show up and just integrate in.
Alana: But, she was only 20 years old, eight and a half months pregnant, traveling alone. And it was 1902. She was arriving by steamship.
Belinda Torres-Mary: I don’t know if she was afraid. I would be a little bit.
Alana: This is Belinda Torres-Mary.
Belinda Torres-Mary: And I am the great-granddaughter of Isabel González.
Alana: Isabel was a widow. Her husband had died earlier that year. She was leaving her daughter in San Juan and wanted to bring her to New York once she got settled.
Belinda Torres-Mary: I see her as, she’s probably an optimist because anytime you need to fight for something, you’re never really a pessimist to do that.
Alana: The trip from San Juan to Ellis Island by steamship took around a week. She arrived in peak summer. Nearly two thousand people could have made their way through this giant immigration center in New York harbor that day; it was the gateway to the US at the time. There was line after line – to get checked for diseases, to get checked for lice, and to have your papers checked. It took hours.
Belinda Torres-Mary: They’re just watching this line of people and she’s coming up knowing she’s pregnant. Like do I hide it? Like, was she wearing a shawl or something? Or like, you know, there’s no way to hide that.
Alana: A new commissioner of immigration, one William Williams, had started a few months earlier – under his watch, more people would get turned away at Ellis Island.
Belinda Torres-Mary: I think she got scared when they took her aside probably.
Alana: Officials were targeting immigrants who they thought were likely to need public assistance, especially single women.
Belinda Torres-Mary: She had 11 dollars only. Was eight and a half months pregnant. And no male chaperone. They were like, you’re getting right back on that boat and you’re going back home because you could be a ward of the state. And she was like, “No, no. I– I have relatives here. I have an aunt. And I have an uncle.”
Alana: But the officials didn’t care. She was still an unmarried woman, and in their eyes a potential burden. So she and the family made a claim: she wasn’t single! She was actually engaged! And was here to meet up with the young man, who was also Puerto Rican, and marry him.
Belinda Torres-Mary: I think her aunt and uncle kind of set that guy up a little bit. like the Puerto Ricans were all working together to help each other.
Alana: But, no fiance showed up at Ellis Island to prove it. So, she was sent to a kind of olden-days immigration court.
Belinda Torres-Mary: Ellis Island had their own court system, I think it was three dudes, you know, sitting on a panel. And –
Alana: It usually is.
Belinda Torres-Mary: Yeah, it is, isn’t it? And so they’re like, “No, you’re going back.”
Alana: But the details of Isabel’s situation – whether she was single or not, and likely to become a public charge – were only part of the issue.
There was a bigger question that was affecting all Puerto Ricans at the time. Spain had extended citizenship rights to them when Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony. But the US had invaded just four years before she arrived at Ellis Island, and Puerto Rico was now a US colony. It would follow that Puerto Ricans would be US citizens but the US didn’t see it that way, and was holding Puerto Ricans at arm’s length.
Belinda Torres-Mary: I imagine it was stressful too when you’re about to go into labor at any moment and then this is going on where people want to kick you out of the country.
Alana: Isabel and other Puerto Ricans were in a legal grey area. Puerto Rico and other colonies belonged to the US, but weren’t a part of it. On one hand, they were subject to US rule, with US-appointed, unelected governors. But they were not treated as US nationals or citizens. They could, for instance, be rejected at the border.
Belinda Torres-Mary: What was so amazing is that, they put her in that holding area at, uh, Ellis Island and, you know she must have been very scared and everything, but she’s just like, “I’m not gonna go back because we are a US territory. So, you can’t kick me out.”
Alana: Isabel had been denied entry to a country that had invaded her homeland, and she was about to be one of the first people to try to force the US into addressing this hypocrisy.
She was going to take her case all the way to the Supreme Court, and in doing so, stand in for all Puerto Ricans. In fact, the entire US empire would be watching. Isabel’s case had implications for people all over the world.
Belinda Torres-Mary: America has told her – in not so many words: “Who do you think you are coming to this country? You don’t belong here.”
And she’s like, “No. Who do you think you are? To treat me that way.”
Alana: Damn.
Belinda Torres-Mary: I know.
Alana: Chills.
Belinda Torres-Mary: Like she’d be snapping if that was a thing.
Alana: From Futuro Studios, I’m Alana Casanova-Burgess, and this is La Brega. In this episode: Isabel González goes to the US Supreme Court.
