Eugenio María de Hostos: Petition to the United States Government (1899)

In 1899, Eugenio María de Hostos traveled to Washington, D.C. as head of a commission representing the Puerto Rican people. He presented a petition to President McKinley requesting a plebiscite on Puerto Rico's political status — asking that the Puerto Rican people be allowed to choose their own future.

The Petition

Hostos argued:
1. The Treaty of Paris transferred sovereignty over Puerto Rico from Spain to the United States without consulting the Puerto Rican people — a violation of the principle of consent of the governed
2. The United States, as a republic founded on the principle of self-determination, had a moral obligation to allow Puerto Ricans to choose their own political status
3. The options should include independence, annexation (statehood), or autonomy
4. Any decision made without the consent of the Puerto Rican people would be illegitimate

Key Passages

'We have come to ask that you give us the opportunity to be what we want to be, to govern ourselves as we see fit, and to exercise those natural rights which belong to every people on earth.'

'Puerto Rico asks nothing that the United States has not already given to itself: the right of self-determination.'

'A democracy that denies self-determination to a people it governs is a contradiction in terms.'

The Response

The United States government ignored the petition. No plebiscite was held. Instead, Congress passed the Foraker Act (1900), imposing a colonial government without consulting Puerto Ricans.

Significance

Hostos's petition is one of the earliest and most eloquent articulations of Puerto Rico's right to self-determination. His argument — that a democracy cannot deny democratic rights to its subjects — remains unanswered 125 years later.

The petition also established a pattern that would repeat throughout the 20th and 21st centuries: Puerto Ricans asking for self-determination, and the United States refusing to respond. From Hostos's petition in 1899 to the UN Decolonization Committee hearings in the 2020s, the question remains the same. The answer — silence — also remains the same.