THE

HISTORY OF
PUERTO RICO
ADVISORY BOARD

John T. Alexander
Professor of History and Russian and European Studies,
University of Kansas
Robert A. Divine
George W. Littlefield Professor in American History Emeritus,
University of Texas at Austin

John V. Lombardi
Professor of History,
University of Florida
 THE
HISTORY OF
PUERTO RICO

Lisa Pierce Flores

The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations

Frank W. Thackeray and John E. Findling, Series Editors

GREENWOOD PRESS
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC
Copyright 2010 by Lisa Pierce Flores

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pierce Flores, Lisa.
The history of Puerto Rico / by Lisa Pierce Flores.
p. cm. — (Greenwood histories of the modern nations)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-313-35418-2 (hard copy : acid-free paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-35419-9
(ebook) 1. Puerto Rico—History. 2. Puerto Ricans—United States—History. I. Title.
F1971.P55 2010
972.95—dc22 2009035279
ISBN: 978-0-313-35418-2
EISBN: 978-0-313-35419-9
14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.
Visit www.abc-clio.com for details.
Praeger
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

ABC-CLIO, LLC
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
 Contents

Series Foreword vii

Preface xi

Timeline of Historical Events xix

1 Puerto Rico and Its People 1

2 Borinquen: Origins and Encounter (4000 BCE–1500 CE) 7

3 Spanish Colony: From San Juan Bautista to Puerto Rico (1493–1800) 27

4 Spanish Province: Autonomy Thwarted (1800–1898) 51

5 U.S. Territory: Military Occupation and Civil Government

(1898–1948) 69

6 Commonwealth: The Freely Associated State of Puerto Rico

(1948–1968) 95

7 State of Transition: After Operation Bootstrap (1968–1998) 105

8 Puerto Rico Today (1999–2009) 115

vi Contents

Notable People in the History of Puerto Rico 123

Glossary of Selected Terms 129

Notes 135

Bibliographic Essay 139

Index 151

An unnumbered photo essay follows page 94.

 Series Foreword

The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations series is intended to provide

students and interested laypeople with up-to-date, concise, and analytical
histories of many of the nations of the contemporary world. Not since the
1960s has there been a systematic attempt to publish a series of national
histories, and as series advisors, we believe that this series will prove to be
a valuable contribution to our understanding of other countries in our
increasingly interdependent world.
Some 40 years ago, at the end of the 1960s, the Cold War was an
accepted reality of global politics. The process of decolonization was still in
progress, the idea of a unified Europe with a single currency was unheard
of, the United States was mired in a war in Vietnam, and the economic
boom in Asia was still years in the future. Richard Nixon was president of
the United States, Mao Tse-tung (not yet Mao Zedong) ruled China, Leonid
Brezhnev guided the Soviet Union, and Harold Wilson was prime minister
of the United Kingdom. Authoritarian dictators still controlled most of
Latin America, the Middle East was reeling in the wake of the Six-Day
War, and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was at the height of his power in
Iran.
Since then, the Cold War has ended, the Soviet Union has vanished, leav-
ing 15 independent republics in its wake, the advent of the computer age
viii Series Foreword

has radically transformed global communications, the rising demand for oil
makes the Middle East still a dangerous flashpoint, and the rise of new
economic powers like the People’s Republic of China and India threatens
to bring about a new world order. All of these developments have had a
dramatic impact on the recent history of every nation of the world.
For this series, which was launched in 1998, we first selected nations
whose political, economic, and socio-cultural affairs marked them as
among the most important of our time. For each nation, we found an
author who was recognized as a specialist in the history of that nation.
These authors worked cooperatively with us and with Greenwood Press to
produce volumes that reflected current research on their nations and that
are interesting and informative to their readers. In the first decade of the
series, more than 40 volumes were published, and as of 2008, some are
moving into second editions.
The success of the series has encouraged us to broaden our scope to
include additional nations, whose histories have had significant effects on
their regions, if not on the entire world. In addition, geopolitical changes
have elevated other nations into positions of greater importance in world
affairs and, so, we have chosen to include them in this series as well. The
importance of a series such as this cannot be underestimated. As a super-
power whose influence is felt all over the world, the United States can
claim a ‘‘special’’ relationship with almost every other nation. Yet many
Americans know very little about the histories of nations with which the
United States relates. How did they get to be the way they are? What kind
of political systems have evolved there? What kind of influence do they
have on their own regions? What are the dominant political, religious, and
cultural forces that move their leaders? These and many other questions
are answered in the volumes of this series.
The authors who contribute to this series write comprehensive histories
of their nations, dating back, in some instances, to prehistoric times. Each of
them, however, has devoted a significant portion of their book to events of
the past 40 years because the modern era has contributed the most to con-
temporary issues that have an impact on U.S. policy. Authors make every
effort to be as up-to-date as possible so that readers can benefit from discus-
sion and analysis of recent events.
In addition to the historical narrative, each volume contains an introduc-
tory chapter giving an overview of that country’s geography, political insti-
tutions, economic structure, and cultural attributes. This is meant to give
readers a snapshot of the nation as it exists in the contemporary world.
Each history also includes supplementary information following the narra-
tive, which may include a timeline that represents a succinct chronology of
the nation’s historical evolution, biographical sketches of the nation’s most
Series Foreword ix

important historical figures, and a glossary of important terms or concepts

that are usually expressed in a foreign language. Finally, each author pre-
pares a comprehensive bibliography for readers who wish to pursue the
subject further.
Readers of these volumes will find them fascinating and well written.
More importantly, they will come away with a better understanding of the
contemporary world and the nations that comprise it. As series advisors,
we hope that this series will contribute to a heightened sense of global
understanding as we move through the early years of the twenty-first
century.

Frank W. Thackeray and John E. Findling

Indiana University Southeast
This page intentionally left blank
 Preface

As I was working on this project I was asked many times why a book on
Puerto Rico would be included in a series called The Greenwood Histories of
Modern Nations. ‘‘Puerto Rico is not a nation,’’ I was told triumphantly time
and again (though never by Puerto Ricans). ‘‘It’s part of the United States.’’
Another popular response was: ‘‘What exactly is the deal with Puerto
Rico?’’ Many non-Puerto Ricans I spoke with were not sure if Puerto Rico
was part of the United States or not, whether Puerto Ricans living in the
United States were immigrants, and if not, my interlocutors wanted to
know, why not.
When I told Puerto Rican family and friends about my project, responses
were too varied to include here; however, I noticed that no one ever
brought up the ‘‘Puerto Rico isn’t a nation’’ argument. Puerto Ricans living
on and off the island—even if our ties to the island are several generations
distant—seem to have an intrinsic perception of Puerto Rico as a nation,
even if it is not currently a nation-state. A history on the geographic, cul-
tural entity that is the ancestral home of nearly 8 million people should
and must be included in a series of books on modern nations. When I told
Puerto Ricans about my project, I received nods of approval, offers of help,
and tireless disquisitions on various aspects of Borinquen (Puerto Rican)
culture and politics, particularly on the status issue.
xii Preface

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH PUERTO RICO?

According to the Puerto Rican government, Puerto Rico is currently a
commonwealth or freely associated state of the United States. According to
the U.S. government, Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the
United States. It is ‘‘unincorporated’’ because it is not on a path toward
statehood. If it were on the path toward statehood it would be called an
‘‘incorporated’’ territory. It is a ‘‘territory’’ because it has a close association
with the United States that, according to U.S. legal definitions, ‘‘freely asso-
ciated states,’’ such as Micronesia, do not enjoy, including interest-free
social welfare subsidies. Puerto Rico’s unique relationship with the United
States means that its citizens carry U.S. passports, vote in presidential pri-
maries (though not elections), and can be drafted into the military. So how,
one might ask, can Puerto Rico be considered a nation?
Although a nation-state has been defined as a sovereign political entity
with defined boundaries, a nation can be defined as a community of people
who believe they have shared traits, a common heritage, and collective
goals, such as a right to self-determination. Using this definition, Puerto
Rico can and should be thought of as a nation.
A nation-state is a fairly recent concept. In fact, according to many his-
torians and political scientists, the concept dates no further back than the
late nineteenth century. In Chapter 3 of this book I trace the complicated
route by which the many traditional historic and cultural entities that made
up the nations of the Iberian Peninsula organized themselves into what

Puerto Rico. [Cartography by Bookcomp, Inc.]

Preface xiii

we today think of as the nation-state of Spain. I do this because it has

important implications for the ethnic, economic, and cultural evolution
of the Puerto Rican landscape and the Puerto Rican people during the
Spanish colonial period, but the narrative in that chapter also serves as an
example of how European nations evolved into the complex political enti-
ties we post-Modernists think of as nation-states.
Perhaps more important than political and historical definitions are the
ways people choose to identify and define themselves. Puerto Ricans living
on the island and in the United States often refer to Puerto Rico—as opposed
to the Puerto Rican Diaspora—as el pa
ıs or la patria, meaning the country,
the nation, the homeland. The simplest answer to the question of how a
landmass that is not recognized as a sovereign political entity by the rest of
the world can be called a nation is because its people believe that it is one.

NOTES ON THE TEXT

Puerto Rico’s political status presents some unique challenges to the writer.
Throughout the text I have tended to use terms like ‘‘the island’’ or ‘‘on the
island’’ to refer to activities that took place on the landmass of Puerto Rico
(though it consists of more than one island). U.S. courts have ruled that Puerto
Rico is a territory of the United States but not part of the United States, a fine
distinction that makes it nearly impossible to discuss interactions between
island and mainland Puerto Ricans without using cumbersome or even unin-
tentionally politicized language. With no other objective but clarity I have
tended to use phrases such as ‘‘stateside,’’ ‘‘in the States,’’ and ‘‘Puerto Ricans
living in the United States’’ to refer to Puerto Rican migrants living in the 50
United States. Of course, it could be argued that this terminology makes
no sense if you believe, as many people do, that Puerto Rico is part of the
United States. Even some U.S. court opinions differ on this matter. I have cho-
sen to use the term ‘‘migrant’’ to describe Puerto Ricans living in the 50 United
States because U.S. citizens are not and cannot by definition be immigrants. I
have chosen to use phrases like ‘‘on the island’’ and ‘‘in the States’’ because
these are phrases used by Puerto Ricans to describe and differentiate
themselves.
I have chosen to concentrate on the history of Puerto Ricans living on the
island and have not attempted to incorporate the long history of Puerto Ricans
living in the United States. I have made this choice because it would have been
too difficult to tackle the complexity of the sometimes parallel and often inter-
secting histories of Puerto Ricans living on the island and the Puerto
Rican Diaspora in the United States (and elsewhere) within the scope of this
book. Luckily for students interested in the history of Puerto Ricans in the
xiv Preface

United States, this rich area of study includes many excellent sources that are
accessible for students and general readers. I have included a selection of them
in the Bibliographic Essay. I concede that the relationship between the two
communities is more intricate and interconnected than I have been able to
explore in any detail here. Indeed, I have only mentioned the Puerto Rican Di-
aspora in short segments when their activities had a direct effect on events
transpiring on the island. In the future, I look forward to sources that will take
a parallel view of the histories of both communities—or perhaps one can argue
that it is, in some respects, a single community.
I have tried to supply English translations for Spanish phrases throughout
the text and in the Glossary. When referring to historical figures by their last
names I have used both the father’s surname, which usually comes after a
person’s first name in Spanish, and their mother’s surname, which typically
appears last, after the father’s surname. That is why two names are typically
given to refer to persons in the text. For example, I have used ‘‘Albizu Cam-
pos,’’ or occasionally ‘‘Albizu,’’ to refer to Pedro Albizu Campos.
Another choice I have made is to include a chapter on indigenous people,
rather than the cursory mention that is characteristic of most general histories
of the island written in English. I have also devoted much of the text to pre-
twentieth century history, which may seem unusual given the focus of this se-
ries. I have done this because many Puerto Rican students in the United States
do not have easy access to this information and because studies have shown
that a growing number of Latino students often ask for and crave such
information. Puerto Rico’s long history is barely mentioned in most U.S. text-
books, despite the unique relationship that Puerto Rico shares with the U.S.
government. The Caribbean is barely mentioned in many American History
textbooks even though Christopher Columbus’ earliest explorations led
him there and despite the fact that the narrative of European colonization and
indigenous interaction for the next 400 years was largely determined by the
events that occurred in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and their
Caribbean neighbors at the turn of the sixteenth century.
As I began researching this text I was completing work on a larger
project for Greenwood/ABC-CLIO called The American Mosaic, a set of Web
sites and blogs exploring the American multiethnic experience. Working
simultaneously on the American Indian component of this larger project
and the preliminary research for this volume I was struck by how events
that took place more than 500 years ago in Puerto Rico and the Dominican
Republic had shaped the discourse of European contact with the indige-
nous peoples of North America that was to take place almost 100 years
later. Here was the origin of the inaccurate term ‘‘Indian’’ and the offensive
‘‘red man,’’ the arbitrarily assigned duality between the ‘‘good Indian’’ and
Preface xv

the ‘‘bad Indian,’’ and the origin of the ‘‘disappearing’’ or ‘‘extinct’’ Indian.
In the words of archeologist and historian Kathleen Deagan:
The Ta
ınos were the first group of indigenous American men and
women to encounter and live with Europeans. . . . The critical first dec-
ades of interaction between Ta
ınos and Spaniards had a profound influ-
ence on subsequent European beliefs about, understanding of, and
policy toward America and its inhabitants.1
Yet, even the indigenous scholarship I was working with rarely made
more than a cursory connection to the earliest European-Amerindian con-
tact because it was part of Hispanic, and not Anglo-American history. For
this and other reasons, I chose to focus part of my history on the Ta
ıno
people and the other indigenous peoples of the island. Perhaps the contem-
porary movement to reclaim this history and incorporate it into Puerto
Rican identity is as good a justification as any for its prominence in a his-
tory that is part of a series on ‘‘Modern Nations.’’

FAMILY HISTORY
Because I am a journalist and writing teacher, I chose to approach this
project as the student I once was, armed with the research skills I had accu-
mulated over the course of 20 years as a reporter and editor. Since I am
not a historian, I knew that I could not give a definitive scholarly account
of the island. Instead, I have tried to focus on my intended audience—stu-
dents and general researchers—and to remember my own frustrations as a
Puerto Rican growing up in the United States, several generations removed
from my family’s years on the island, trying to find out whatever I could
about who I was.
As a result, I have tried to provide a general history that mentions areas
that could easily lead the student to more intensive, detailed study, and I
have provided a detailed Bibliographic Essay intended to give students
some ideas of how to begin researching those more specific research proj-
ects. I have tried to provide a ‘‘big picture’’ of the island’s history and I
have tried to make that history as accurate and inclusive as possible. The
inclusive part was important to me for personal as well as professional rea-
sons. Growing up I knew that my mother’s family had never made any
secret of their African ancestry, but they also talked about the customs
they had inherited from their Ta
ıno-Carib family members, some of whom
were not part of the ‘‘distant’’ past. They may not have used words like
indigenous or Ta
ıno, but when they talked about a grandparent or great-
grandparent from ‘‘the interior’’ that is what they meant.
xvi Preface

As a college student, I began researching my heritage and internalized

critiques of indigenous ancestral claims that, according to the historians,
could not be true because the indigenous population had disappeared
shortly after the appearance of the European explorers, though they
brought no women with them initially, came in small numbers, and yet
somehow proliferated. According to historians, claims of indigenous ances-
try must be the result of Puerto Ricans’ racist endeavors to erase, or at least
mitigate, their African ancestry. This has until recently been the narrative
that awaits Puerto Rican students studying their heritage. Looking back,
the critique makes no sense. Like most Puerto Ricans I know my own
family has always described themselves as ‘‘brown’’ and even those of us
who are, like me and my mother, closer to ‘‘beige,’’ readily admit to a
racial heritage that is ‘‘una mezcla,’’ a mixture.
I have tried to include as much information as I could on Afro-Puerto
Rican, indigenous, and European and U.S. aspects of the island’s history
and culture, focusing where appropriate on new research uncovered by
archeologists and scholars of indigenous culture, as well as information on
slavery and slave revolts uncovered by contemporary Afro-Puerto Rican
scholars. Taking their cue from the multicultural studies movement of the
late twentieth century, many Puerto Rican scholars have literally uncovered
new ground during the past few decades in the form of archeological digs.
Others have begun sifting through previously neglected documents on
Afro-Puerto Rican history. This research has changed and will continue to
change the narrative of Puerto Rican history, creating a more inclusive and
more accurate picture of the last 4,000 years.
As my research unfolded, I began to piece together my own family his-
tory. Fragments that had never before formed a complete picture began to
come together and a clearer image of their life story came into focus. For
example, it made sense that my great-grandfather, Jos
e Flores, from the
tobacco-producing region of San Lorenzo, would open a cigar shop in
Manhattan in the 1920s. The tobacco industry’s downturn and the passage
of the Jones Act made sense of the timing of his migration to the United
States. Growing up in San Lorenzo, where he worked as a cigar roller (and
semi-professional baseball player) for the local cigar and cigarette factory,
provided him with the expertise he needed to open a small shop that sold
hand-rolled and imported cigars. My new knowledge of San Lorenzo, the
tobacco industry, and the prominence of women within that industry also
made sense of a greater and more scandalous mystery from my early child-
hood—why some of the older women in my family smoked cigars!
Preface xvii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My career in journalism and my connection to my Latino heritage—as
my struggles to find material about Puerto Rican history and culture dur-
ing my teenage years attest—would not have been possible had it not been
for an internship arranged during my sophomore year of college by my
parents, Robert Pierce and Felicity Flores Pierce; my grandfather, the late
Thomas Flores; and Venezuelan journalists Rafael Poleo and his daughter
(my mother’s stepsister) Patricia Poleo. The Poleos generously allowed me
to spend the summer of 1988 as the least helpful intern any newsroom has
likely ever seen.
My mother is due a second dose of gratitude for her support, both emo-
tional and linguistic, during the course of my research for this book.
My editor, Kaitlin Ciarmiello, has been kind, attentive, and above all,
patient. I am indebted to her careful reading and attention to detail. Series
Editors Frank Thackery and John Finding also provided useful suggestions.
While dividing my time between researching this book and serving as
Web editor of The American Mosaic, Ilan Stavans, the late Maria Chavez-
Hernandez, and all the members of the Latino American Experience Advisory
Board provided inspiration for me to keep researching and writing, as did
my always supportive boss, Kevin Ohe.
Like everything I have done since I first met my husband eighteen years
ago, this book is a collaboration—a project I could not have accomplished
without his support, encouragement, and feedback. This time it is literally
true; his photo of Ponce appears on the cover.
Finally, I dedicate this effort to my grandparents, Josephine and Thomas
Flores, and my great-grandparents, Jos
e, F
elin, Luis, and Mary, all of whom
found their way to the New York colonia.
This page intentionally left blank
 Timeline of Historical Events

2000 BCE First human inhabitants settle in mangroves of Puerto

Rico.
500–200 BCE Saladoid people arrive in Puerto Rico bringing
advanced agricultural and pottery skills.
1200 CE Artistically sophisticated Saladoid people give way to
the emergence of the highly politically organized Ta
ıno
people, ushering in the Ta
ıno Florescence, a period of
artistic, political, and agricultural accomplishment.
Puerto Rico was only one of many islands inhabited by
the Ta
ıno, whose villages and towns throughout the
Greater and Lesser Antilles were connected by trade
routes and ruling-class (nitaı́nos) bloodlines.
1450 CE Ta
ıno begin to experience attacks from Carib people,
who capture Ta
ıno women as brides.
September 25, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus leaves Port of
1493 Cadiz in Spain for his Second Voyage to the Americas,
on which he will ‘‘discover’’ Puerto Rico.
xx Timeline of Historical Events

November 19, A group of Ta
ıno women and children guide Columbus

1493 to the island they call Borinquen, where he probably
landed near the port of Aguada or Cabo Rojo. He
remains for two days and names the island San Juan
Bautista.
August 12, 1508 Juan Ponce de Le
on settles on the island with 42 men,
becoming the first governor of San Juan Bautista, the
Spanish name for Borinquen (Puerto Rico).
December 1508 Ponce de Le
on establishes the settlement of Caparra,
which is later relocated to present-day Old San Juan.
1510–1511 Ta
ıno Uprising (often referred to as the Ta
ıno-Carib
Uprising) results in the deaths of as many as 200 Span-
ish settlers before its eventual defeat by Juan Ponce de
Le
on.
1512 Juana I of Castile issues the Laws of the Burgos, which
creates guidelines for the treatment of the Ta
ıno by the
Spanish colonists. Most of the provisions of the laws are
ignored.
January 1517 4,000 slaves from Africa arrive in Puerto Rico, though
small numbers of African slaves were brought to the
island as early as 1512.
1521 Ponce de Le
on, first governor of Puerto Rico, dies of
injuries inflicted by indigenous Calusa people of
Florida.
1522 San Jos
e Church is built in San Juan. It is the second old-
est Christian church in the Americas.
1523 First sugar cane processing plant built.
1530 First census taken by Francisco Manuel de Lando.
1537 Construction begins on La Fortaleza, the building that
still serves as the governor’s mansion, by some accounts
the oldest continuously used government building in
the Americas.
April 1539 Construction begins on El Morro fort.
1543 Spain orders the emancipation of Ta
ıno and Carib
slaves, though few remain. Some of those freed join pre-
viously escaped Ta
ıno-Caribs to set up communities in
the interior, where they maintained many of their cus-
toms and beliefs away from interference by the Spanish
for centuries.
Timeline of Historical Events xxi

1582 Spain begins to provide colonists on the island (now

referred to as Puerto Rico or ‘‘the rich port’’ rather than
San Juan Bautista) with the situado, a stipend, to help
pay for fortifications, public works, and soldiers’
salaries.
November 1595 Englishman Sir Frances Drake attacks Puerto Rico and
is repelled.
June 1598 George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, attacks, and por-
tions of the island are briefly under English rule before
he is repelled.
1625 Dutch fleet commander Boudewijn Hendriksz lays siege
to San Juan before his forces are defeated and he is
forced to retreat.
1765 Alejandro de O’Reilly comes to the island to undertake
an extensive census, which the Spanish use to determine
future policy for developing the island’s agricultural
and economic potential.
1797 British General Ralph Abercromby attacks Puerto Rico
and controls an area just outside San Juan for two weeks
before he is defeated and forced to retreat by Spanish
forces aided by local volunteer militia.
1811 Ram
on Power y Giralt becomes Puerto Rico’s first dem-
ocratically elected representative, charged with commu-
nicating the interests of the Puerto Rican people in the
Spanish government. In Cadiz, Spain, he is elected vice
president of parliament and helps to draft the first Span-
ish Constitution.
1812 Spanish Constitution ratified in Cadiz, declaring Puerto
Rico a Spanish province.
1815 C
edula de Gracias, or Warrant of Opportunity, decreed
by Spain, offering land grants and tax breaks to Catho-
lics from other countries willing to relocate to Puerto
Rico.
1826 Governor Miguel de la Torre issues the Reglamento de
Esclavos (Slave Regulations) authorizing slave owners to
use brutal methods to prevent slaves from revolting.
1848 Governor Juan Prim issues the Banda Contra la Raza Afri-
cana (called the Black Code), which strips away protec-
tions against the abuse of African slaves and takes away
xxii Timeline of Historical Events

the rights of free Afro-Puerto Ricans to legal redress in

physical disputes with whites, even if those disputes
lead to murder.
1849 Governor Juan de la Pezuela issues the law of libreta, or
Reglamento de Jornaleros (Workers’ Regulations), which
requires all agricultural workers to carry a passbook to
prove that they are employed by a large landowner.
1854 Puerto Rico annexes Vieques.
1855 Cholera epidemic kills 30,000 residents, or about six per-
cent of the total population of more than 492,000.
September 23, Grito de Lares uprising, 600 revolutionaries capture the
1868 government office of Lares and proclaim the Republic of
Puerto Rico. Unable to capture any other municipalities,
they are chased into the mountains and arrested as
traitors.
1873 Slavery abolished by Spanish government; Spain’s con-
stitutional monarchy is replaced by a republican form of
government.
1876 Spain establishes El Yunque as a reserve.
1890 Luis Mu~noz Rivera founds the influential pro-
independence newspaper La Democracia.
November 15, Spain ratifies Carta Auton
omica (Autonomic Charter),
1897 which grants Puerto Rico substantial political and
administrative autonomy, while still maintaining its
affiliation with Spain.
April 12, 1898 Spanish-American War begins.
July 25, 1898 American troops, led by General Nelson Miles, invade
Puerto Rico.
August 12, 1898 Treaty of Paris cedes control of Puerto Rico to the United
States.
October 18, 1898 General John R. Brooke becomes the first of many U.S.
military and civil governors appointed by the U.S.
President.
1900 Foraker Act (First Organic Act of Puerto Rico) passed by
U.S. Congress establishing a system of government
dominated by U.S. officials appointed by the U.S. Presi-
dent and various divisions of the U.S. War Department.
1903 University of Puerto Rico established.
Timeline of Historical Events xxiii

December 5, 1916 Jones Act approved by U.S. Congress establishes a slight

increase in governing power for elected Puerto Rican
officials in partnership with appointed U.S. officials, but
U.S. officials retain the bulk of control. In addition, the
Jones Act grants U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans.
1930 Pedro Albizu Campos becomes president of the pro-in-
dependence Nationalist Party.
1936 Suffrage granted to all women. Educated women had
been given the vote in 1932.
February 23, 1936 Police Commissioner Francis E. Riggs is assassinated,
setting off a string of arrests of Nationalists (members of
the pro-independence party) and violence, leading to
the arrest and imprisonment of Pedro Albizu Campos.
March 21, 1937 Shots are fired at a pro-independence march in Ponce
killing at least 19 and injuring 100, though some have
put the casualty toll much higher. The incident is called
the Ponce Massacre and triggers unrest that leads Presi-
dent Franklin Roosevelt to replace the unpopular gover-
nor, Blanton Winship.
1940 Luis Mu~noz Mar
ın’s autonomist Popular Democratic
Party (PDP) wins a majority of seats in the legislature.
The PDP remains in power for the next three decades.
1941 World War II begins, thousands of Puerto Ricans are
assigned to military units on the island and in the
United States.
1942 Liberal reformer Rexford Tugwell becomes the last non-
Puerto Rican appointed governor. He and Senate Presi-
dent Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın form a partnership instituting
widespread social and economic changes during the
next five years.
1946 Jes

us Pi~
nero becomes the first Puerto Rican governor.
He is the last governor appointed by a U.S. President.
1947 U.S. Congress approves the Puerto Rican people’s right
to elect their own governor.
June 1948 Governor Jes
nero signs the ‘‘Gag Law’’ (Ley de la
us Pi~
Mordaza, also known as Law 53), which prohibits any
pro-Nationalist rhetoric under the argument that any
expression calling for an independent Puerto Rico
is sedition encouraging the overthrow of the U.S.
xxiv Timeline of Historical Events

government. Under the law even displaying the Puerto

Rican flag is punishable by fine or up to ten years in
prison.
January 2, 1949 noz Mar
ın is sworn in as Puerto Rico’s first
Luis Mu~
democratically elected governor.
October 30– Nationalist Insurrection of 1950, includes violent upris-
November 1, 1950 ings in several municipalities on the island and
attempted assassinations of Governor Mu~ noz Mar
ın in
San Juan and President Harry Truman in New York
City. Weapons are confiscated from Albizu Campos’ car
and 140 Nationalists, including Albizu, are arrested.
1951 Puerto Rico’s constitution drafted and approved by U.S.
Congress, after portions are amended at the insistence
of Congressional members.
1952 U.S. Congress and the Puerto Rican people ratify consti-
tution, making Puerto Rico a commonwealth or freely
associated state (Estado Libre Asociado).
1954 Nationalists fire shots from the visitors’ gallery of the
U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C.,
wounding several Congressmen.
1965 Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos dies.
1967 First Plebiscite (referendum) on Puerto Rico’s status is
held; the majority of voters select commonwealth status
over statehood and independence.
1972 National hero and baseball star Roberto Clemente is
killed in a plane crash.
April 30, 1980 noz Mar
ın, Puerto Rico’s first elected governor,
Luis Mu~
dies.
1989 Hurricane Hugo causes destruction throughout the
island.
1993 Commonwealth status reaffirmed in Second Plebiscite.
1998 Island-wide, non-binding referendum held on Puerto
Rico’s status; most voters select ‘‘none of the above’’
from a slate of options, including independence and
continued commonwealth status. Statehood garners the
second most votes.
Timeline of Historical Events xxv

1998–1999 Pro-labor protests held in opposition to the govern-

ment’s policy of selling publicly owned utilities such as
telephone service to foreign investors.
1999 Military accident on Vieques kills a civilian guard and
injures four other Puerto Ricans, leading to several years
of protests demanding that the U.S. military stop con-
ducting military maneuvers and weapons testing on
Vieques and/or shut down the island’s military base.
2000 Sila M. Calderon becomes the island’s first woman
governor.
2001 President George W. Bush orders an end to test bomb-
ing on Vieques beginning in 2003.
2004 The U.S. military base in Vieques is shut down and the
grounds made into a nature preserve by the U.S.
government.
2005, 2007 The President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status
issues reports stating that the current commonwealth
status does not in fact constitute the legal definition of a
freely associated state and urging periodic plebiscites
that would include more detail for voters on the legal
boundaries of their status options.
2009 Protests held in opposition to Governor Luis Guillermo
Fortu~no-Burset’s extensive cuts in government jobs in
response to the worldwide economic downturn, which
hit Puerto Rico’s economy especially hard.
May 2009 Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi
submits the Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2009 (H.R.
2499) to Congress. The bill calls for a plebiscite that
would contain two options for Puerto Rican voters:
remaining under the island’s present commonwealth
status or opting for a follow-up plebiscite with a variety
of governance options, ranging from statehood to inde-
pendence. The pro-statehood party favors the bill, while
the pro-commonwealth and pro-independence parties
have voiced opposition to it.
This page intentionally left blank
 1
Puerto Rico and Its People

Nations have been defined any number of ways. For many, a ‘‘nation’’ calls
to mind a nation-state, a self-contained, sovereign entity whose political
boundaries correspond to ethnic or cultural borders. This type of political
entity is a fairly recent concept and was not commonly in existence at the
time that Spain colonized Puerto Rico in the early sixteenth century.
In contrast to a nation-state, a nation, as defined in The American Heritage
College Dictionary (4th ed.), is a ‘‘people who share common customs, ori-
gins, history, and frequently language; a nationality.’’ By this definition,
Puerto Rico is a nation. In addition to its shared customs, culture, and lan-
guage, Puerto Rico has clearly defined borders, a democratically elected in-
ternal government, a unique ethnic heritage and culture, and a history that
goes back over 4,000 years. This history’s narrative consists of common,
recurring themes, not the least of which are a desire for sovereignty and a
struggle to maintain and define its culture in opposition to larger, more
powerful external cultural and political entities, first Spain and then the
United States. This continuity, along with the unrelenting ability of the
Puerto Rican people to adapt to outside forces without letting go of their
2 The History of Puerto Rico

rituals, beliefs, language, and culture, defines Puerto Rico as a nation.

Though Puerto Rico’s ultimate political future is still uncertain, the deter-
mination of its people to insist on their own definitions of puertorriquenidad
(literally, what it means to be Puerto Rican) will exist as long as the entity
that is Puerto Rico exists.