BREAK
For most of her life now, Belinda has been the keeper of her great-grandmother’s story. Belinda’s grandfather was Isabel’s grandson.
Belinda Torres-Mary: I started asking my grandparents and doing interviews with them, just really wanting to get to the bottom of things, and where are we from? What does it all mean? Why did they come here?
Then my father produced like an old article he had a copy of, and it’s out of a Puerto Rican encyclopedia written in the 1930s.
Alana: It referred to a court case, González v. Williams about how the US government tried to deport Isabel back to Puerto Rico. And about how she put up a fight that would be extraordinary in any time period: she said “No.”
So, Belinda started reaching out to great aunts and uncles and cousins. She went to libraries and contacted law schools and historians, piecing together her great-grandmother’s life.
Belinda Torres-Mary: Some people have asked me, “Why are you even doing this kind of research? Like, who cares?”
I don’t see it as the past. Like we live in the now and our past is always running parallel with us. It’s not like a linear thing.
Alana: There are still a lot of mysteries about Isabel’s life in Puerto Rico. She was born and raised in San Juan. A massive hurricane, San Ciriaco, struck Puerto Rico in 1899, just a year after the US invasion, and the devastation kick-started a wave of migration. Belinda isn’t sure if that’s what happened to her family, but over time many of them relocated to New York.
Belinda Torres-Mary: So like the whole family immigrated.
Alana: And do you have a sense of what their life was like in Puerto Rico? If they needed to move to New York for opportunity, were things very hard for them?
Belinda Torres-Mary: Well, that’s what I assumed at first. Although I had heard some stories that at one point the family was a little bit better off. They were very aware of class and what level people were at. And there was also a famous picture that was floating around with relatives of Isabel on a horse, posing sitting side saddle with a long white dress on, back in Puerto Rico.
Alana: She’s looking like a fancy lady.
Belinda Torres-Mary: She’s looking more like a fancy lady but you know, it doesn’t mean they were rich or anything.
Alana: Regardless of how much money they had, or didn’t — the family was politically active.
Belinda Torres-Mary: When I was interviewing my Aunt Grace, which is one of Isabel’s children, she was telling me that her mother and her family, they were revolutionaries back in Puerto Rico.
Alana: Isabel had an uncle named Domingo Collazo, who was a well connected journalist in New York. In the 1890s, Domingo had been part of a group of Puerto Ricans based in the city who were supporting the cause of independence from Spain. He was around when the Puerto Rican flag was being designed in New York City. He had tentatively embraced the US invasion, but US policy towards Puerto Rico had disappointed him.
So when Isabel arrived at Ellis Island and was rejected, Domingo stepped in to help. He reached out to lawyers to appeal her removal right away. And she was allowed to enter the US on parole, and gave birth in his home – to a daughter, Eva – while a federal judge in New York considered her case.
And Isabel did end up marrying that mystery fiance that her aunt and uncle had set her up with. That meant that she was no longer at risk of being a public ward — so case closed, right? But she kept the marriage secret so the case could continue. Why? Because it was no longer just her case. It was a case that had the power to affect all Puerto Ricans.
Belinda Torres-Mary: It would’ve been easy for her, like, imagine, you just had a baby, like, “I’m done with this! Like, I have a way out!” She didn’t choose that way out.
Alana: Weeks went by. Domingo, the uncle, he was sending updates on the case to eager newspaper readers back in Puerto Rico. He didn’t sound very optimistic. The Americans, he wrote, “quieren la jaula, pero rechazan los pájaros.” They want the cage but they reject the birds.
Then, the news came out:
ARCHIVAL – The New York Times 1902
Voiceover: “Porto Ricans are NOT American citizens entitled to land in the United States without interference from the immigration authorities, according to a decision handed down […] in the United States Circuit Court yesterday in the case of Isabella Gonzales.” The New York Times, October 8th, 1902.
Alana: A court had ruled Puerto Ricans were not American citizens. Isabel and her uncle Domingo wasted no time. They did the thing you do when you really want to change how the law is applied: they appealed to the Supreme Court.
Isabel had provoked a huge question that went even beyond immigration – one newspapers were following closely:
ARCHIVAL – The Brooklyn Eagle 1902
Voiceover: “Are Porto Ricans Aliens?” The Brooklyn Eagle, 21st of August, 1902
Alana: And it was spelled that way – Porto, instead of Puerto – because the US military had renamed the island after the invasion.
