Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History since 1898

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION In 1941, publisher Henry Luce announced the coming of the AmericanCentury from the pages of Life magazine. The moment symbolically marked the rise of the United States as a global power. It has been pointed out many times that American influence as proclaimed by Luce in 1941 and as built by U.S. strategists after 1945 did not imply the construction of a new colonial empirefollowing the British or other European models. This is undoubtedly so,but it should not lead us to forget that there were exceptions. For some, the American Century had begun much earlier, on the eve of the twentieth century, when the Spanish-American War of 1898 led to the installation of U.S. colonial governments in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. While the Philippines became independent in 1946, Puerto Rico and Guam remain under U.S.sovereignty to this day. Puerto Rico thus became an anomaly: a colony of a fundamentally noncolonial imperialism. It is this exceptional case that concerns us here. The objective of this book is to acquaint the reader with the history of Puerto Rico since 1898. Such a projectis nevera neutral or value-free operation. We bring to it a particular perspectiveand set of interests.While we relay many findings of past contributions in thisfield,we also depart from some prevalent views regarding many of the events, processes,and historical figures discussed here. But before wego into these, it is appropriate to begin with some facts and a brief overview of the terrain wewill cover. Puerto Rico is the smallest and easternmost of the Greater Antilles (see Maps I.I and 1.2). Although often referred to as an island, it is in fact formed by three inhabited islands: Puerto Rico,Vieques, and Culebra, the latter two being much smaller than the former. The three islands have a combined area of roughly 3,500 square miles. Following convention, wewill use the term "Puerto Rico" or "the island" to refer to the three insular territoriestaken as a unit. In 2006, Puerto Rico had close to four million inhabitants. It is therefore densely populated, with around 1,140 inhabitants per square mile. About one-fourth of Puerto Rico's surface is taken up by a coastal plain that encircles a mountainous interior, which in turn accounts for close to half of the island's territory . The remaining one-fourth of the insular surface corresponds to hilly areas between the flat lowlands and the central highlands. Puerto Rico's capital and largest city and harbor is SanJuan, located on its northern coast. At present, around half of those classified and/or describing themselves as Puerto Ricans reside outside Puerto Rico. Historically, most of them have lived in cities such as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Hartford. In recent years, a new pole of Puerto Rican relocation in the United States has emerged around Orlando and other cities in central Florida. While Spanish is the vernacular of most Puerto Ricans who grew up on the island, English is the first language of many who were born in or grew up in the United States. The diasporic dimension of the Puerto Rican experience since 1898 forces anyone attempting an account of it to embark on ajourney far beyond the confinesof strictly insular geography. Yet a thorough history of Puerto Ricans in the United States entails going deep into the specific economic and political history of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other North American cities. This is beyond the reach of a general overview. Therefore, while dedicating many of the pages that follow to developments in New York and, to a lesser extent, Chicago and Philadelphia, we know they are hardly enough to do justice to the richness of the history of the Puerto Rican diaspora. Having gone through the twentieth century—and entered the twenty-first— under direct U.S.rule, Puerto Rico stands out as doubly exceptional. After being one of the few colonies of a fundamentally noncolonial imperialism, it remains, most observerswould argue, a colony, long after most colonies in the world have moved on to either political independence or formal political integration with their metropolis, as in the case of some French colonies in the Caribbean. Not surprisingly, the question of the political relationship with the United States remains the central, constantly debated issue of insular politics. The history of Puerto Rico after the onset of U.S. rule in 1898 breaks down into two distinct epochs: before and after World...