Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898 (review)

As soon as I finished this book, I recommended it to a Nuyorican colleague with whom I disagree over the island’s status (independence, commonwealth, or statehood). She emailed me back that she thought the book was “fabulous” and would be using it in her course on Puerto Rico. It is a remarkable book, indeed, that can draw praise from diametrically opposed positions, even more so when the subject is Puerto Rico, so entangled in controversy and painfully caught between the histories of Latin America and the United States.

About four million Puerto Ricans live on three islands (Puerto Rico, Vieques, and Culebra) and another four million live on the U.S. mainland. Thus, Ayala and Bern-abe face the task of integrating the history of the islands with that of the diaspora in the United States. They skillfully guide the reader through the varied policy changes in the twentieth-century U.S. and show how these policies have been flexible on occasion. They make it quite clear that colonialism cannot be held responsible for all of Puerto Rico’s woes. They not only survey political and social aspects of history and the economic transformation of Puerto Rico but also discuss issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation in detail. At the same time, they are careful to relate Puerto Rican history to global trends as well as Latin American history.

Although Puerto Rican national consciousness had been developing throughout the nineteenth century parallel to other Latin American nations, the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1898, which transferred the island to the U.S. as a possession, cut short the Independence movement. The contradictory impact of United States rule, the denationalization of the economy, and the threat of Americanization at the expense of Puerto Rican culture emerged as major themes for intellectuals and artists as well as politicians and labor leaders. The agonizing search for identity by the people of a colony controlled by a “noncolonial imperialism” (p. 1) has produced one of the richest cultures of Latin America. The authors’ examination of cultural trends and figures, their struggle to “explain and define the Puerto Rican situation” (p. 260), is both analytical and sympathetic. Among others, it encompasses philosopher Eugenio María Hostos in the nineteenth century, Luis Palés Matos, Julia de Burgos, and Nuryorican poets and novelists José Luis González and Rosario Ferré in the twentieth century, Puerto Rican plena music, Rafael Hernández’s Lamento borincano in New York in 1929, and the invention of Salsa, the blending of Afro-Caribbean rhythms and jazz born in the Bronx.

Emotions run very high with respect to the fate of Puerto Rico and these authors have done an admirable job of sorting out highly contentious issues related to politics, economics, and migration. The status issue is unquestionably the most incendiary. Influenced by my Puerto Rican Independentista classmates in graduate school in Mexico, I have always supported Independence. However, Ayala and Bernabe map out the three positions, their history (above all, their changing context), and their proponents in such a respectful and dispassionate manner that the reader truly gains an appreciation of all sides of the issues. In particular, they provide a wonderful recap of the trajectory of Luis Muñoz Marín, from Independentista to the major representative of the commonwealth option (today’s “free and associated state”), and leader of the Partido Popular Democrático. Muñoz Marín opposed annexation because he feared that Puerto Rico’s thriving culture would not survive it, yet he was also convinced the island needed to stay attached to the U.S. in order to prosper. Given this affinity for the U.S., the authors contend that he should not be characterized as a Latin American populist like Lázaro Cárdenas or Getulio Vargas as is often the case.

This...