THE LAND
Puerto Rico is the smallest and easternmost of the Greater Antilles, a system
of islands in the Caribbean Ocean. The political entity referred to as Puerto
Rico consists of three islands—Puerto Rico, Vieques, and Culebra—with a
combined area of 13,790 square miles. The main island is 100 miles long and
34 miles across and lies east of the Dominican Republic, across a section of
water referred to as the Mona Pass. The two islands are so close that it is
believed that the indigenous Taı́no people traveled across by canoe daily.
Puerto Rico’s climate is tropical, though there is enough variation of sea-
sons to create a distinct growing season, with slightly colder temperatures
in the winter and hotter weather in the summer. Temperatures are slightly
cooler in the mountainous regions. Hurricanes are frequent. Though Puerto
Rico is a small landmass, it contains diverse terrain, including a rain forest,
mountain range, fertile coastal plain in the south, and a dry, arid coast in
the north.
The history of human habitation on the island has been affected by its
relationship to the Gulf Stream, which is created by the joining of two
major currents: the South Equatorial Current and the North Equatorial Cur-
rent. The South Equatorial Current moves west from Africa, then swirls
along the upper coast of South America and Central America into the Gulf
of Mexico and Florida Straits. The North Equatorial Current travels east
across the northern side of the Greater Antilles. These currents join to cre-
ate the powerful Gulf Stream. What this essentially means for Puerto Rico
is that travel to the island is easier south to north, east to west—the direc-
tions by which various waves of explorers and invaders have been coming
to the island for 4,000 years, ever since there has been human habitation on
the island. In addition to the Gulf Stream and its equatorial currents, there
is a countercurrent that travels east along the southern side of the island.
For this reason, Pre-Contact historians believe that two groups of settlers
came to the island: one traveling east from the Yucatan and another north
from South America. So, despite the relatively short distance between Flor-
ida and Cuba, it is unlikely Amerindians from Florida ever came to the
Greater Antilles, which explains why Puerto Rican societies more closely
resembled the civilizations of Mesoamerica than those of the American
Indians from the region that later became Florida.
Puerto Rico and Its People 3

The Trade Winds later brought explorers from Europe, especially after
Juan Ponce de Le
on discovered how the Gulf Stream facilitated westward
journeys to the Caribbean. The Trade Winds affect the climate and topogra-
phy of Puerto Rico as well. During most of the year the Trade Winds blow
in a northeasterly direction, bringing heavy rain to the northern and east-
ern parts of the island where the mountains of the Sierra de Luquillo range
and the lush valleys of the rain forest are found. In contrast, little rain falls
on the semiarid southern coast.
El Yunque rain forest (the U.S. Forest Service officially refers to it as the
Caribbean National Forest, Luquillo Division) is home to a diverse range of
wildlife, including more than 100 species of butterflies, 270 kinds of birds,
16 species of the coquı́ frog, and 25 species of lizards, including some of
the smallest varieties in the world.
Puerto Ricans refer to their island as ‘‘el pa
ıs,’’ or the country. For Puerto
Ricans living on the U.S. mainland, La Isla refers to the island of Puerto
Rico, but to Puerto Ricans living on the island, La Isla refers to the cities,
towns, and rural areas outside of San Juan. Though the majority of present-
day Puerto Ricans live in cities, many still retain a romantic image of the
campo, or country, and of the j
ıbaro, the rural worker. On the island it is not
unusual to hear people say that la isla, or el campo, is where the Puerto
Rican heart is.

THE PEOPLE
There are more than 3.9 million people living in Puerto Rico and another
4 million people of Puerto Rican descent living in the United States. Puerto
Ricans are U.S. citizens with a complicated governance relationship with
the United States explained in the Government section of this chapter.
Puerto Rico’s relationship with the United States has allowed it to take
advantage of social programs and health care services, providing it with
one of the region’s highest qualities of life, including a high literacy rate,
low infant mortality, and life expectancy of 78 for men and 82 for women.
About 75 percent of Puerto Ricans living on the island are Roman
Catholic, with a growing number of Protestants. Spanish is the official and
primary language, though many people—and nearly all young people—
speak English as well. Puerto Ricans living on and off the island are the
descendants of Amerindian, African, and European settlers to the island.
The j
ıbaro has long served as a powerful cultural and political symbol for
Puerto Ricans, particularly for the independence and autonomist move-
ments. J
ıbaro literally means farmer, but for the majority urban population,
the j
ıbaro is a symbol of the past, a romantic figure who embodies the pride
the people feel for the beauty and history of their island. Even among
4 The History of Puerto Rico

Puerto Ricans who do not support independence, the j
ıbaro prompts an

emotional connection.
Contemporary Puerto Ricans are proud of their cultural past and partici-
pate in a number of activities that pay homage to their Spanish, African,
and indigenous ancestry. Traditional cultural endeavors include a pride in
the Spanish language and literature, including a rich island canon. Poetry
is especially revered on the island and many of the country’s most impor-
tant political figures, including twentieth-century leaders like Pedro Albizu
Campos and Luis Mu~ noz Marı́n, were also published poets. Music, and
especially dance, are also important elements of the traditional culture, par-
ticularly native forms that combine Spanish and African elements to create
uniquely Caribbean means of expression. At the same time, a younger
generation of Puerto Ricans has come to see themselves as consumers and
creators of a new hybrid culture that encompasses North American–
dominated consumer culture and media and processes them through the
lens of a bilingual, multiethnic, Caribbean experience unique to Puerto
Ricans because of the island’s relationship with the United States. This
blended cultural and artistic attitude can be heard in Puerto Rican hip hop,
seen in Puerto Rican film, and understood through a new wave of Puerto
Rican literature that especially gravitates toward memoir.

THE ECONOMY
Puerto Rico is considered a middle-class economy by the World Bank
and has one of the healthiest economies and highest standard of living in
the Caribbean and Latin American region. Its currency is the U.S. dollar,
and it enjoys duty-free access to the U.S. market, as well as some special
tax breaks designed to attract foreign investment, an important element in
the economy since the 1950s. Once an agricultural center and one of the
world’s top producers of sugar, coffee, and tobacco, Puerto Rico’s economy
shifted to manufacturing in the 1950s. By the 1980s, the economy had
shifted from textile and other forms of traditional manufacturing to phar-
maceutical and small consumer electronic production; however, the island
still generates a fair share of export revenue from rum, a sugar-derived
product. Tourism is also a source of income. Because the economy is so
closely tied to the U.S. market, the economy contracted slightly in 2007 and
2008, mirroring the downturn in the U.S. economy.

THE GOVERNMENT
Since 1952 Puerto Rico has operated as a Commonwealth (called a Freely
Associated State or Estado Libre Asociado by the internal government) and
Puerto Rico and Its People 5

enjoyed internal self-rule. It is officially referred to as The Commonwealth

of Puerto Rico or El Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans
elect a governor, an island-wide bicameral legislature, and local municipal
leaders, all of whom govern according to a constitution, which was drafted
and ratified by island residents, but approved by the U.S. Congress. The
three main insular political parties represent three options for the island’s
status: sustained Commonwealth status, statehood, and independence.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens but field their own Olympic team. They
serve in the U.S. military and can be conscripted, but do not have a voting
delegation to the U.S. Congress and they do not vote for President. The
U.S. Democratic and Republican parties both hold presidential primaries in
Puerto Rico. A Resident Commissioner is elected by the voters to represent
the interests of the Puerto Rican people to the U.S. government and can
speak before the U.S. House of Representatives, but cannot vote.
The island capital is San Juan, as it has been for nearly 500 years. The
island has 78 municipalities, each with a locally democratically elected gov-
erning apparatus. The legal system consists of municipal courts and a sys-
tem of appellate and superior courts; however, cases that test jurisdiction
between internal and federal government are decided by the U.S. federal
court system.
According to certain interpretations of the U.S. Constitution recently
endorsed by the Report by the President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status
(2007), Puerto Rico is an unincorporated, organized territory of the United
States with Commonwealth status. The importance of incorporation,
according to the U.S. Constitution, is that an incorporated territory would
be undergoing the official steps necessary to become a state. In addition, if
Puerto Rico were actually a freely associated state with the United States,
under the definition accepted by the U.S. Constitution, then it would be an
independent country and could no longer be provided with some of the
social programs and tax benefits it currently enjoys.
Puerto Ricans carry a U.S. passport and if they move to the United States
can vote in Congressional and Presidential elections.
Puerto Rico’s political situation is unique and complicated and the focus
of much of its internal party politics as well as its history.
This page intentionally left blank
 2
Borinquen: Origins and
Encounter (4000 BCE–1500 CE)

Until the late twentieth century, most histories of Puerto Rico began with
cursory mentions of the island’s pre-colonial era. In some cases, books on
the island simply began with the arrival of Columbus in Puerto Rico in
1493. Traditionally, historians maintained that the island’s indigenous
inhabitants had quickly disappeared in the first few decades after the ar-
rival of the conquistadores, victims of disease, warfare, and brutality. Fur-
thermore, mid-twentieth-century historians and political scientists argued,
the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean had not significantly affected the
cultural life of the island from the colonial era to the present. As recently
as the late 1990s and early 2000s, many prominent Caribbean and Latin
American historians maintained that the ethnic contributions of the Taı́no,
Carib, and other indigenous groups were insignificant when compared to
the European and African genetic inheritance embodied in present-day
Puerto Ricans living on the island and in the United States.
Despite this widely held argument, students in Puerto Rico (as well as
Puerto Rican students at many U.S. universities) in the 1970s began
demanding classes on Pre-Contact Puerto Rico and have continued to
demand information on this era ever since. In addition, civic life on the
8 The History of Puerto Rico

island and in Puerto Rican communities in the United States has often
embraced and celebrated the indigenous elements of Puerto Rican identity.
This continued interest among everyday Puerto Ricans in the island’s pre-
colonial past has driven scholarship. At the same time, over the past sev-
eral decades, archeologists and other historians have been building the case
for a strong indigenous influence on the culture of Puerto Rico. It seems
appropriate that a contemporary general history of the island should
devote at least one chapter to the Pre-Contact history of the island from the
perspective of the people who lived there prior to the arrival of Columbus.

PRE-CONTACT PUERTO RICO

The first inhabitants of Puerto Rico left no written history. To understand
the cultures of the people who settled the island prior to 1493, historians and
scientists have had to piece together fragments of a historical puzzle. These
historians and scientists specialize in the study of Pre-Contact America. Pre-
Contact refers to the era prior to the arrival of Europeans in the Americas.
Other terms for Pre-Contact include Pre-Encounter and Prehistory.
To understand what Puerto Rico was like before Columbus’ arrival,
archeologists have taken their clues from the artifacts left behind by vari-
ous waves of cultures, often at burial sites and refuse piles. Each of these
cultures traveled to Puerto Rico, reached its cultural zenith, and was then
overtaken by the next wave of human arrivals. Sifting through the various
layers of artifacts, Caribbean archeologists have been able to create a time-
line of successive immigration patterns, consisting of waves of people who
traveled from the Yucatan Peninsula of present-day Mexico and Central
America and from the Orinoco River basin of South America. These immi-
grant groups arrived in Puerto Rico, often interacting with those who came
before them, adopting their ways and introducing others, until the arrival
of Europeans in the Greater Antilles drastically altered the course of Puerto
Rican history.
In addition to archeology, another method historians use to understand
indigenous cultures of the past is to study the language patterns and cul-
tural characteristics of the present-day people who are thought to be most
closely related to them. These specialists, called ethnohistorians, have been
able to trace the cultural legacies of the island’s earliest communities to
many present-day traditions still upheld by Puerto Ricans on the island as
well as by Puerto Ricans living in the United States. They also study the
cultures of indigenous peoples who they think are related to past Puerto
Rican people. These relatives of past Puerto Rican indigenous cultural
groups now live on other Caribbean islands and in Central America and
South America.
Borinquen 9

Ethnohistorians also study written records and descriptions of indige-

nous languages and other cultural elements left behind by the early Euro-
pean explorers to Puerto Rico. Though these records were once considered
the most accurate evidence of indigenous history and culture, contempo-
rary historians tend to acknowledge that these written records, although
valuable, must be examined within the context of the motivations of those
who wrote them and may not in fact present an accurate portrayal of the
beliefs and practices of the Native Peoples of Puerto Rico.
Among the most recent, and perhaps the most significant, findings in the
area of Pre-Contact Puerto Rican studies is one that doesn’t come from his-
torians but from scientists. Using DNA evidence collected from the skele-
tons of Taı́nos and comparing it to the DNA of their present-day
descendents, geneticists from the University of Puerto Rico have drastically
altered long-held assumptions about how many Taı́nos and Caribs sur-
vived the early colonial era.
Thanks to the work of these scientists and historians, we are beginning
to get a clearer picture of what life was like for the early Puerto Ricans
prior to and just after Contact with the first waves of European colonizers.

EARLY HUMAN SETTLEMENTS (2000–200 BCE)

Long after its neighbors hosted small pre-agricultural communities, Puerto

Rico remained uninhabited by humans. Cuba and Hispaniola (the island that
now consists of Haiti and the Dominican Republic) were inhabited starting
in 4000 BCE, or possibly earlier. By contrast, human inhabitants traveling by
sea did not settle in Puerto Rico until about 2000 BCE. Based on the archeo-
logical evidence, these first Puerto Rican people had originally lived in the
Orinoco River basin of South America in what is now Venezuela. They trav-
eled north by boat, stopping first at the islands of the Lesser Antilles to the
south. According to the archeological record, it appears that many members
of this South American tribal group settled on other islands, such as Trini-
dad and Grenada, even as their companions moved ever northward settling
most of the Caribbean islands, including Puerto Rico. These first Puerto
Ricans settled in the island’s mangrove swamps, which provided abundant
sources of food and shelter from the sea.
It seems likely that a second group of people, traveling east from the Yuca-
tan, disembarked first in Cuba, then sent members of its clan to settle on the
northern end of Puerto Rico. Both groups, the South American arrivals in the
south and the Mesoamerican settlers to the north, lived in caves near man-
groves. Historians refer to both of these groups as ‘‘archaic,’’ ‘‘aceramic,’’ or
‘‘pre-ceramic,’’ all terms that simply mean that they did not produce ceramic
objects. They also had not developed a system of agriculture. However, it
10 The History of Puerto Rico

should not be assumed that they were ‘‘primitive’’ or without skills. For exam-
ple, there is evidence that they were effective fishermen. Their small commun-
ities managed to survive for thousands of years, growing into communities of
about 25 to 30, the maximum sustainable number without an agricultural food
source. In addition to fishing and gathering shellfish, they hunted turtles and
manatees. Since slightly different species of animals were available for hunting
on each island, the various island communities traded goods and foodstuffs
regularly. Thus, they were also expert inter-island travelers, who built seawor-
thy canoes and established trade routes. They also created implements for
hunting and food preparation by carving shell, bone, and stone. The descend-
ents of this aboriginal group, called Guanahatabeyes in Cuba or the Culture of
the Crab because of the large amount of crab remains found in their refuse
piles, were still living in remote sections of Cuba and Hispaniola when the
Spanish arrived thousands of years after these people initially arrived on the
shores of the Caribbean Islands.
By about 500 to 200 BCE another group of settlers, this time with agricultural
skills, arrived from South America, settling in Puerto Rico and nearly every
other island in the Caribbean, mingling with the previous cultures and to a
large extent overtaking them. These sophisticated potters, called the Saladoid
people, left behind a wealth of artifacts. The artifacts’ white-on-red color
scheme and cross-hatched decorations create a link to similar cultures in Vene-
zuela from around the same era. This red-and-white, crosshatch pattern
abruptly disappears in the archeological record prior to the Taı́no flourishing.
Though the pottery that follows is technically advanced and elaborate, the
abandonment of the red-and-white pattern has sparked debate among archeol-
ogists, with some arguing that the change in technique indicates the influx of a
new immigrant group that merged with the Saladoid people and others specu-
lating that this shift in pottery decoration represents the arrival of an entirely
new ethnic group that retained little of the Saladoid culture.
This group of people is often referred to as Igneris, or the Hacienda
Grande people because the first and most extensive cache of their artifacts
was found at Hacienda Grande, a settlement founded at the same site
much later by Puerto Rico’s first governor, Juan Ponce de Le
on. Among the
artifacts found at Hacienda Grande and other sites were vessels for storing
food. The archeological record of the Saladoid people in Puerto Rico gains
in sophistication and skill from 500 BCE to about 1200 CE. Growing numbers
of archeologists in the 1990s and 2000s have speculated that the Saladoid
people were not a new wave of immigrants at all, but that this highly
accomplished culture evolved from the earlier pre-ceramic society. This hy-
pothesis hinges on the argument that the people of Puerto Rico and other
Greater Antilles inhabitants gained their cultural influences, not from an
influx of new arrivals from South and Central America, but from trade and
Borinquen 11

cultural interaction with cultural groups from these areas. This chapter
adheres most closely to the interpretations of leading, long-established his-
torians, such as Irving Rouse and Ricardo Alegrı́a, who believed the Salad-
oid were a new group, albeit influenced by their more ancient neighbors.1

TA
INOS: ‘‘THE GOOD PEOPLE’’

By 1200 CE, the Saladoid people had reached a level of cultural flourish-
ing that has been attributed to the rise of the Taı́no culture. There is some
speculation that the Taı́no were not descendents of the Salaloid people at
all, but instead represented yet another wave of immigrants from Mexico
and Central America to Puerto Rico and its neighboring islands throughout
the Caribbean.2 These new settlers, historians argue, brought customs that
have much in common with the Maya, particularly in the society’s empha-
sis on a ball game played on elaborate ball courts. These ball courts have
been found throughout Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. In any event, it is
unclear who the Taı́no were ethnically. Were they a combination of the
pre-ceramic fishermen who first inhabited the island and the skilled Salad-
oid farmer-potters who came to the island 1,500 years later? Or were they
more closely related to the Maya?
Whatever their origins, archeologists pinpoint the emergence of the Taı́no
culture with the appearance of ball courts, the establishment of highly
populated communities, intensified and highly effective agriculture, and
the emergence of elaborate religious artifacts called three-pointers. The pe-
riod from 1200 to 1490 CE—right before the first contact with Europeans—is
called the Taı́no Florescence (historians define a florescence as a period of
cultural accomplishment).
During this time, the Taı́no people were the dominant cultural group
throughout the Greater Antilles (present-day Cuba, Jamaica, the Dominican
Republic/Haiti, and Puerto Rico). Taı́no groups located on each island
visited one another frequently. In fact, Puerto Rican Taı́nos visited their
counterparts in Hispaniola on a daily basis. Their elaborately carved, well-
crafted canoes held up to 150 people and could travel swiftly and safely
across the Mona Pass, which separates Puerto Rico from Hispaniola. The
Puerto Rican Taı́nos engaged in trade with Taı́no and other Native groups
on other islands and with peoples from the coast of South America.

Lifeways
The Taı́no were sophisticated and efficient farmers, who were able to
feed and sustain a large population by cultivating a wide variety of food-
stuffs, including corn, fruit, sweet potatoes, beans, squash, peanuts, and
12 The History of Puerto Rico

chilies. They also cultivated medicinal herbs and tobacco. Their staple food
was cassava (also called manioc or yucca), a tuber that they grew in
mounds. Cassava is poisonous and to eat it safely, the Taı́no developed a
method for boiling away and discarding the poisonous water contained in
the raw harvested plants. Cassava was eaten in a variety of ways, most
commonly as bread baked on a clay griddle.
Taı́nos were effective at gathering food from the water as well as from
the land. Though they did not forge metals, they used hooks made of bone
and shells, woven cotton nets, and bow and arrows to catch fish in the sea,
rivers, and lakes. They also sometimes threw poison made of the barbasco
plant into the water, where it asphyxiated the fish, causing them to die and
float to the surface where the Taı́no could easily gather them. This poison
did not harm humans and did not permanently harm the water.
As their agricultural productivity increased, the Taı́no were able to con-
centrate their efforts on creating and refining their complex political system
and creating impressive cultural artifacts. Freed from the ardor of subsist-
ence farming and hunting, Taı́no artists, mostly women, discovered new
and innovative ways to create and decorate ceramic objects, while male
artists reached artistic heights in the carving of wood and stone.
Most Taı́nos wore no clothes but they anointed their skin with natural
oils from plants found on their islands, which protected them from bug
bites and from rashes and other skin irritants from contact with poisonous
plants. Some of these oils gave their brown skin the ‘‘red’’ appearance that
the Spanish chroniclers noted and that has been erroneously attributed to
the Native peoples of the Americas ever since.
In addition to anointing their skin, unmarried women wore cotton head-
bands, while married women wore short cotton skirts. All Taı́nos wore
ornaments, including necklaces and belts, crafted from gold and shells.
They also wove cotton hammocks (hamacas) for sleeping.
The Taı́no language was rich and expressive and the Spanish and
English languages retain many words from it, including barbecue, canoe,
hammock, hurricane, and tobacco. In addition, many Puerto Ricans still
use the Taı́no name for their homeland—Borinquen or Borik
en, which
means ‘‘Land of the Noble Lord’’—and refer to themselves as Borique~ nos
or Boricua. The word ‘‘Taı́no’’ means ‘‘the good people.’’ In his correspon-
dence to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, Columbus described
Taı́no as the sweetest, most gentle language he’d ever heard spoken.

Politics
Taı́nos were divided into two classes, the ruling nitaı́nos and the naborı́as
or laborers. They lived in large communities of as many as 2,000 called
Borinquen 13

cacicazgos, which were ruled by a cacique, a chief from the ruling nitaı́no
class. Some historians have speculated that the naborı́as may have been the
descendents of the earlier pre-agricultural inhabitants and the nitaı́no the
remnants of the conquering Saladoid. Whatever their origins, it is clear
from the early post-Contact reports that the Taı́no thought of themselves as
a single unified people by the time the Spanish arrived.
Each Taı́no village was built around a central plaza used for ceremonial
events, often with an adjacent ball court. The cacique’s house, called a caney,
was placed in a central position in the plaza, and the other villagers’ dwell-
ings, called bohios, were more modest and built in a circle surrounding the
plaza, ball court, and cacique’s home. Caneys were large and rectangular,
while bohios were round. Each village contained about 20 to 50 naborı́as
houses made of wood with thatched roofs and dirt floors. Several related
families lived in each house and there were no partitions between families.
There may have been as many as 100 of these communities (or as archeolo-
gists refer to them, ‘‘complex chiefdoms’’) on Puerto Rico at the time that
the Spanish arrived.
Caciques determined who labored in what capacity within the commu-
nity. Taking possession of all the goods produced, from crops to orna-
ments, the caciques would then redistribute them among the community
members according to rank and need. The power of the caciques derived
from their ability to control the labor of the naborı́as and not from owner-
ship of the land. Like many indigenous American peoples, the Taı́no did
not view land ownership or land use in the same way that the Europeans
did. Instead, the nitaı́nos in their capacity as caciques and shamans (or behi-
ques) derived their power from their ability to communicate with the spirits
of ancestors and gods, as healers and as prophets. Although each village
had a cacique, the various caciques seem to have come from five to 12 main
family bloodlines and the original ancestors of each of these clans were
worshiped as gods, along with a number of other deities.
Chiefdoms were matrilineal, which means that the son of the mother or
sister of the last chief inherited the post on the death of his uncle or brother.
Women could inherit chiefdoms and there were female caciques in power at
the time that the Spanish arrived. There is evidence that women also could
serve as shamans, and possibly even warriors, once they were past child-
bearing age.3 Though gender roles were somewhat fluid, women wove most
of the baskets, rugs, and hammocks, and created most of the ceramic items
that the Taı́no are so famous for, while men planted and harvested cassava,
fished and hunted for meat to supplement the Taı́nos’ diets, carved canoes
and wooden objects, and built houses for the nitaı́nos and the naborı́as.
Like the indigenous peoples of Mexico and of Central and South America,
the Taı́no played a ball game called batey using a ball made of rubber,
14 The History of Puerto Rico

a substance unknown to Europeans prior to Contact. Batey was played by

teams, each representing a village. Teams were sometimes all male and
sometimes all female, but never, it seems, coed. The ball game was played at
festive gatherings called areytos, which brought villages together from differ-
ent parts of the island. These occasions were central to the culture of the
Taı́no because they allowed the nitaı́no members of the ruling class from var-
ious villages to interact. Because the nitaı́nos retained their ruling status by
marriage, the local cacique’s nearest relative was often the cacique of one of
the neighboring cacicazgos. Caciques and their families traveled from one
caciczgo to another by litter, while naborı́as traveled by foot. The ruling class
used areytos as opportunities to work out differences between villages
through negotiation, ball games, or even mock battles, which could become
deadly. Attendees performed songs, dances, and pageants, which drama-
tized the history of the Taı́nos and also taught cultural values and morality
to Taı́no children. Members of the laboring class sat on stone embankments
along the sides of the ball court, while caciques and their families sat on stools
along the top of the embankments. At some batey sites, elaborate buildings
stand at the top of the ball court. These buildings may have served as view-
ing areas for nitaı́no families or as temples used to perform special rituals
that coincided with the areyto festivals.

Spiritual Life
Much of what we know about the spiritual life of the Taı́no comes from
the observations of the early Spanish settlers, particularly from Father
Ram
on Pan
e, who was commissioned by Columbus to study the Taı́no reli-
gion. His study offers a wealth of first-hand observations. Unfortunately,
Father Pan
e and other Spanish observers from the period tended to view
the Taı́no religion from a Christian lens.
Traditionally, it was thought that the Taı́no believed in one supreme
sky god named Yucahu, lord of cassava, and a slightly less powerful god-
dess, called Attabeira, goddess of water and mother of Yucahu. Recently,
some scholars have questioned whether this interpretation was colored by
Catholic faith practiced by the sixteenth-century Spaniards who were
charged with documenting the Taı́no religion. For many Catholics, Christ’s
mother Mary, though revered, holy, and capable of acting as an intermedi-
ary between humans and the divinity, is secondary and not herself divine.
The early Spanish tended to equate Yucahu with Christ and Attabeira with
Mary, but many contemporary historians think that it is more likely that
the two gods were equal in power, especially since Attabeira controlled
water and winds, including hurricanes, a destructive element much feared
by the Taı́no. Some contemporary scholars have even argued that Attabeira
Borinquen 15

was the primary god as God the Father is to Christ, with Yucahu represent-
ing a more approachable god to whom the Taı́no prayed when they sought
intervention with his all-powerful mother.
Three-pointers, the elaborately carved and decorated triangular objects
that Taı́no artists are most famous for, represented Yucahu or at least a
means of appealing to him. Buried in the ground in hopes of encouraging
a good crop, three-pointers seem to have had any number of other spiritual
functions and were found in nearly all Taı́no homes by the Spanish.
In addition to Yucahu and Attabeira, Pan
e reported that the Taı́no
revered 12 secondary gods who represented ancestors of the major ruling
clans on the island, each of whom controlled various aspects of nature. The
Taı́no also worshiped scores of additional deified ancestors of important
chiefs. Any and all of these gods were represented by zemis (sometimes
spelled cemis), carved likenesses of the gods made of various materials:
wood, ceramics, bone, or cloth. These small idols were a prevalent part of
Taı́no spiritual life, kept in nearly all Taı́no homes by both the nitaı́nos and
the naborı́as classes. Some scholars have hypothesized that this tradition,
which was also common in Mesoamerica and other parts of Latin America,
led to the contemporary practice of displaying santos, figurines of saints
and especially of Mary and Christ, typically about six to eight inches
high—the height of many zemis—in the homes of many Latin American
Christians, as well as in the homes of many Christian Latinos living in the
United States.
Caciques performed important public religious rituals, but it was the sha-
man who performed private rites, such as healings, for individual families
and households. Shamans could be men if they were young or women if
they were past childbearing age. Older male shamans were expected
to take potent young men as prot
eg
es, teaching them to make sense of
the hallucinations they induced by taking a potent herb called cohoba,
made from the crushed seeds of a tree (Piptadenia peregrina) found in the
Caribbean and Latin America. To enhance the potency of the herb, shamans
fasted for days prior to a healing. Just before inhaling the cohoba seeds,
the shaman would sit on an elaborately carved ceremonial seat called a
duho and purge himself using a sacred stick to induce vomiting. He would
also mix in nicotine-rich tobacco with the cohoba before ingesting the
powerful powder. Then he (or she) would chant, dance, shake maracas
made of dried gourds, and go into a trance to communicate with gods and
ancestors who would send symbolic visions to the shaman allowing him to
cure the illness or solve the problem faced by the family or community.
Shamans were prominent in Taı́no society, though there is some evidence
that their influence in society was waning in favor of the caciques just prior
to the arrival of the Spanish. At this time it seems that the caciques were
16 The History of Puerto Rico

taking over and performing many of the spiritual functions previously

practiced solely by the shaman.
The Taı́no believed in four epics for their people, which roughly adhere
to what we know of their homeland and their society: a time of gods and
the physical creation of their homeland, the emergence of a subsistence
hunting community, the emergence of an agricultural society, and the
emergence of the Taı́no. Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the caciques and
shamans had been predicting for some time that a fifth era was coming.
This fifth era would see the Taı́no destroyed by a ‘‘clothed’’ people, ghosts
from the land of the dead. When the Spanish arrived they thought the fore-
told conquerors had arrived. They also initially thought the Spanish were
immortal and that it was useless to resist them.

ENCOUNTERS: TA
INOS, CARIBS, AND EUROPEANS

The Taı́no Battle the Carib (1450–1500 CE)
By the late 1400s CE, the Taı́no were engaged in a complex, increasingly
antagonistic relationship with a group of newcomers from South America
called the Kalinago, or Carib. To distinguish these Amerindians from the
Carib Indians still living today in South America, these people are some-
times referred to as Island-Carib. Aggressive warriors, the Carib had trav-
eled north by boat from the Orinoco River basin of South America in what
is now Venezuela. They had settled among the smaller, less densely popu-
lated Caribbean islands, overtaking the Igneri people who lived there and
gradually working their way northward toward the Greater Antilles, just
as so many waves of South American groups had done before. At first it
appears the Carib were content to trade with the Taı́no of the Greater
Antilles, but by the time the Europeans arrived in the early 1490s, the Carib
had begun antagonizing the Taı́no by raiding their communities and taking
their women as brides.
Though the Carib are famous for their skill as warriors, they were also
productive farmers and skilled weavers and potters. Theirs was a hybrid
culture representing the domestic, linguistic, artistic, and possibly agricul-
tural accomplishments of their brides’ Igneri culture, and the warrior tradi-
tions and navigational skills of the male Island-Caribs. The male warriors
seem to have left their South American villages behind in hopes of settling
new territory without taking any women or children from their homeland
with them. Instead, they engaged in bridal capture. The warriors, who
lived in isolation in separate dwellings from the women and children, did
not have a highly developed language or culture and they often adopted
aspects of the language and customs of the women they brought into their
Borinquen 17

settlements, first Igneri and later Taı́no. Carib men spoke a basic language
they employed for trade and battle, while they allowed the women they
had captured to control the practices and rituals on the domestic sphere,
including child rearing. As compared to the Taı́no, the Carib had a small
population and were far less open and welcoming toward the Spanish.
Because the Carib were mobile and transient and had not established a cul-
tural stronghold in the Caribbean at the time of their first contact with
Europeans, we know much less about their culture than we know about
the Taı́no. As of this writing, what little historians have surmised about the
Island-Carib comes from a scant archeological record and accounts of the
early European settlers. These accounts are likely biased by the Europeans’
wishes to quell the Caribs’ armed resistance to Spanish occupation and
their desire to enslave them. At best, even accounts from the most well-
meaning Spaniards are biased by simple misunderstanding and the pro-
found cultural differences that existed between the observers and the
observed. Even more than the Taı́no culture, the Carib culture was radi-
cally different than sixteenth-century Iberian culture and it seems highly
probable that the Spanish chroniclers misunderstood much of what they
saw.4 Working from such unreliable source material, even the most
respected theories about Island-Carib culture are largely conjecture.
Ironically, perhaps because they were feared or because they were an
enigma, the Carib made a big impression on the Spanish. The entire region
of the Caribbean bears their name and the word cannibal is derived from
the word Carib. In fact, in Spanish caribe is a synonym for cannibal.
The most instructive source of information about the Island-Caribs comes
from studies of their South American counterparts, the Carib of eastern
South America, who today live peacefully side-by-side with Arawak tribes
in Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana. There they practice the tradi-
tions the Spanish observed among their Island-Carib kin more than 500
years ago: the men employing their simple trade jargon language and the
women and children employing a more robust language within the domes-
tic sphere. When boys come of age and join the men in the male residence,
they abandon their more complex language forever and adopt the warrior
language of their fathers.
In some ways the Carib were more egalitarian than the Taı́no. There was
only one class among the warriors, who elected temporary chiefs to carry
out trade and military missions. After the mission, the chief would relin-
quish his leadership role. However, this egalitarianism extended to class
and leadership among only the men. The Carib display none of the gender
equity evidenced by the Taı́no, and in fact, even today, the Carib require
the women of their tribes to behave in a subservient manner toward the
male warriors.
18 The History of Puerto Rico

The Igneri women, now Carib brides, created pottery and kept zemis in
their homes in a very similar fashion to the Taı́no. They also wove baskets
and hammocks. Brewing and consuming beer held an important social and
ceremonial role among the Carib, particularly at gatherings between adjoin-
ing villages where they planned military actions and elected mission lead-
ers. The Carib preferred surprise attacks with well-crafted, deadly
weapons, including long bows, blowguns, poison arrows and darts, and a
noxious gas produced by smoking hot chili peppers.
By the 1450s, the Carib were the dominant culture on several islands of
the Lesser Antilles and were attempting to settle in the Greater Antilles,
including Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. In response to the Carib incursion,
Taı́no villages located near bodies of water began building observation
towers so that they could spot the Carib warships and defend themselves
from the increasingly frequent Carib attacks.