ARCHIVAL – The Brooklyn Eagle 1902
Newspaper: “The question has come up over the deportation of a widow named Isabel J. Gonzales.”
Alana: In the court of public opinion, it helped a lot that Isabel was a widow. It was seen as more respectable than being an unmarried woman. Other Puerto Ricans had been deported before, but she had a sympathetic story to tell, and a family with connections to anchor her.
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: You’re fighting colonialism, but at the same time it’s patriarchy, because this case wouldn’t happen if she was a man.
Alana: Jessica Méndez-Colberg is an attorney in Puerto Rico who knows the case well.
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: If she was a man traveling alone, unmarried, to the United States, she probably wouldn’t have a problem. Actually, her fiance didn’t have a problem because we didn’t see a case with his name.
Alana: Even the officials who had blocked her entry were anxious to get an answer: Williams, who was in charge at Ellis Island, told the press the decision would affect (quote): “all immigrants who come here from the insular possessions of the United States.”
In 1902, the US had lots of colonies – Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam – which were referred to as the insular territories. And it wasn’t clear how the US Constitution applied in these faraway parts of the US Empire, because for the most part, the government didn’t want it to.
The US government had recently been using the confusing term “non-citizen national” when referring to Puerto Ricans. What did it mean to be a national who wasn’t a US citizen? What kind of rights did that person have? Other times they’d use “Puerto Rican citizen” — what does it mean to be a citizen of a non-sovereign territory?
Just the year before, the Supreme Court had ruled in a case involving tariffs on oranges imported from Puerto Rico. It was called Bidwell v Downes. But it wasn’t really about fruit, it was about what was considered foreign.
The justices decided that because the territories were inhabited by quote “alien races” they weren’t ready to be part of the US. Specifically, they weren’t civilized enough, so (quote): “the administration of government and justice according to Anglo-Saxon principles may for a time be impossible.”
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: These territories are not part of, they belong to the United States and because they are different, they speak a different language, have different customs, religions, and ways of life, then the Constitution cannot apply in its full extent to them.
Alana: Collectively, the court decisions about the US territories from around this time are known as “the insular cases.” And today, they’re widely recognized as being racist.
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: It’s very frustrating and infuriating to literally see those words in Supreme Court cases, where they refer to your people, Puerto Ricans, as “savages, uncivilized, alien races” – that are “not worthy” of the Constitution being applied in its whole extent to them because of the color of their skin, basically.
Alana: The question was, essentially, what would it mean if these uncivilized people could participate in something as sacred as U.S. democracy?
Belinda Torres-Mary: There were conversations starting out in Ellis Island.
Alana: Belinda again.
Belinda Torres-Mary: They mentioned skin color and the brownness of people and “savages,” you know, amongst the Caribbean islands and natives. And “what would that do to the vote if everyone were allowed to come in and vote? And could they be capable of that? And what would that do to this country?”
Alana: Isabel got a new lawyer to represent her to the Supreme Court: the same one who had challenged the government in the other insular case involving the oranges.
And she had more help.
Puerto Rico didn’t have – and still doesn’t have – a vote in Congress. But the position of resident commissioner, the non-voting representative in Washington, had just been created in 1900. And the very first person to be elected to that position was someone who would come to be an important ally for Isabel: Federico Degetau.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: No nos han contado casi nada de él.
Alana: Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez is a professor at the University of Puerto Rico, and she’s fascinated by this largely unknown figure.
Federico Degetau was a lawyer, he spoke multiple languages and had lived in Europe. He admired the US Constitution and the republican system of government.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Federico Degetau, el hombre yo– yo estoy asombrada con él, eh?
Alana: Se nota!
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Se nota, verdad?
Alana: Federico was a man of law and democracy. But he also consulted with a medium in Old San Juan, who would help him connect with spirits. Sometimes these spirits were historical figures who would give him advice about the future. He kept a meticulous diary, and Nieve has found that the predictions he got were uncannily accurate. Like, a year before Federico was elected as resident commissioner, the spirits were telling him to study up on his English because he was going to Washington.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Y desde un año antes se lo estaban advirtiendo que se preparara, que estudiara inglés, porque se iba pa’ Washington…
Alana: WHAAAAT?
