Aníbal Acevedo-Vilá served a single four-year
term as Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner,
advocating for the island’s commonwealth status
and its cultural and political autonomy. “I’m going to
Washington to reaffirm that we are Puerto Ricans first.
I’m going to Washington to defend the sovereignty of the
Puerto Rican people,” Acevedo-Vilá declared shortly after
his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000.1
Aníbal Acevedo-Vilá was born on February 13, 1962, in
Hato Rey, Puerto Rico, to state senator Salvador Acevedo
and Elba Vilá. He earned a degree in political science from
the Universidad de Puerto Rico in 1982 and graduated
from its law school three years later. After clerking for the
supreme court of Puerto Rico, he moved to the mainland
United States, where he earned a master's degree from
Harvard Law School in 1987. For the next two years, he
clerked for the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the First Circuit, returning to Puerto Rico in 1989. He
married Luisa Gándara, and the couple had two children,
Gabriela and Juan Carlos.
Acevedo-Vilá began his career as an aide for Puerto
Rican Governor Hernández Colón of the Partido Popular
Democrático (Popular Democratic Party, or PPD), which
he called “the longstanding defender of the commonwealth
of Puerto Rico.”2 In 1992 at the age of 30, he won election
as a Popular Democrat to the Puerto Rican house of
representatives, and after only five years in the insular
legislature, he was elevated to minority leader and elected
president of the PPD—a major vote of confidence.3 As
party head, Acevedo-Vilá became a leading critic of the
island’s 1998 status referendum—which had support in
the U.S. House of Representatives—complaining that it
gave those who favored statehood an unfair advantage. On
multiple occasions, Acevedo-Vilá asked Congress to scrap
referendum bills H.R. 856 and S. 472, and in 1997 he argued heatedly with Puerto Rican Resident Commissioner
Carlos Romero-Barceló during a House subcommittee
hearing on the island’s political status.4 Testifying before
the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural
Resources roughly a year later, Acevedo-Vilá blamed
mainland administrators for the island’s nebulous federal
relationship. “It is not our fault. It was the United States
that invaded Puerto Rico. It was Congress that granted
U.S. citizenship back in 1917. It was Congress that granted
Commonwealth back in 1952,” he said. “By harmonizing
the fact that we are a people, a Nation, with our own
identity, history, and culture, with the preservation of the
permanent bond of the U.S. citizenship, Commonwealth
represents an alternative to the extremes of complete
integration and total separation.”5 In December 1998,
much to Acevedo-Vilá’s satisfaction, a majority on the
island voted in favor of commonwealth status. “This vote,”
he declared, “means that we have here people who are
proud of their history, proud of their relationship with the
United States, proud of their American citizenship, but,
above all, proud of their Puerto Ricanness.”6
Not long after the contentious plebiscite debates,
Acevedo-Vilá received some unexpected support in the
PPD primaries and ran for Resident Commissioner against
Romero-Barceló.7 The earlier status vote had set the stage
for the 2000 election, crystallizing the major differences
between the island’s two main parties. According to the
San Juan press, the race was notably “confrontational,”
with attacks on character, accusations of dirty money,
complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission
(FEC), and threats of disbarment.8 Acevedo-Vilá put
everything he had and then some into the campaign;
by late October, he was nearly half a million dollars in
debt and struggling to match the fundraising pace set
by Romero-Barceló.9 In a televised debate days before the election, Acevedo-Vilá chided the incumbent for his
aggressive position on statehood, faulted him for the federal
government’s military training on the island of Vieques, and
accused him of wasting time in Congress.10 Acevedo-Vilá
won the support of powerful labor unions and campaigned
on promises to strengthen Puerto Rico’s economy, revamp
certain environmental regulations, open access to affordable
housing, curtail crime, and improve the island’s education
system.11 The PPD’s frequent charges of corruption
against the sitting Nuevo Progresista (New Progressive)
administration weighed heavily on the race. Despite early
polls that showed him trailing Romero-Barceló, Acevedo-
Vilá eventually pulled ahead with a 49.3 percent plurality,
besting the incumbent by about 4 percent.12
Acevedo-Vilá was sworn in as the 18th Resident
Commissioner from Puerto Rico on January 3, 2001.