THE SPANISH INVADERS

The Spanish Settle Hispaniola
Christopher Columbus encountered the Taı́no on Hispaniola on his first
voyage to the Americas in 1492. He described them as peaceful and was
immediately impressed by their two-tiered social-political system, which
reminded him of Europe’s own class distinctions. He was also impressed
by the gold ornaments the Taı́nos wore as necklaces and belts. From this
time forward, Spain would accord a degree of deference to the nitaı́nos
chiefs and their families, treating them in a manner similar to the way a
conquered vassal or lord might be treated in Europe.
On his return to Spain, Columbus brought six Taı́nos back to Europe,
where he presented them at the court of Queen Isabella of Castile, the sov-
ereign who had paid for his voyage, and her husband, King Ferdinand of
Aragon. Their daughter, the future Queen Juana, was also in attendance.
The princess and her parents acted as godparents when the six Taı́nos were
baptized in the Christian faith. All but one of the Taı́nos returned with
Columbus on his second voyage to the Americas.
After Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas in 1492, some European sover-
eigns questioned whether these new lands rightfully belonged to Castile. In
1493, Pope Alexander VI bestowed control of any future discoveries in the
Americas to the ‘‘Catholic Kings’’ as Ferdinand and Isabella were called. There-
fore, in the eyes of the subjects of Castile and Aragon, the territories of North,
South, and Central America and the Caribbean were Spanish by divine right.
The king and queen placed seventeen ships under Columbus’ command
for his return to the Americas. They instructed him to create settlements,
Borinquen 19

develop a trade relationship with the Taı́no, educate them in the Christian
faith, and construct mines to extract the gold they believed must be abun-
dant on the islands as evidenced by the Taı́nos’ ornamental belts and
necklaces.
In the fall of 1493, as he sailed toward Hispaniola, Columbus and his
small landing party stopped at the Carib-occupied island of Guadeloupe,
where they were hailed by a small party of Taı́no women and children
who said they had been captured by the Carib. They asked the Europeans
to take them back to their home and guided them to a land that Columbus
described as beautiful, an island the Taı́no called Borinquen.
No one is quite sure where Columbus landed on November 19, 1493.
Some say Aguada or Aguadilla, in the northwest corner of the island, but
the best candidate is considered to be Boqueron Bay near Cabo Rojo on the
southwest side of the island. Columbus decided to name the island San
Juan Bautista.
The early Spanish chroniclers reported that the coasts of Puerto Rico (and
Hispaniola) were densely populated with Taı́no people. In their reports, they
described valleys that were cleared, extensively farmed, and dotted with
highly complex communities, each headed by a cacique or chief. They noted
that the villages along the coast had several hundred inhabitants.
Almost immediately after the arrival of the Spanish, the Taı́no began
forming alliances between their chiefdoms to resist the Spanish. However,
the Spanish routinely referred to the Taı́no as peaceful and blamed any
resistance they encountered on the Carib. In contrast, they described the
resistant Carib people as savage human flesh-eaters, ‘‘cannibals.’’ This
allowed them to obtain leave from their monarchs to enslave the Carib as
enemies of the king and queen and make them prisoners of war. This
oppositional narrative of the good, cooperative Native versus the bad, re-
bellious, and dangerous Native would influence European policy toward
Americas’ indigenous peoples for centuries to come.
Because the slave industry provided income and free labor for the con-
quistadores’ search for gold, many historians believe that Carib brutality
was exaggerated. For example, there is little archeological evidence that the
Carib ate human flesh for sustenance. They may have ingested small por-
tions of the most valiant of their enemies in a ceremony that honored the
warrior’s spirit and allowed it to pass along to his victorious enemy. Both
Taı́no and Carib kept the bones of ancestors and revered enemies in their
homes as talismans. Some historians have even speculated that there was
no actual ingestion of human flesh at all, and that the legend of the Carib
as cannibals is merely a misinterpretation of rituals surrounding the preser-
vation of human remains. It is likely that rebellious Taı́no were labeled as
Carib to justify their enslavement. In a similar fashion, Spanish clergy eager
20 The History of Puerto Rico

to justify their efforts to repress the Taı́no religion reported that the zemis
were actually representations of the devil and destroyed hundreds of them.
In 1494, one of Columbus’ officers, Antonio de Torres, returned from the
Caribbean to Castile with a small number of enslaved men, women, and
children, all of whom were described as Carib in the communication from
Columbus that de Torres conveyed to the queen. By 1495, de Torres had
returned to Castile with 500 more slaves whom he described as rebellious
Carib captured during an attack. Because the Carib did not take children
or women along on attacks and because there were at that time no Carib
villages outside of the Lesser Antilles, the ‘‘Carib’’ slaves transported to
Europe on these early voyages from the New World were almost certainly
Taı́no.
That same year Queen Isabella formed a commission of jurists and clergy
to determine whether the indigenous people of the Caribbean could be
enslaved. The commission found that the people of the Caribbean were free
and could not be enslaved.
In 1503, Queen Isabella issued the first repartimiendo, or distribution of
the Taı́no into divisions of labor to be used on each encomiendo, or parcel
of land decreed to individual settlers. This original repartimiendo barred
the Spanish from enslaving the Taı́no, but allowed them to demand that
the caciques supply the settlers with laborers in exchange for instruction
in the Catholic faith. Because the Spanish saw the Taı́no ruling class as
vassals to their sovereign, they considered the encomiendo system justified.
After all, feudal lords in Europe could be required to share the labor of their
subjects for the greater good of a king or queen. In reality, however, the sys-
tem crippled the Taı́no culture, leaving no time for the Taı́no to grow their
own crops. The colonizers did not adhere to the rules the queen had estab-
lished to guide the treatment of the workers and in essence the encomiendo
became a system of slavery, with no difference in treatment for the Taı́no
and Carib, who could be legally enslaved according to royal decree as ene-
mies of Spain. The settlers twisted the intent of the repartimiendo system,
using it to justify their demands for labor, to punish laborers whose efforts
did not satisfy them, to claim island resources as their own, and to impose
their own religion and customs on the indigenous people of the island. The
stage had been set for the near-annihilation of the Taı́no culture.
In the years to come, many Spaniards who visited the colonies would
protest this situation, especially Bartolom
e de las Casas in A Short Account
of the Destruction of the Indies. He reported that less than 10 percent of Taı́no
laborers managed to live more than three months under the forced labor
conditions of the Spanish mines and farms. The first encomiendo devastated
the Taı́no of Hispaniola, where most of the earliest Spanish settlements
were concentrated.
Borinquen 21

The Spanish Settle Borinquen

In 1505, Vicente Y
~ ez Pinz

an on, who captained the Ni~ na on Columbus’s
First Voyage, was named captain of San Juan Bautista. It was expected that
he would settle the island; however, aside from symbolically sending a few
fellow conquistadores to the island with a herd of goats and sheep, he made
no attempt to do so. In 1506, he gave his captaincy to Martı́n Garcı́a de
Salazar, who also showed little interest in colonizing San Juan Bautista.
Although it appears he landed on the island in 1506 with five ships and
100 men, it is unclear whether they stayed or simply sailed back to Hispa-
niola. Certainly they established no permanent settlement. His captaincy
expired in 1507.
In 1508, Juan Ponce de Le
on, an ambitious conquistador and military vet-
eran, was selected by King Ferdinand and the territorial governor, Nicolas
de Ovando, to settle Puerto Rico. After landing on the southeast coast of
the island on August 1, 1508, he and about 50 settlers established mining
and farming operations on the southwestern coast, where he founded the
city of San Germ
an; in the northeast, he established the village of Caparra,
which would later be moved about 10 miles north to the more easily defen-
sible inlet that became the capital city of San Juan. De Le
on’s encomiendo, or
community of enslaved Taı́no and Carib Indians, lived in a village called
Hacienda Grande, east of the Caparra settlement, where he put them to
work seeking gold. (Hacienda Grande is now an important source of arche-
ological information about the post-Contact living conditions of the indige-
nous people living on the island in the encomiendo era and has also
provided important Saladoid-era findings.)
A few months before arriving on the island, under the orders of Gover-
nor Ovando, Ponce de Le
on had taken part in a brutal massacre designed
to quell dissent among the Dominican Taı́no. After ambushing at least 600
Taı́no in the house of a local cacique, Ovando had ordered his men to attack
the men and women in the house savagely so as to inflict dramatic stab
wounds. He then ordered his men to drag the Taı́no bodies out to the
square, ostensibly to be counted, but in fact the entire endeavor was staged
to instill fear in the surviving Taı́nos.
News of de Le
on’s part in this massacre accompanied him to Puerto Rico
and initially many Puerto Rican caciques tried to accommodate the new Eu-
ropean governor. Because the Taı́no shamans had long predicted the ar-
rival of a clothed, immortal group of ghostly newcomers, many thought it
was futile to resist the Europeans’ demands for labor and goods. However,
as the settlers became more numerous and more brutal, the Taı́no became
desperate to gain their freedom. Disease and starvation were beginning to
take their toll on the Taı́no women and children, and the men who were,
22 The History of Puerto Rico

encumbered with the encomiendo were becoming increasingly determined

to escape the Spanish yoke so that they could work their own lands and
feed their families.
In 1510, Chief Urayo
an decided to test the belief that the Spanish were
immortal by having his subjects drown a Spaniard named Diego Salcedo
as they were carrying him across a river on a litter. To ensure that
Salcedo did not come back to life, once on shore they watched over his
body until it began to decay. Once the Taı́no learned that a Spanish man
could be killed, several prominent chiefs from across Puerto Rico (and
possibly the Virgin Islands) met to plan an attack against the hacienda
of Crist
obal de Sotomayor, a particularly brutal landowner and adviser
to Ponce de Le
on. In the raid, the Taı́no rebels killed as many as 200 set-
tlers, including Sotomayor and his son, at Villa Sotomayor and other
settlements.
After this uprising, Ponce de Le
on led a troop of fewer than 100 men to
face what turned out be 11,000 armed Taı́no men. De Le
on was an experi-
enced soldier who as a teenager had taken part in Spain’s conquest of
Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain. Though he quickly realized
he could not achieve immediate victory against the large indigenous forces,
he also knew that he faced an enemy unaccustomed to joint military action.
Though he was vastly outnumbered, he managed to escape defeat by kill-
ing the Taı́no leader, Chief Agueybana, and instigating confusion among
the loosely affiliated Taı́no troops. He retreated and returned to Caparra,
where he devised a plan to weaken the Taı́no force. First, he offered am-
nesty to any leaders who wished to lay down their arms. The loss of Chief
Agueybana and the surrender of some of the most powerful caciques on
the island left the remaining rebels disorganized. Some took cover in the
Cordillera Central mountain region, occasionally carrying out attacks
against the settlers, but largely retaining their way of life in isolation,
attempting to avoid detection and inscription into the increasingly harsh
systems of encomiendo and slavery. Meanwhile, Ponce de Le
on chased
down known rebels and branded their foreheads with the letter ‘‘F’’ in
honor of his patron, Ferdinand of Aragon.
By 1512, many of the Taı́no men who chose to revolt against the enco-
miendo system escaped and joined their former enemies the Carib to fight
the Spanish. That year, the newly allied Taı́no-Carib warriors repeatedly
attacked the settlement of San Germ
an on the western side of the island.
Columbus’ son, Diego, now governor of the Indies, appointed Crist
obal
Mendoza governor of Puerto Rico and charged him with quelling the
revolt. That same year, the Laws of Burgos were enacted in an effort to
safeguard the well-being of the Taı́no laborers participating in the enco-
miendo system and to set procedures for how chiefs, children, and women
Borinquen 23

were to be treated by the settlers. The colonists found new ways to use the
Laws to justify their harsh treatment of the laborers. To make matters
worse, even the easily manipulated Laws of the Burgos did not apply to
the ‘‘Carib’’ slaves, which was further incentive to label any indigenous
people as Carib.
In 1513, Mendoza led a bloody campaign against the rebel Taı́no and
Carib, which provoked the Taı́no to destroy San Germ
an. From there they
rowed their warships around the island to San Juan bay. They set fire to
Caparra and attacked the town of Loı́za.
Although the Taı́no and Carib managed occasional victories, because
they did not forge metals, their weapons were no match for the Spanish
during these years of open rebellion. But perhaps even more devastating
than the Europeans’ weapons were their diseases. The Taı́no had no immu-
nity to many European ailments, particularly small pox and influenza.
Escaped Carib slaves and Taı́no workers who were not killed in battle or
by disease often committed suicide on returning home to find that their
families had died of yet another rampant difficulty facing the Taı́no, starva-
tion. During the first few decades after 1493, many Taı́nos who could not
escape the encomiendo and who could not bear living as slaves committed
suicide by hanging or by drinking unprocessed poisonous cassava juice. At
the same time, some Spaniards insisted that the villages assigned to them
under encomiendo be forcibly moved and consolidated so that the workers
were more easily accessible. This practice further reduced the population
as it placed women and children, in addition to male laborers, in the vicin-
ity of deadly European diseases.
During the time that the Taı́no men were bound into the encomiendo,
Taı́no and Carib women were taken as brides by Spanish settlers. Although
there was mingling of European and indigenous (and later African) blood-
lines throughout the Americas, the situation was slightly different in the
Spanish colonies, where the colonists did not have the same taboos against
interracial marriage that later European settlers, such as the English and
the French, had. According to the census of 1514, 40 percent of Spanish set-
tlers had Indian wives. These women and their children were automatically
exempt from the encomiendo.
By 1518, the Spanish were alarmed at the rate at which the Taı́no popula-
tion was dwindling and many colonial leaders tried to establish some
autonomy for the Taı́no in hopes of restoring their spirits and their num-
bers. It was too little, too late. The population continued to decline. In
1542, Spain freed the slaves of indigenous ancestry, including the Taı́no
and Carib, but by then many had died and many of those remaining had
become assimilated into the Spanish colonial culture. The Taı́no civilization
ceased to exist. Or so it was believed.
24 The History of Puerto Rico

THE LEGACY OF THE TA
INO

Recent archeological evidence indicates that some Taı́no and Carib man-
aged to forge a joint culture and went into hiding, particularly in the interi-
ors of many of the Caribbean islands. At the same time, DNA testing
suggests that nearly all Puerto Ricans have some Taı́no and/or Carib
ancestry, at least through their maternal ancestral line, which is measured
through mitochondrial DNA (or mtDNA). In fact, Amerindian mtDNA has
been found in higher concentrations than African or European mtDNA in a
cross section of Puerto Ricans, a reversal from what most historians main-
tained just 10 to 15 years ago.
The archeological and genetic data indicate that more Taı́no and Carib
than originally thought may have survived long enough to contribute to
the Puerto Rican gene pool. The DNA findings date to the discovery of
four skeletons in the 1980s at a construction site in Arecibo. The skeletons
were dated to 645 CE by experts from the University of Puerto Rico, where
geneticists, chiefly Juan Carlos Martı́nez Cruzado, conducted carbon dating
and DNA testing. Dr. Martı́nez Cruzado compared the genes of the skele-
tons with samples from the Puerto Rican population on the island and on
the mainland of the United States. The findings called into question
assumptions long stated in nearly all history books and textbooks about
Puerto Rico, namely that the Taı́no and Carib were wiped out early in the
1500s and that the Taı́no had almost no impact on the ethnicity or even the
culture of the people who call themselves Puerto Ricans.
Dr. Martı́nez Cruzado is convinced his findings prove that bands of
Taı́no-Carib rebels survived by hiding in sparsely populated pockets of the
island until their recent emergence as locally and federally recognized
tribes, and that their ancestors who did not flee Spanish rule had a signifi-
cant impact on the gene pool of the African- and European-descended peo-
ple of Puerto Rico. In fact, there were higher traces of Amerindean mtDNA
(61 percent) than African (27 percent) or European (12 percent) genetic ma-
terial in the blood samples of contemporary Puerto Ricans living on the
island and in the United States. The test sample included individuals who
identified as Taı́no and those who did not. Evidence of Amerindian
mtDNA was high for both groups. Research using the skeletal remains is
ongoing and supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. It seems
likely that these findings will lead to a reassessment of many historical and
cultural assumptions about Puerto Rico and its people.5
In addition to DNA research, archeological research focusing on post-
Contact domestic customs indicates that the Taı́no women who married
Spanish settlers, as well as those who married enslaved and freed Africans,
maintained many of their traditions into the colonial era. These marriages
Borinquen 25

resulted in a cultural heritage among today’s Puerto Ricans that is strongly

European, African, and Carib-Taı́no.6 Further, indigenous influences are
more evident among Puerto Ricans than any other Caribbean population,
according to ethnohistorians, because there were more Taı́nos living in
Puerto Rico than any other island pre-Contact save Hispaniola, where the
indigenous population was quickly decimated. Taı́no and Carib cultural
influences can be found on all the islands of the Greater Antilles, but these
influences, particularly linguistically, are strongest among Puerto Ricans.
Due to improved scientific methods and to the extensive archeological
research currently taking place throughout the Caribbean, Pre-Contact
Puerto Rican history is undergoing a period of exciting discovery and tran-
sition. The old narrative of the island’s origins—namely that the Taı́no are
long extinct, their culture effectively wiped from the face of the earth for
nearly 500 years—is being revisited and the cultural legacy of the Taı́no
and Carib reassessed. Today’s historians agree that the island’s indigenous
past has played a significant role in the island’s history and on the identity
of the people who call themselves Puerto Ricans. This indigenous past is
manifested genetically, culturally, and symbolically, and embracing it has
served as a way to claim a unique identity apart from, and often in opposi-
tion to, Spain and the United States—the entities that have controlled
Puerto Rico’s fate for the more than 500 years.
This page intentionally left blank
 3
Spanish Colony: From San
Juan Bautista to Puerto Rico
(1493–1800)

To understand Puerto Rico’s earliest years as a Spanish colony it is neces-

sary to understand something about the political situation of the Iberian
Peninsula at the time of Columbus’ voyages to the Caribbean. The Iberian
Peninsula is the section of Europe that is currently comprised of the
nations of Portugal and Spain. It is often said that ‘‘the Spanish’’ discov-
ered America by stumbling on the islands of the Caribbean, among them
Puerto Rico, but the truth is more complicated. Christopher Columbus was
an Italian whose voyages to the Americas were paid for by Queen Isabella
of Castile, one of several separate kingdoms in the geographic region we
now think of as Spain. The ships that carried Columbus and his mostly
Spanish crews to the Americas in the 1490s sailed under the flag of Castile,
not Spain. Although many textbooks state that Queen Isabella’s marriage to
Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469 united Spain, this is not quite true either. At
the time that Columbus made his voyages to the Caribbean and South
America the separate kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were allied but
did not constitute a single undisputed nation. This did not occur until the
death of King Ferdinand of Aragon in 1516 consolidated the rule of
Aragon, Valencia, Castile, and other regions of the Iberian Peninsula under
28 The History of Puerto Rico

his daughter, Queen Juana, and her son Charles V, the Holy Roman Em-
peror. Therefore, the laws of Castile governed the Spanish settlers of Puerto
Rico from 1493 until those of the united Spain first held sway in 1516.
The date of Columbus’ first voyage, 1492 CE, was also the date of the final
stage of what the Spanish refer to as the Reconquest (or reconquista), the expul-
sion of Muslim rulers from the Iberian Peninsula. Christian nobles had been
fighting to take back territory controlled by the Muslims (or ‘‘Moors’’) since
711 CE. The final victory came with the capture of Granada by forces fighting
under the flags of Aragon and Castile in 1492. Several future conquistadores
fought in this battle, among them a teenage Juan Ponce de Le
on, who would
become Puerto Rico’s first Spanish governor. Over the coming decades, many
of the soldiers who fought in the final battles of the Reconquest would be
rewarded for their service with passage to the New World and apportioned
land, as well as Ta
ıno, Carib, and later African laborers and slaves.
There were many consequences of the Reconquest, including the expul-
sion of practicing Muslims and Jews from Aragon and Castile and the
implementation of the Spanish Inquisition, a campaign to rid Castile and
Aragon of religious heretics. In many instances the Inquisition served as a
vehicle for expelling families of Jewish and Muslim descent who had con-
verted to Catholicism in previous generations. In the decades and centuries
to come many of these persecuted individuals would relocate to the New
World. In addition, this Christian religious fervor served as a justification
for extinguishing the religions and cultures of the indigenous peoples who
the Spaniards encountered in the New World, among them the Ta
ıno of
Puerto Rico.

INTRIGUE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CONTROL

OF SAN JUAN BAUTISTA
The dual governance of the New World by Ferdinand and Isabella
caused some confusion in the settlement of the Caribbean, especially in
Puerto Rico. With two separate courts—one representing the interests of
the kingdom of Aragon and one representing the kingdom of Castile—each
issuing laws and orders on the settlement of Spain’s newly discovered ter-
ritories, it was inevitable that miscommunication and rivalries would
emerge among power-hungry conquistadors. This situation became even
more complicated after the death of Isabella in 1504 left Castile in the
hands of Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter Queen Juana, while Aragon
remained under Ferdinand’s command. Ferdinand contested the right of
his son-in-law Philip of Burgundy to assume the title of King of Castile.
Instead, Ferdinand claimed that he should rule as sole monarch of Aragon
Spanish Colony 29

and joint ruler of Castile along with his daughter, Juana. To complicate
matters further, Ferdinand claimed that Juana was unfit to rule without a
regent to guide her. Widely referred to as La Loca (or the Mad One),
Queen Juana was widely depicted by her enemies as mentally and emo-
tionally unstable, vulnerable to the manipulations of her husband and
other close advisers. This impression of Queen Juana as La Loca has pre-
vailed through the centuries, though some contemporary historians have
begun to question her depiction as ‘‘mad.’’1
Many of the earliest settlers to Puerto Rico (then called San Juan
Bautista) and other early Spanish settlements in the New World were low-
ranking nobles or hidalgos. Many of the hidalgos who made their way to the
New World were younger sons who had no substantial inheritance or
wealth, since European estates were typically handed down intact to the
oldest son in a noble family with very little property left over for any
younger siblings. For these ambitious noblemen, the New World presented
an opportunity to own property and accumulate gold of their own. In
addition, the discovery of Puerto Rico and other territories by Columbus
and subsequent explorers provided the opportunity for a generation of
young, ambitious Spaniards of high birth and meager prospects—many of
them tempered by war against the Moors—to compete for appointments to
high posts and impressive-sounding titles in the colonies. To secure a cov-
eted commission as captain of a ship sailing for New Spain or as governor
of an island, a hidalgo might align with one of the many factions that
existed in the courts of Aragon or Castile. This complicated patronage sys-
tem led to many intrigues in the first few decades of Spain’s colonization
of Puerto Rico. A quick succession of governors took charge of Puerto Rico
only to relinquish the office to rivals. Strategies for settlement and gover-
nance were mapped out and then abandoned, as one faction outmaneuvered
the next.

Christopher Columbus, First Governor of New Spain

The Italian explorer Genoese Cristoforo Colombo (referred to as Crist
obal
Col
on in most Spanish texts and Christopher Columbus in English) found
his way to Puerto Rico and the other Caribbean homelands of the Ta
ıno by
accident. It was Asia, and in particular ‘‘the Indies’’ (modern-day Indone-
sia), he was aiming for when he stumbled on the realm of the Ta
ıno, which
is why he assumed the inhabitants were ‘‘Indians.’’
Columbus was not the first European who believed that the Earth was
round and could therefore be circumnavigated. In fact, he was not even the
first European to successfully sail to the Americas. This task had been accom-
plished by the Vikings, who explored parts of Canada at least 500 years earlier.
30 The History of Puerto Rico

However, Columbus was the first explorer of his era to secure the financial
backing to test out a theory then held by only a handful of academics and
sailors—that the Earth was round and that a quicker, cheaper, more efficient
route to Asia could be found by sailing west than by traveling south around
the continent of Africa. By endeavoring to prove his theory, Columbus
changed history. He also miscalculated. For one thing, he underestimated the
size of the Earth and therefore the distance between Europe and Asia. Most
importantly, he assumed there were no great landmasses between Europe
and Asia.
Columbus first tried to secure funding for his Asian voyage from Portu-
gal. However, Portugal had grown rich from its Africa-to-Asia route and
had no desire to change its trading strategy. This rejection led Columbus to
seek funding from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. He waited six years
for an answer to his request as the monarchs focused their efforts on expel-
ling the Moors. In 1492 at the court of Santa Fe the newly prosperous king
and queen, empowered by their recent conquest over the Moors, offered
Columbus a contract known as the Stipulations of Santa Fe. Officially the
funding for the endeavor would come from the coffers of Castile under the
flag of Queen Isabella. Because Ferdinand and Isabella were not as experi-
enced as Portugal’s sovereign in trading expeditions like the one proposed
by Columbus, and because, like Columbus himself, they did not expect the
expedition to stumble on extensive island systems like the Caribbean, let
alone two enormous formerly unheard-of continents, the Spanish monarchs
were exceedingly generous in the provisions of their agreement with the
explorer. Queen Isabella decreed that Columbus would be named admiral,
viceroy, and governor of whatever islands or lands he discovered during
his journey and that he would be entitled to 10 percent of any gold as well
as any other precious metals and gems he obtained through exchange or
mining, as well as control of any trade routes he discovered.
Columbus’ first flotilla, consisting of three ships, the Ni~ na, Pinta, and
flagship Santa Maria, left the Canary Islands on September 6, 1492, and
landed in the Bahamas 36 days later. Thinking he had landed in Japan or
one of Asia’s outlying islands, he soon continued west, hoping to land in
China or India. Instead, he next landed in Cuba and then Hispaniola,
encountering the Ta
ıno and Carib, whom he called Indians, along the way.
By the time Columbus returned from his first expedition, it was clear that
he had discovered a new land altogether. He presented evidence of his dis-
covery to Ferdinand and Isabella in March 1493 and was rewarded for his
efforts with a larger expedition of 17 ships, which sailed from the Canary
Islands in September 1493. It is believed that Puerto Rico’s first governor,
Juan Ponce de Le
on, was among the 1,500 or so men who took part in this
second voyage of discovery.
Spanish Colony 31

It was during Columbus’ Second Voyage that he ‘‘discovered’’ Puerto

Rico and claimed it for the Spanish. In November 1493, Columbus and a
small crew were navigating their way through the Lesser Antilles when a
group of stranded Ta
ıno women and children on the Carib-controlled
island of Guadeloupe hailed them. Once aboard, the women led the Euro-
peans to the island the Ta
ıno called Borinquen and which Columbus imme-
diately renamed San Juan Bautista (see Chapter 2 for more on this pivotal
encounter).
Because Columbus’ discovery led to the near-destruction of the Ta
ıno
and other indigenous peoples of the New World, he is a controversial,
widely criticized figure. However, it seems likely that his aim was to estab-
lish a trade relationship with the peoples of the New World, similar to the
relationship that then existed between the Portuguese and certain African
and Asian kingdoms. In contrast, the Castilian hidalgos aboard his ships
planned to conquer, colonize, and control these new lands in a similar
manner to the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands in the early 1400s.
This conflicting strategy led to disputes between Columbus and the earliest
Spanish settlers to Puerto Rico. Further, Queen Isabella and her daughter
Queen Juana issued several orders, such as the Laws of the Burgos (1512),
designed to limit abuses against the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean.
Though Queen Isabella’s and Columbus’ ideas of how the Ta
ıno should be
treated would be considered patronizing and abusive by contemporary
standards, particularly in their disregard for the religious beliefs of the in-
digenous Puerto Ricans, nonetheless, in trying to adhere to the spirit of his
sovereign’s decrees calling for the Ta
ıno people to be taught the Christian
faith and given time each year to grow their own crops and feed their
families, Columbus apportioned too many safeguards against outright
enslavement for the liking of most his fellow settlers. His governorship of
the island was frequently protested in letters to Queen Isabella and King
Ferdinand written by colonists who wanted a freer hand with their Ta
ıno-
Carib laborers than Columbus would allow. In 1500, while Columbus was
raising funds for an expedition in Spain, his brothers, who were acting as
administrators to New Spain in his stead, were arrested and sent back to
Spain in chains by their fellow settlers. During the 14 contentious years of
Columbus’ First Admiralcy, the Spanish Main (all of the New World under
Spanish rule, including Puerto Rico) was ruled by three governors: Christo-
pher Columbus (with his brothers often acting as his administrators as he
sailed back and forth on his four New World expeditions), Francisco de
Bobadilla, and Nicolas de Ovando.
When Columbus died in 1506, his son, Diego Columbus argued that the
Columbus family should inherit his titles and King Ferdinand (a cousin of
Diego’s by marriage) and Queen Juana agreed. The First Admiral’s titles
32 The History of Puerto Rico

were transferred to Diego Columbus, the Second Admiral. However, from

1506 to 1509, while Diego Columbus waged his legal battle to claim his
father’s titles, day-to-day governance of the Spanish Main in general, and
Puerto Rico in particular, was carried out by settlers who did not favor the
Columbus family. Among them were settlers favored by Aragon’s King
Ferdinand, including Juan Ponce de Le
on.