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Está en el diario.
Alana: At first, people didn’t have very high hopes for him. The position was brand new:
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Era un invento nuevísimo.
Alana: Federico was supposed to represent Puerto Ricans, but he didn’t have the right to have a seat, or the right to debate or speak from the floor, and of course he couldn’t vote on anything. It was absurd.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Tampoco tenía derecho a voto. Y, y –
Alana: Y qué más hay?
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Exactamente, era una pantomima.
Alana: One newspaper proclaimed that if Federico even managed to get past the lobby at the capitol, he would be exceeding expectations. But he was exceedingly handsome. And extremely charming. And very tall. And crucially, he was white.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Si no hubiera sido guapo o blanco o alto o refinado, probablemente – no hubiera cumplido la profecía de que no vas a pasar ni siquiera del lobby.
Alana: Federico’s beard was lush and well groomed. He had a high forehead, and in photos he often looks straight at the camera. There’s one that could be on Tinder, where his arms are folded in front of him as though he’s talking to you across a bar. His head is cocked to one side, he’s raising an eyebrow, and I believe these days we’d call it a thirst trap.
American newspapers described him as among (quote): “the finest looking men” in Washington, and referred to his “splendid physique”. Nieve says: this was not normal.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Cuando lo yo, esto no es normal. Yo no vi estas descripciones en yo que le me he leído estos periódicos. Esto no es normal que lo digan.
Alana: And remember: the idea that people in these Washington circles had of Puerto Ricans – and Filipinos and Hawaiians – was essentially that we were savages. Cartoons portrayed brown children who needed to be educated by Uncle Sam. And here was Federico Degetau, with his oiled beard striding around in well-tailored suits, talking about how much Puerto Ricans knew about democracy, corresponding with anyone and everyone, and winning them over.
That’s how he got the rules changed so that he’d be able to not only enter the lobby of Congress, but to speak from the floor. Those are still the extent of the powers of the resident commissioner today.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Todavía estamos exactamente en el mismo lugar donde Federico lo dejó.
Alana: Obviously, he was also a product of his privilege. Nieve has looked into how he responded to Puerto Ricans who were being abused at sugar plantations in Hawaii. When the plantation owners said there was nothing to see here, Federico basically bought their lie, and moved on.
His main focus in Washington was establishing that Puerto Ricans were citizens, worthy of admission to the union to be part of the great American experiment in democracy that at that time, at least, was so inspiring to him.
So, Nieve says he started to do stunts. Like, he applied to be admitted to the Supreme Court bar, to be able to bring and argue cases. It was a position open only to citizens. If they accepted him, then it would follow that Puerto Ricans were US citizens.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Y para la sorpresa de todo el mundo, el tribunal supremo lo acepta.
Alana: When he’s accepted, it’s a shock – but they draw the line at just him. Over and over again, the government would recognize Federico, but only him.
So when he heard about the case of Isabel González, he saw an opportunity.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Lo que le llaman “test case” que le sirva para llegar al supremo.
Alana: A test case. Here was a fellow boricua who was willing to go all the way to the highest court, to push the US government into giving a different answer on citizenship..
Coming up… Federico and Isabel join forces. This is La Brega.
BREAK
Belinda Torres-Mary: Well, this is so pertinent now, right? I mean, and it always has been like, it seems like every presidential race there’s something coming up about immigrants and you know, who is worthy and who is not, is what it amounts to, in my opinion.
Alana: And that’s really the question that she was facing, right? Who’s, who’s worthy and who isn’t worthy?
Belinda Torres-Mary: That’s exactly what she was facing, yeah.
Alana: Belinda has a photograph of Isabel from around this time, there were several copies made. Some have speculated that it was commissioned by her lawyer to show how worthy this Puerto Rican plaintiff was.
Isabel looks white, she has her light brown hair up, it’s almost reddish. She’s wearing a white blouse with a high collar up to her chin, and white gloves.
Belinda Torres-Mary: Very prim and proper looking, I would say. And just the way she’s standing with that straight spine. She’s got her hands on a chair, but like her back is almost arched and she’s got her lips almost pursed. It’s almost like with a firmness of character.
Alana: Isabel and Federico were representing Puerto Ricans, using their own personal stories for wider gain. But their writing shows that they came at the issue of belonging in very different ways. He charmed people, she demanded. He spoke of his love of the US, she spoke of her inherent rights.
