UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO LAW — “Puerto Rico’s Constitution is very inspiring,” says Visiting Assistant Professor Jorge Farinacci-Fernós, a native of the island, “but it is absolutely colonial. It’s very progressive, but it has not been used adequately. It’s extremely democratic, but the institutions it created were not.” There’s a word for internal contradictions like that, and it’s in the title of Farinacci-Fernós’ newly published book: Puerto Rico’s Constitutional Paradox (Bloomsbury). Subtitled “Colonial Subordination, Democratic Tension, and Promise of Progressive Transformation,” the volume looks at the tensions inherent in Puerto Rico’s 1952 Constitution—the only constitutional document written by the Puerto Rican people after more than 500 years of Spanish and U.S. colonial rule.