Juan Ponce de Le
on, First Governor of San Juan

Bautista (Puerto Rico)
In 1508, while Diego Columbus was fighting to restore his father’s titles
under the Stipulations of Santa Fe and securing funding for a journey to
the New World, the acting Governor of Hispaniola, Nicolas de Ovando,
appointed Juan Ponce de Le
on the first official governor of San Juan
Bautista (Puerto Rico). De Le
on left Hispaniola for San Juan Bautista with
42 men and established the towns of San Germ
an and Caparra, where he
set up his own residence. De Le
on and his fellow settlers soon established
gold mines in the area surrounding Caparra and between 1508 and 1512,
while Diego Columbus’ attentions were focused on regaining control of
New Spain, a steady stream of gold made its way from San Juan Bautista
to Spain. King Ferdinand, who wished for the gradual settlement of San
Juan Bautista to continue, viewed Juan Ponce de Le
on as an effective gov-
ernor and faithful servant to the crown. Despite his relation by marriage to
Diego Columbus, the king had no immediate desire to remove de Le
on
from his post. Even after 1509, as Diego Columbus arrived in Santo Domi-
ngo and assumed control of the Americas under the provisions of the Sec-
ond Admiralcy, Ferdinand urged him to allow de Le
on to stay on as
governor of San Juan Bautista. Diego Columbus grudgingly agreed to make
de Le
on his deputy, which allowed him to remain acting governor of San
Juan Bautista. However, Diego resented Ferdinand for not upholding the
Columbus family’s claims to absolute control of all of the Spanish Main. In
turn, Ferdinand was so concerned that Diego Columbus would neglect
Puerto Rico in favor of settling other territories in the New World, that he
secretly reiterated his appointment of de Le
on as governor of San Juan
Bautista in a letter. This was a highly unusual break in protocol, as the let-
ter and the appointment should have gone through Diego Columbus as
governor of all of Spain’s New World territories. In addition, it could be
argued that San Juan Bautista was the territory of Castile and not Aragon
and that if the appointment of a governor was to be made directly by a
monarch, rather than through the admiralcy, then such an appointment
could only be made by Queen Juana and her husband, King Philip. In
Spanish Colony 33

essence, by pitting Diego Columbus against Juan Ponce de Le
on, Ferdinand
was testing the power of his daughter and her husband, whose authority
he was widely ignoring at home as well as in the new colonies, a situation
that only complicated matters on the nascent Spanish colony.
Adding to the confusion, another hidalgo, Crist
obal de Sotomayor, also
claimed that Ferdinand had named him governor of San Juan Bautista.
However, Sotomayor had a great deal of respect for de Le
on as a warrior
and administrator, and he willingly took a second position to him in the
governance of the new colony. Meanwhile, Diego Columbus named his ally
Juan Cer
on chief justice, a position similar to governor, in an effort to
undermine de Le
on and Sotomayor. Sensing that Diego Columbus was
determined to oust him as governor, de Le
on stepped aside and concen-
trated on running his farm and mines in Caparra. In 1510, after hearing
of Ceron’s appointment, King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Juana of
Castile sent a rare joint dispatch naming de Le
on governor and chief justice
of the island. The vindicated de Le
on sent Juan Ceron and his deputy
Miguel Diaz to Spain under arrest on July 10, 1510.
Ferdinand’s approval of de Le
on only increased after his effective defeat
of the Ta
ıno Uprising of 1510 (see Chapter 2), but the patronage of the king
would not be enough to keep Puerto Rico’s first governor in power for
long. Though de Le
on won the war against the Ta
ıno, he would soon lose
the political battle for governance of the island. De Le

on had many enemies
among his fellow Spanish settlers and his contentious time as governor
was coming to an end.
Though de Le
on has often been depicted as a villain, responsible for
orchestrating vicious massacres of Ta
ınos in Hispaniola and for the defeat
of the Ta
ıno Uprising in Puerto Rico, it has also been argued that de Le
on’s
lack of popularity with his fellow Spanish settlers was actually due to his
refusal to ignore royal decrees aimed at curbing cruelty toward the Ta
ıno
and preventing their outright enslavement. In effect, some historians have
argued, de Le
on was not brutal enough in his treatment of the Ta
ıno and
Carib to satisfy the ambitions of his fellow hidalgos.2 De Le
on’s opposition
to moving the island’s main settlement of Caparra to the location of pres-
ent-day San Juan (which would eventually take place in 1521) was another
unpopular stance that did not endear him to his fellow settlers. In short,
his enemy Diego Columbus had little trouble finding allies in his plan to
oust Puerto Rico’s first governor.
In 1511, Queen Juana upheld Diego Columbus’ petition granting him
absolute control of New Spain. One of his first acts following this decree
was to reinstate Juan Ceron as governor of San Juan Bautista with Miguel
Diaz as his deputy. King Ferdinand, who must have suspected that Diego
Columbus would displace de Le
on at the first opportunity, had already
34 The History of Puerto Rico

written to de Le
on ahead of time, instructing him to leave San Juan

Bautista and attempt to colonize the areas north of the Greater Antilles.
This led to de Le
on’s discovery of Florida in 1513. In 1515, he returned to
Caparra, where despite holding many lofty titles from King Ferdinand in
honor of his discovery of Florida, he held little power outside of his haci-
enda of Caparra. He concentrated on building up his settlement and farm-
ing his lands. In 1521, he organized a final expedition to Florida, where he
died at the hands of Florida’s indigenous Calusa people. (It would be
another 38 years before the Spanish would establish a settlement in Flor-
ida.) That same year, after decades of squabbling, the settlement of Caparra
was finally moved to its more defensible position on the inlet that is now
referred to as Old San Juan. From then on, the city of San Juan would serve
as the center of commerce, culture, and religious and political power for
the island. Though he did not want the main commercial center to be
located at the inlet, de Le
on is credited with coming up with the name
Puerto Rico (the rich port) to describe the harbor town and with changing
the colony’s name from San Juan Bautista to Puerto Rico in 1511, just
before his ouster as governor.
Today, Juan Ponce de Le
on’s tomb can be found in a place of honor in
the Cathedral of San Juan in the capital city. A statue of the governor can
be found a few blocks away in the square just outside the Church of
San Jos
e, facing in the direction of Caparra, his original settlement and
family home.

Diego Columbus and the Second Admiralcy

After de Le
on’s ouster, Juan Ceron and Miguel Diaz returned from Spain
to take control of Puerto Rico, instituting a new apportionment of Indians
under the Repartimiendo of 1511. Feeling shortchanged, many of de Le
on’s
followers simply ignored the rules governing Ta
ıno labor and claimed in-
digenous people as slaves, often labeling the Ta
ıno as Carib and therefore
unlawful enemies of Spain. This allowed the settlers to disregard any laws
governing the treatment of the Ta
ıno. Queen Juana and her spiritual advis-
ers, particularly the priests and friars of the Dominican order, tried to stem
this mistreatment by issuing the Laws of the Burgos in 1512. These laws
insisted that the Ta
ıno nobles, the nita
ınos, be treated as vassals, whose
‘‘peasants,’’ the nabor
ıas, could be used for their labor only in exchange for
certain services to their vassal lords, such as instruction in the Christian
faith. Setting aside the patronizing nature of these laws, as well as their
disrespect for Ta
ıno spiritual traditions, it should be remembered that even
these meager safeguards against the mistreatment of the Ta
ıno were largely
disregarded by the queen’s colonial subjects.
Spanish Colony 35

In 1512, Diego Columbus visited Puerto Rico and appointed yet another
governor, the warrior Crist
obal Mendoza, who implemented aggressive
policies against Ta
ıno rebels. In retaliation the rebels destroyed the settle-
ment of San Germ
an and set fire to Caparra. By 1513, the Ta
ıno crisis and
other spiritual and humanitarian concerns led Queen Juana and her reli-
gious advisers to appoint Alonso Monso as the first Bishop to San Juan
Bautista. His presence was a check on the absolute power that Diego
Columbus and his appointed governors had exercised over the island since
the departure of Ponce de Le
on. However, Monso was unable to stop the
widespread abuse of indigenous laborers and by the time of his arrival on
the island in 1513 the Ta
ıno and Carib populations were dwindling at an
alarming rate. Many succumbed to hunger, illness, or suicide, while others
fled to the interior to escape the conditions of the mines. If the Spanish
thirst for gold was to be sated, a new labor source would be needed.

AFRICAN SLAVES ARRIVE IN SAN JUAN BAUTISTA (1517)

During the first decades of the sixteenth century, the upheaval and
intrigue that had plagued the settlement of Puerto Rico by the Spanish con-
tinued. From 1514 to 1519, Sancho Vel
azquez served as governor. But by
1519, Velazquez, like de Le
on and Ceron, had been imprisoned by his po-
litical enemies and replaced by de Le
on’s son in-law Antonio de la Gama.
During this tumultuous period, the event that was to have the most sig-
nificant influence on the future historic and cultural development of Puerto
Rico took place when ships carrying African slaves to work in the colonial
gold mines and settlements began arriving in the Americas. It has been
estimated that from the 1500s to 1820, four out of every five migrants who
traveled across the Atlantic to the New World were of African origin.3 The
race-based African slave system was introduced in Puerto Rico in 1512
when the first slaves arrived, though the first official royal decree permit-
ting it was issued in 1513, and the first large shipment of 4,000 slaves was
sent to Puerto Rico and the other islands of the Greater Antilles in 1517.

West Africa
Most Africans who came as slaves to Puerto Rico (and the rest of the
New World) were residents of West Africa. In the centuries prior to the
establishment of the African slave trade to Europe and the Americas, this
culturally, ecologically, and ethnically diverse region had seen several king-
doms rise, flourish, and then diminish. Among the most important of these
kingdoms were ancient Ghana, ancient Mali, and Songhai. (The boundaries
of present-day Ghana and Mali are not identical to their ancient
36 The History of Puerto Rico

predecessors.) Each of these kingdoms served as the center of a great

empire in its time. Ghana had reached its zenith in the fifth and sixth cen-
turies CE, when its borders stretched from the Niger River to the Atlantic
and encompassed several urban centers. The Mali capital was the legend-
ary city of Timbuktu, which served as a center of Islamic learning, cultural
achievement, and trade in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In
Europe, Timbuktu was revered for its renowned university and library. All
of these civilizations collapsed prior to the ascendancy of the Yoruba
people, master forgers of metals, who built the kingdom of Oyo. Many
Afro-Caribbean Puerto Ricans are the descendents of these and other
ancient kingdoms.
As the slave trade became more lucrative, many of the emerging African
nations took their payment from the Europeans in weaponry that they used
to wage war on their declining, less powerful neighbors, whom they took
as prisoners of war and then sold to the European slave traders. Other
slaves were captured directly by Europeans financed by traders who
wanted to cut out the African middlemen. Over the next 350 years, the
period during which the importation of African slaves was permitted in
Puerto Rico, the tribes and nations of origin among those captured varied
but the brutality of their capture and transport went unchecked. Based on
records kept by slave merchants, some historians have estimated that mil-
lions of Africans died during capture and transport across the Middle Pas-
sage. Mortality rates for slaves once they reached the Americas,
particularly within the first year after capture, were also extremely high.

The Establishment of the African Slave Trade

Prior to the European colonization of the New World, slavery was not a
race-based institution. Slavery had existed on every continent and among
nearly every culture in the world for thousands of years, but most slaves
were prisoners of war or debtors who could theoretically redeem their free-
dom during their lifetime and who retained certain lawful rights, particu-
larly in the ancient civilizations of southern Europe and northern Africa.
Prior to the implementation of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery in
Africa and Europe was not hereditary. The form of slavery that students of
U.S. history are most familiar with was established by European settlers
who believed they had a desperate need to replace the enslaved Ta
ıno-
Carib workers in Puerto Rico and other territories of New Spain with a
steady supply of cheap labor. As the Ta
ıno-Carib population dwindled—at
least as a distinct population—the number of African slaves increased.
When the mines became less profitable, the need for slave labor was redir-
ected to farms, cattle ranches, and sugar, coffee and tobacco plantations.
Spanish Colony 37

Throughout the New World, as plantations proliferated and the number of

slaves increased, the human rights that slaves had traditionally been entitled
to since the ancient periods of European and African history began to disap-
pear. Slavery became a permanent hereditary institution based on race. The
treatment of those who were enslaved or born into slavery was left to
the whims of individual owners. This form of slavery, which started in the
Spanishcontrolled Caribbean, quickly spread throughout the Americas and
Europe, where it was adopted by Spain’s rivals, including the French and Eng-
lish. Between them the European colonizing nations would transport between
10 and 15 million enslaved Africans to the Americas over the next 400 years.
Individuals of African descent became the majority ethnicity among
Puerto Ricans by the 1530s, especially once Europeans began leaving the
island to pursue opportunities presented by the discovery of rich gold
reserves in Mexico, Central America, and South America. During this time,
colonists began transferring their African slave labor force from the mines
to their farms and agricultural enterprises, particularly cattle ranches, as
Puerto Rico became a leader in the leather trade, with an estimated 100,000
cattle on the island by 1620.
Puerto Rico’s stagnant economy kept its slave trade fairly small as com-
pared to other colonies. In fact, by the 1700s most of Puerto Rico’s African
population consisted of those who had escaped slavery among Spain’s ene-
mies. These African people came to the island because, beginning in 1664,
Puerto Rico had become a safe haven, granting asylum to any slaves who
managed to escape from English, French, or Dutch colonies. In the institu-
tion’s final century, from the 1760s to the 1870s, the enslaved population of
Puerto Rico hovered around 10 percent of the total population, while its
total African Caribbean population was much higher.

A STRATIFIED SOCIETY
In 1543, Spain ordered its colonists to free the remaining Amerindian
slaves be freed. It was noted that about 60 Puerto Rican Amerindians were
freed. As discussed in Chapter 2, that does not mean that there were only
60 individuals of Ta
ıno-Carib ethnicity remaining on the island, as genera-
tions of previous histories have erroneously maintained. It simply means
that there were 60 Ta
ıno-Caribs who were either not hidden by slave own-
ers who did not wish to adhere to the decree, had not fled to the interior,
were not living as brides of Spanish colonists or African laborers, or were
not free individuals of mixed Amerindian heritage. By the 1802 census,
2,300 individuals were counted as ‘‘Indios.’’
Perhaps because there were more free individuals of African descent liv-
ing in Puerto Rico than there were slaves and because there was little
38 The History of Puerto Rico

stigma to interracial marriage between African, European, and Ta
ıno-Carib

individuals, Puerto Rico had a far less violent racial history than many of
its neighbors. Nonetheless, a rigid class system separated various groups
living on the island. Spanish-born colonists were typically at the top of this
ladder, with native-born whites, or criollos, next. (Criollo is also used to
refer to anyone born in Puerto Rico, whatever their ethnicity). Those of
mixed race came next, with mestizos—those of European and Ta
ıno-Carib
descent—slightly higher on the socioeconomic scale than mulatos (a word
used to describe a person of African and European or African and Amerin-
dian descent that does not carry the stigma in Spanish that it does in
English). Ta
ıno-Caribs were largely exempt from the social hierarchies, as
they remained secluded from colonial society, retaining their culture in the
interior and interacting with dominant Puerto Rican culture as little as pos-
sible. Freed Africans were often poorer than those of mixed race and the
working conditions they endured under white landowners were severe. In
the 1800s, a combination of forces, including the ascendancy of the sugar
trade and a resulting influx of large numbers of African slaves, race-based
slave revolutions on neighboring Caribbean islands, and the simultaneous
immigration of European settlers with harsher attitudes toward racial inter-
marriage than had been previously held by the Spanish, ushered in an era
of racial tensions that would color the island’s social history long after the
abolition of slavery in 1873.
Race-based differences in socioeconomic status should be kept in mind
when considering Puerto Rico’s history. The origins of these differences as
they were heightened by economic developments of the nineteenth century
will be further examined in Chapter 4. Despite these tensions, it can still be
argued that high rates of interracial marriage among Puerto Ricans, partic-
ularly those that took place in the island’s first three centuries as a Spanish
colony, mitigated some of the more profound and violent schisms among
racial and ethnic groups seen in other parts of the Americas. In addition, it
is not uncommon for contemporary Puerto Ricans to claim a mixed ethnic
heritage of European, Amerindian, and African ancestry whatever their
apparent ethnic phenotype.

ECONOMIC SHIFTS: FROM GOLD TO AGRICULTURE

TO MILITARY WELFARE STATE
As it became more difficult to extract gold from Puerto Rico’s mines,
Spanish colonists began leaving the island to seek wealth in the ever-
expanding frontiers of New Spain, particularly in the gold mines of Mexico.
Things got so bad that in the 1530s Governor Manuel de Lando threatened
Spanish Colony 39

death by hanging to any colonists who left for other parts of New Spain and
actually cut off the feet of two colonists caught leaving the island.
Those who remained on the island turned their attention to agriculture
as a source of revenue. Tobacco, sugar, ginger, and cinnamon were culti-
vated, harvested, and shipped to Europe, and cattle were reared primarily
for use in the manufacture of leather goods. Coffee was introduced during
the 1700s and for nearly a century provided more revenue than the island’s
other agricultural endeavors. But the island never produced as much reve-
nue as many of Spain’s larger, more resource-rich territories, and in time
Puerto Rico came to be valued less for its economic assets than for its
pivotal strategic role as a gateway to the Caribbean. Over the centuries,
Spain spent more money fortifying Puerto Rico than it ever invested in the
island’s economy, and far more than it extracted from the island in trade.
Ironically, it was around this time that the Spanish and the colonists began
to refer to the island by the name of its largest city, Puerto Rico, meaning
the ‘‘rich port.’’ The city, previously referred to as Puerto Rico, became
known by the name that had previously belonged to the entire island, San
Juan. The change was gradual and no one is certain of an exact date when
this exchange in names became ‘‘official.’’
During this period of poverty, Spain tried to encourage its colonists to
remain on the island and not abandon it in hopes of seeking greater for-
tune elsewhere in the Spanish colonies. This meant that Spain needed to
supply the inhabitants of the island, particularly the soldiers safeguarding
its fortifications, with enough money and goods to make living on the
island tolerable. The solution to this economic conundrum was a subsidy
supplied by the crown and referred to as the situado.
Beginning in 1582, the situado paid for soldiers’ wages, the upkeep of
their quarters and the island’s fortifications, government salaries and proj-
ects, and eventually widow’s stipends and a host of other church- and
state-related expenses. Over time, the situado became the main means by
which Puerto Rico supported itself, a state of dependency that lasted for
centuries. Dispensed annually, the situado created a system by which sol-
diers would spend much of the year buying goods on credit from local
merchants, promising to pay them back with interest when their situado
arrived. Needed improvements to the island’s infrastructure were often
postponed until the government’s portion of the situado was provided. As
time went by, many colonists became angry if the situado arrived later than
expected or if it was seen as inadequate to the needs of the growing col-
ony. Some settlers began to question the situado, claiming that it stood in
the way of the island creating a self-sustaining economy of its own. Even-
tually, economic policies that fostered a dependent relationship between
Spain and her colonies, such as the situado, which lasted into the early
40 The History of Puerto Rico

nineteenth century, would become a rallying point for a nascent independ-

ence movement.
Changing trade routes also contributed to Puerto Rico’s very brief rise
and long and disastrous fall as a destination for commerce. During the first
half of the sixteenth century most ships coming from Spain took advantage
of the trade winds to stop at Puerto Rico for a brief bit of bartering—goods
from Europe in exchange for goods produced on the island—before mov-
ing on to New Spain’s larger, more lucrative trading centers. However, by
the end of the 1500s, the lure of the fabulous wealth made available by the
conquest of Mexico and other Latin American territories was too great and
merchant ships began bypassing routes that would have taken them to
Puerto Rico. In addition, by this time the ships were so large and difficult
to maneuver that they could not safely manage the narrow Mona Pass that
would allow them to disembark in Puerto Rico. More and more ships
chose to stop only in Hispaniola or some other nearby island, before voy-
aging to Mexico or elsewhere in New Spain. The exception to this was the
tendency of some ships from the flotillas, about 20 percent from 1550 to
1650, to dock briefly in northwestern ports, such as Aguada, where officers
would barter textiles and other goods for fresh fish, vegetables, and fruit
for their crews. This break in the flotilla pattern led to the ascension of
some of the cities on the north coast of the island. After the 1650s even this
pattern had dwindled, with as few as eight commercial ships landing any-
where in Puerto Rico in any given year, hardly enough nautical traffic to
sustain the island’s basic needs.4
To alleviate this dire situation, the Spanish crown granted merchants
from the Canary Islands (whose earlier conquest had served as a model for
the colonization of the Caribbean) limited trading routes with Spain’s
Caribbean territories, including Puerto Rico. The Canary merchants rou-
tinely exceeded these mandated limits to meet the needs of the colonists,
and the local governors, particularly in Puerto Rico where they were more
focused on military than mercantile issues, tended to look the other way.
Spanish economic policy toward Puerto Rico was inconsistent, changing
drastically from one monarch to the next. For example, Charles V, hoping
to create a manufacturing base on the island to fuel economic growth, pro-
vided the island with the capital needed to construct the first sugar mills in
1546 and 1552. But by the end of the reign of Phillip II in the late 1500s,
the Spanish government acquiesced to the demands of its merchant class,
particularly Seville’s powerful consulado guild, by discouraging colonists in
Puerto Rico and other Spanish territories from manufacturing any goods.
The merchants feared that goods could be made more cheaply by the colo-
nists. Instead, the consulado pressured the monarch to have the colonists
send their raw materials to Spain, where they could be used to create
Spanish Colony 41

finished products, such as textiles, leather harnesses, farming implements,

and household goods. The colonists were also seen as a captive consumer
market, prohibited from purchasing goods from Spain’s commercial com-
petitors. With few options, Spanish merchants expected the colonists would
be willing to pay a high price for the refined goods sent back by each
flotilla. The flaw in the system, of course, is that to be a reliable consumer
of luxury goods one needs a steady income. With its developmental poli-
cies in constant flux and largely dictated by the political interests of various
factions who had never been to the island, Puerto Rico’s economy often
stagnated, leaving generations of its residents in a state of almost perpetual
material deprivation.
It is not surprising that the colonists would look for alternate ways to
transport their goods to unofficial markets and to access consumer goods
from prohibited, less expensive suppliers.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

Piracy emerged in the Caribbean almost as soon as Spain claimed the
region and began extracting its gold. Spain’s rival, France, launched the
first wave of sporadic piracy, which intensified following Cortes’ conquest
of Mexico. From 1519 to 1521, Spain attempted to transport large amounts
of gold from Mexico to Spain via the Caribbean, where mercenaries, mostly
French Corsairs, often Protestants who could claim religious as well as
mercenary grounds for their actions, would attempt to intercept Spanish
shipments. Spain’s enemies also included Corsairs from the rival Iberian
nation of Basque. Loaded down with gold in larger, slower ships, the
Spanish crews were no match for the Corsairs, whose swifter, more easily
maneuverable crafts would run the Spanish ships down, sail alongside,
throwing ropes with grappling hooks over the sides of the galleons, board,
engage in battles on the decks with their crews, and then make off with
large portions of the gold. Sometimes the Corsairs would ransom the crew
as well, emptying the ships of personnel before burning the vessels at sea.
All of this took place with the sanction of the French monarchs as well as
governments from other rival nations, including Basque and England. In
addition to gold, the Corsairs stole tobacco, sugar, pearls, and other goods.
Because of these attacks, Spanish ships attempted to travel by fleet
between Spain and the New World beginning around 1525. La flota, or the
flotilla, set out each January and August, landing in the New World twice
a year. This meant that colonists on Puerto Rico and other islands had to
make do without provisions from Europe for long periods of time and that
the arrival of la flota carrying goods from Spain was a biannual event and
occasion for celebration and social interaction.
42 The History of Puerto Rico

The flotilla system was adopted to avoid financing a Spanish Navy that
would patrol the Caribbean, an expense that Spain hoped to avoid. In the
long run, this decision would have lasting consequences on Spain’s ability
to maintain control over the Americas in general and Puerto Rico in parti-
cular. In the short term, it gave rise to several waves of piracy, as private
ships, sanctioned by Spain’s enemies during wartime and unsanctioned
during times of peace, took advantage of the vast amounts of wealth being
transported across the Atlantic with almost no protection. Pirates also
became wealthy by intercepting Spanish ships carrying African slaves from
Africa to South America and the Caribbean, although some pirate captains
freed the slaves they captured and allowed them to join the pirate crews.
Documents from the time indicate that at least one-third of all pirates were
African.
In 1528, the colony of Puerto Rico experienced its first pirate invasion
when 60 Corsairs invaded the settlement of San Germ
an, burning and
plundering the town’s farms and mines, which had been abandoned by the
families living there. As the years progressed it became clear that not only
the port of San Juan, but other major trading areas, such as San Germ
an,
would need to be fortified and guarded from piracy, as well as invading
armies.
By 1552, all private merchant ships trading with Spain and carrying
goods from her colonies were required to carry trained militia at their own
expense. With armed men on either side, the sea battles soon became
deadly. When it became clear that few private merchants were willing or
able to hire their own mercenaries, Spain began levying ‘‘pirate taxes’’ on
its colonists to pay for armed guards to sail with merchant ships carrying
goods to Spain. Spanish colonists, including those living in Puerto Rico,
considered this tax unfair. In their view their sovereign nation owed them
the protection necessary to conduct business on the open seas and many
argued that they were being victimized twice—by the pirates and by their
own rulers. Such arguments would eventually feed the cause of
independence.
Another issue fueling colonist discontent was Spain’s insistence that the
Puerto Rican merchants could trade only with the Spanish ports of Seville
and Cadiz, thus limiting their ability to sell their goods to the highest bid-
der. As a result, some colonial merchants soon made side deals with the
pirates, paying them to transport a portion of their goods to more lucrative,
but officially prohibited, ports.
In addition, Spain required the colonists to purchase European goods
from Spanish merchants at fixed prices. This prevented the colonists from
obtaining textiles and other goods at the lowest possible cost. Soon, the
pirate ships were landing on Puerto Rican shores, selling goods from
Spanish Colony 43

prohibited manufacturing centers such as Flanders, Italy, and France at dis-

counted prices. Far from being reviled by the locals, pirate ships were often
welcomed, especially when they quietly sailed in and out of ports just out
of sight of the great forts and watchful eyes of the military governors. In
fact, some Spanish Caribbean governors even colluded with the pirates in
return for kickbacks and bribes. Puerto Rico, in particular was dependent
on the pirate trade because by the 1600s its population was so small that
many officially sanctioned Spanish merchant ships did not think it was
worth their time to stop at any of the island ports. In addition, the high
volume of pirates operating in the north coast of Puerto Rico had made it
one of the most dangerous water routes in the world. It is hard to say
whether Spain’s policies spurred piracy in the Caribbean in general and
Puerto Rico in particular, or if the reluctance of Spanish merchants to dock
in Puerto Rico was the result of piracy. What can be stated with certainty
is that the people of Puerto Rico depended on the black market goods the
pirates provided simply to keep themselves clothed and their homes
stocked with cooking implements and other everyday household goods.
For many Puerto Ricans, the pirates were seen as folk heroes, who were
able to supply them with their basic needs when their government had
failed to do so.
Pirate scholars divide the Golden Age of Piracy (1650–1730) into three
eras, two of them in the Caribbean. During the first, 1650 to 1680, Protes-
tant English, French, and Dutch buccaneers, many sanctioned by rival
European powers, invaded Spanish ships in the Caribbean in the name of
religion, but benefited from the commerce. In 1674, the king of Spain began
hiring his own corsairs and privateers to patrol the waters of his colonies
and to counter-attack his enemies’ trading ships. In exchange for their
services, these sanctioned Spanish ‘‘pirates’’ were allowed to keep a per-
centage of the Spanish treasury that they were helping to protect. This era
was chaotic, characterized by sanctioned and unsanctioned pirate attacks
on all sides.
The second era, during the 1690s, was centered along the African coast
and Indian Ocean, and represented an era of only moderate pirate activity
in the Caribbean.
In the early eighteenth century, between the second and third eras of pi-
racy, there was a brief interruption in outlaw maritime activities, but only
because adventure on the high seas in these years came in the form of
sanctioned raids by privateers working for rival European powers. During
the War of Spanish Succession between Spain, England, France, and the
Netherlands (1715–1730), crews that had been previously designated as
pirates were now officially sanctioned as privateers and were rewarded by
Spain’s enemies for raiding Spanish ships. Spain, in turn, sanctioned
44 The History of Puerto Rico

privateers to raid her enemies’ ships. This was a lucrative epic for mercena-
ries and many young men from Europe and the colonies took to the prac-
tice of looting ships and raiding colonial settlements.
The third era of the Golden Age of piracy (1730s) took place just after
the War of Spanish Succession as the now non-sanctioned pirates began
attacking ships. As the official navies of all four nations (Spain, England,
France, and the Netherlands) departed from the Caribbean, pirates took
advantage of the absence of well-armed crewmen to attack merchant ships
of every nation and the number of pirate crews multiplied. In fact, many of
the pirates were former professional sailors from the four navies, now out
of work. The highest percentage of these former professional seamen were
English, but the crews of pirate ships were highly diverse, consisting of
freed slaves, criollos unsatisfied with the lack of opportunity created by
preference often shown to European-born colonists, biracial individuals of
African, Ta
ıno-Carib, and/or European background, and Europeans from
any of a half dozen nations.
Pirate ships were not run in the dictatorial manner of most European na-
val ships. Unruly sailors were almost never punished using the brutal cor-
poral methods practiced by navy officers, though in extreme cases they
might be left on whatever island was nearest. Missions were decided by
majority vote and every pirate sailor had an equal share in the plunder.
The captain was elected by his crew and could lose his position by majority
vote. The captain’s share of the spoils was sometimes higher, but that share
was typically voted on as well. In short, a spirit of democracy reigned on
pirate ships and pirate settlements, including Tortuga off the coast of His-
paniola. In fact, some contemporary pirate scholars cite the equitable spirit
championed by the pirates as a precursor to the eventual spirit of revolu-
tion and democracy that would sweep through the Americas in the eight-
eenth and nineteenth centuries.
The loyalties of these crews were as diverse as their crews and the rela-
tionship to the various colonies complicated. Some pirates were welcomed
and revered by the settlers of Puerto Rico for providing them with needed
goods and access to otherwise unreachable markets for their wares. Other
pirates, who held nominal loyalty to Protestant nations even though those
nations outlawed their existence during peacetime, were likely to raid
Spanish settlements and were therefore feared by colonists. Thus, the resi-
dents of Puerto Rico had a complex relationship with piracy, and the island
held a central place in this fascinating epic of history.
It was during this period that some of the Puerto Rican governors paid
pirate captains to intercept English and Dutch ships that came near their
waters. Many of these ships were carrying goods from colonies in what
would become the United States from ports such as Boston, Philadelphia,
Spanish Colony 45

etc. Famed pirate captains of this era included the Puerto Rican mulatto
Miguel Henriquez and San Juan resident Pedro de la Torre. The last and
perhaps most famous Puerto Rican pirate was Roberto Cofres
ı y Ram
ırez
de Arellano, who started out pillaging U.S. and British ships in the late
1810s and early 1820s and was largely overlooked by Spanish authorities,
who approved of his activities. Later he shifted his loyalty from Spain to
independence forces and began to raid Spanish as well as other nations’
ships indiscriminately. It was at this point that Spain cooperated with the
United States in capturing him in 1825, when he was executed on the lawn
in front of El Morro. Considered a Robin Hood figure, he is said to have
shared his bounty with friends, family, and the less fortunate, and to have
buried treasure near his hometown of Cabo Rojo.

FORTIFICATIONS AND INVASIONS

Though the amount of gold and other salable goods Spain received from
Puerto Rico was small compared to the riches extracted from the rest of
New Spain, the island was strategically important. At various points,
England, France, and the Netherlands all attempted to capture the island.
Beginning in 1564 Spain stopped awarding the governorship of the island
to political appointees. For the next several centuries, the island was gov-
erned by military leaders, and constructing fortifications to protect San
Juan and other strategic settlements came to be seen as the colony’s main
function and highest priority.
From the 1530s through the 1540s, the military concentrated on building
fortifications around the government building now called La Fortaleza,
where the island’s treasury was housed. In 1539, construction of the El
Morro fort began. Built on a promontory overlooking the ocean, El Morro
was staffed by resident soldiers and equipped with cannons aimed at
incoming ships.
Throughout most of the 1500s it is believed there were never more than
about 200 men available to defend the island at any given time and most
of those were not professionally trained soldiers. In 1582, a professional
garrison was housed in El Morro for the first time, its salaries and upkeep
provided for by the first situado. The face of Puerto Rico was changing from
a struggling commercial colony to a strategic trophy, surrounded by for-
tresses and under assault by a series of foreign invading powers over the
following three centuries.
In dealing with the sometimes harsh, military-style justice of the martial
governors the colonists could appeal to the audiencia, a sort of appeals court
centered in Santo Domingo (Hispaniola). This court was a check on the
absolute power of the governors and also helped shape Puerto Rican
46 The History of Puerto Rico

concepts of governance for centuries to come. Puerto Rico’s local munici-

palities were run by a council, called a cabildo. At first those on the cabildo
were elected and tended to support the claims of settlers over the interests
of the crown. Later seats on the cabildos were sold by the crown to the
highest bidder. These royally appointed administrators tended to hold their
meetings in closed-door sessions.
One of the most famous invasions came in 1595, when a damaged gal-
leon, laden with gold and precious gems took refuge on the island, its
treasure temporarily stored at La Fortaleza until another galleon could be
sent to retrieve it. Sir Francis Drake, one of England’s most famous Cor-
sairs, soon heard of the treasure and devised a plan to raid San Juan and
plunder La Fortaleza. Drake was regarded as a war hero by the English for
his successful service in the defeat of the Spanish Armada, after which
Queen Elizabeth rewarded him for his efforts with a knighthood. But in
Spanish circles he was regarded as a feared outlaw and pirate. On November
22, 1595, he arrived off the coast of San Juan with a flotilla of his own.
However, El Morro had been fortified in recent years and was better
staffed than the war hero expected. His ships could not penetrate the fort’s
defenses to reach the shore and his flagship was fired on. On November
23, Drake tried another tactic, using small launches to quietly approach
some Spanish ships that were anchored in the bay outside the capital city
and set them ablaze. However, the first fire was spotted by soldiers on
watch in El Morro who were then easily able to spot the launches and
attack them from above with battery guns. The next day, Drake attempted
to boldly sail his entire flotilla into the bay, braving the cannon fire from
the El Morro fort. However, the Spanish chose to sink three of their own
large galleons, making entrance into the port impossible. Drake gave up
and left Puerto Rican waters for good. This outmaneuvering of one English
history’s most celebrated naval warriors has long been celebrated in both
Puerto Rican and Spanish history.
Puerto Rico experienced a closer call in 1598 when George Clifford, the
Earl of Cumberland, entered Puerto Rican waters with 1,400 men, includ-
ing several veterans of Drake’s invasion. After a 15-day battle, Cumber-
land’s troops captured El Morro, forced the governor to surrender, and
sacked of the capital city. However, a widespread bout of gastric fever
reduced his force by half to less than 700 men and forced Cumberland to
relinquish control of the city just before a large fleet from Spain arrived to
recapture San Juan.
In 1625, Dutch fleet commander Boudewijn Hendriksz laid siege to San
Juan as an act of war, since at the time the Dutch were enemies of the
Spanish as part of Europe’s vast and complicated Thirty Years War. He was
able to bypass El Morro because its guns and weaponry were in disrepair at
Spanish Colony 47

the time. His troops came ashore, capturing La Fortaleza and terrorizing the
residents of San Juan. However, the Dutch were not able to defeat the troops
in open battle on the shore next to El Morro and Governor Juan De Haro
refused to surrender. The Protestant troops then laid siege to the city’s
churches and looted their holy artifacts. Cumberland’s troops were forced to
abandon the city less than 24 hours later and return to Dutch-controlled
waters aboard ships that had been badly damaged by fire from barrages
launched by troops stationed in El Morro. After burning homes and other
buildings and damaging much of the city, he returned to the Netherlands
with treasured possessions stolen from churches and homes.
From 1701 to 1713, during the War of Spanish Succession, the military gov-
ernors expected an attack from the British to its main port. Instead, a small
band of 40 Englishmen came ashore in the small town of Arecibo but were
repulsed by local residents. The Treaty of Utrecht ended the war in 1713.