Belinda Torres-Mary: There’s evidence of her definitely showing her will, like she was not someone to do platitudes. she wasn’t gonna cater to you.
Alana: Isabel and her uncle Domingo published scathing letters to the editor in major newspapers. The New York Times published a series of letters under Isabel’s name in 1905.
ARCHIVAL – The New York Times 1905
Isabel González Voiceover: “If the “citizens of Porto Rico,” as they are unintelligibly called in the Foraker law, which is in force in the island
Porto Rico’s organic laws are clogged with different States’ codes, imposed on her by the American rulers who have carried to the island the system of laws
The country wants its own. We are not going to ask that liberties and franchises be taken away from or granted to Kentucky or Oklahoma. We are going to ask that our own be given back to us – those that we exercised when General Miles went to Porto Rico to save us, and proclaimed to the wide winds his “liberating” speech, which turned out later to be nothing but bitter mockery and waste paper.”
Alana: Federico Degetau was no less passionate. A friend would later write: “No pensaba él en otra cosa.” He thought of nothing else but Isabel’s case.
Federico had so much admiration for the Constitution and for the US, he had written as much in a letter to President Theodore Roosevelt. And the President had written back, calling Puerto Ricans his “fellow Americans”.
To support Isabel, Federico submitted a brief to the Supreme Court, spelling out the flaws in the government’s case .
ARCHIVAL – Degetau SCOTUS Brief
Federico Degetau Voiceover: I maintain that no port of the Territory of Porto Rico can be considered as a “foreign port” for the purposes of the Immigration Laws; and that, even if the petitioner were an alien – which I deny – the provisions of the Immigration Laws should not apply to her.
Alana: Across 42 pages, Degetau ran circles around the US argument. He leaned on law and logic, and educated them on Puerto Rico’s past relationship with Spain, and the US invasion itself. He also, unfortunately, described Puerto Rico’s position as being separate from that of the other colonies, saying they didn’t necessarily qualify for citizenship if Puerto Rico did.
ARCHIVAL – Degetau SCOTUS Brief
Federico Degetau Voiceover: In the case of Porto Rico the oath required from the inhabitants during the military government was a plain renunciation of all foreign allegiance and an explicit acceptance of the duties of American citizenship.
Alana: And, of course, he praised US democracy, calling it “our government” – and used himself as an example again.
ARCHIVAL – Degetau SCOTUS Brief
Federico Degetau Voiceover: “If I were an alien, I could not have attained the highest honor in my professional career, that of taking, as a member of the bar of this Honorable Court, the oath to maintain the Constitution of the United States…”
Alana: The justices would later call his brief “excellent.”
In January 1904, the decision came down. The justices narrowed the question to whether Isabel was a foreigner, and decided: No, she was not. Newspapers reported it as a win for Puerto Rico.
ARCHIVAL – San Juan News 1904
Voiceover: “Porto Ricans Not Aliens; No Somos Extranjeros.” San Juan News, January 6, 1904.
Alana: But the justices punted on the issue of citizenship, and really didn’t touch it at all. Domingo Collazo, Isabel’s uncle, was quoted saying, “the decision was to not decide.” The case has become one of the infamous insular cases.
For Federico, it was another gut punch. The justices had complimented his legal mind, but it was clear they didn’t really follow his logic. Eventually, the espiritistas would tell him that there was nothing else for him to do in Washington, to pack up his bags…
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Le dice: ‘Federico, no hay nada que hacer. Puerto Rico está rodeado de espíritus oscuros.’
Alana: That Puerto Rico was surrounded by dark spirits.
Federico lived out the rest of his life in Aibonito with his wife. He wouldn’t live to see the US extend citizenship to Puerto Ricans in 1917. When he died just three years earlier, he donated land, books and art to the public, and was buried very humbly in a cemetery that’s now falling apart.
Nieve has been trying to get his remains moved to a more fitting spot, without success.
We know that Federico and Isabel’s paths crossed at least one more time after the case.
Alana: ¿Me podrías leer la carta?
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: Bueno lo que tengo es un fragmento nada más…
Alana: There’s a fragment of a letter from Isabel to Federico from April 1904. It’s written in neat, looping cursive. Nieve shared it with us, it begins: “Distinguished compatriot…”
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: ”Distinguido compatriota–” Le llama compatriota, miren también también las palabras.