He caucused with the Democrats and was selected by
his first-term peers to serve as their vice president. Like
those of his predecessors, Acevedo-Vilá’s committee
assignments gave him a voice in economic and territorial
issues before Congress. He served on the Agriculture,
Resources, and Small Business Committees and also joined
the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, where he chaired the
Livable Communities Task Force.13
Underlying Acevedo-Vilá’s time in the House was an
aggressive campaign to change how Congress understood
its relationship with Puerto Rico. Romero-Barceló had cast
the federal-insular connection as a struggle for equality,
but Acevedo-Vilá sought “a fresh start” in which Puerto
Rico would lobby for more control over its affairs, almost
as if it were a separate nation. The island’s press called
Acevedo-Vilá’s plan “a concept that could run into trouble
with federal bureaucrats.” “No longer will Puerto Rico be
portrayed on Capitol Hill as a politically put-upon colony
whose citizens are deprived of full civil rights within the
American system,” wrote the Washington correspondent of
the San Juan Star.14
The first test was Acevedo-Vilá’s attempt to convince the
navy to cease bombing exercises on the nearby island of
Vieques before May 2003, the deadline set by the previous
Resident Commissioner and the outgoing William J. (Bill) Clinton administration.15 Acevedo-Vilá had been
working on the issue for the better part of two years as
PPD president, and in 1999, a year before he ran for
the U.S. House, Acevedo-Vilá called on the U.S. Senate
to withdraw the navy for good. An accident in which a
resident of Vieques was killed by a stray bomb sparked
new calls for the Defense Department to cede its portion
of the island to Puerto Rico. Moreover, the continual
bombings were reportedly sickening Vieques’ residents and
destroying the environment.16 “It’s not a national security
issue, it’s a health and human-rights issue,” Acevedo-Vilá
said.17 Despite the Resident Commissioner’s efforts, the
U.S. military upheld the original settlement, ceasing all
operations on Vieques in spring 2003 before transferring
much of the land to the National Wildlife Refuge System.18
The situation in Vieques cast a long shadow over
Acevedo-Vilá’s legislative agenda in the House, which
included securing new tax-based incentives for industry
seeking to establish roots in Puerto Rico. Many in
Washington suspected that Congress would delay any new
tax package as long as Puerto Rico pressured the navy to
leave Vieques—especially a tax proposal that could easily
be construed as “corporate welfare,” according to the
island’s press.19 But Acevedo-Vilá framed the incentives
as a way to create jobs on an island suffering from high
unemployment.20 In a Washington Times editorial, he
proposed new tax breaks with safeguards to prevent big
companies from exploiting possible loopholes, “thereby
maximizing the economic benefits of the legislation.”
Since Puerto Rico was a major consumer of U.S. goods,
any policy that benefited the island would also benefit the
mainland’s economy, Acevedo-Vilá explained, calling his
plan “a win-win proposition.”21
Acevedo-Vilá often emphasized Puerto Rico’s unique
relationship with the federal government in the hopes of
winning more autonomy while seeking equal treatment
in relation to the national budget. As the Washington
Post pointed out in September 2002, he sought leeway
to enact independent trade pacts with nearby Caribbean
countries, which the PPD hoped would raise much-needed
revenue, even as the PPD “also [was] working to achieve parity with states in federally funded programs, such as
nutritional assistance and health care.”22 In the 108th Congress (2003–2005), Acevedo-Vilá worked to improve
the services available to veterans on the island, especially
at the San Juan VA Medical Center, which had lost many
of its resources. He supported amendments to H.R. 1261,
the Workforce Reinvestment and Adult Education Act of
2003, and advocated bolstering Medicare on the island,
declaring, “U.S. citizens in Puerto Rico pay the same Federal
payroll taxes as any other jurisdiction. They deserve equity.”23
Acevedo-Vilá also highlighted Puerto Rico’s environment,
introducing a bill in mid-March 2002 to protect a swath
of land known as El Yunque, “the only tropical rain
forest within the U.S. National Forest System.” Known
as the Caribbean National Forest Wild and Scenic Rivers
Act of 2002 (H.R. 3954)—and based on the Wild and
Scenic Rivers Act of 1968—the bill provided “maximum
protection” for three river systems containing “critical
habitat for endangered species and sensitive tropical plant
species.” As Acevedo-Vilá noted during its consideration
that May, his measure insulated the designated rivers from
future commercial development. The bill was reported
favorably out of the Resources Committee and passed
the House by voice vote on May 7th. The measure was
approved by the Senate in the fall and was signed into law
by President George W. Bush on December 19, 2002.24
Midway through his four-year term, Acevedo-Vilá
announced he would not seek re-election to the House.25
Opting instead to run for governor of Puerto Rico, he won
the PPD’s nomination and prevailed in the general election
in fall 2004 by a razor-thin margin. After a lengthy legal
battle, with multiple appeals and overturned rulings, the
federal courts declared Acevedo-Vilá the victor by about
0.2 percent, or approximately 3,500 of the nearly two
million votes cast.26 As governor, he continued to oppose
calls for statehood and supported efforts in the U.S.
Congress proposing a new Puerto Rican constitutional
convention. Facing mounting budget deficits, Acevedo-Vilá fought with the Nuevo Progresista-controlled house
over a loan to keep the government operational, only to see
part of the insular government shut down in May 2006.27
In 2008 Resident Commissioner Luis Fortuño of the
Partido Nuevo Progresista challenged Acevedo-Vilá in
the gubernatorial election. From the start, Acevedo-Vilá’s
re-election prospects were weakened by the controversial
race four years earlier, the government shutdown, and the
resulting financial difficulties. Worse, federal authorities
indicted him on multiple counts of fraud, along with a
handful of other charges, in what the New York Times
described as “an elaborate scheme to pay off more than
$500,000 in campaign debts” dating to his time as
Resident Commissioner.28 The prosecution denied any
underlying motivation, but Acevedo-Vilá remained
convinced that the case was politically motivated—a
“spectacle designed to harm me.” Acevedo-Vilá lost the
gubernatorial election that fall. He was eventually acquitted
of all the charges.29
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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