| History
Puerto Rico, The Tumultuous Story of the Oldest Colony in the World
As I learned more about my country’s dark past, I learned the origin many of the phenomena of the island I know today - and what they mean for our existence as a distinct people.
By Hector Miranda Plaza, January 26, 2021
Title Image: Hector Miranda Plaza
As a child, I never gave much thought to the conditions of my surroundings.
I grew up in a suburb of San Juan, Puerto Rico, a place whose metropolitan area is an eclectic cultural brew of African and Indigenous traditions, Spanish colonial architecture and language, and American customs sprinkled in between.
My extended family was tightly knit and middle class; my parents worked so many hours that I was with my grandparents most of the time. Despite this absence, though, I lived a calm life which mostly consisted of going to school and playing video games on my grandpa’s old computer.
These conditions afforded me a lifestyle that many in the island didn’t have. It was this same privilege that also blinded me to many oddities that now stick out to me like a sore thumb in this cultural landscape: Why was there another flag flying by our own in the Capitol building? Why do I hear people use English words while speaking Spanish? What do independence, statehood, and commonwealth statuses even mean? Most importantly, what does this mean for my culture, and for the future of my island?
It was only when I moved to the States, separated from my native culture and traditions, that I became interested in and slowly began to gain knowledge on the reason why: Puerto Rico’s recent history.
Puerto Rico in the modern era has been controlled by two foreign powers: Spain, since the early 1500s, and the United States. In 1898, in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War and the resulting Treaty of Paris, the Spanish ceded Puerto Rico among other territories to the United States. This was preceded by the introduction of political autonomy to the island by the Spanish only three months before the transfer; autonomy to this degree would be unseen by the Puerto Rican people for the next 50 years.
Under the American military junta, key actions were taken against Puerto Ricans to enable subjugation: The currency of the island, the Puerto Rican Peso, was declared null and void and its value pegged to three fifths of the US Dollar (before it was of equal value), effectively cutting the net wealth of Puerto Ricans by 40%; agricultural lands were bought by large sugar cane conglomerates using state and economic coercion, resulting in a dramatic shift from agricultural autarky to total mercantile dependence.
Colonial authorities, military and civilian alike, would oppress Puerto Ricans for the entirety of their rule, with many peaceful events that spoke out against the current state of affairs being violently crushed, such as the Ponce Massacre.
Police fire upon peaceful pro-independence demonstrators in the Ponce Massacre. El Imparcial
Although there would be the introduction of some semblance or representative government in the form of an elected Chamber of Representatives, they had no real power as all decisions had to go through the US-appointed senate and the Congress in Washington. This is best seen when, in 1914, the Chamber unanimously voted to declare independence, but was blocked by the US Congress.
In 1917, the United States passed the Jones Act, restricting all imports and exports between Puerto Rico and the US, which it was now most dependent on, to only go through ships wholly built and operated by Americans. This raised prices for many essential goods, and still continues to strangle the island to this day.
In addition to this, the Act forced limited citizenship upon Puerto Ricans, making them eligible for the draft with little other of the benefits citizenship brings. The Puerto Rican Chamber voted unilaterally against this legislation; it still passed anyways.
In 1932, running with the now defunct Puerto Rican Liberal Party, Luis Muñoz Marin won a seat in the now-elected insular senate. In 1938, he helped found the Partido Popular Democratico (People’s Democratic Party/PPD) as a left-leaning party running on extensive social and economic reforms, as well as immediate independence.
His party soon came to prevalence, obtaining a popular mandate through a senate majority in 1944. As these successes began to threaten the island’s status quo, then-director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover opened an investigation into him and found that he was chronically addicted to opioids. He then used this knowledge to blackmail him into towing the American agenda.
This effectively defanged the PPD, and ensured a shift to a political situation that squashed any hopes of independence arriving soon peacefully.
In 1948, he helped pass the Ley de la Mordaza (the Gag Law) - a piece of legislation reminiscent of the American Smith Law - which gave the government unchecked authority to crack down on pro-independence movements, most of which also happened to be aligned against the PPD. Later in the year, he was elected governor and took office in 1949.
In 1950, Pedro Albizu Campos, a well known figure in the Puerto Rican independence movement and head of the Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico (Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico/PNPR), orchestrated an islandwide uprising against colonial authorities in the hopes of gaining independence.
In response, Muñoz Marin mobilized the national guard to forcefully crack down on the insurrection, demanded the arrests of Albizu Campos and other independence advocates, and used the Gag Law to detain thousands of innocent Puerto Ricans without due cause or process.
During this time, many other acts and movements of insurrection occurred, such as Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irvin Flores, and Andres Cordero’s assault on the US Congress, and the formation of Filiberto Ojeda Ríos’s Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (People’s Army of National Liberation)
Puerto Rican Independentists Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, and Andres Cordero are arrested by Capitol police following their attack on the building. Associated Press
As governor, besides implementing moderate social and economic reforms such as Operation Bootstrap, Muñoz Marin established the Estado Libre Asociado (Commonwealth Status/ELA) in 1952 as a means of appeasement.
This compromise only granted partial autonomy, and stood as a betrayal of the ideals the party was founded on in the eyes of many party members. Disgruntled, many PPD stalwarts defected to found the Partido Independentista Puertorriqueño (Puerto Rican Independence Party/PIP).
In theory, the Estado Libre Asociado (ELA) is meant to be a transitional authority that grants Puerto Rico the ability to either opt for statehood in the US or independence.
In practice, however, due to referendums on this status being non-binding or rejected by the US Congress, the rise of a bipartisan dynamic between the PPD and the pro-statehood Partido Nuevo Progresista (New Progressive Party/PNP), and the current order being most beneficial for American political and business interests, this state of affairs has persisted for the past 70 years.
In light of this extensive history of repression and exploitation, the observations I missed in my youth can only be the symptom of a greater cultural malaise perpetrated by a foreign power: Americanization.
The United States is very effective at this process of assimilation, having done it with the Cajuns of Louisiana, the Nuevo Mexicanos of New Mexico, and all its immigrant groups
The creeping Americanization of Puerto Rico stands as an existential threat to the Puerto Rican identity; why should a country that has oppressed, plundered, and taken advantage of us hold so much sway over our culture? As Puerto Ricans, we must recognize this exploitative North American legacy and call out American encroachment on our culture for the extension of imperialism that it is.
This isn’t to say that we can’t engage with the culture of the United States. To the contrary, a healthy understanding of all cultures, including the American one, is necessary to understand the uniqueness of both one’s own culture and that of others. Personally, I love to watch American football while grilling some burgers with my friends in the States, and I’d encourage others to enjoy it too. It is good fun, after all. However, their traditions should not take precedence over ours.
Our culture has been molded over centuries by the ethnicities and nationalities that have arrived at our noble shores, and traditions and cultural staples like the Sanse, Frituras, our language, and our music distinguish it from all others. Before we can even hope to grapple with the political and economic realities of our island, we must first learn to accept ourselves for who we are. We aren’t Americans, we are Puerto Ricans, and we should be proud of who we are.