Alana: That word – compatriota – is a word associated with revolutionaries.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: “La presente tiene por objeto molestarle acerca de un asunto que al contárselo en detallado, no dudo abrirá las puertas de su corazón para ayudarme a conseguir lo que me propongo que no es mucho, pues siendo buena la obra, no es difícil el esfuerzo.”
Alana: She’s asking him for help with something – frustratingly, the fragment cuts off the part that says what it was. She sounds formal, but warm.
Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez: ”Quedo afectivamente su paisana, que le respeta. Isabel González y Staten Island Nueva York.”
Alana: She signs the letter, as his countrywoman who respects him.
A few years after the Supreme Court decision, Isabel divorced the man she had married in New York, and then, later she married Belinda’s great grandfather. They had three more kids, who had their own children, and so on, and so on. And in the family, the sense is that Isabel’s legal challenge was successful.
Belinda Torres-Mary: Her husband, which is my great-grandfather, Juan Francisco Torres, he was always saying, “Just look at my wife. She, you know, she changed the laws. She fought against the US government, US immigration, and won.”
Alana: If Federico was heartbroken by the “non-decision” decision on citizenship, Isabel seemed motivated by it. That’s when she started writing those letters to the New York Times.
There’s some doubt – Nieve, for example – thinks it was Domingo who wrote them, using Isabel’s name and celebrity to get published.
But the Isabel that Belinda has gotten to know would probably have written them herself.
Belinda Torres-Mary: I am choosing to see it in this way. Whether it ends up being right or not, it would be nice to know that, but in the end, I have enough of constellation of evidence, right?
Alana: And what is it that you are doing with your interpretation? How does it fuel you? In what direction?
Belinda Torres-Mary: Well, I mean, it totally inspires me, like when I feel down, I just have to think about her. Like, she was eight and a half months pregnant on a boat, has no idea what’s gonna happen. She could have just turned around. She had the chance, it would’ve been paid for. You’re just going back. It would’ve been so easy.
But she opened the other door, the door of unknowing and she walked through that.
And so if she can do that – and I’m a grown, grown ass woman, or whatever. Grown ass adult, right? – My woes are petty in comparison, just petty. So it’s, it’s nice to have that kind of a boost as she walks in parallel with me.
Alana: A lot hasn’t changed in the century since Isabel’s court case. Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but American Samoans are not. There’s no right to vote in federal elections, there’s no vote in Congress. Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico are denied benefits that people in the states get, to this day, because of the insular cases.
But a few years ago another Puerto Rican woman walked through the door of unknowing, and challenged the US government, too.
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: Pues mira, es cuesta arriba, es tirarle piedras a la luna, pero tú lo haces por principio.
Alana: Jessica Méndez Colberg, the attorney from earlier in the episode, asked the Supreme Court to overturn those racist insular cases.
She also knew that she was fighting an uphill battle, but doing it on principle. Jessica went to Washington DC in 2019.
ARCHIVAL – Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment, LLC
Justice Roberts: We’ll hear argument today in case 18 13 34, the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico versus Aurelius Investment and the consolidated cases…
Alana: It was a complicated case involving the financial oversight board which controls Puerto Rico’s finances, but it’s the insular cases that makes the imposition of the board possible, and Jessica was asking – for the first time in the court’s history – for the justices to overturn them.
Jessica was working for a small firm from Ponce, representing a public sector union.
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: This court is used to having in front of them, a white man of old age with a lot of experience before them. We wanted the court to see somebody different in front of them.
Alana: The other advocates there had argued before the Supreme Court some 60 times. It was Jessica’s first time, and she was 33 years old.
Alana: I recognize that the Supreme Court has centuries of history of racist decisions, that we need not respect it more than actually necessary. And yet, I also want to ask you, like, how do you feel going into that space?
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: Well, I never thought of them – still to this day – as they are, gods. To me, they are people and I wanted to put them at my same level so that that wouldn’t distract me. I also went a few days before my argument so that I could actually see them in person and actually, you know, see these are people. They are not that tall, not that strong.
Alana: Jessica and the other attorneys negotiated over how to split up the time, and she ended up with 10 minutes to argue for overturning the insular cases, so that the US couldn’t withhold certain rights and benefits from Puerto Rico.
ARCHIVAL – Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment, LLC
Justice Robert: Ms. Mendez Colberg.