THE O’REILLY CENSUS (1765)—THE EMERGENCE

OF PUERTO RICAN IDENTITY
With very little opportunity to make one’s fortune in Puerto Rico, colo-
nists began leaving the island to pursue opportunities in Spain’s other
colonies. Because of this lack of opportunity, the 1673 Census stated that
the island was suffering from a lack of skilled workers: carpenters, ship-
builders, farmers, blacksmiths, etc. This deficiency in workers was partially
made up over the next several decades thanks to Spain’s decree that any
African who found his way to the Spanish colony from a territory con-
trolled by another European power would be considered free. In addition,
indentured servants of European background also began migrating to
Puerto Rico, where due to labor shortages, no questions were asked. It is
largely believed that these fugitives swelled the number of inhabitants on
the island to about 6,000 by 1700.
The 1673 Census also noted that there were nearly twice as many women
living on the island as men. One factor that helped prevent the complete stag-
nation of economic development on the island was the Spanish law that
allowed women to own property after a husband or father’s death and to con-
trol property in the absence of their husbands or fathers. These legal provi-
sions, which did not exist in some of Spain’s rival European countries, allowed
women to administer property and carry on economic endeavors started by
their husbands even when they were engaged in activities in other colonies.
Spain’s King Charles III was not happy with Puerto Rico’s slow rate of
development and in 1765 sent Alejandro O’Reilly as the Special Envoy of
the Spanish King to conduct a special report. His report declared that the
48 The History of Puerto Rico

people of Puerto Rico were the poorest in America, and that they lacked
such commonplace public works as proper roads after 250 years of Spanish
rule. He also reported that smuggling, contraband trade, and other forms of
piracy had been more central to the development of the island’s economy
than any legitimate commercial enterprises. He estimated that the value of
illegal trade was ten times greater than the income earned by Puerto Ricans
from legitimate commerce. He noted that many of the island’s settlers were
outlaws and military deserters with no skills or agricultural knowledge.
O’Reilly urged the crown to eliminate many of its trade restrictions on the
colonists and to encourage the emigration of Catholic settlers from other
countries, particularly those with agricultural skills. Following up on
O’Reilly’s recommendations, Spain issued reforms designed to increase im-
migration to Puerto Rico and managed to increase the population from the
1765 mark of about 45,000 to more than 155,000 in 1800.

REVOLUTIONS ABROAD AND ONE LAST EUROPEAN ATTACK

The revolutionary era sparked by the North American declaration of in-
dependence from the British in 1776 and the subsequent establishment of
the United States eventually sparked nationalist, anti-colonial sentiment
among most of the peoples of the Americas. In the near-term, its greatest
impact for Puerto Rico may have been its role in igniting discontent among
the citizens of Spain’s rival European nation, France. When the French citi-
zenry declared the Rights of Man in 1789 and overthrew their king in 1792
they triggered parallel revolutionary fervor among the slave populations of
their Caribbean colonies including Haiti, as the victorious slaves chose to
call the island that the Spanish referred to as Hispaniola. (Today, the island
that was once the most populous stronghold of the Ta
ıno civilization is
home to two distinct states—Haiti and the Dominican Republic.) Frequent
skirmishes between the newly established Haitian government and rival
factions based on the Spanish-controlled side of the island, as well as fight-
ing between the French, English, and Spanish—each of them determined
to recapture and control the entire island—made the governance of the
Spanish-controlled portion of Hispaniola increasingly uncertain and forced
the Spanish to relocate the Council of the Indies to Cuba. This change of
venue created a closer political and cultural relationship between Cuba and
Puerto Rico in the century that followed.
The French Revolution and the slave revolts that it triggered emboldened
the English, who were eager to increase their holdings in the region
after losing territory in North America. In 1795, British General Ralph
Abercromby traveled to the West Indies, where he captured St. Lucia, St.
Vincent, and Grenada. In 1796, he was ordered to capture Trinidad and
Spanish Colony 49

Puerto Rico. He quickly took control of Trinidad, but Puerto Rico presented
more of a challenge than the veteran of the Seven Years War had expected.
During Abercromby’s two-week siege in 1797, Spain’s centuries-long
investment in fortifications along its major ports paid off. Unable to breach
the walls guarding the capital city, Abercromby bypassed the harbor and
led a small force ashore on foot. This force occupied the village of San
Mateo de Cangrejos (now a neighborhood of modern-day San Juan), where
the general set up headquarters in the summer home of the bishop of San
Juan. Confined to the small village, the British troops soon needed to ven-
ture from their headquarters to obtain additional supplies. However, Span-
ish troops and local Puerto Rican militias attacked their every foray. Across
the island, the Puerto Rican people, including free black men living in
Lo
ıza, voluntarily took up arms and effectively silenced communications
between Abercrombie’s fighting units. Soon voluntary soldiers were arriv-
ing in San Juan from every village to join forces with General Ram
on de
Castro’s regulars. On April 30, 1797, Abercromby and his forces retreated.
As governor, General Castro took advantage of the victory, winning
reforms and investments from Spain that helped alleviate some of the eco-
nomic hardships the Puerto Rican people had suffered leading up to the
invasion. His efforts improved economic development and governance on
the island during the decades ahead. He would be the last Spanish gover-
nor to enjoy widespread popularity on the island.
Though only 200 of Abercrombie’s 7,000 men had been killed, the victory
still resounds with symbolism on the island, where many poems, folk
legends, paintings, and statues commemorate the battle. Long seen as a
defining moment in island history, the English invasion of 1797 spurred
Puerto Ricans from every ethnicity and every corner of the island to unite
to face a common enemy, not as dutiful subjects defending the glory of the
Spanish Empire, but as patriots who had begun to think of their island
home as a nation in its own right.
This page intentionally left blank
 4
Spanish Province: Autonomy
Thwarted (1800–1898)

Throughout the first three centuries of the Spanish colonial period the
everyday lives of Puerto Ricans were affected by events taking place in the
Caribbean and the Americas, Europe, and Africa. By the early 1800s,
European conflict over trade, royal succession, and the Atlantic slave trade
had left its mark on the developing culture and politics of the island. This
phenomenon only intensified during the nineteenth century.
The Napoleonic Wars, for example, had long-lasting consequences for
Spain’s relationship with her island colony. Spain’s alliance with Napoleon
left her treasury depleted and her citizens too impoverished to purchase
luxuries, such as leather goods, sugar, or coffee from the colonies. Thus, as
the nineteenth century unfolded, the United States gradually replaced
Spain as Puerto Rico’s leading trading partner. The 1804 defeat of France
and Spain by the British Navy at the Battle of Trafalgar left the Spanish
fleet wounded, diminished, and in no position to defend its colonies or to
control trading activities as it once had. By 1808, Napoleon had coerced
Spain’s Bourbon king, Ferdinand VII, into abdicating his throne in favor of
Bonaparte’s brother Joseph-Napol
eon. Though the French controlled por-
tions of Spain under Joseph Napol
eon Bonaparte, most regions of the
52 The History of Puerto Rico

country refused to acknowledge Napoleon’s brother as their sovereign and

a military junta took control of most of the nation.
In the coming decades Spain’s Bourbon monarchy was restored, only to
have its authority interrupted and challenged by a series of internal wars
sparked by disputes over succession, as well as periodic coups undertaken
to end the monarchy and establish an intermittent form of constitutional re-
publican government. Amid this backdrop, many native-born Puerto
Ricans began to feel increasingly alienated from a chaotic motherland,
which seemed to ignore their concerns. Many native-born Puerto Ricans, or
criollos, believed that Spain did not accord them their rights as Spanish sub-
jects; taxed their meager earnings to pay for European wars and wayward,
inconsistent trade policies; and perhaps most galling, treated recently
arrived Spaniards, called peninsulares, with favoritism, awarding them with
land grants, tax exemptions, and lucrative government posts that were
seldom awarded to criollos.
From Spain’s perspective, past investments in its colonies, from the crea-
tion of infrastructure to defense against foreign invasion entitled the gov-
ernment to ask its colonial subjects for contributions and special taxes in
times of crisis. By 1821, nearly all of the nations of the Spanish Main had
rejected this supporting role. From Venezuela to Argentina to Mexico, most
of Spain’s former colonies had declared their independence from the once-
powerful, now-ravaged empire, and a weakened Spain was too depleted to
defeat the revolutionary armies. Nation-by-nation Spain began losing con-
trol of its territories in North, South, and Central America, and by 1826,
Spain’s New World empire was comprised of two small under-developed
islands, Cuba and Puerto Rico. (Spain also retained control over the
Philippines, Guam, and other islands in the South China Sea.)
As a consequence, Puerto Rico became a refuge for defeated loyalists
fleeing from revolutionary conflicts throughout the former Spanish Main.
These imperial loyalists soon joined recently arrived immigrants from
throughout Europe who used their capital and business knowledge to de-
velop Puerto Rico’s economy, particularly its sugar, coffee, and tobacco
industries.
The nineteenth century saw Puerto Rico evolve from a sparsely popu-
lated island of mostly mixed-race criollos (various combinations of African,
European, and Ta
ıno-Carib), largely getting by as subsistence farmers, to a
highly stratified plantation-based economy reliant on increasing numbers
of African slaves. Harsh working conditions for slaves and free laborers
alike and a more rigid race-based class system characterized Puerto Rico’s
quickly evolving economy. Meanwhile, high rates of debt among native-
born Puerto Ricans and perceived favoritism for newly arrived immigrants
created new tensions with the Spanish colonial government; escalating
Spanish Province 53

demands for autonomy, if not outright independence, characterized island

politics as the twentieth century approached.

CYCLES OF REFORM AND REPRESSION

By 1808, Spain had seen British colonists successfully fight for independ-
ence to form the United States and the French populace dismantle its mon-
archy. But it was the violent overthrow of the colonial government in
Haiti, just across the Mona Passage from Puerto Rico, that prompted a con-
cerned Spanish government to acknowledge calls for reforms long
requested by its island subjects. In 1809, hoping to cement the loyalty of its
remaining colonies through economic and political concessions, Spain’s
Supreme Junta invited Puerto Ricans to vote for a delegate who would rep-
resent their interests before a session of parliament to be held in Cadiz.
The delegate vote was Puerto Rico’s first democratic election. Only land-
owning men were allowed to vote. The winning delegate, Ram
on Power y
Giralt, actually had to be elected twice because the Junta was replaced by a
new political unit called the Regency before he could leave for Cadiz. The
parliamentary session, or Cortes, now hosted by the Regency government,
began in 1810. Power y Giralt soon won respect among his fellow Spanish
and Cuban reformists and was named vice president of the Cortes. He
managed to convince the Regency government to ease trade restrictions on
Puerto Rican merchants in a decree called the Rey Power, which granted
Puerto Rico status as a Spanish province. He also had a hand in conceiving
many of the provisions of the first Spanish Constitution, drafted between
1811 and 1812. It should be noted that in addition to trade and civil
reforms, Power y Giralt also carried with him demands for an independent
republic from many of the elected municipal bodies that had conferred and
drawn up lists of reforms prior to the delegation’s departure.
Power y Giralt’s prominent contribution to Spanish history was a point
of pride for most Puerto Ricans, but not all. A number of royalists, peninsu-
lares, loyalist refugees from Latin America’s new republics, and some of
the island’s wealthiest criollos thought that the reforms went too far. Advo-
cating a more centralized government and continued Spanish control over
trade, these powerful interests made up a conservative counter-current to
the reformist, autonomous movement. Opposition between these two eco-
nomic, political currents would characterize Puerto Rican politics for the
rest of the century. It can be argued that this political tug of war is still the
dominant theme of Puerto Rican politics, on and off the island, to the pres-
ent day.
In 1814, the Bourbon king, Ferdinand VII, was restored to power. Ferdi-
nand nullified the Rey Power and the Spanish Constitution, and imprisoned
54 The History of Puerto Rico

many of Spain’s reform-minded leaders, despite the fact that they had
fought the Bonaparte government and were partly responsible for his return
to the throne. By 1815, hoping to retain what remained of a diminishing
empire, Ferdinand moved to retain the loyalty of Puerto Rico and, if possi-
ble, develop its economy to help make up for the trade and resources Spain
had lost in its other Latin American colonies. In August 1815 he issued the
C
edula de Gracias (Warrant of Opportunity), which encouraged immigration
to the island by granting any white settler willing to convert to Catholicism
and pledge support for the Spanish king six acres of land (three acres for
each slave owned) and a 10-year tax exemption. Free black and mulato set-
tlers would be awarded three acres of land (one and a half acres for each
slave they owned) and a five-year tax exemption. If the new settlers stayed
for five years they would be invited to become Spanish citizens. Most of the
C
edula’s provisions remained in place until 1836. The C
edula and other
reforms aimed at increasing immigration resulted in a shift in the popula-
tion, as the island saw an influx of European immigrants from Catalan,
Valencia, Basque, Galicia, Corsica, Ireland, and France, as well as the Canary
Islands, which had been a steady source of immigration since the late 1600s.
Other immigrants came from throughout Latin America and the French-,
Dutch-, and English-controlled islands of the Caribbean. The decree was
intended to grant unused land to immigrants, who would develop it into
revenue-producing farms and plantations. In fact, the new law often deeded
land that had been farmed by native-born Puerto Ricans for generations to
new arrivals. Many criollos were now required to pay rent to the new own-
ers or work as farmhands if they wished to stay.
By 1823, Ferdinand had spent years struggling to consolidate his power
and was in no mood to tolerate reformist philosophy in Spain or overseas.
After nullifying Spain’s second constitution and reclaiming absolute power
as monarch, he revoked Puerto Rico’s status as a province, reducing her to
a colony once more. Ferdinand’s harsh treatment of Cuba and Puerto Rico
were continued under his daughter Isabel’s regency and eventual rule (she
was only three years old when first crowned), as well as under her uncle,
rival, and sometime pretender to the throne, Carlos, Ferdinand’s brother.
For the next several decades Puerto Rico would be ruled by a series of
anti-reformist governors, beginning with Marshall Miguel de la Torre, who
governed the island from 1823 to 1837. De la Torre resented the success of
revolutionaries, particularly the popular general and folk hero Sim
on
Bol
ıvar, known throughout Latin America as El Libertador, who had
defeated de la Torre’s troops in Venezuela. Determined to avoid further
defeat and disgrace, de la Torre implemented a series of laws designed to
prevent the formation of popular uprisings. He curtailed criollo gatherings,
devised brutal punishments for anyone who disobeyed his decrees, created
Spanish Province 55

a secret network of informants, and offered rewards designed to encourage

citizens to spy on one another and report to him any behavior that might
be construed as revolutionary. De la Torre was able to issue different laws
for criollos than for peninsulares because, under Spanish law, those who
were born in its colonies were defined as Spaniards, rather than citizens,
unless they could prove that both of their parents had been born in Spain.
This discrepancy in citizenship created a two-tiered social structure even
among Puerto Rico’s most successful criollos, placing even wealthy families
who could trace their ancestry back several generations on the island below
recent Spanish arrivals.
Despite the repressive measures instituted by de la Torre and the gover-
nors who followed, there was a planned uprising in 1838. The intent of the
conspirators, all wealthy landowners and well-placed militia members, was
to declare Puerto Rico an independent republic. Though the plot was
thwarted when it was denounced by an insider close to the conspirators,
this planned uprising marks a pivotal moment in the history of the island
as the first fully conceived plot to end the island’s colonial status.

ECONOMICS: SUGAR, COFFEE, AND TOBACCO

Despite the island’s political instability and its residents’ fluctuating civil
rights, the economy flourished during the first six decades of the nine-
teenth century. By 1810, Mexican independence had ended the situado, just
as Puerto Rico’s growing sugar and coffee trades were making this stipend
less necessary. Between 1814 and 1854, for example, foreign trade increased
2000 percent.1 This period of growth has been cited as the point at which
Puerto Rico’s economy transformed from a colonial economy to a national
economy.2
Puerto Rico began the century with over 150,000 inhabitants and ended
it with more than 1 million. In addition to a population that was finally
sufficient to develop the island’s agricultural potential, Puerto Rico’s econ-
omy also benefited from the chaos that followed the Haitian Revolution,
which had incapacitated the world’s largest sugar exporter. Puerto Rico
reaped the benefits, becoming a major global source of sugar (including
sugar-derived products like molasses and rum) for Europe and the United
States, and enjoying three decades of favorable trade balances (it exported
more than it imported). However, the seeds for the island’s economic
downturn were embedded in its success. As more and more of its lands
were dedicated to growing luxuries like sugar, coffee, and tobacco for
export to Europe and the United States, the amount of land dedicated to
agriculture and subsistence farming became scarcer. Increasingly, Puerto
Ricans were dependent on the United States to provide food supply.
56 The History of Puerto Rico

For example, by the late 1800s Puerto Rico was importing the bulk of its
rice from the United States even though sufficient amounts of rice, a major
part of the population’s diet, had been produced locally for centuries.
Now, rice had to make way for revenue-producing coffee trees in the
island’s southwest region.
The 1838 vagrancy laws made it nearly impossible for rural workers to
grow enough food to feed their families. The laws gave wealthy land-
owners an additional tool to compel rural workers and subsistence farmers
to work for them for wages insufficient to support their families if and
when those landowners’ slave labor force could not complete work fast
enough. Additional day laborers were needed at harvest and during certain
points in the sugar refining process, but it was not always worthwhile for
free laborers to skip a critical day harvesting their own crops for one day’s
meager wages on the sugar plantations. The vagrancy law provided the
landowners with a tool that compelled small farmers to do just that, often
at a great cost to their families’ survival. Jornaleros (wage workers) were
defined as those with no steady income or an insufficient amount of land
to support a family (approximately less than 2 acres). Those classified by
the government as jornaleros were required to seek and accept wage work
immediately. Those who did not could be jailed, fined, or required to
accept work for half the going rate. In 1849, after the slave trade, though
not the institution of slavery, was officially ended by Spain, Governor Juan
de la Pezuela issued an even harsher version, called the Reglamento de
Jornaleros (Workers’ Regulations) or the ‘‘law of libreta,’’ which required
wage workers to carry a passbook, or libreta, with them at all times. The
passbooks carried notations from landowners and could be checked by
government officials at any time. Officially, the intention was to prevent
vagrancy, but in fact the libreta became a way for the landed class to track
every aspect of workers’ lives, from wages to debts. Because the island’s
uneducated workers were required to purchase food and other necessities
from plantation-owned stores with money that was subtracted from their
wages, many workers lived in a constant state of debt and dependency.
Many plantations issued vouchers redeemable at their own stores rather
than currency, thus cementing their workers’ indentured status.
By 1850, the European market was purchasing less raw cane sugar and
more refined beet sugar, which could be grown and manufactured in
Europe. In addition to encouraging the spread of the slightly less profitable
coffee industry, the growth of the European beet sugar market increased
Puerto Rico’s reliance on the United States as its main trading partner,
which remained strong throughout the Civil War when the United States’
own sugar industry was disrupted. In fact, times were so good that several
Puerto Rican plantation owners over-speculated and had to sell their land
Spanish Province 57

after the war was over because they had defaulted on their loans. Because
peninsulares and other immigrants tended to own shops as well as land,
they weathered the fluctuations in the sugar markets better than the criollo
planters. Also contributing to the debt problem was Spain’s policy of pro-
hibiting the establishment of banks on the island. This policy meant that
private merchants provided the only means of obtaining credit. Failure to
repay a debt within two years required the forfeiture of the debtor’s land.
By the late 1860s, the bulk of the sugar cane-growing lands were held by
peninsulares, and a large number of once-wealthy criollos were in debt. In
addition, small-scale subsistence farmers were having a tougher time hold-
ing on to their own lands and free white and black laborers were facing
extreme poverty as well. The nature of sugar cane production encouraged
the importation of more African slaves than ever and the large-scale opera-
tions of cane harvesting and milling created grueling and dangerous work-
ing conditions and tended to promote brutal treatment of slaves by
overseers to keep production rates high. The Puerto Rican sugar industry
was particularly labor-intensive because Spain prohibited its colonies from
investing in manufacturing equipment. Spain’s colonial model for the past
three centuries had been based on restrictions designed to extract Latin
America’s natural resources while protecting the interests of Iberian manu-
facturers and merchants.
A cholera epidemic that left 30,000 dead in 1855—the largest demographic
disaster to hit the island since the epidemics that decimated the Ta
ıno popu-
lation in the sixteenth century—and a series of deadly hurricanes in the
1860s embittered many on the island to the colonial government, which
seemed to offer its people no respite in times of crisis and, in fact, often
raised taxes in their aftermath to repair damage to fortifications and other
infrastructure that provided little benefit to the workers’ daily lives. At the
same time, the colonial government had not invested islanders’ tax money
into infrastructure that might have helped to develop the local economy,
areas like education, roadways, or reliable postal service.
Following the decline of the sugar market and the political and social
unrest this dramatic shift sparked, the coffee industry and, to a lesser
degree, the tobacco industry grew during the final three decades of the
1800s, becoming important export crops. The growth of the coffee industry
and the tobacco industry (which included cigarette and cigar manufactur-
ing) helped to develop parts of the island that had previously been
sparsely inhabited by Ta
ıno-Carib and other subsistence farmers. The
southwest and interior of the island saw the development of a number of
municipalities during the expansion of these two industries.
Despite these two small areas of economic growth, by the late 1860s no
more than 30 percent of Puerto Rican households were characterized as
58 The History of Puerto Rico

‘‘solvent,’’ while nearly 70 percent were poor and illiteracy ran as high as
90 percent; even colonial officials described the bulk of the population as
inadequately fed and clothed. Given these conditions, discontent was brew-
ing among nearly every segment of society toward the wealthy peninsulare
landowners and the colonial government officials who protected their
interests.

EL GRITO DE LARES, 1868

In 1865 a group of liberal monarchists came to power in Spain and
invited Puerto Rican colonists to participate in a fact-finding conference in
Madrid. Meanwhile, back in Puerto Rico, Governor Jos
e Mar
ıa Marchesi
thwarted a mutiny among militia members of a barracks in San Juan in
June 1867. Marchesi, who opposed extending reforms to the islanders, used
the mutiny to argue for tougher restrictions on the criollos and to under-
mine the reformist intentions of officials in Madrid. To underscore his
argument he arrested several prominent criollo civilian liberals, charged
them with planning the mutiny, and had them exiled.
Among the exiled criollos was Dr. Ram
on E. Betances, a leading aboli-
tionist and the most prominent figure in the nineteenth-century independ-
ence movement. Betances, who was exiled in 1859 for his abolitionist
activities, was ordered to Madrid, but instead he and fellow revolutionary
Segundo Ruiz Belvis escaped to Santo Domingo and then to New York
City, where they joined members of the Republican Society of Cuba and
Puerto Rico. Angered by Spanish demands for increased tax revenue to
cover war expenses and public debt, Betances issued several proclamations
from New York City outlining Spain’s history of oppression against the
criollos of Puerto Rico and demanding human rights for its residents. His
most famous proclamation was the ‘‘Ten Commandments of Free Men,’’
which consisted of (1) the abolition of slavery, (2) the right to vote on pro-
posed taxes, (3) freedom of worship, (4) freedom of speech, (5) freedom of
the press, (6) free trade, (7) freedom of assembly, (8) the right to bear arms,
(9) inviolable citizenship, and (10) the right to elected representation. If
these conditions were not granted by one’s sovereign government, Betances
argued, it was the right of the people to take up arms against that govern-
ment and declare themselves an independent nation.
The committee and his fellow revolutionaries did not wait for a response
from Spain before planning uprisings on both islands with Puerto Rico
striking first. After establishing the preliminary plans and securing finan-
cial backing from sympathetic parties in the United States, Betances
returned to Santo Domingo in September 1867 to plan the revolution. There
he joined Ruiz Belvis and two other prominent liberal exiles to form the
Spanish Province 59

Revolutionary Committee of Puerto Rico. The committee drafted a constitu-

tion on January 10, 1868, and, after secretly consulting with rebel leaders
located in Puerto Rico, decided the revolution should start in the city of
Camuy on September 29, 1867. However, on September 20, before the origi-
nal plan could take place, the colonial government was informed of the
planned insurrection and one of the organizers was arrested. Undeterred,
the remaining organizers, led by Manuel Rojas of Lares, decided to move
up the date of the first attack to September 23 in the city of Lares.
By early evening of September 23 about 600 men had gathered at Rojas’
estate where he delivered a speech designed to stir up the revolutionary
troops, promising that under a republican government taxes would be
eliminated, debts canceled, and the libreta system ended. To demonstrate
his point, he urged the jornaleros present to burn their passbooks; hundreds
were burned on the spot. After setting the passbook bonfire, the men
marched behind Rojas in two rows toward the town of Lares chanting such
slogans as ‘‘Death to Spain,’’ ‘‘Long Live Liberty,’’ ‘‘Long Live Free Puerto
Rico,’’ and ‘‘Liberty or Death.’’ Along the way they confronted prominent
peninsulares and ransacked their stores. Merchants and their clerks were
taken prisoner, their horses and weapons seized.
In Lares, the rebels arrested the mayor and other municipal officials,
occupied City Hall, removed a portrait of the queen, declared Puerto Rico
a free republic, and placed the flag of the Republic in places of promi-
nence. From midnight to dawn they set up a provisional government,
appointing rebels in their midst as officials. They declared that Spaniards
living on the island had three days to declare their support of the Republic
or leave.
The next day the rebels sought a priest and had him perform a blessing
on the rebel troops and the new Republic, a delay that cost them valuable
hours of darkness before their next attack. By the time they reached the
town of Pepino it was daylight and the element of surprise could not be
used to help capture the town. In addition, the mayor of Pepino had extra
time to prepare for the attack he knew was coming and had asked the mili-
tary commander at Aguadilla to send troops to aid in confronting the
rebels. He also secured the militia’s armory, a planned target of the rebels.
As a result of the mayor’s precautions, the rebels failed in their repeated
attempts to capture the town square of Pepino. Rojas ordered his men to
retreat and led them into the mountains, where he hoped they would be
able to hide until Betances’ scheduled attack by sea on September 29. How-
ever, word of the uprising had reached Dutch officials in St. Thomas who
had seized Betances’ war ship and all its equipment. Though Betances was
able to escape arrest, he was not able to deliver the equipment the rebels
needed to fend off government officials who had pursued them into the
60 The History of Puerto Rico

mountains. The government quickly rounded up some 550 rebels, ending

what came to be known as El Grito de Lares (translated as the ‘‘cry’’ or
sometimes ‘‘scream’’ of Lares).
Of those 550 rebels, over 90 percent had been born in Puerto Rico. This
was significant because the colonial government and many historians
tended to describe the Grito de Lares as a small uprising spurred by out-
side radicals rather than a nationalist movement of genuinely impassioned
Puerto Ricans. They were also proportionally more educated and wealthier
than the general population.
Initially, the colonial government sought death penalties for the most
prominent rebel leaders and kept the others in crowded jail cells for so
long that 80 died of yellow fever and other illnesses while waiting for trial.
Fearful of popularizing the rebels’ cause by creating sympathy, the Spanish
authorities removed Governor Julian Juan Pavia from office, commuted the
death sentences of the leaders to short prison terms, and freed nearly all
the other remaining prisoners in a general amnesty. Once again, the island
was awarded provincial status and citizenship was extended to criollos.
With Cuba now fully in the midst of a revolution, Spain could not afford to
lose Puerto Rico. In the end the Grito de Lares sparked a brief period of reform
by Spain’s new liberal government, which had deposed Queen Isabel several
days after the Grito uprising. Spain could not afford to lose its strategic gate-
way to the Caribbean and her leaders were willing to compromise to keep
Puerto Rico under Spanish rule. In addition, it is likely that Spain’s conciliatory
stance following the Lares uprising was influenced by a half-century of suc-
cessfully staged revolutions that had cost it nearly all its other colonies. In
addition, the Lares rebellion fell between two tumultuous events for Spain: the
latest overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy on September 17 and the outbreak
of the first Cuban revolution, the Ten Years War, on October 10. The failure of
El Grito de Lares has been attributed to Puerto Rico’s lack of a well-developed
criollo elite. In contrast to other colonies in the region, Puerto Rico’s impover-
ished populace lacked the well-trained military leaders and well-educated
statesmen and orators who had inspired successful revolts throughout nine-
teenth century Latin America, or even leaders with the access to sufficient
resources to arm a revolutionary army and the expertise to plan for a pro-
longed, sustainable conflict like the Ten Years War.
It was at this point in Puerto Rico’s history that a schism began to form
between liberals willing to work with the ever-changing government of
Spain to find some form of compromise that would put the island on the
road to autonomy, and the separatists and revolutionaries for whom a free
and independent Puerto Rican nation was the only solution.
So far, the independence movement’s height is still the 1868 Grito
de Lares. This relatively minor skirmish still has enormous symbolic
Spanish Province 61

importance for Puerto Ricans because it was the only significant armed
uprising to ever occur on the island. Today, there are rallies, celebrations,
and pro-independence demonstrations held in the central square of Lares
on September 23, the anniversary of the uprising.

