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COPYRIGHT 2003 Plenum Publishing Corporation
It has been more than 100 years since the U.S. took control of Puerto Rico. In that time, the way in which the U.S. perceived Puerto Rico has changed from a colony requiring Americanization to becoming, in the 1950s, its showcase of democracy in the Caribbean, to today, when the island still has geopolitical importance for the U.S., but represents an increasing economic burden to the federal government. The failure of Operation Bootstrap, as the Puerto Rican industrialization program was known, resulted in almost permanent large-scale unemployment, with a population dependent on federal transfers for a living, and a constant source of migration to the mainland, where more than half of Puerto Ricans now live. I trace the outline of these three stages in U.S. hegemony over Puerto Rico, and argue that throughout, the U.S. Congress was reluctant to fully incorporate Puerto Rico because its population was deemed racially and socially inferior to that of the mainland. Though the removal of Spain from Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines was considered part of the U.S. "manifest destiny," it never intended to incorporate these people so different from the U.S. as part of the American nation, as it did with its earlier acquisitions in Texas, Alaska or even Hawaii.
As a result, the economic integration of Puerto Rico into the U.S. is now complete, but its political status remains ambivalent. As a commonwealth or "freely associated state," with limited internal autonomy, Puerto Rico enjoys neither the rights and responsibilities of statehood nor the sovereignty of independence, which remains attractive only to the island's nationalist intelligentsia. With growing migration and economic integration, sympathy for independence has waned while statehood supporters have increased and now pose a significant challenge to the commonwealth option.
As hopes for independence have dimmed, political nationalism has turned increasingly to cultural nationalism. Puerto Ricans maintain that, despite their century-long colonial subordination to the U.S., they have managed to retain their own Latin culture. Pride is focused on language, with commonwealth supporters passing Spanish First laws as recently as 1991 making Spanish the official language of the "government," but excluding the schools or trade (Negron-Muntaner 1997). Spanish remains the vernacular on the island, although probably the majority of its residents are now bilingual, due more to circular migration to the U.S. than to English language instruction in the schools. Even statehood supporters had to concede the continuing official recognition of Spanish as a condition for jibara statehood, a move that angered many in the U.S. Congress. The continuing work of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture as well as new museums and concert halls support a flourishing art scene in music, literature and the plastic arts, while artists like Rickie Martin and Jennifer Lopez enjoy renown on the mainland. Though fast food restaurants such as McDonalds and pizza houses abound in Puerto Rico, most places still serve find a standard rice and beans, while U.S. style supermarkets and shopping malls also cater to Puerto Rican tastes.
Puerto Rico has retained a distinctive culture, despite a century of U.S. control and conscious attempts at Americanization. But Puerto Rican culture goes beyond language, food, and art to values or what P. Chatterjee calls the spiritual domain, emphasizing women and the family. Chatterjee (1993, Chapter 6) maintains that Indian nationalists under British rule drew a sharp contrast between modernizing the material or public world of politics and the economy and the spiritual or private world of the home, which was to remain essentially national. The spiritual realm in Indian culture was considered superior to the West and was considered far more important to maintaining identity, and therefore should be preserved and protected, while modernizing politics and economics along Western lines. Latin Americans like Rodo have made similar distinctions between their superior spirituality in contrast to the vulgar materialism of the Anglo-Saxons, echos of which can be heard in Puerto Rican nationalism. But I would argue that there has been more change in this spiritual or cultural domain than most Puerto Ricans recognize, due in part to a modernization campaign that nationalists themselves espoused, in order to challenge the assumed superiority of North Americans. I focus on the transformation of the family and sexuality, where I have done much of my work, and suggest the changing norms in these areas since 1898, due to both conscious policies of Americanization and immense culture changes such as urbanization, industrialization and migration, both internally and to the U.S. The cost of this transformation has been heavy, both in Puerto Rico, where the family as a source of cohesion and stability has lost much of its force, and to the U.S., which is now burdened with a more dependent and vulnerable population than it encountered in 1898. But the transformation has also produced a more open sexuality, that rejects patriarchy and openly supports women's rights, who have a growing public presence as well as domestic autonomy (Safa 1995).