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: Mr. Chief Justice, and may you please the court…
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: One of the things that we wanted to say in those few minutes is that well, when you look at the building…
ARCHIVAL – Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment, LLC
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: …we will see the words equal justice under law. The insular cases stretch that tenet into its breaking point…
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: And how they just need to be overruled because it’s been too long, basically, uh, to say it in rice and beans. It’s been too long. That brought a very interesting dynamic with the Chief Justice Roberts.
ARCHIVAL – Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment, LLC
Justice Roberts: None of the other parties rely on the insular cases in any way. So it would be very unusual for us to address them in this case, wouldn’t it?
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: Because as they always try to do, they don’t want to address the issue directly.
ARCHIVAL – Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment, LLC
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: Well, your Honor, they relied on the insular cases since the beginning of the proceedings.
Alana: And not only that, but the Court had just recently repudiated another racist decision: the Korematsu case, which justified imprisoning Japanese-Americans in World War II.
ARCHIVAL – Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment, LLC
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: The court said that the case had nothing to do with the Trump versus Hawaii case, but still it was a morally repugnant doctrine that was purely on the basis considering the basis of race, and therefore it was overruled…
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: So I told him now here is the same, the insular cases are morally repugnant and they need to be overruled now. And after that, no more questions from him.
Alana: Jessica got questions from Justices Kavanaugh, Ginsburg, and Breyer. And then she was done.
Alana: Were you optimistic?
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: We wanted to be, but we know the court that we’re in, you know.
Alana: They did not win. There have been other challenges to the insular cases, but the justices haven’t taken it upon themselves to reverse them, although Justice Gorsuch called them “shameful”.
Still, Jessica sees her effort at the Supreme Court as another link in a chain that includes Isabel.
Jessica Méndez-Colberg: I do see the, the parallels of that case. It’s something that tells you the fight is still ongoing, you know, it’s not, it’s not over.
Alana: Jessica only had ten minutes, and she used them all. Federico and Isabel were limited in where and how they could speak, but they made their case anyway – using whatever privileges they had – connections, looks, righteousness. The problem is, it often doesn’t matter. Even 100 years apart, they could all rely on being able to speak for Puerto Rico, but not necessarily on being heard.
MUSIC: Theme Song
On the next episode of La Brega, we enter the world of beauty pageants, where not only has Miss Puerto Rico dominated, but Mister Puerto Rico, too.
This episode was reported and written by me, Alana Casanova-Burgess. It was produced by Ezequiel Rodríguez Andino, with editing by Maria Garcia, Laura Pérez, and Marlon Bishop. Our Senior Producer is Nicole Rothwell.
Original art for this episode is by Elizabeth Barreto. Special thanks this week to Sam Erman, the author of “Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire,” – which was a helpful resource when reporting this episode. And thank you also to Christina Duffy Ponsa-Kraus, Belinda Torres-Mary, Nieve de los Ángeles Vázquez, and Rebeca Ibarra. Thank you also to Mario Roche and Laura Pérez for their voice over work. And thank you to Sara Cruz Castro and Wanda Aponte from Radio Universidad for providing studio space for this episode’s interviews.
The La Brega team includes Nicole Rothwell, Ezequiel Rodríguez Andino, Laura Pérez, Liliana Ruiz, Roxana Aguirre, Maria Garcia, and Marlon Bishop. Our production managers are Jessica Ellis and Victoria Estrada with support from Francis Poon. And our marketing team includes Anhelo Reyes and Luis Luna with support from Paloma Perez and Jackie Hill.
Fact checking this season is by Laura Moscoso and Tatiana Díaz Ramos.
Sound design by Jacob Rosati.
Mixing by Stephanie Lebow, Julia Caruso, Jacob Rosati, and JJ Querubin.
Scoring and musical curation by Jacob Rosati and Stephanie Lebow.
Our theme song is by IFÉ. Original music is by Balún.
Our executive producers are Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia and me, Alana Casanova-Burgess.
Legal review by ProJourn and Clearance Counsel by Fisher Legal Arts; Jonathan Fisher.
Futuro Media was founded by Maria Hinojosa.
La Brega is a production of Futuro Studios. This season of La Brega was made possible by the Mellon Foundation.
Check out our website, labregapodcast.org, for transcripts and more information about this episode.
See you next time. Bai!
