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The spectacle of clashing political projects shaped the historical moment that was turn-of-the-century Puerto Rico. Puerto Rican liberals in the late nineteenth century successfully negotiated a reformed colonial relationship with the declining Spanish empire. Spanish imperial authority in the Caribbean was deteriorating as Puerto Rican liberal reformers and Cuban radical revolutionaries struggled against an oppressive Spanish colonialism. Meanwhile, the expansionist United States was emerging as a new imperial power in the Caribbean and the Pacific, challengingthepoliticalprojectsoflocaleliteswithinthecoloniesandthebroader Spanish imperial intentions in the regions. While Spanish and US imperial actors battled each other for supremacy in the Caribbean, creole liberal reformers and revolutionaries struggled to maintain their authority within each island’s political hierarchy. The 1880s and 1890s were years of intense political activity in Puerto Rico. Liberal reformers, reorganized into the Partido Autonomista Puertorriqueño (Puerto Rican Autonomist Party) in 1887, demanded that the Spanish colonial state redefine the relationship between empire and colony. Guided by the political ideology of autonomism, liberal reformers called for greater local and municipal control over the island’s political and economic affairs without fully rejecting Spain’s political authority as empire. In response to the political pressure of liberal reformers, the highest representative of Spanish colonial authority on the island, the appointed governor, launched a campaign against the proponents of liberal reform. Through the notorious Guardia Civil (Civil Guard), Governor Romualdo Palacios persecuted those opposed to absolute Spanish authority. Despite the repression, liberal reformers achieved their goals in 1897 when the 24 chapter 1 The Politics of Empire, Education, and Race queen of Spain granted Puerto Rico and Cuba a new constitution, the Carta Autonómica (Autonomic Charter). This new constitution altered Spain’s relationship to the Caribbean colonies. While Spain maintained sovereignty over both colonies, it granted them the right to establish an insular government with elected representatives. The Autonomic Charter, which was a Spanish reaction to the political pressure of both Puerto Rican liberal reformers and Cuban revolutionaries , fulfilled some basic tenets of autonomist ideology. The year 1898 began with a new promise for autonomism, a political project that different sectors of the creole elite nevertheless contested and redefined.1 The liberal reformers’ political project, however, was quickly undermined by the expansionist intentions of the United States. Since the 1850s, the political and physical boundaries of the United States had been expanding west, spilling across the Pacific Ocean. Beyond the territory of Hawaii, US imperial aggression reached the Philippines. US imperial actors first challenged the Spanish colonial government, then the Filipino “insurgency,” with the intention of acquiring the archipelago. After the success of the US military in Manila, US imperial intentions turned to Cuba. The US intervention in the 1895 Cuban War of Independence became the “Spanish-American” War of 1898. Before negotiating the Treaty of Paris with Spain, the US military invaded its number two target in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico. At the end of the “splendid little war,” the United States and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris on December 19, 1898. The treaty called an end to the war between the two empires and ceded Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other Spanish territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific to the United States. The treaty also provided the legal foundation for the new US military occupation of Puerto Rico. For eighteen months the United States maintained a military occupation of the island. On April 12, 1900, the US Congress approved a new civil government for Puerto Rico with the Foraker Act. The founding of the new civil government confirmed what several Puerto Rican liberal reformers feared. Through the act and the judicial clarification of the 1901–4 “Insular Cases,” the island was defined as an unincorporated territory of the United States. The Foraker Act consolidated US imperial intentions to retain the island as a “permanent colony.”2 The United States entertained several objectives for Puerto Rico. For some Americans, the island held the promise of economic profit. They imagined Puerto Rico to be ripe for economic investment and agricultural production, a source of cheap labor, and a ready market for US exports. The political project of US empire in Puerto Rico, however, was not clearly defined. Some in the mainland were opposed to US expansion and acquisition of colonial territories, convinced it went against the basic tenets of a liberal democracy. Others, informed by a The Politics of Empire, Education, and Race 25 strong sense of white supremacy and the Anglo-Saxon right to govern over those defined...

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