Borinqueneers gain ground in Congress
By CB Online Staff
The U.S. Senate appears set to join the U.S. House of Representatives in taking up legislation to award the Congressional Gold Medal to Puerto Rican veterans of the 65th Infantry Regiment known as the “Borinqueneers.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, has pledged to sponsor such legislation in the upper chamber and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has said she will co-sponsor the bill. Both New England states have large Puerto Rican populations.
A measure filed in the House of Representatives by Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner in April has garnered 37 co-sponsors to date. Puerto Rico’s lone representative in Congress filed the bipartisan measure along with Rep. Bill Posey, a Florida Republican.
The Borinqueneers were created by Congress in 1898 as an all-Puerto Rican segregated unit, and is credited with the final battalion-sized bayonet assault in U.S. Army history.
Called upon to serve in World War I, World War II, and especially the Korean War, the Borinqueneers have consistently shown exceptional and unyielding valor on the battlefield despite the hardships they lived under such as ethnic discrimination.
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