SLAVE REVOLTS AND ABOLITION, 1800–1873

More African slaves were brought to Puerto Rico between 1800 and 1873
than in the three previous centuries combined. Nearly 50,000 slaves entered
Puerto Rico during the first half of the nineteenth century. These new
African slaves were mostly children and adolescents stolen from such
tribes and nations as Dahomey, Ghana, Togo, Yorubas, Wolofs, Angola,
Carabilis, Igbo, modern-day Nigeria and Congo. This increase in slave traf-
fic took place despite the fact that Spain had signed a treaty with Britain
effective in 1820 promising to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In theory
this meant that plantation owners had to be satisfied with the slaves they
already owned and that any increase in their numbers could only come
from births. In fact, during the 17 years that followed the agreement, more
slaves than ever before were transported to Puerto Rico. Working with
smugglers, the Spanish colonists essentially ignored their agreement with
England. During this period slave traders began selling younger and
younger slaves to Puerto Rican landowners. This new generation of adoles-
cent and child slaves was feared by peninsulare landowners because newly
arrived slaves were considered more likely to revolt than those who had
been born into slavery.
Despite the increased importation of slaves during the sugar industry
boom, the proportion of slaves to free citizens in Puerto Rico remained the
smallest in the Caribbean, at just over 5 percent of the total population.
However, in sugar-producing municipalities like Ponce, the second largest
city on the island, the percentage approached 30 percent. It has long been
argued that slavery made up an inconsequential contribution to the island’s
economy. Unlike its neighbors, Puerto Rico was not reliant on slave labor
and Puerto Rican landowners did not treat their slaves as brutally as slave
owners did elsewhere in the Americas. Traditionally, historians had main-
tained that the island’s small proportion of slaves to wage earners and its
supposedly more racially tolerant culture had prevented the slave revolts
seen in other Caribbean colonial cultures. However, contemporary Afro-
Puerto Rican scholars with access to previously unavailable primary docu-
ments from the Spanish colonial era have proven these long-held assertions
to be false. Export industries, particularly the sugar industry, were almost
entirely reliant on slave labor and landowners argued as much whenever
Spanish officials considered emancipation. According to these landowners’
62 The History of Puerto Rico

reports, free laborers worked only a few days a year during the planta-
tions’ busiest production periods. Of course, it is possible that the land-
owners were downplaying the role that free wage earners played in their
industries to maintain an essentially free labor supply. Nevertheless, there
is ample primary evidence to support the argument that the rapid eco-
nomic growth experienced by Puerto Rico in the nineteenth century owed
a significant debt to the labors of its slave population.
As for the long-held argument that slaves were better treated in Puerto
Rico because they worked side-by-side with free laborers, this, too, has
been placed into question by the documentary evidence that has been
uncovered by historians specializing in Afro-Puerto Rican studies. In years
past, the lack of planned slave revolts was often cited as evidence that the
lives of Puerto Rico’s slaves were not as harsh as those on other islands. In
fact, there were more than 40 planned revolts between 1795 and 1873,
according to colonial records, and many more thwarted escapes, as well as
attacks on slave owners and plantation overseers. Inspired by the success-
ful slave revolution in Haiti, as well as revolts in Saint Lucia, Venezuela,
and other nearby colonies, slaves in Aguadilla attempted to stage a revolt
in 1795.
In 1812 a misunderstanding led to a riot in San Juan. During the Cortes
of 1812, Puerto Rican delegate Ram
on Power y Giralt wrote a letter to his
mother telling her of two proposals before parliament, one that would free
newly born children of slaves and another that would end the slave trade
and free all slaves. Power y Giralt urged his mother to free her slaves im-
mediately if either proposal was passed. After reading the letter out loud
Do~ na Josefa Giralt burst into tears and tore the letter to pieces. Two slaves,
Jacinto and Fermin, had seen and heard the incident and misunderstood.
Believing they were legally free, they ran away from Do~ na Giralt’s home
and spread word among the slaves of several local haciendas that Spain
had abolished slavery throughout the empire but that the Puerto Rican
slave owners were ignoring the decree. Word quickly spread to several
municipalities, including the capital, where an uprising was planned dur-
ing annual Christmas festivities. After a doubtful slave heard the news of
the abolition and the planned uprising, he told his owner and several of
the revolt’s organizers were arrested. In the days that followed the rumor
continued to spread as did plans for revolt, and additional arrests were
made.
In 1821, an elaborate slave revolt was planned in Bayam
on. Similar in
outline to several conspiracies that would be discovered and thwarted dur-
ing the following decades, the plan called for slaves from several haciendas
to meet at a designated time to collect weapons that would be hidden in a
cane field. The armed slaves would then proceed to the nearest municipal
Spanish Province 63

armory where they would take over the cache of weapons. Weapons would
be distributed to slaves throughout the district and the conspiracy would
culminate in the murder of all whites and the declaration of a black repub-
lic similar to the Republic of Hati. Five days before the planned revolt was
set to begin one of the slaves told his master. Within days, 61 slaves from
dozens of haciendas were arrested.
After a similar scheme was uncovered in Ponce in 1826 Governor de la
Torre issued the island’s second Reglamento de Esclavos (Slave Regula-
tions), which allowed owners to use harsh punishments to prevent upris-
ings. The previous Reglamento de Esclavos of 1789 was aimed at outlining
slave owners’ responsibilities toward their slaves, limiting cruel treatment,
and setting up a system by which slaves could earn money to buy their
freedom. The difference in the two laws can be explained by the
increased anxiety that the Caribbean slave revolutions had created in the
white population.
Another planned revolt nearly succeeded in the town of Toa Baja in 1843
when slaves who were members of the Longoba nation escaped and cap-
tured the town munitions store. When the small band of slaves made their
way to a bell tower, where it is believed that they would have sounded the
alarm that would begin a more general uprising, they encountered resistance
and before they could ring the bell, a band of trained militia arrived along
with local volunteers. Five soldiers and at least one slave were killed in the
bell tower skirmish before the slaves were forced to retreat to nearby cane
fields. After the slaves were captured in the cane fields by use of fire and
firearms, arrests were made and eight of the conspirators were executed.
Planned revolts increased during the 1840s, though nearly all were pre-
vented by disclosure by informants to their owners prior to planned start
dates. White residents, cognizant of the violent slave revolts that had taken
place in other Caribbean colonies, pushed the colonial government for
assurances that rebellions would be kept in check. In response, Governor
Juan Prim issued the 1848 Banda Contra la Raza Africana (more commonly
referred to as the Black Code). These regulations are a stunning departure
from the policy of previous centuries in that they target free blacks and
mulatos as well as slaves. The code stated that any person of the African race
would be assumed to be in the wrong if they perpetrated an act of violence
against a white person, even if they had been provoked or were acting to
defend themselves, that all members of the black race—free or slave—were
under the jurisdiction of the military, and that slave owners had the power
of life and death over their slaves. The code urged owners to be vigilant in
monitoring slaves’ activities and outlined penalties for slave owners in the
event of revolt, claiming that owners would be held financially responsible
for any damage done by their slaves’ activities. Such provisions led to
64 The History of Puerto Rico

increased corporal punishment of slaves and harsh penalties for small

infractions. The code also encouraged slave owners to lock their slaves in
their quarters for the night and outlawed many slave social rituals, such as
bombas (dances), which had been a regular feature of both slave and free
black culture on the island for centuries. These harsh measures provoked a
slave revolt a few months after they were announced.
In addition to instituting harsh measures on slaves, the colonial govern-
ment also refused to tolerate abolitionist lobbying or rhetoric from the free
population, and in 1859, Governor Fernando Cotoner ordered physicians
Jos
e Francisco Basora and Ram
on E. Betances (more famous for his role in
El Grito de Lares than for his earlier work as an abolitionist) exiled for
planning to found an abolitionist society. Betances, who was of African
ancestry, was well-known for saving the lives of perhaps hundreds of
slaves during the cholera outbreak of 1855. But the colonial government
could not silence calls for abolition and in 1864 Puerto Rican Julio L.
Vizcarrondo founded an abolitionist group in Spain.
Aside from famous figures like Betances, very little is known about the
free Afro-Puerto Rican population during this period of escalating slave ac-
tivity. Afro-Puerto Rican scholars have had an easier time uncovering the
culture of the slave community because there are more documents about
this population available for study than there are documents testifying to
the lives of free Puerto Rican blacks, many of whom could not write and
therefore left behind few journals or letters to mine for historic or sociologi-
cal data. Court documents in sugar-producing areas like Ponce, where
there were large concentrations of both African slaves and free Afro-Puerto
Ricans, seem to indicate that the island’s racial atmosphere became increas-
ing strained throughout the 1800s. Whiteness, these court documents seem
to indicate, was increasingly equated with decency and honesty, while
those of African ancestry or mulato status were assumed to embody oppo-
site traits.3 Contemporary scholars specializing in Afro-Puerto Rican history
have argued that race took on greater significance following the race wars
in neighboring colonies. The precarious economic backdrop and the fear
created by rumors of race wars on surrounding islands certainly must have
contributed to increasingly repressive social stratification based on race.
By 1869 over 50 percent of the island’s population classified itself as
white, about 40 percent as free persons of color, and 6.5 percent as slave.
Previous census numbers over the centuries had recorded white as the mi-
nority race. It is unclear whether the census numbers reflect an actual
increase in the number of white settlers to the island due to the C
edula de
Gracias, or, as some historians have argued, a growing tendency for light-
skinned Puerto Ricans to claim ‘‘white’’ status as race-based divisions on
the island grew due to immigration from European ethnic groups with
Spanish Province 65

less tolerance for interracial marriage and from the race-based labor seg-
mentation that characterized the sugar plantation economy. In fact, many
contemporary Afro-Puerto Rican historians routinely use the phrase ‘‘appa-
rently white’’ to describe light-skinned landowners and social actors, since
these scholars maintain that, aside from newly arrived European immi-
grants, very few Puerto Ricans were likely to have been white. Instead,
they argue, most Puerto Ricans identifying as white were in fact light-
skinned mulatos, mestizos, or descendents of black, white, and Ta
ıno-Carib
bloodlines. Though Spanish-speakers across Latin America have long used
a seemingly endless variety of words to describe various skin tones and
variations of ethnicity, this tendency seems to have taken on an uglier con-
notation during this period as whiteness came to embody status, purity,
and moral standing. Records from civil and criminal court cases conducted
during this time period make clear what the official historians have long
worked to obscure—racial relations among Puerto Ricans were not always
free of tensions and injustices.
After the 1868 Grito de Lares, Spain’s new liberal government invited
Puerto Rico to send delegates to Madrid for another Cortes that would con-
sider several issues affecting the island, among them abolition. Although
the liberal Puerto Rican delegates argued for immediate abolition, many of
the Spanish delegates wanted to move more slowly and came up with a
compromise measure, the Moret Law, named for the delegate who pro-
posed it, which would emancipate slave children and slaves older than 60.
Following the Cortes, a series of liberal governors set up Puerto Rico’s first
elected legislative body, the Provincial Deputation, in 1870 and authorized
the island’s first sanctioned political parties, the Liberal Reform Party and
the Conservative Party.
On March 22, 1873, Spain’s Republican government abolished slavery in
Puerto Rico. However, the pro-slavery movement, led in part by Puerto
Rico’s former governor Jos
e Laureano Sanz y Posse, added a provision to
the decree that required the island’s 30,000 slaves to undertake a three-year
apprenticeship. The emancipation decree consisted of eight provisions:
three outlining the rights of the newly liberated slaves and five protecting
the rights of slave owners.
In theory, the slaves had the freedom to change employers but not their
work designations. In practice few slaves had the capacity to change
employers and few employers negotiated fair wages with workers they still
saw as property, despite the fact that the slave owners were compensated
with stipends for the loss of each slave. Three months later, in June 1873,
Governor Rafael Primo de Rivera abolished the libreta system, which at
least prevented newly released slaves from exchanging one form of endless
servitude for another.
66 The History of Puerto Rico

THE PATH TOWARD AUTONOMY, 1880–1898

In 1874, shortly after slavery and the libreta system were abolished, the
Bourbon monarchs regained their seat in Spain and royalists began to
erode the freedoms Puerto Ricans were just beginning to exercise. Isabel
II’s son, Alfonso XII, appointed a series of hard-line governors, beginning
with the return of former governor and pro-slavery, anti-criollo stalwart
Jos
e Lorenzo Sanz, who immediately began replacing elected members of
the legislature with his own appointees. He fired the few criollo public serv-
ants on the island and replaced them with peninsulares. Sanz believed that
the schools were responsible for fomenting discontent among the middle
and working classes, so he fired all the teachers and shut down educational
institutions across the island. This move forced elites to send their sons to
schools in Europe and the United States, where wealthy criollos had a
chance to see first-hand the prosperity made possible by free markets and
more liberal education and social systems. Frustrated with what they were
beginning to see as the forced backwardness of their homeland, many
criollos returned to their island more determined than ever to attain inde-
pendence. Still others hoped to convince Spain that Puerto Rico should
become an economically autonomous Spanish territory, similar to the rela-
tionship Canada enjoyed with Great Britain. At the same time the inde-
pendence movement, particularly among radical criollos living in New York
City, was gaining supporters. It was there, in 1895, that members of the
Puerto Rico Section of the Cuban Revolutionary Party created what we
think of today as the Puerto Rican flag.
Members of the Liberal Reform Party (LFP) met in Ponce in 1887 to
reconsider their approach. There a new party emerged; the Partido Autono-
mista Puertorrique~ no (PAP) was established from the ruins of the LFP.
Later that year, the PAP faced a reformed Conservative Party, now calling
itself the Unconditionally Spanish Party (Partido Espa~ nol Sin Condiciones,
also called the Incondicionales, or Unconditionals in English). When it
appeared that the PAP would prevail in the coming elections, the Uncondi-
tionals turned to violence, attacking PAP candidates and destroying their
property. In response the PAP organized a boycott of Spanish-owned busi-
nesses. In addition, peninsulare stores were robbed and damaged, though
the PAP denied responsibility and even claimed that the Unconditionals
had staged the vandalism. Eventually the new governor, Romualdo Palacio
ordered the arrest and torture of 80 PAP members. Alarmed, government
officials in Madrid quickly removed Palacio from office. Violent outbreaks
characterized local politics until the end of the century. A rift soon formed
between the older members of the PAP, who still hoped to seek accommo-
dation with the colonial government, and younger, foreign-educated
Spanish Province 67

members who urged a more radical stance in demanding autonomy. Rep-

resenting the younger PAP members was Luis Mu~ noz Rivera, who pre-
ferred to circumvent local Spanish authorities and negotiate directly with
Spain. Shortly afterward, the party went back to being referred to as the
Liberal Party.
In 1896 Mu~ noz Rivera led the autonomists’ commission to Spain, where
he argued that reform and autonomy were the best defense against revolu-
tion. By the late 1890s, Spain was contending with frequent regime changes
and almost continuous unrest at home, and conducting a war against revo-
lutionary forces in Cuba. In light of these struggles, capitulating to the
demands of Mu~ noz Rivera’s autonomists must have seemed prudent. In
1897 Spain granted the island a limited autonomy. It would be governed
by a Spanish-appointed executive branch and a democratically elected
legislature as well as democratically elected local city and village councils.
An autonomous government was authorized on November 25, 1897. The
Autonomic Charter granted Puerto Rico elected representation through a
legislative body at home and in the Cortes in Spain. The governor would
remain an appointed position, named by the Spanish head of state. In addi-
tion, democratically elected Puerto Ricans would have a voice in the Span-
ish government. The island legislature would have the right to negotiate
trade terms independently with foreign powers. Perhaps most importantly,
the Charter could not be amended except by request of the Puerto Rican
legislature.
It was not quite independence, but it was an autonomy approaching that
of Canada, the model Mu~ noz Rivera was seeking to emulate. Yet, no one,
not even Mu~ noz Rivera, had expected Spain to grant this level of autonomy
so soon. The news was cause for joy and pride for Puerto Ricans, but there
was also skepticism. After so many years of austerity and broken promises,
some thought the news too good to be true.
Mu~ noz Rivera’s party won nearly all the available seats in the new legis-
lature and the cabinet, with Mu~ noz Rivera as president, was installed in
February 1898. However, the legislature’s first session was postponed when
the United States declared war against Spain in March 1898.
This page intentionally left blank
 5
U.S. Territory: Military
Occupation and Civil
Government
(1898–1948)

PRELUDE: THE HOLSTEIN CONSPIRACY

In 1822, Docoudray Holstein attempted to set up the Republic of Boricua
with U.S. backing. Holstein, who was born in Alsace, Germany, fought
alongside Sim
on Bol
ıvar in his revolution to evict the Spanish from Latin
America. After a falling out with Bol
ıvar, Holstein settled in the Caribbean
island of Curacao, and then traveled to Philadelphia, where he met exiled
Cuban and Puerto Rican independence activists. He began raising money
for a Puerto Rican revolution from U.S. merchants in Philadelphia, New
York, Boston, and New Jersey. Holstein’s backers thought an independent
Puerto Rico would open up revenue opportunities that would not exist as
long as the island remained a Spanish colony. In addition to raising funds
for weapons and other equipment, Holstein also attracted as many as
500 adventurers to his cause, all of whom were ready to journey to the
Caribbean to depose the Spanish. Several national newspapers also backed
Holstein’s plan, which called for the revolutionaries to leave from several
ports on the same day and converge on the island. Once there, Holstein
and his adventurers thought they could count on the island’s slaves to
revolt and join the revolution and depose the Spanish. News of the plot
70 The History of Puerto Rico

reached Spanish authorities while Holstein’s ships were in transit, and

Spanish troops were mobilized along the island’s shores and ports. News
of the revolutionary expedition also seems to have reached slave commun-
ities throughout Puerto Rico, because Spanish authorities squelched a series
of simultaneous revolts on October 12, 1822, around the time that Hol-
stein’s attack was expected. The slave revolts were prevented and Hol-
stein’s band of liberators never reached Puerto Rico. His schooner ran off
course and took on water, forcing him to land in his old home base of Cu-
racao, where he was arrested by Dutch authorities.
The Holstein Conspiracy was not the only example of businessmen, jour-
nalists, and other powerful entities in U.S. society expressing interest in lib-
erating and/or occupying Puerto Rico and other European-controlled
islands in the Caribbean. Several U.S. presidents offered to purchase Cuba
and/or Puerto Rico from Spain at various points during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Official U.S. policy, from the 1820s through 1850, was
not to expend military resources on acquiring Cuba or Puerto Rico as long
as they remained in Spanish hands. Spain was a crumbling empire and
posed little threat to the southern United States. What the U.S. government
most hoped to prevent was the acquisition of Cuba or Puerto Rico by a
stronger European power such as England or France. In fact, Sim
on Bol
ıvar
intended to expand his revolutionary activities to Cuba and Puerto Rico,
but he amended his plans when he learned that the United States did not
desire the islands’ independence from Spain.
Interest in Cuba, and to a lesser degree Puerto Rico, intensified after the
1845 annexation of Texas and the 1848 land acquisitions that resulted from
the U.S. victory in the Mexican-American War. As a result of that war the
United States had acquired a taste for expansionism, which it articulated as
Manifest Destiny, a policy based on the belief that the United States was
destined to control an increasing swath of the Americas, with God’s bless-
ing. In more practical terms, expansionists believed the U.S. economy
would be strengthened by access to resources, markets, and labor sources
in Latin America and the Pacific. Cuba was especially prized because mili-
tarists argued that it might someday be needed to help defend Florida. Its
occupation by a strong European power, such as England or France, would
pose a threat to the territorial integrity of the southern United States. Some
proponents of Manifest Destiny believed that the United States should con-
trol all of the Caribbean and North America.
By the end of the nineteenth century, expansionist journalists, business
leaders, and politicians called on the government to assist Cuban national-
ists in their revolution against Spain. The rhetoric of these calls to war
focused on Spain’s tyranny over the Cuban people, but the motivations to
forge a strong alliance with a free Cuba (or to replace Spain as an
U.S. Territory 71

occupying power) were financial and military. Though most proponents of

intervention in Cuba were not advocating the liberation of Puerto Rico, a
few key players, such as then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore
Roosevelt, secretly urged President William McKinley to include Puerto
Rico in any eventual war plans.

SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR
In 1895 both Cuba and the Philippines revolted against Spain. For Cuba
this was a re-ignition of its 1868 to 1878 revolution. Pro-expansionist news-
papers in the United States, particularly the Hearst syndicate, made the
events of the war in Cuba front-page news, highlighting perceived brutality
by the Spanish troops against the Cuban revolutionaries with banner head-
lines and lurid illustrations. It did not help matters for the Spanish when
its top general in Cuba, Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, began interring the ci-
vilian population in camps to keep them from joining the revolutionaries.
Poor sanitation and inadequate housing and food supplies in the camps
caused illness and starvation among families and children. It has been esti-
mated that as many as 100,000 people died in the camps. U.S. citizens who
read in the newspapers about the suffering of those residing in the camps
were outraged and called on the U.S. government to do something to
end it. On entering office in March 1897, President William McKinley
demanded that Spain end the internment policy and relinquish its control
over Cuba. Spain refused.
The war between the United States and Spain was finally triggered by the
sinking of the Maine, a U.S. battleship that had been sent to Havana Harbor
in January 1898. On February 15, 1898, the Maine blew up and its 266 crew-
members were killed. Many U.S. historians and nearly all Puerto Rican and
Latin American historians now maintain that the sinking of the Maine was
staged by the U.S. government as an excuse to start the war in the hopes of
gaining territory in the Caribbean. Others have hypothesized that mechanical
error was responsible for sinking the ship. Following the incident, a U.S.
investigation declared that it had been blown up by a mine, although a
Spanish investigation suggested mechanical error. The U.S. press, led by the
Hearst syndicate, blamed the tragedy on sabotage by the Spanish and public
opinion began to mount in favor of an invasion of Cuba.
On April 19, 1898, Congress granted President William McKinley author-
ity to use military force to expel the Spanish from Cuba. At the same time,
U.S. Senator Henry Teller proposed an amendment to the military authori-
zation that precluded the United States retaining Cuba as a colony.
In response, Spain declared war on the United States and the United
States declared war on Spain on April 25. The declaration of war opened
72 The History of Puerto Rico

the battlefield beyond Cuba, allowing U.S. expansionists to cast their net
on Spain’s other remaining colonies, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. And
there was nothing like the Teller Amendment standing in the way of mak-
ing colonies of either the Philippines or Puerto Rico.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Spain, once the largest empire in the
world due to its fifteenth-century discoveries in the Americas, was a collaps-
ing remnant of the world power it had once been. Its population of 18 mil-
lion was dwarfed by the United States with its growing populace of 75
million. Spain’s economy was contracting, while the U.S. economy was
growing exponentially. Spain’s one advantage was its military, which con-
sisted of over 300,000 men, many of them already deployed in Cuba, Puerto
Rico, and the Philippines. The United States had a 28,000-man Army and
about 114,000 additional men who could be called on from state militias.
This problem was largely solved by the war’s popularity. Volunteers lined
up to oust the Spanish from Cuba. In part a younger generation hoped to
capture some of the glory that the Civil War generation still held in the pop-
ular imagination. By the end of the summer the Army had almost 300,000
men in uniform. In addition, the United States hoped to rely on its stronger
navy to win the war with blockades of Cuba and Puerto Rico’s harbors that
would prevent Spain from deploying its Iberian-based troops.
The U.S. war effort was speedily planned, and the new recruits barely
trained and inadequately supplied. Spain, however, was not able to take
advantage of these weaknesses. On all three fronts—Cuba, Puerto Rico, and
the Philippines—Spanish resistance was disorganized and U.S. victory swift.
In Cuba and Puerto Rico, the United States chose similar strategies. After
rejecting initial plans to bombard and attack the capitals of each island, it
was decided that the navy would bombard the islands from various har-
bors, initiate ground force attacks in key cities where they suspected that
Spanish defenses were weakest, and gradually work toward capturing the
colonial capitals of Havana and San Juan. On both fronts victory occurred
more swiftly than had been anticipated.
General Nelson Miles, the highest-ranking U.S. officer in the Caribbean,
arrived in Cuba just as the Spanish were surrendering. He left Cuba July
21 with six ships and 3,400 men heading for Puerto Rico where he
expected to face Spanish forces of about 9,000. Nearly 15,000 more U.S.
troops were on their way from training facilities in Tampa, Florida, and
Charleston, South Carolina.
Meanwhile, in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Navy had started bombarding the
fortifications of San Juan from sea on May 12. On July 25, 1898, General
Miles and his troops came ashore near the town of Gu
anica on the south-
western coast. U.S. troops encountered almost no resistance. In the follow-
ing days troops landed in Ponce and Arroyo. The Spanish troops under the
U.S. Territory 73

leadership of the governor, General Manuel Mac
ıas y Casado, were posi-

tioned to meet the U.S. invaders at San Juan, Ponce, Mayaguez, and
Caguas. Mac
ıas accurately realized that he was outnumbered two-to-one
and that he could not count on support from the native-born population
who favored the U.S. troops.
Given Puerto Rico’s history of native resistance to outside invasion, U.S.
forces had been trained to expect and were prepared to encounter resist-
ance from the criollos, famed for fending off English and Dutch invaders
in earlier centuries. Instead, they were welcomed. Records from the time
show that many Puerto Ricans were dubious that Spain truly intended to
grant the autonomy they had been promised in 1897. The Puerto Rican
people, who admired the United States for overthrowing Britain’s colonial
rule and for gaining prominence and economic independence from Europe,
thought that the United States was more likely to allow them sovereignty
and that the transition would be more orderly than it might have been
under Spain. The people of Puerto Rico felt assured that their island would
be granted independence or eventually become a state, and that either of
these possibilities would ensure greater prosperity and liberty. U.S. troops
were greeted in most parts of the island as liberators.
For the first time in 400 years the local Puerto Rican population did not
come to the defense of the Spanish authority when faced with a foreign in-
vader. In fact, many Puerto Ricans actively helped the U.S. forces, serving
as guides, suppliers, interpreters, and mule drivers. With an enemy out-
manned two-to-one and a native population that was actively helping the
invasion force, General Mac
ıas relayed his assessment of the situation to
Madrid: The Spanish had no hope of victory.
The military campaign lasted 19 days, during which seven U.S. soldiers,
34 Spanish troops, and eight Spanish civilians were killed. An armistice
was announced August 12 and the Treaty of Paris signed on December 10,
1898.
Before the short war had ended the expansionist McKinley administra-
tion decided it would attempt to annex Puerto Rico and negotiate control
of the island during peace talks. Throughout the treaty negotiations, the
United States maintained that control over Puerto Rico and the Philippines
was owed as fair compensation for the cost of the war. In its final form, the
treaty forced Spain to evacuate Cuba, which the United States promised
not to incorporate as a territory, and to cede to the United States Puerto
Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. Article 9 of the treaty stated that, ‘‘The
civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants hereby ceded to the
United States shall be determined by the Congress,’’ while the tenth article
guaranteed the residents of the ceded territories freedom of religion, their
only enumerated right.
74 The History of Puerto Rico

Puerto Rican members of the New York-based Cuban Revolutionary

Party felt betrayed. Cuba, it seemed, would gain its freedom, thanks to the
Teller Amendment, but there would no such guarantees for Puerto Rico.
Some Puerto Rican politicians and historians have argued that the Treaty
of Paris is an unlawful document because Spain had signed the Autonomic
Charter Puerto Rico in 1897 and, therefore, Spain did not have the right to
give an island it no longer controlled, but only helped to govern by mutual
consent, to another nation. Others argue that since the Charter did not
actually grant Puerto Rico independence, but rather a limited form of local
self-rule, the Spanish did not violate the spirit of the Autonomic Charter in
signing the Treaty of Paris with the United States. What is clear is that the
United States did not consider itself bound by the Charter, which granted
Puerto Rico more autonomy than it enjoys in its relationship with the
United States to this day.

U.S. MILITARY OCCUPATION (OCTOBER 1898–MAY 1900)

When the United States invaded in 1898, the island’s population was
over 1 million and had increased six-fold during the nineteenth century.
Most of these 1 million inhabitants were living as wage laborers or subsist-
ence farmers and an increasing proportion of the island’s land was owned
by a small number of families in the sugar, coffee, and tobacco industries.
Though 85 percent of the population lived in rural areas, most of the coun-
try’s food was imported. This dependence on food transported from
abroad meant that during times of economic crisis or following natural dis-
asters, such as hurricanes, many of the rural poor went hungry. Their
dwellings were rudimentary, with water, cooking, and bathroom facilities
outside the home. Health care was provided by curanderos, or healers,
whose herbal remedies could do little in the face of illnesses created by
malnutrition and the hygiene problems inherent to industrialized agricul-
ture. Clothing was inadequate to protect the poor against the elements and
three out of four Puerto Ricans had never worn shoes.1
This portrait of life before the arrival of U.S. forces on Puerto Rico’s
shores does not correspond to the pastoral paradise that members of the
New York-based independence movement would try to perpetuate in the
1920s. Many historians and political activists have described the island
prior to U.S. domination as prosperous, populated by a well-educated har-
monious multicultural agrarian society. Ironically, many Puerto Ricans
who offered no resistance to the U.S. invasion seemed to have visions of
Puerto Rico under U.S. control that weren’t far off from this same idyllic
picture. As detailed in previous chapters, Puerto Rico’s years under Span-
ish rule were far from idyllic, filled with tensions and challenges. Its years
U.S. Territory 75

as a U.S. territory (under U.S. Constitutional definitions it is technically an

unincorporated territory) would prove just as challenging.
Puerto Ricans were already familiar with the United States through its
consumer and cultural products. Puerto Ricans were quick to adopt baseball
in the late nineteenth century and the dollar had been used as currency there
for some time. The United States was perceived as the origin of liberty and
independence from corrupt European rule, and Puerto Ricans felt sure that
once the U.S. military had safely delivered them from the Spanish, the U.S.
government would right all the injustices on the island, leaving Puerto Rico
as an independent nation or perhaps on the road to statehood.
Immediately after the U.S. invasion there were a series of demonstrations
held demanding that the hacienda owners leave the island. These rallies
were likely caused by the widely held belief that the Americans were going
to free up the land previously owned by the Spanish peninsulares and redis-
tribute it to the workers. Although everyday Puerto Ricans were familiar
with George Washington the revolutionary, they were less familiar with
George Washington the businessman and slave owner.
U.S. perceptions of Puerto Rico were wildly inaccurate as well. Many
thought that it was located in the China Sea, while others thought that it
was attached to Cuba. A book of photographs published in 1899 titled Our
Island and Their People depicting the island’s quaint poverty and agrarian life-
ways in words and pictures couldn’t have stated the paternalistic approach
the U.S. government would take in more stark terms. As far as the U.S.
expansionists were concerned, the island belonged to ‘‘us’’ and the people
who happened to live there were ‘‘they,’’ ‘‘other,’’ foreign, and passive.
Just prior to the invasion, the island had experienced a prolonged drought,
followed by the blockade and, during the ground force invasion, flooding.
What little food was still grown on the island had been nearly impossible to
harvest and the food that ordinarily would have been imported from the
United States was delayed by the war. In desperation, bands of armed young
men began traveling the countryside just after the Spanish withdrew, raiding
food and other materials from wealthy Spanish families and merchants.
The bands became increasingly violent as the weeks and months passed
and conditions failed to improve. They no longer restricted their raids to
haciendas owned by Spanish families, for example, and began targeting
wealthy native-born families as well. Sometimes they burned down homes
and other buildings. There were even instances of beatings or murders of
hacienda owners. In addition to theft, vandalism, and occasional violence,
the bands of raiders also used the opportunity to destroy records of debts
kept in hacienda stores. Under Spanish law wageworkers could not seek
new employment or better wages until all debts had been paid to their cur-
rent employer. This system meant that most of Puerto Rico’s rural poor
76 The History of Puerto Rico

lived as debt-indentured near-slaves, unable to seek a better paying job or

move to another area of the country until all their debts were paid. Since
imported food and other goods often cost more than wages earned, many
laborers saw no way out: They would work for a single employer their
whole lives and die in debt. In this light, it is easy to see how the bands’
destruction of the debt records was cheered by their neighbors.
The U.S. military government, inexperienced at occupation, was ill-
equipped to effectively deal with this humanitarian crisis. What was
needed was a massive logistical effort to feed the people of Puerto Rico.
Instead, military leaders concentrated their efforts on capturing the ‘‘ban-
dits.’’ Because U.S. military leaders perceived the crisis through their own
cultural lens, they casted the band members as criminals, disturbing the
peace and threatening vulnerable law-abiding citizens,  a la the Old West of
the American frontier. In contrast, many working-class Puerto Ricans saw
the bands as young men inflamed by the passions of war, attempting to
exact revenge for old injustices. Others saw band members, such as legend-
ary band leader ‘‘White Eagle,’’ as folk heroes, the country’s earliest revolu-
tionary force, resisting U.S. occupation in its earliest stages. This gap in
perception presages many of the cultural misunderstandings that would
characterize Puerto Rico’s modern era as a U.S. colony/commonwealth.