The Colony of Puerto Rico and Americanization
Puerto Rico in 1898 was a poor, underdeveloped Spanish colony, where 80% of the population was illiterate and lived mostly on subsistence farms en la isla, as the interior was known. It did not have the commercial importance of Cuba as a port or as a sugar producer. In the 19th century, coffee, grown on family owned haciendas in the interior, had come to be the major crop. As a result, slavery was less important and slaves never represented more than 11% of the population, although the percentage of free blacks was generally higher. Subsistence farms grew food for domestic consumption and to serve the growing urban population in San Juan and Ponce.
U.S. occupation brought about a total change in Puerto Rico's economy and polity. The U.S. was welcomed by all sectors of the population as a symbol of modernity and progress, in comparison with the backward and inefficient Spanish, but they did not apply democratic principles in their colony. Puerto Rico was designated an "unincorporated territory" belonging to but not part of the U.S., and the protections of the Constitution did not automatically apply. Although military rule was replaced by a civilian government, the Foraker Act of 1900 stipulated that the governor and top officials were presidentially appointed and they were all North Americans until the 1940s, while Congress had veto power over all legislation promulgated by a locally elected House of Delegates. The franchise was restricted to literate, tax-paying males, but progressive reforms, such as an eight-hour day (not often enforced) and trial by jury, were designed to win the allegiance of the popular classes. Puerto Ricans were not made citizens of the U.S. until 1917, when troops were needed for World War I and there were security concerns in the overseas colony.
To exert economic control, the U.S. made Puerto Rico part of the U.S. monetary system, and prohibited Puerto Rico from negotiating commercial treaties with other nations, from determining tariffs, and from shipping goods to the mainland on other than U.S. carriers. This helped pave the way for U.S. business interests to exploit Puerto Rico's resources and prevented the development of an independent capitalist class. (Dietz 1986: 86-92).
Large-scale sugar cultivation based on centrales or sugar mills expanded rapidly, resulting in the proletarianization of the labor force, increasing land concentration, and an expansion of imported foodstuffs. The old hacendado class lost control over the economy and served increasingly as intermediaries between the colonial government and the masses (Quintero Rivera 1976). Domestic food production dropped rapidly, as food imports increased and the percentage of land devoted to growing crops for local consumption dropped (Dietz 1986: 122). Women found new low-paid jobs as stemmers in the cigarmaking industry and as seamstresses in the home needlework industry. Public health reduced mortality rates, especially in the first few years, and the population increased rapidly. Public education also reduced illiteracy, which was still a major problem in rural areas, where schools were inaccessible and costly beyond the third grade.
Schools were to be a primary vehicle of Americanization, and initially all classes were to be taught in English, which also made for a large drop-out rate. Though modified, this policy was maintained until Puerto Rico elected its own governor and legislature in the 1940s, and Spanish was declared the official language. The Americanization which was central to the U.S. colonial project was based on supposed racial and cultural superiority. Puerto Ricans were regarded as children or "noble savages," to whom North Americans brought, in the words of the leader of the U.S. invasion, "the advantages and blessings of enlightened civilization" (Dietz 1986: 84). As Lanny Thompson (1995) points out in his analysis of one of the better known U.S. picture books on their new possessions common to this early period, Puerto Ricans were regarded as "others," as simple and poor victims of Spanish domination, eager to learn from their new masters, but with little culture of their own. Racially, this book emphasized the "whitening" of the Puerto Rican population, and its indigenous heritage, which had then disappeared, and marginalized the black African presence, a vision which Puerto Ricans continue to hold to this day.
One key aspect of Americanization, overlooked until recently, centers on the question of the family and sexuality in Puerto Rico, which was closely tied to race and class. U.S. officials were shocked to find that more than 50%...
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