“Sorry, this video only available in the United States,” says the Cartoon Network website. Grrrrrrr… mommy growls as she in unable to show a Ninjago video to her 4 year-old because she is “not in the United States.” Well I would like to know where exactly am I?
I live in Puerto Rico, the quagmire of colonies. Yes, if you thought colonies were things of the Middle Ages, you were wrong. Our beautiful little island is a colony and “subject to the territorial clause of the Constitution of the United States of America,” according to the President’s taskforce on Puerto Rico. Yup. In the political sense we don’t even exist! Oh, sure we have a governor and senate and house of representatives, but all they decide can go to the shits if the US government decides against it (people we don’t get to vote for, btw). So if I’m subject to US territorial clauses, then why am I not in the USA? (Insert confused expression here).
Apparently the political limbo has extrapolated to the web and some internet sites are clueless. I don’t blame them. The whole thing is pretty confusing, even to the Puerto Ricans. None of us know where the fuck we are! Is this USA or Latin America? (Tan tan taaaaaaan… the suspense is killing me!) My passport says I am a US citizen, the US postal service delivers for the same rate as any other state (Growl to the sites that insist on charging international rates for Puerto Rico deliveries: Grrrrrrrrrr!), my cable t.v. is filled with US channels, the streets are filled with US fast food chains and brands, Obama came here recently, and wherever I go there are (at least) two flags:
Which one is it? The mystery has lingered over the island for over 50 years and thus we are One of a Kind; the Quagmire of Colonies, neither here nor there; in limbo. In fact, some internet sites haven’t even heard of us. We’re not on their list of countries, not on their list of US states or territories; nowhere at all. One would think we don’t even exist: the Isle of Nowhere. I wonder how all those airplanes get here…