Politics
In their new and unaccustomed role as liberators (some would argue colo-
nizers), U.S. military leaders adopted a paternalistic role, allowing local lead-
ers even less say in the governance of their island than they had enjoyed in
Puerto Rico’s final years as a Spanish colony. Even before the Treaty of Paris
was signed, the U.S. military began the process of taking over power from
the local colonial administrators, which was to be expected, and from locally
elected native Puerto Ricans, which was shocking and disheartening for
members of the island’s elite as well as for its workers.
General Miles left the island two days after the peace protocol was
signed and General John R. Brooke became the island’s first U.S. military
governor. Brooke only held his post for a few months before becoming
governor of Cuba, but during that time he made his lack of respect for the
elected leaders and institutions of the island clear. Ignoring orders to retain
as much of the existing governmental institutions and processes as possi-
ble, he suppressed the legislative body and made changes to the judicial
system. During September and October, his troops traveled from town to
town, installing officers in place of the local mayors, and hoisting the U.S.
flag in place of the Spanish flag, until the Stars and Stripes was finally
hoisted in San Juan on October 18, 1898.
U.S. Territory 77

After Brooke’s departure, Major General Guy Henry was installed as gov-
ernor. As these changes took place, the democratically elected cabinet, led by
the pro-autonomist Liberal Party, tried to carry on, but was soon disbanded
by General Henry, who appointed his own cabinet. In February 1899, the
governor disbanded the Insular Council, the last remaining institution from
the period of Autonomy. Treating the island like an army base, the military
officers tolerated no criticism and shut down newspapers and jailed editors
who dared to question these decisions. It even kept the newspapers from
reporting on strikes and disturbances, creating the false impression of a per-
fectly peaceful transfer of power. This turn of events soured many of the
island’s local leaders on U.S. rule and would play a role in the relationship
between Puerto Rico and the United States for years to come.
However, local leaders still attempted to make a public show of welcoming
the military government. Even after being removed from elected office, lead-
ing autonomist Mu~ noz Rivera expressed his admiration for the United States
and his faith that, after a short transition period, the most famous democracy
in the world would leave the governance of Puerto Rico to Puerto Ricans.

U.S. Politics
Meanwhile in Washington, D.C., a political debate ensued over the future
of Puerto Rico between expansionists on one side and those who did not favor
the United States taking and holding territories by force on the other. Many in
the United States believed that any territory under U.S. control had to begin
steps to become a state or be allowed to become an independent sovereign
nation. These were the only two options available, anti-expansionists argued.
Any other possibility would be a violation of the U.S. Constitution. With these
sympathies in mind, expansionist military leaders and war correspondents
downplayed the part played by Puerto Ricans (and Cubans) in helping U.S.
forces defeat the Spanish. U.S. troops were given full credit for the glorious
resounding victory, while the Puerto Rican people were portrayed as passive
bystanders indifferent to their fate. This narrative helped bolster the argument
that the U.S. government did not owe the Puerto Rican people anything for
the victory because they had not helped bring it about. Since the United States
owed the people of Puerto Rico no political debts, it was not obligated to grant
them either independence or statehood.
Most U.S. lawmakers, including the anti-expansionists, did not support
statehood. The arguments against statehood were many, but racism seems to
have been the most popular. Records of Congressional debate surrounding
the issue of governing Puerto Rico from this era, prior to the military gov-
ernment’s withdrawal in 1899, contain a great deal of racist rhetoric that
would be considered shocking by today’s standards. However, it must be
78 The History of Puerto Rico

remembered that these debates were taking place during an era when the
Jim Crow laws were in full effect throughout the South. Puerto Ricans,
according to the race-based argument against statehood, would not fit into
the union. They had a different culture, history, language, and they were of
a different race (there was quite a bit of argument over what exactly that
race was), and would not fit into the Anglo-Saxon cultural and moral tradi-
tions of the United States. Even the island’s Catholicism was cited as a mark
against its possible place in the Union.
On the other hand, these same traits made the Puerto Ricans too inept to
govern themselves. Though a more paternalistic tone characterized debate
surrounding the possibility of granting Puerto Rico independence, racism
remained an underlying element. Lawmakers argued that Puerto Ricans
were not educated enough and did not have enough experience with de-
mocracy to govern themselves.
The country that had gone to war to liberate one people from the tyr-
anny of empire, was now claiming the right to own another country with
no intention of ever making it a state or an independent nation. The United
States, a country established on the theory that colonization was innately
unjust, was taking on the role of colonizer.

Puerto Rican Politics

Back on the island, the first two political parties that formed after the
invasion were the Federalist and Republican parties, both of which favored
the island’s recognition as an organized U.S. territory in preparation for
eventual statehood.
The leader of the first pro-statehood party, the Republicans, was Jos
e
Celso Barbosa, a black doctor, who graduated from the University of
Michigan in 1877. While in the United States he forged a loyalty to the U.S.
Republican Party as the party of Lincoln and the abolition of slavery.
Barbosa claimed that there was no ‘‘race problem’’ in Puerto Rico and his
fervor for all things American underscored his belief that free enterprise
and unfettered capitalism would allow hard-working Puerto Ricans of tal-
ent to rise to the highest ranks of society. For this reason he was not out to
abolish the existing class structure. His faith in the country and the party
of Lincoln meant that he was willing to wait for increased autonomy and/
or statehood until Congress deemed it appropriate. Barbosa’s sincere admi-
ration for the United States made him a perfect spokesman for the wealthy,
who made up the bulk of the pro-American Republican Party membership.
The Federalists, led by Mu~ noz Rivera, also favored eventual statehood,
after a period of autonomous government, including the right of the people
to elect their own governor and enact laws not subject to overview by the
U.S. Territory 79

U.S. Congress. The military government saw the Federalists as a threat and
threw their support behind the Republicans.

Economics
Emboldened by the U.S. invasion, many workers in 1899 refused to work
for vouchers and demanded to be paid in currency. Landowners were sur-
prised when the provisional military government occasionally backed the
workers in disputes, including the voucher issue. Not only did the military
leaders tell the landowners that they would have to pay the workers in
currency, but they also instituted an eight-hour workday. However, on
most issues the military and later the civil U.S. governments tended to side
with landowners and business interests.
The sector that gained the most from the transfer from Spanish to U.S. control
was the sugar industry, which almost immediately overtook coffee as the lead-
ing industry on the island. This was because the United States was the largest
consumer of Puerto Rican sugar. Conversely, coffee and tobacco, which
depended on European markets, suffered under the new economic conditions.
The United States insisted that its commercial fleet be used to carry goods
abroad, increasing costs for local sugar, coffee, and tobacco suppliers. U.S.-
imposed tariffs meant that Puerto Rico could not negotiate with its former trad-
ing partners individually. A lack of ready credit for islanders, an arbitrary
exchange rate that favored the dollar over the peso and diminished the net
worth of all Puerto Ricans, rich and poor, literally overnight, and interest rates
of up to 18 percent on loans with land as collateral made it easy for offshore
business interests, particularly those from the United States, to take over much
of the available property on the island. In a few short years, U.S. interests, most
of them absentee corporations, owned about half the sugar-generating land. In
addition, small farmers and coffee producers were hard hit by an income tax of
2 percent. The governor appointed the land assessors who often assessed the
value above what the farmers could pay given the new restrictions on negotiat-
ing favorable coffee import rates with European consumers. Soon, 85 percent of
coffee-producing land and 50 percent of public utilities were owned by non-
Puerto Ricans. The four leading banks were U.S. and Canadian, the most power-
ful of which was the aptly named American Colonial Bank. Most borrowers
who were deemed ‘‘qualified’’ by these lending institutions were from the
United States. By 1930, 95 percent of Puerto Rico’s trade was with the United
States. The monetary policy put into place in 1898 laid the groundwork for the
eventual devastation of the island’s agricultural sector. It never recovered.
The shift in ownership that put a large percentage of Puerto Rico’s land
and industry in the hands of absentee U.S. owners was swift and left even
the island’s elite in a vulnerable position. Soon, some of the island’s
80 The History of Puerto Rico

wealthiest criollo families were sending their sons abroad to learn how to
become high-level assistants to foreign-owned manufacturers. Engineering
and law degrees proliferated among the island’s elite, even as they held a
diminishing percentage of the island’s land and capital.
Conversely, some local sugar producers managed to hold on and reap
unprecedented profits in the years after the Spanish-American War. Access
to new equipment helped some families in the sugar industry see record
profits. These families became backers of the new regime, many of them
taking part in pro-American movements and becoming active in the vari-
ous incarnations of the pro-statehood political parties throughout the deca-
des to come.

THE FORAKER ACT

In the debate leading up to the Foraker Act, Congress was persuaded by
reports from the military government and others that the Puerto Ricans
were not ready for self-government or even incorporated territorial status,
the form of government that typically preceded statehood. Instead, in mid-
1900, Congress created an unprecedented system of government no other
U.S. territory had ever been subjected to, with presidential and War
Department appointees holding the bulk of the power and doing the bulk
of the governing, and local democratically elected officials providing
extremely limited input in decision making.
When it went into effect on May 1, 1990, the Foraker Act replaced the
military occupation with a government largely presided over by U.S.
civilians, including a civilian governor, an 11-member executive council
that would also serve as the upper house of the legislature, a 35-member
lower house of the legislature (the only governmental body that would
consist of democratically elected Puerto Ricans), and a supreme court. The
governor, executive council, supreme court justices, and cabinet members
would all be appointed by the President of the United States. In addition,
any laws passed by the lower legislative body, the only segment of this
governmental mechanism that was actually voted on by the people, could
be vetoed by the governor, the Executive Council, or the U.S. Congress.
The provision of the Act that sparked the most anger from Puerto Rico’s
elite landowners and merchants was a costly tariff on goods from the
island, even those heading for the United States. Not only would this pro-
vision limit commercial opportunities for sugar, coffee, and tobacco export-
ers, but it also made clear that the United States viewed Puerto Rico as a
possession and not as an integral part of itself in the way an incorporated
territory destined to become a state was legally seen. Elites were wounded
by the political message inherent in the Foraker Act. Unlike Hawaii, whose
U.S. Territory 81

path from territory to state paralleled Puerto Rico’s association with the
United States chronologically, Puerto Rico was not looked on by Congress
as a potential state, as an entity destined to become an equal member of
the United States.
Despite the islanders’ disappointment, some saw hope in the Foraker
Act’s creation of the office of Resident Commissioner, a delegate who
would speak for the interests of Puerto Ricans among government entities
in Washington, D.C. However, the Foraker Act was a disappointment to
most Puerto Ricans, including the pro-U.S. elite. It provided far less self-
rule than had the Autonomic Charter with Spain. Legally, the Act, and par-
ticularly its tariff provision, meant that Puerto Rico was an unincorporated
territory, and, in all but name, still a colony. For the governed, all that had
changed was that Puerto Rico’s new colonizing power did not even share
its language or culture. Many Puerto Ricans expressed frustration and feel-
ings of betrayal. They had hoped for more.
After the Foraker Act was enacted, the United States installed the island’s
first civilian governor, Charles Allen, and most of the U.S. troops left the
island by June 1900, though several military bases remained on the island.
Elections were held for the lower house of the legislature in 1900. Foraker’s
hated tariff provision did not last long and by 1901 free trade was estab-
lished between the United States and Puerto Rico, though Congress still
negotiated and set trading terms between Puerto Rico and all her other trad-
ing partners. In 1904, the status of the Resident Commissioner was upgraded
to a non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representative, empowered to
communicate the concerns of the people of Puerto Rico to Congress.
Leading autonomist and for a time Resident Commissioner Luis Mu~ noz
Rivera continued to push the United States to grant Puerto Rico true independ-
ence. Short of that, he pushed for a plebiscite, or referendum, that would allow
island residents to vote for a range of options, from independence to local self-
rule under the mantle of U.S. affiliation to statehood. His Federalist party, now
renamed the Union, called for the same. In his newspaper, La Democracia,
Mu~ noz Rivera argued that Puerto Rico’s political dignity rested on her ability
to determine her own future through this democratic procedure, but he died
in 1916 without seeing this dream realized.

THE JONES ACT

The Jones Act, enacted in 1916, improved some elements of Puerto Rican
governance. For example, it created a legislative body in which both cham-
bers would be elected by popular vote. Suffrage was extended to all men
21 or older. The governor, auditor, and commissioner of education
remained presidential appointees, while the remaining eight members of
82 The History of Puerto Rico

the Executive Council, though they would be appointed by the governor,

at least required the approval of the Puerto Rican Senate to assume their
posts. The Jones Act also granted U.S. citizenship to all Puerto Ricans. To-
gether the Foraker and Jones acts are sometimes referred to as the Organic
Acts and provisions from each are still used as the basis for decisions ren-
dered by courts on and off the island when making rulings on issues of
governance.
Debate surrounding the extension of U.S. citizenship to all Puerto Ricans
prompted yet more racist rhetoric among some members of the U.S. Con-
gress, reminiscent of the racist rhetoric used in the Foraker Act debates to
argue against Puerto Rico’s incorporation as a state. Those who favored the
citizenship provision argued that it would help to silence the independence
movement. The independence movement and pro-labor activism were a
cause for alarm for business owners in 1916, a year that saw labor strikes
among many of the island’s industries. That year, more than 40,000 sugar
industry workers waged a strike that lasted for more than five months,
while 50,000 workers held strikes to protest conditions in the tobacco
industry, and dock workers participated in strikes that interrupted ship-
ping in several port cities. Business interests in Washington, D.C., Wall
Street, and San Juan hoped that granting Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship
would instill a sense of loyalty toward the United States and perhaps pro-
vide workers with the hope that their rights could be protected and their
complaints could be addressed in less costly and destructive ways—at least
that is what some more moderate voices in the debate argued.
At the same time, the extension of U.S. citizenship was criticized by
many of Puerto Rico’s political leaders, who argued that it was a way of
retaining Puerto Ricans as subjects of the United States without any inten-
tion of making Puerto Rico a state. In addition, critics like Mu~ noz Rivera
argued, U.S. citizenship would present an obstacle to eventual independ-
ence if the Puerto Rican people desired it later. Many Puerto Rican leaders,
including Mu~ noz, said that Puerto Ricans were receiving a second-class
version of U.S. citizenship because those living on the island would not be
able to vote for President or for a voting delegation to the U.S. House and
Senate. However, once a Puerto Rican left the island and established resi-
dency in the United States, he would be eligible to vote in local, statewide,
and national elections. Some Puerto Ricans criticized this as a citizenship
whose agency depended on mere geography. This situation has persisted
under the island’s current Commonwealth status.
Because the United States was also considering declaring war against
Germany and entering World War I, some claimed that the Jones Act gave
Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship in time to draft them into military service. In
fact, residents of U.S. territories do not need to be citizens to be conscripted
U.S. Territory 83

into the military during wartime. In addition, volunteer rates for World
War I and every U.S. military action that has followed have been excep-
tionally high among Puerto Ricans.
Despite the many objections of their leaders, everyday Puerto Ricans
seemed to welcome citizenship. The law did not essentially change migra-
tion status for Puerto Ricans; however, after it was passed several thousand
immediately took advantage of what they saw as the clarified migration
status that U.S. citizenship created, starting new lives in the United States
almost before the ink on the Act had dried.

Migration
During the 1800s a number of Puerto Rican elites traveled to the United
States to attend U.S. universities, to work for U.S. firms and industries, and
as exiles at odds with the Spanish colonial government. Since the 1898 U.S.
invasion there had been steady migration by Puerto Ricans to the United
States, especially since even without U.S. citizenship the courts had estab-
lished that Puerto Ricans were free to enter the mainland at any time as
residents of a U.S. territory. During World War I the government trans-
ported about 13,000 Puerto Ricans to the States to help manufacture muni-
tions. When a large number died as a result of unsanitary conditions
during transit, as well as from unsafe working conditions in the workers’
camps that were hastily built to accommodate them, reforms were passed
to create healthier migration conditions for Puerto Ricans, particularly
those who were being transferred at the government’s or an industry’s
expense.
Puerto Ricans began migrating in even larger numbers after the Jones
Act declared them U.S. citizens. This large, continuous migration pattern
helped to alleviate unemployment issues that intensified with the early
twentieth century shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy, espe-
cially during the Depression. By 1920 there were 45,000 Puerto Ricans liv-
ing in New York City. Many of these migrants were former agriculture
workers from Puerto Rico’s coffee and tobacco regions.

Arturo Schomburg
One of these early Puerto Rican New Yorkers (later to be called Nuyoricans)
was Arturo A. Schomburg, who was born in San Juan in 1874 and spent part
of his childhood in St. Thomas. According to legend, his legacy as one of
the world’s most famous collectors and archivists of African culture was
cemented by the following exchange he had with one of his teachers in
Puerto Rico. When the young Arturo asked why the textbook his class was
84 The History of Puerto Rico

reading made no mention of African culture, he was told it was because

Africa had no culture. Later, as a young man, he joined a group of Puerto
Rican intellectuals on a journey to collect Puerto Rican documents from an
archive in Madrid. This quest may have inspired him to begin the archiving
project that would become his lifelong mission. After moving to New York,
he joined the African separatist movement and developed an admiration for
its most famous leader, Marcus Garvey. He was also a member of the Revo-
lutionary Committee of Puerto Rico. Schomburg’s collection of books, manu-
scripts, and art relating to Africans and the African Diaspora was purchased
by the New York Public Library’s Division of Negro Literature, History, and
Prints in 1926. Today, his collection is a cornerstone of Harlem’s Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture, one of the world’s most important
centers for research on the African Diaspora.

Culture Clash: Education

The most obvious mark of distinction between Puerto Ricans and their
U.S. colonizers was language. Puerto Ricans embraced their language in a
way they had not done under Spanish rule when they had shared a lan-
guage with the ruling regime. This became contentious when a series of
U.S. governors, as well as some pro-statehood leaders, insisted that chil-
dren should be taught in English.
Following the invasion, the military government shifted the role of edu-
cation from the church to the government. This was a profound cultural
shift for students, families, and teachers. The U.S. military and early civil-
ian governments set up dozens of schools, including high schools (most
Puerto Rican students at the time stopped attending school after four
years), and in 1903 the University of Puerto Rico.
Schools were seen as tools of Americanization. American flags were
assigned to each school and children began each school day saluting the
flag, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and singing patriotic songs. Teachers
were required to learn English and encouraged to teach all subjects in Eng-
lish. Those who failed to learn English fast enough were fired and replaced
by teachers from the United States. During the earliest years of U.S. admin-
istration, nearly half of the island’s teachers were sent to summer seminars
at Harvard and Columbia universities, where they were taught English
and U.S. teaching theories and methods. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of
students were sent via government-funded scholarships to U.S. boarding
schools. Some students who the government had determined met an Amer-
indian racial phenotype were sent to controversial Indian residential
schools, whose primary mission was to ‘‘civilize’’ students by discouraging
them from practicing their culture or using their indigenous languages.
U.S. Territory 85

Puerto Ricans who seemed to fit U.S. administrators’ conception of an Afri-

can racial phenotype were sent to segregated African American vocational
boarding schools. During school breaks the boarding school students were
often sent to work as servants for host families.
Finally, in 1942, after decades of failed experimentation that critics said
left the majority of Puerto Rico’s children illiterate in both English and
Spanish, Spanish was declared the official language of instruction for all
students through eighth grade in Puerto Rico’s public schools.
In addition to the language debate, there were debates over school holi-
days. School was closed for all U.S. holidays, many of which had no mean-
ing or context for Puerto Rican families and their children. In contrast, it
took much debate before the U.S. education minister allowed the observ-
ance of Three Kings’ Day, an important religious holiday throughout Latin
America.
In addition to the Spanish language and religious traditions and rituals,
other Puerto Rican traditions counter to U.S. culture that continued in the
face of disapprobation from the military and civil government included
cock fighting and the production and consumption of rum during
Prohibition.

Religion
Today, about two-thirds of the population is Roman Catholic and one-
third Protestant Christian. When the U.S. military government took over
the school system and other social/cultural functions on the island in 1898,
the population was almost entirely Catholic and the church was a central
part of most people’s lives. Schools were run by the church and civic cele-
brations were held on religious holidays and the feast days of the saints.
Attempts to separate church and state and to limit the number of religious
holidays celebrated by the people were only partially successful. A few
feast days are no longer celebrated with the pomp they once were, but
many Puerto Rican municipalities continue to hold public celebrations for a
variety of Catholic holidays, while U.S. civic holidays have simply been
added alongside these older celebrations.
The island’s Catholicism played a large role in the independence move-
ment since prominent Nationalist leaders, particularly Pedro Albizu Cam-
pos, tended to equate Catholicism with Puerto Rican culture and claimed
that the United States was attempting to undermine the church and impose
Protestantism on the population as a way to Americanize the island. For
this reason, many on the Left were as fiercely Catholic, and in some cases
more so, than conservatives. For example, many Nationalists and labor
leaders objected to allowing women access to birth control in the century
86 The History of Puerto Rico

following the Treaty of Paris because it contradicted Catholic doctrine,

while some pro-statehood leaders on the Right favored broadening access
to birth control, including abortion after 1974, to fight the overpopulation
that they believed was limiting economic development. Protestants have
also had an impact on other aspects of Island politics, particularly the Epis-
copal Church, which has taken on a leadership role in the growing envi-
ronmental movement.
In addition to Catholicism and a growing Protestant movement, another
religion practiced on the island is Santer
ıa, a blending of the Catholic prac-
tice of revering saints with customs and beliefs from the religion of the
Yoruba people, slaves who originally lived in the area of Africa that makes
up modern-day Nigeria. The religion is called Santer
ıa because it involves
the worship of saints who resemble Yuroba gods. Though the religion orig-
inally served as a way for African slaves to maintain their religion under
the guise of adhering to the religion of their owners, today many Hispanics
throughout Latin America and the United States say that they adhere to
both religions—Santer
ıa and Christianity—simultaneously and see no con-
tradiction in doing so. Santer
ıa has some regional variations. In Puerto Rico
most adherents worship a central deity and a group of lesser gods called
the Seven African Powers or Siete Potencias. The practice sometimes
includes the sacrifice of animals, but adherents say that the animals, typi-
cally chickens, are killed humanely and eaten afterward.

Women’s Suffrage
The women’s suffrage movement on the island, active since the late
1800s, has often been depicted as primarily a movement of middle-class
educated women, its leaders tending to argue that only educated, literate
men and women should have the vote. In 1904 when universal male suf-
frage was instituted, for example, many elite and middle-class Puerto Rican
suffragists argued that if uneducated men could vote then surely educated
women should have the same right. However, working-class women were
also fighting for the right to vote and it was a working-class woman who
staged one of the most audacious challenges to the prohibition on women’s
suffrage. After women were given the right to vote in the United States,
Genara Pagin, a Puerto Rican garment worker who had been living in the
States returned to the island and attempted to vote in the island’s 1920
elections. The U.S. Department of the Interior, which at that time was over-
seeing bureaucratic policy for the island, ruled that since Puerto Rico was
not part of the United States, the latest amendment to the U.S. Constitution
did not apply there. Educated women were given the vote in Puerto Rico
in 1932 and all women were finally able to exercise that right in 1936.
U.S. Territory 87

It has been hypothesized that the vote was kept from women until the
later 1930s because working women made up such a large part of the labor
movement on the island and many in the business community feared that
they were more radicalized than the men. Allowing them to take part in
elections might skew the vote in favor of the socialists or the independence
parties. According to some political historians, the decision of the conserva-
tive pro-statehood Republicans to form an alliance with the Socialist Party
in the 1930s may have been motivated by the number of votes the Republi-
cans thought they could gain from the Socialist and pro-labor vote once
women were given the vote. The alliance created the pro-statehood Union,
the forerunner of today’s pro-statehood New Progressive Party.
Other historians have argued that machismo is so ingrained in Puerto
Rican culture that U.S. intervention was necessary to bring about women’s
suffrage. Machismo is a cultural emphasis on masculinity and the public-
directed role of the male head of household, and its counterpart, an em-
phasis on passive domestic-focused femininity, sometimes referred to
marianismo, that is prevalent in many Latin American cultures. By this
argument, of course, no Latin American countries would have female
suffrage. Though there are countries that still deny the vote to women,
none are found in Latin America.

ACTIVISM AND REPRESSION

Following the enactment of the Jones Act, many advised the President to
appoint a Puerto Rican as governor. Instead he appointed Montgomery
Reily, an inexperienced, low-level civil servant who proceeded to appoint
friends and cronies with no knowledge of Puerto Rico to the island’s most
important posts. The Puerto Rican Senate refused to confirm many of them
and even began impeachment proceedings to oust the governor, a power it
did not seem to have, according to either Foraker or Jones. Reily was also
being investigated by a U.S. grand jury for unrelated fiscal irregularities.
Before he was replaced by Governor Horace Towner, Reily declared that
expressing support for independence for Puerto Rico was a form of trea-
son, because it advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government. He also
announced that raising or bearing a Puerto Rican flag was a form of treaso-
nous expression. These proclamations would be revisited during the anti-
communist fervor that swept through the United States and found its way
to Puerto Rico in the 1940s and 1950s, when a series of U.S. governors
would use repressive tactics to silence dissent.
Throughout the 1920s, the legislature tried to reform the Jones Act to cre-
ate more autonomy. Led by the newly named Alianza (Alliance) Party (for-
merly the Federalist and then Union Party), the legislature passed law after
88 The History of Puerto Rico

law designed to increase the elected government’s autonomy and limit the
power of the U.S. government in island affairs; however, all of them were
vetoed by the governor, U.S. Congress, or the President. Finally, the
Alianza Party disintegrated and became the Liberal Party, with Luis
Mu~noz Mar
ın, Mu~ noz Rivera’s son as one of its founding members. The
conservative pro-statehood party banded together as the Coalici

on.

THE DEPRESSION AND THE NEW DEAL

The 1930s were a period of crisis in the relationship between the United
States and Puerto Rico. Incomes dropped, conditions for many of the coun-
try’s rural and urban poor became desperate, and a series of governors
with military backgrounds chose to answer the discontent of the people
with escalating law-and-order measures aimed at silencing the populace’s
calls for independence and economic justice.
The worldwide economic downturn hit Puerto Rico hard. As the fortunes
of its only major trading partner, the United States, fell, Puerto Rico’s econ-
omy crumbled. Income fell 30 percent between 1930 and 1933. By 1937
unemployment hit 60 percent. Isolated strikes broke out in several towns
and industries. However, a popular governor kept the Puerto Rican discon-
tent from erupting during the early years of the economic and humanitarian
crisis. Though he failed to obtain the public funds he sought to alleviate
poverty, Governor Theodore Roosevelt Jr., son of the twenty-sixth presi-
dent, became the first governor to publicly discuss Puerto Rico’s economic
problems and to place the blame for them on failed U.S. policy, rather than
on the innately poor character of the Puerto Rican people. Since he could
not convince the federal government to send adequate aid during his short
tenure of 1930 to 1932, Roosevelt tried to raise funds to alleviate hunger
and supply medicines from the U.S. private sector. He also endeavored to
learn Spanish. Though the charitable donations he amassed were inad-
equate and his Spanish famously awkward and full of errors, his honesty,
his attempts to alleviate suffering, and his sincere collaboration with local
leaders, along with his respectful attitude toward Puerto Rican culture
endeared him to the Puerto Rican people. The fact that he was one of the
island’s most popular appointed governors demonstrates just how little
effort most previous and subsequent U.S. governors exerted toward trying
to understand the island they governed.
It was at this point that Mu~noz Rivera’s son Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın entered
the political scene. Born months before the U.S. invasion of 1898 and edu-
cated in the United States, he returned to the island in 1931. At first
he joined the Liberal Party and deferred to its senior members. However,
he soon grew weary of the endless debates over status. None of the
U.S. Territory 89

alternatives—statehood versus independence versus some form of

reformed autonomous relationship with the United States—mattered,
Mu~ noz Mar
ın argued, as long as the United States was unwilling to grant
them and as long as the vast majority of the population remained impover-
ished and uneducated. Mu~ noz Mar
ın decided that the country needed to
improve its infrastructure and economic base before it could address the
status issue. According to Mu~ noz Mar
ın, if Puerto Rico was given inde-
pendence under the drastic conditions of the 1930s, it would not be able to
sustain itself and its people would sink into even greater poverty. Discour-
aged by the leadership of the Liberal Party, which seemed to him obsessed
with the status issue, Mu~ noz Mar
ın returned to the States in the hopes that
funds could be raised to ease suffering and create jobs.
The Depression continued to drive migration from Puerto Rico to the
United States, even though it was well known that there were few jobs on
the mainland and that people there were suffering as well. Food prices
were a major driving force for migration to the United States in the 1930s
as Puerto Rico continued to import the bulk of its food supply. Prices on
most of the major staples that made up the working Puerto Rican’s diet
were 8 percent to 14 percent higher in Puerto Rico than they were in New
York City. At the same time, wages in New York City were four to ten
times higher. Many families felt they had no choice but to move to the new
Puerto Rican colonias in New York, Chicago, and Boston. This migration
would become even more intense during the industrial war effort of World
War II.
The Puerto Rico Emergency Relief Administration (PRERA), part of Pres-
ident Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policy designed to alleviate suffering
and to address the underlying causes of the Depression by investing in
infrastructure and stimulating new industries, was supposed to start opera-
tions in 1933. However, the conservative governors who had been helming
Puerto Rico since the creation of the New Deal did everything in their
power to block the distribution of aid to workers. Even before PRERA was
created, Puerto Rico could have applied for funds through the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration. However, Puerto Rico’s anti-New Deal
governor, Robert Gore, refused to apply, depriving the people of aid for
which they were eligible.
In 1934, with the economy still faltering, a widespread general strike
affected most of the sugar industry. The strikers rejected the agreement that
the pro-union party negotiated for them and insisted that revolutionary
leader Pedro Albizu Campos negotiate for them instead. Meanwhile,
Puerto Ricans throughout the island showed support for the striking sugar
workers by boycotting gasoline and electric power. The strike forced the
U.S. administrators and their pro-statehood Puerto Rican legislative allies
90 The History of Puerto Rico

to rethink their policy of withholding aid. They began to distribute aid

from PRERA. The more conservative elements in the U.S. federal govern-
ment and Governor Blanton Winship favored installing harsh civic meas-
ures to go with the welfare provisions. Aid would come at the price of
increased surveillance and curtailed expression. In part, Winship and his
pro-business allies feared the enthusiasm Albizu Campos stirred whenever
he spoke. Their aim was to curtail the independence and pro-worker move-
ments. For the time being, President Roosevelt was willing to trust their
strategy.
In 1934, Mu~ noz Mar
ın, still residing in the United States, used his con-
nections to meet with economists Carlos Chardon and Rexford Guy Tug-
well, and the President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, all of whom were
concerned that the people of Puerto Rico were not getting the relief they
needed. In response to their concerns, President Roosevelt authorized a
Puerto Rican Policy Commission to study the island’s needs. The strategy
the commission created has been called the Chardon Plan. It proposed
reorienting the Puerto Rican economy away from large industrial farms to-
ward smaller family farms, diversifying the economy, weaning Puerto
Rican endeavors from U.S. investment and ownership, and creating indus-
trial sectors based on local resources. Roosevelt placed Chardon in charge
of dispersing funds from PRERA and other New Deal initiatives on the
island, despite Governor Winship’s objections. Through Chardon’s effi-
ciency, 35 percent of Puerto Ricans received some form of PRERA aid by
the middle of 1934. With some reluctance, Winship tolerated Chardon’s
implementation of Roosevelt’s program on the island and concentrated his
activities on maintaining law and order along with his police commis-
sioner, Francis E. Riggs, whose brutal tactics made him and the governor
unpopular with many segments of the population.

THE INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT AND THE PONCE MASSACRE

In 1926 the Nationalist Party sent Pedro Albizu Campos, a Harvard-
educated lawyer, on a four-year journey through the Caribbean and Latin
America, where he became increasingly radicalized, dedicated to a mission
of independence for Puerto Rico and anti-colonial struggle for all
oppressed peoples. Albizu, who was of Afro-Puerto Rican ancestry had
also served as an officer in an African American unit of the U.S. Army dur-
ing World War I.
When he returned from his four-year journey across Latin America on
May 12, 1930, the Nationalists elected Albizu Campos party president. More
radicalized than ever by his time meeting with revolutionaries throughout
the Spanish-speaking world, Albizu stated that the independence movement
U.S. Territory 91

would be justified in the use of violence to achieve their goals if necessary.

