Iain Murray implies that I’m a blogger of the Caribbean Anglosphere. True if I were in the Bahamas, or Jamaica, or Caymans, or other British or American islands. But, actually, I’m in Puerto Rico, which by all appearances is trying to paddle its way out of the Anglosphere as quickly as it can, back to the fantasized glory days of their Spanish heritage.

The island has a new governor, Sila Calderon. She ran a Hillary-like campaign, with billboards containing nothing except her picture and the word “Sila!” One of Governor Calderon’s first acts was to roll back the requirement for English language instruction in the primary schools–Espanol is good enough for us, gracia’. She’s supposedly of the Commonwealth party, but she was accused the other day of being a closet member of the Movimiento Independista by the San Juan Star. One of her second acts was to have the stationary changed from “Puerto Rico, US Commonwealth” to “Puerto Rico, Free Associated State.”

Mark Twain once said, “A dog will not bite the hand that feeds him. This is the principal difference between a man and a dog.” The dirty little secret is that there were quite a few down here who were almost as pleased at what happened on September 11 (I was here the day it happened, scheduled to fly back to California on a 10 AM flight–needless to say, my departure was delayed as I watched the towers fall) as some in the West Bank and Gaza.

Unfortunately, too few Boriquens (what they call themselves) realize how much their economy is being propped up by dollars from Washington. If we finally decide that without Vieques, the Roosevelt Roads naval facility is not by itself worth the billions of US taxpayer funds that flow down here, they just may find out.