America's Colony: The Political and Cultural Conflict between the United States and Puerto Rico

7. Conclusion

Conclusion The United States views Puerto Rico’s cultural and political assertiveness as resistance that must be stopped or controlled. This has resulted in a campaign of cultural and political repression. In the process, independence has been constructed as an unacceptable alternative for the United States and a disaster for the Puerto Ricans. Full incorporation into the United States, which would politically empower Puerto Ricans, also is not acceptable, because their cultural identity conflicts with the idealized “American” norm. In choosing to retain their cultural identity, Puerto Ricans are regarded as “stubborn” and “ungrateful” to the United States. This chapter analyzes the consequences of the U.S. colonial regime over Puerto Rico, especially the misleading social and political narratives about the Puerto Ricans that it has produced. The Mythology of “American” Imperialism in Puerto Rico Republican Senator James Inhofe (Okla.) recently complained that “they” (the Puerto Ricans) “kick[ed] us out of our range” in Vieques.1 While the closing of the Vieques Training Center may yet prove to be the single most important event in the U.S.–Puerto Rican relationship in the last one hundred years, the history of the United States’ military use of Puerto Rico is the best example of the United States’ desire for Puerto Rican land and the contempt for its people. Since the beginning of its colonization , it was evident that the United States’ interest in conquering land did not extend equally to the colonized peoples.2 Historically, the United States has viewed Puerto Rico as “its” land and Puerto Ricans as, at best, “ungrateful” “foreign” laborers and consumers and, at worst, dangerous subversives and revolutionaries. 7 147 Contrary to the view that Puerto Rico was a mere afterthought in the Spanish-American War and is now a forgotten American colony, la isla is in fact a colony that the United States wanted and has never forgotten at policymaking levels. The historical record reveals that one of the estadounidenses ’ main interests in their defeat of the Spanish in the SpanishAmerican War was acquiring Puerto Rico. In President William McKinley ’s instructions to the U.S. delegation that negotiated the Treaty of Paris, the only full territory that he ordered them to demand from the Spanish was the islands of Puerto Rico.3 Although the islands were important to the United States for military and economic reasons, their principal attraction was their strategic location when the Spanish-American War broke out. Indeed, the acquisition of Puerto Rico was contemplated from the very conception of the new “American empire” that resulted from the Spanish-American War, as illustrated by the following correspondence: Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, in a personal letter to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, wrote: “. . . do not make peace until we get Porto Rico.” Lodge replied: “Porto Rico is not forgotten and we mean to have it. Unless I am utterly . . . mistaken, the administration is now fully committed to the large policy that we both desire.”4 Nevertheless, Puerto Rico is often erased in any discussion of the purposes and effects of the Spanish-American War. This social construction is exemplified by a documentary aired on PBS. Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War was a film purporting to tell the story of that con- flict, but it focused almost exclusively on Cuba and the Philippines. PBS’s Web site describes the historical moment as follows: “Victorious over Spain in Cuba and the Philippines, the United States, a nation founded in opposition to imperialism, grappled with its new role as an imperial power.”5 In fact, the film and its Web site at www.pbs.org make only token references to Puerto Rico and Guam, even though the Puerto Ricans and the Guamanians are the only peoples colonized during that war that are still part of the “American empire.” After acquiring it, the United States designed a process of governance that hid Puerto Rico in plain view. Puerto Rico’s carefully crafted legal regime was intended to conceal the true colonial status of the island because it is part of the U.S. legal structure but different and apart from it. Such a dichotomy was necessary in order for the United States to lobby after World War II for people’s self-determination.6 The United States 148 | Conclusion needed to hide its own colonial empire from allies, to whom it was preaching about decolonization, and from...