Further, he argued, it was the responsibility of the people to actively work
toward independence, and not simply wait passively for the United States
to grant Puerto Rico its sovereignty. After the Nationalist Party’s disap-
pointing showing in the 1932 elections, Albizu advocated a strategy of
unrest that would entice the United States to relinquish its association with
the troublesome island. In addition to Albizu’s involvement with the sugar
strike of 1934, the independence leader drew large crowds wherever he
spoke and ignored Winship’s injunctions against raising the Puerto Rican
flag. In defiance of the governor’s injunctions against free speech, Albizu
delivered passionate arguments for Puerto Rican independence wherever
and whenever he appeared.
On October 24, 1935, Albizu was scheduled to speak at the University of
Puerto Rico’s R
ıo Piedras campus. Authorities decided a large police pres-
ence was necessary to prevent any unrest. A car carrying Nationalist Party
members was stopped and the occupants arrested, allegedly for carrying
bombs. On the way to the police station, four of the Nationalists and one
bystander were killed. Albizu and his party vowed revenge for the mur-
dered Nationalists. On February 23, 1936, Police Commissioner Riggs was
assassinated. Two young Nationalists were accused of his murder and
arrested. Both were killed in jail during an alleged attempt to escape. Albizu
and seven other Nationalist Party leaders were charged with sedition and
plotting to overthrow the U.S. government. Albizu Campos and his fellow
party members were sent to prison in Atlanta, Georgia, for 15 years.
While Alibizu was in prison, in 1937 the Nationalists asked the mayor of
Ponce for permission to hold a march on March 12, which he granted. The
chief of police revoked the mayor’s permit. Party leaders decided to march
anyway. Police fired on the crowd that had gathered for the march. In all, 19
people were killed, including two police officers, and more than 100 people
were wounded. In the aftermath of what became known as the Ponce
Massacre, more than 10,000 showed up at the funeral for the demonstrators
and 3,000 gathered in East Harlem to hear Albizu Campos’s lawyer explain
what little he knew about the matter. Repercussions were wide-ranging. Not
only were Nationalist Party members monitored and punished, but Liberal
Party members faced retaliation from the U.S. governor as well. For exam-
ple, Chardon was removed from his position as head of PRERA. In response
to Winship’s crackdown, a 37-day dockworkers’ strike was held that para-
lyzed shipping and commerce across the island. Despite the tense political
climate, Governor Winship decided to hold a parade on July 25, 1938, to
commemorate the 1898 U.S. invasion. The celebration was interrupted by
gunfire and dozens were wounded, including government officials. A detec-
tive was killed when he leaped in front of a bullet intended for Winship. At
92 The History of Puerto Rico

this point, President Roosevelt began to realize that Winship’s leadership

was actually contributing to unrest, rather than containing it. He offered the
post of governor to Navy Admiral William Leahy.
The era of the collaboration between law-and-order governors and con-
servative pro-statehood party members was coming to an end and Puerto
Ricans would soon enjoy a more active role in their own governance. This
new autonomy would fall short of either statehood or independence. The
architect of this middle path would be Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın.

THE RISE OF THE POPULAR DEMOCRATIC PARTY

During Mu~ noz Mar
ın’s years in the United States, he studied the work-
ings of government and economics, knowledge he would use to reach his
political goals of alleviating Puerto Rico’s poverty and increasing its politi-
cal autonomy. His shift toward political and economic autonomy over in-
dependence as a realistic political goal was largely shaped by events
following the assassination of Police Commissioner Riggs.
In 1936, U.S. Senator Millard Tydings drafted a bill that called for a Puerto
Rican plebiscite (referendum) that would allow islanders to vote for or against
independence. The catch was that if the majority of Puerto Ricans voted for in-
dependence they could not receive any aid from the United States and would
be burdened with large trade tariffs. This bill was designed as a punishment
for Puerto Rico’s ingratitude and lawlessness. Given Puerto Rico’s depend-
ency on U.S. investment and trade, the bill would have crushed the Puerto
Rican people. Though the bill never moved out of committee, Mu~ noz Mar
ın
noted the enthusiasm with which many U.S. political leaders drafted and
praised the proposal. He was convinced that the United States would not
allow for a gentle transition toward independence for his country and that the
island’s economy was not developed enough to stand on its own.
It was in this context that Mu~noz Mar
ın returned to Puerto Rico. Meeting
with members of his Liberal Party he stated that Puerto Rico was not ready
for independence, words that rankled his fellow party members, who
expelled him from their ranks. In response to his expulsion, on July 22,
1937, Mu~ noz Mar
ın formed the Popular Democratic Party (PDP). He chose
as the party’s emblem the jibaro, or mountain peasant, whose most literal
translation in English may be something like ‘‘hillbilly.’’ At rallies and
marches, members of the party chose to wear the straw hats that jibaros
wore while working in the sun. The party’s motto, ‘‘Bread, Land, and Free-
dom,’’ communicated the order of its priorities—first food, clothing, educa-
tion, and other necessities, then land and capital redistribution to
strengthen Puerto Ricans’ stake in their country’s economy, and only then
independence, or at the very least, a form of autonomist government that
U.S. Territory 93

would restore Puerto Rican dignity. It was a message that played well
among the country’s most impoverished voters, whose need to feed and
shelter their families outweighed less immediate and abstract arguments
over political status.
The PDP emerged at a time when many members of the legislature and
other local governing bodies were controlled by wealthy sugar plantation
owners whose interests were closely aligned with U.S. business. The voters,
especially in the agricultural regions, were so uneducated, desperately poor,
and new to the democratic process that they often sold their votes for $5 or a
pair of shoes to the ever-evolving pro-U.S. party (the Republicans, the
Alianza, etc.; the names changed frequently while the key actors and policies
remained fairly constant). To combat vote selling, Mu~ noz Mar
ın implemented
what he had learned from observing activists and political parties in the
United States, creating a grassroots political movement for increased local rule
throughout the rural areas. Mu~ noz Mar
ın convinced the sugar cane workers
and other agricultural wage earners to refuse bribes and express their patriot-
ism by casting their vote and placing a majority of Popular Democratic party
members in the legislature during the 1940 elections. Mu~ noz Mar
ın and the
PDP would retain their majority in the legislature for the next 28 years.

WORLD WAR II
Following Governor Winship’s ouster, Governor William Leahy concen-
trated on preparing the island for its possible role in World War II, over-
seeing the quick construction of several military bases and leaving most
matters of internal governance up to local officials.
After the Japanese bombed Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, large numbers of
young Puerto Rican men living on the island and in the U.S. colonias of
New York, Chicago, Boston, and elsewhere volunteered to fight in the U.S.
Army. Puerto Ricans in the United States were assigned to either African
American or white units depending on their perceived race. Many of the
Puerto Ricans living on the island who volunteered for service fought in
the 65th Infantry Regiment. Called the ‘‘Borinquineers,’’ this highly deco-
rated unit fought in Europe. Other Puerto Ricans, along with large num-
bers of other Spanish-speakers of other nationalities, were sent to the
Philippines, where it was believed their language skills might be useful.
Many Puerto Rican recruits on the island and in the States were taken
aback when Army officials asked them to line up and take off their shirts
so that they could be segregated into African American and white units by
the color of the skin on their backs.
Leahy, who was named U.S. Ambassador to France was replaced as gov-
ernor by Rexford Tugwell. Following the widespread strikes of the 1930s
94 The History of Puerto Rico

and the austere actions Governor Winship had taken to suppress pro-
independence rhetoric, tensions between U.S. administrators and the
Puerto Ricans they governed were running high. This increasing tension
was about to shift under the leadership of Governor Tugwell, who served
as Puerto Rico’s last U.S.-born governor from 1942 to 1946. Tugwell, an
economist, had been studying the island for years and had already formed
a working relationship with some of the island’s leading young reformers,
particularly Mu~noz Mar
ın. He was also an enthusiastic New Dealer who
had favored Chardon’s plan to diversify the local economy. For the next
several years, Tugwell and Mu~ noz Mar
ın formed a partnership, splitting
various governmental functions between them and quickly implementing
sweeping changes in economics, education, politics, agriculture, health
care, and nearly every other aspect of life on the island.
Fortifications built by the Spanish in the sixteenth century can be clearly
seen in this modern aerial view of the Old San Juan section of the island’s
capital. [Photo provided by the Puerto Rico Tourism Company]

Indigenous Ta
ıno artists created thousands of ‘‘three-pointers,’’ elaborately

carved triangular objects believed to have religious significance. [Della
Zuana Pascal/Corbis Sygma]
This seventeenth-century engraving depicts Puerto Rico as visualized by a
Spanish illustrator. [Courtesy of the Library of Congress]
Juan Ponce de Leon, the first governor of Puerto Rico, is believed to
have come to the New World during Christopher Columbus’ Second
Voyage in 1493. [Courtesy of the Library of Congress]
During the Golden Age of Piracy, pirates used grappling hooks to attack ships
in the Spanish flotilla. [Bettmann/Corbis]

In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War and U.S. invasion of Puerto

Rico, Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States as part of the Treaty of
Paris in 1898. [Courtesy of the Library of Congress]
Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos is arrested after the 1950 Uprising,
a series of gun battles between pro-independence activists and law enforce-
ment officials that included the attempted assassinations of U.S. President
Harry Truman and Puerto Rico Governor Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın. [AP Photo]
Demonstrators march outside the U.S. Navy bombing range in Vieques in
May 2000. In 1999, a military accident killed a civilian guard, spurring years
of protests calling for the United States to end weapons testing and close its
military base on the island. The base was closed in 2004. [AP Photo/Ricardo
Figueroa]
Governor Sila M. Calderon became the first woman elected to Puerto Rico’s
highest office in 2001. [AP Photo/Ricky Arduengo]

On June 24, 2009, Puerto Rico Governor Luis Guillermo Fortu~ no-Burset tes-
tified before the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources on behalf of
the Puerto Rico Democracy Act, a bill that would create an island-wide ref-
erendum on Puerto Rico’s status, the fourth since 1967. [AP Photo/Harry
Hamburg]
 6
Commonwealth: The Freely
Associated State of Puerto
Rico (1948–1968)

THE LEAD UP TO COMMONWEALTH STATUS

Governor Rexford Tugwell and Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın, president of the Puerto
Rican Senate, were aided in their endeavors to transform the island’s
economy from one dominated by a few large landowners to more diversi-
fied industrial base by a wartime shortage of distilled liquor. Puerto Rico’s
ability to produce rum for the United States and its allies ended up paying
for many of the island’s wartime reforms. Between 1941 and 1946, Puerto
Rico received about $160,000 million in extra revenue thanks to the world-
wide liquor shortage. Aided by the rum funds, the Puerto Rican govern-
ment, following through on the provisions of Chardon’s original plans
before he was removed as head of the Puerto Rico Emergency Relief
Administration (PRERA), took over hundreds of acres of land that violated
a previously ignored law that prohibited foreign entities from owning more
than 500 acres of land, compensating owners for the value of their lost
land. Some of the land was divided into small plots and given to farm
workers rent-free. The farmers, who did not hold the mortgages on the
land, were encouraged to grow food for their families and communities in
the hope that the policy might slowly ease some of the island’s dependence
96 The History of Puerto Rico

on U.S. food imports and create a more diversified agricultural base. Tug-
well and Mu~ noz Mar
ın feared that if they gave the deeds for the land to
workers they would simply sell them back to large wealthy landowners or
foreign interests. By the end of the 1950s, more than 50,000 families had
been resettled onto these small government-owned lots. Though these
farmers did not have enough land to become wealthy or even free from
the need to supplement their income with wage work, they were freed
from rent and the threat of eviction.
Most of the confiscated land was maintained as government-owned
large-scale sugar, coffee, or tobacco plantations and processing centers,
which were run as cooperatives for workers who provided the labor and
shared in the profits. Most sugar plantations were still owned by elite fami-
lies and the sugar industry continued to grow until a gradual decline
began during the 1950s. The land reform program did not substantially
change the nature of land ownership on the island and it did not succeed
in creating a diversified agricultural sector or in weaning Puerto Rico from
its dependence on U.S. food imports.
Another element of the economic plan was the creation of industries. At
first, Mu~noz Mar
ın hoped to use locally available raw materials to forge an
industrial base and export economy. The factories would be financed and
owned by the government with workers sharing in profits. The first
endeavors included a glass and bottle factory, paper and box plant,
ceramics and clay products producer, and a shoe manufacturer. Eventually,
Mu~ noz Mar
ın abandoned the project in favor of a new, more ambitious
endeavor, Operation Bootstrap, aimed at attracting foreign investment and
transforming Puerto Rico into an industrial center.

PUERTO RICO’S FIRST PUERTO RICAN GOVERNORS

Tugwell and Mu~ noz Mar
ın’s industrial projects were attacked by the
island’s pro-capitalist segments, including plantation and distillery owners,
merchants, and pro-statehood newspapers and politicians, who boycotted
the products created in the government-owned plants. However, the poli-
cies were popular with the workers and in November 1944, Mu~ noz Mar
ın’s
Popular Democratic Party (PDP) won 65 percent of the vote. In 1946, Presi-
dent Harry Truman appointed PDP member Jes
us T. Pi~
nero the first Puerto
Rican-born governor of the island. In 1947, the legislature enacted a law
calling for the governor to be elected, which was approved by Congress,
and in 1948 Mu~ noz Mar
ın won over 60 percent of the vote to become the
first democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico. He was sworn in on
January 2, 1949.
Commonwealth 97

COMMONWEALTH STATUS
In 1947, nationalist Pedro Albizu Campos returned to Puerto Rico. On
the day of his arrival, students at the University of Puerto Rico raised the
Puerto Rican flag and were subsequently expelled, since under Governor
Winship this action had been ruled as illegal political speech advocating
the overthrow of the U.S. government. A student strike followed. In the
aftermath of the conflict the Puerto Rican legislature adopted a law, some-
times called the Gag Law, reiterating former Governor Winship’s order that
prohibited speech advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. govern-
ment. The Gag Law, which was signed into law by Governor Pi~ nero in
1948, criminalized any discussion of possible independence for Puerto Rico
and displaying the Puerto Rican flag.
That year, Puerto Rico sent its own team to the Olympic Games, march-
ing under a flag bearing the Olympic rings since it would have been illegal
at that time for them to march under the Puerto Rican flag. All subsequent
Puerto Rican Olympic teams have marched bearing the Puerto Rican flag.
Mu~noz Mar
ın knew that the U.S. government was fearful of the possibil-
ity that either the Socialist wing of the pro-statehood party or the inde-
pendence movement might gain popularity among the Puerto Rican
people. Banking on this fear and his own popularity he hoped the timing
might be favorable to renegotiate the nature of governing conditions
between the United States and the island. The form of government Mu~ noz
Mar
ın negotiated with Congress is officially called the Estado Libre Asociado
(Freely Associated State).
Mu~noz Mar
ın wrote Public Law 600, setting up the structure that
allowed for the drafting of the constitution and the establishment of the
Commonwealth, or Freely Associated State. Public Law 600 was vehe-
mently criticized by the pro-independence Nationalist Party for stating that
the U.S. Congress would approve the constitution, thus negating the law’s
stated claim that the new status would be adopted ‘‘in the nature of a com-
pact’’ and under the principle of a ‘‘government by consent.’’ Nevertheless,
the referendum initiating the drafting of the constitution was approved by
a majority of voters on the island on June 4, 1951. The constitution, which
was drafted by elected representatives under Mu~ noz Mar
ın’s guidance
from September 1951 to February 1952, changed the form of the insular
government and included an extensive Bill of Rights.
Once the constitution was drafted, it needed to be approved by Con-
gress, a process many expected to be a formality since the constitution had
adhered closely to the guidelines for constitutional government set up by
the United Nations. However, during the hearings that led to the constitu-
tion’s ratification, Mu~noz Mar
ın was repeatedly forced to assure members
98 The History of Puerto Rico

of Congress threatening to withhold their approval of the constitution and

commonwealth status that the United States could amend or change the
relationship at any time and that upholding the constitution would not
change the body’s power to unilaterally alter the U.S.–Puerto Rico relation-
ship at any time. In addition, Congressional members expressed their con-
cern about statements Mu~ noz Mar
ın had made in the past, many of which
implied that, without a constitution representing consent by the people to
live in association with the people of the United States, Puerto Rico would
essentially remain a colony. Various members of Congress argued that
Puerto Rico had never been a colony of the United States because it had
never been called a colony and further that it could not have been a colony
because the United States has never had and would not have colonies. As
the rhetoric of the Congressional committee meetings deteriorated, Mu~ noz
Mar
ın’s former colleague Rexford Tugwell urged him to acquiesce to any
rhetorical concessions the Congressional leaders might insist on to get the
constitution ratified. In this context, Mu~ noz Mar
ın agreed with the U.S.
leaders that Puerto Rico had not in fact ever been a U.S. colony, a conces-
sion that nearly cost him his life.
The Puerto Rican constitutional convention reconvened to make the
required changes and the constitution and the new Commonwealth status
allowing for internal self-rule was proclaimed July 25, 1952, nearly 54 years
after U.S. troops had landed on Puerto Rico.

NATIONALIST INSURRECTION
Most Puerto Ricans were encouraged by the creation of the Estado Libre
Asociado. Eighty percent voted to ratify it in a 1952 referendum, and its dec-
laration, along with the ratification of the Constitution, was celebrated with
marches and patriotic festivals throughout the island.
The process also satisfied the U.N. General Assembly, which after some
debate decided that the new constitution and Commonwealth status repre-
sented a new government relationship that reflected the will of the people
and, therefore, relieved the United States from its duty of reporting annu-
ally on Puerto Rico’s progress toward self-government.
However, during the two-year process that led to the declaration of the
new status, many argued that calling the new governance system a Freely
Associated State was misleading and legally inaccurate, since an act of
Congress had been needed to allow Puerto Rico to draft the constitution
that was meant to declare the island’s free status. After the constitution
was drafted by the Puerto Rican congress, the U.S. Congress demanded
changes, including the addition of a provision stating that the United States
could change the nature of the relationship at any time in any manner it
Commonwealth 99

saw fit without the input of the Puerto Rican government or voters. Fur-
ther, under its new status Puerto Rico was still not a state or an incorpo-
rated territory. As many pro-state and pro-independence advocates pointed
out, Puerto Rico’s constitution placed it no closer to independence or state-
hood than it had been before. The Nationalists were especially angered by
the process and by Mu~ noz Mar
ın’s concessions that Puerto Rico was not
and had never been a U.S. colony.
In the midst of the hearings and referendums surrounding the creation
of the Commonwealth, on October 30 and November 1, 1950, independence
forces unhappy with the process engaged in a series of violent uprisings in
various sections of the island that included an attempted assassination of
Governor Mu~ noz Mar
ın at La Fortaleza; an attempted assassination of U.S.
President Harry Truman in Blair House in New York City (where he was
staying while the White House was undergoing repairs); and attacks by
bands of protestors in seven towns on the island, capturing one of them,
Jayuya, and declaring the existence of the republic in a move reminiscent
of El Grito de Lares, while in another town rebels burned down the police
station and the post office.
In all, 28 people, including nine Nationalists, were killed and 49 people
wounded in what came to be called the Nationalist Insurrection of 1950.
The coordinated attacks were supposed to take place later and after more
planning, but this strategy was thwarted when police confiscated weapons
from Albizu Campos’ car on October 27, 1950. After Albizu Campos was
arrested, his deputies had to act without his guidance and before all the
preparations were complete. Otherwise attacks might have been more
widespread and even more deadly. After order was restored in the weeks
that followed, as many as 140 Nationalists were arrested and Albizu Cam-
pos was jailed again. He was released in 1953. But in 1954, Nationalists in
Washington, D.C., sprayed bullets into the House of Representatives from
the spectator gallery, wounding five Congressmen. In the aftermath of the
Congressional shooting, Albizu Campos was arrested again and jailed until
1964. He died in 1965.

OPERATION BOOTSTRAP
Even prior to his election as governor, Mu~ noz Mar
ın had launched a
new aggressive platform of his economic plan, called Operation Bootstrap
(Operaci
on Manos a la Obra) in 1947, in his capacity as president of the legis-
lature. Tagged ‘‘the battle for production,’’ the policy’s aim was to attract
foreign investment in industrialized endeavors at a rate fast enough to
make up for the island’s shrinking agricultural sector. It was hoped that
the new enterprises would quickly enhance employment and provide
100 The History of Puerto Rico

higher paying jobs. Taking advantage of tax loopholes that already existed
thanks to Puerto Rico’s unprecedented status, adding on other local tax
breaks, and building facilities that corporations could lease rent-free,
Mu~ noz Mar
ın hoped to entice industries to relocate to Puerto Rico. In addi-
tion, by placing their manufacturing facilities on what was technically U.S.
soil, the industries were given free access to U.S. markets.
Puerto Ricans would thus be christened into the new global industrial
economy and gain marketable skills. They would be paid at rates that
might seem cheap to the incoming industries but would be significantly
higher than the earnings of sugar or tobacco workers. The high income lev-
els would improve the quality of life for thousands of Puerto Ricans.
To accomplish these goals, Mu~ noz Mar
ın set up the Economic Develop-
ment Administration (its Spanish acronym was FOMENTO) to attract for-
eign and U.S. industrial investment. After an initially slow start, the policy
took off, catching the first wave of the post-war economic expansion and
allowing Mu~ noz Mar
ın to fill most of the buildings his government had
built in the hopes of attracting tenants. By 1950 over 90 plants were located
on the island; by the mid-1960s there were over 900. In 1956, manufactur-
ing income exceeded agricultural income for the first time in the island’s
history. The workers employed by these overseas entities enjoyed rapid
improvements in their standard of living.
There were downsides: once foreign companies set up shop many
refused to pay the agreed-on prices for facilities that had not been built to
their specifications. Though the rent and lease prices were lower than any
comparable facilities in the world at that time, corporations haggled and
were given concessions. In addition, the bulk of industries were not locally
owned or locally managed. The textile, food products, and consumer goods
industries that dominated the program shipped in raw materials, which
were assembled on the island and then shipped out. The Puerto Ricans
were serving as a ready, inexpensive source of labor for outsiders, many of
whom did not live on the island, and therefore did not pay significant
taxes on the island or even engage in civic projects. Some critics contend
that Operation Bootstrap only succeeded in attracting labor-intensive, low
technology industries that paid low wages and held no loyalty toward their
workers. When trade barriers to the U.S. market eased in the 1970s and
1980s, the industries left to seek even cheaper sources of labor and more
generous tax breaks elsewhere. Despite the enormous efforts that went into
Operation Bootstrap and the island’s other industrial initiatives, job crea-
tion barely kept pace with the rate of job loss from a diminishing agricul-
tural sector. Losses probably would have exceeded gains and led to high
levels of chronic unemployment if not for the massive numbers of Puerto
Ricans who were migrating to the States.
Commonwealth 101

Although it is true that no integrated markets based on local raw materi-

als emerged, the policy transformed the island from an agricultural mono-
culture—that is, an economy that produced one major crop, sugar, and had
very little diversity or sustainability—to an export-focused manufacturing
economy. By the 1950s, an increasing number of Puerto Ricans became
urban dwellers and fewer lived in the rural areas. The geographic concen-
tration of jobs in a few key urban centers led to suburban development as
workers commuted between their homes and work. Traffic, pollution, and
reliance on oil became issues of concern. Despite these problems, for many
Puerto Ricans, living standards improved throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Wages increased as did life expectancy. New roads, electrical grids, and
housing were built. The education and health care systems expanded and
became more accessible for a larger percentage of the population and the
literacy rate approached 90 percent.

MIGRATION
During World War II, the United States encouraged and even paid for
many Puerto Ricans to come to the States to work in the munitions indus-
try and other sectors of the industrial war effort. After the war, the pace of
migration continued to increase, especially in the 1950s as air travel made
migration increasingly easy and affordable. It has been estimated that migra-
tion from the island to the States from 1950 to 1970 was between 25 percent
and 30 percent of the population.
Over the years the government has cited overpopulation as the reason for
its persistent unemployment problem and encouraged migration as one way
to address it. In the post-war era, the government created the Department of
Labor, which negotiated agreements with stateside agricultural and indus-
trial employers in states like Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.
The rising popularity and affordability of air travel also made it easier
for Puerto Ricans to visit family members or move back to the island in
what has come to be called a circular migration pattern. Air travel also con-
tributed to Puerto Rico’s rise as a tourist destination, especially after the
1959 Cuban Revolution. Another factor that helped increase tourism to
Puerto Rico and the rest of the Caribbean after World War II was the rise
of a large middle class in the United States, Canada, and Europe with the
means to travel overseas for pleasure.

FAMILY PLANNING
Another solution to the overpopulation problem was family planning.
This took several forms, all of which angered the dominant Catholic
102 The History of Puerto Rico

Church. Some feminist-based nonprofit sources focused on birth control

and sexual/reproductive agency for women. However, there is a darker
component to the island’s family planning history. With the government’s
permission, pharmaceutical companies used Puerto Rico as a testing
ground for new forms of birth control. Many women have since said that
they did not know that the medication they were taking was being tested
and had not yet been approved for the U.S. market. Other organizations
encouraged sterilization, including hospitals, which would perform tubal
ligations (a surgical procedure that cuts, burns, or otherwise blocks a wom-
an’s fallopian tubes so that eggs cannot be fertilized) during deliveries. At
least one hospital would not perform deliveries of a mother’s fourth child
unless she agreed to sterilization at the same time. Many women who
underwent sterilization during this period have since said that they were
told that the procedures they underwent were temporary. Others have said
the sterilizations were forced or coerced, that they were told that health
care would be withheld from them and from their children if they did not
agree to sterilizations. Some activists have claimed that sterilizations were
disproportionally aimed at low-income and dark-skinned women, though
the results of document analysis from family planning centers and hospi-
tals have been inconclusive. What can be quantified is that by 1982, 39 per-
cent of Puerto Rican women aged 15 to 49 were sterilized, the highest rate
of any nation in the world.

THE FIRST PLEBISCITE, 1967

Held in 1967, the First Plebiscite, or referendum on the island’s status,
affirmed the PDP’s Commonwealth government as the status preferred
by Puerto Ricans living on the island, with 60 percent voting for Common-
wealth. Despite the fact that officials from the pro-independence and
pro-statehood factions had called for their supporters to boycott the vote,
the strong showing in favor of Commonwealth status was evidence of the
popularity of the PDP during what would prove to be the party’s high
mark. Living standards for most Puerto Ricans were still improving and
most expected this trend to continue. Most voters were satisfied with their
ability to vote for their own governor and legislature. Fewer everyday
Puerto Ricans were concerned with their inability to vote in U.S. presiden-
tial elections than they might have been if the economic picture were more
troubling, as it soon would be.
Cultural changes were evident, from the opening of the first supermar-
kets and malls, to the emergence of highways and suburbs, and most of
them were welcomed. In addition to mass culture and pop culture, high
culture was also experiencing a renaissance as artists were then fleeing
Commonwealth 103

both Francisco Franco’s fascist regime and Castro’s Cuba to settle in Puerto
Rico. Musicians, artists, and writers from a variety of Lain American and
Hispanic backgrounds mingled over cocktail parties in San Juan’s new hi-
rises, launched literary magazines, and raised Puerto Rico’s cultural status
in the Spanish-speaking world.
In 1964 Mu~ noz Mar
ın declined to run for governor. His successor was
fellow PDP leader Roberto S
anchez Vilella. During Vilella’s four-year term
divisions within the PDP grew over the direction of Operation Bootstrap
and other issues. At the end of his term, Sanchez opted to run against the
PDP’s chosen candidate as a member of the Popular Vanguard, a splinter
group that had parted ways with the PDP. Neither the PDP nor the Van-
guard candidate won. Instead, Luis A. Ferr
e, an industrialist representing
the latest statehood party, the New Progressives, won the governor’s race.
The PDP still controlled the majority of seats in the Senate, but Ferr
e’s vic-
tory marked the first major electoral defeat for the PDP in three decades.
This page intentionally left blank
 7
State of Transition: After
Operation Bootstrap
(1968–1998)

THE RISE OF THE NEW PROGRESSIVE PARTY

During the 1950s and 1960s, Operation Bootstrap brought large amounts of
U.S. and foreign investment to the island, but wages did not increase at the
same pace and manufacturing salaries on the island remained four or five
times lower than those in the States. By the late 1960s the economy was not
growing at the rate of the previous two decades and unemployment began
to climb. By some estimates, foreign interests controlled up to 70 percent of
the island’s wealth.
Many Puerto Ricans blamed their problems on the moderate policies of a
moderate leader, Mu~ noz Mar
ın, whose ideas, many said, were outdated and
not aggressive enough to keep pace with a faster-paced financial world. The
worldwide recession of the 1970s underscored the island’s dependency on
the fortunes of the United States. Without a diversified economy and an
equally diverse set of trading partners, economically Puerto Rico was as
dependent on a single political entity as any colony. Still beloved for the
dignity he had brought to the country at a critical time in its history, many
believed the time of Mu~ noz Mar
ın middle path of autonomy was past.
106 The History of Puerto Rico

The dream of independence, still dear to many Puerto Ricans, seemed too
risky. Statehood seemed within reach.
Leaders of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (Partido Nuevo Pro-
gresista or PNP) suspected that growing fears about the economy and
job market might lead some workers to reconsider their unconditional
support for the Popular Democratic Party (PDP) in favor of a
pro-statehood agenda. They were right. In 1968, Luis A. Ferr
e of the New
Progressive Party defeated the PDP’s candidate in the governor’s race, the
first defeat for the PDP since 1940.
For a while the electorate was torn and close elections went back and
forth between the statehood party and the autonomists, often with one
party in control of the executive and the other controlling the legislature.
Governance required cooperation between the two main parties and the
smaller independence movement utilized civil disobedience to communi-
cate its concerns. Other interest groups were also making their concerns
visible, including labor organizations, environmentalists, and feminists.
Realizing that the era’s uncertain economic and social climate made the
PDP vulnerable, pro-statehood leader Carlos Romero Barcel
o took the reins
of the New Progressive Party, changing the tone of its political message to
voters. He argued that the U.S. Civil Rights movement and the social safety
net created by President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society would protect
Puerto Ricans from losing their cultural identity and improve conditions
for the poorest Puerto Ricans if the island became the fifty-first state. At
the same time, the leadership of the New Progressive Party remained well-
off and the platform pro-business. Romero Barcel
o was attempting to put
together a coalition of varied interests that could trump the PDP’s appeal
to the working class and moderate liberal elites. It worked. The PNP con-
trolled the governor’s office as often as the PDP has in the decades that fol-
lowed and frequently holds a majority or plurality of seats in the
legislature as well. The two parties share nearly equal support from island
voters, with a small percentage of voters, typically fewer than 10 percent,
voting for pro-independence candidates. Romero Barcel
o served two terms
as governor, from 1977 to 1985.
Some have seen the increased popularity of the pro-statehood theme in
island politics from the late 1960s to the present as a testament to PDP’s
success and its failures. It can be argued that a more conservative, pro-
business, pro-establishment group of young voters was made possible by
the success of Operation Bootstrap, which allowed a growing number of
young, educated Puerto Ricans to join the professional ranks as lawyers,
doctors, teachers, scientists, and business managers. These young voters
considered themselves middle-class capitalists and tended to see the PDP’s
New Deal ideals as outdated. They aspired to a North American lifestyle
State of Transition 107

and income level, and believed that becoming part of the United States, on
equal footing with other states, would achieve this.

~
MUNOZ MAR
IN’S FAILED PETROCHEMICAL STRATEGY
In addition to the worldwide economic downturn of the 1970s, the PDP’s
loss of power and popularity has been blamed on Mu~ noz Mar
ın’s failed
plan to transform the island into a center for petrochemical enterprises,
including oil refineries. Many in the U.S. Congress approved the strategy
and had cleared the way for large amounts of raw oil to be imported to
Puerto Rico. The most ambitious feature of the plan was the construction
of an enormous deep water oil factory off the coast. But the project was
stalled and ultimately derailed by new segments of society emerging in the
1970s, among them environmental activists. Had the scheme succeeded, the
new revenue stream would have come at the cost of potential damage to
the environment as well as to the tourism industry. The plan was also
thwarted by a sharp increase in the cost of crude oil due to the oil crisis of
the last 1970s. The sharp profits Mu~ noz Mar
ın envisioned became less and
less likely and nothing short of them would pay for the initial capital out-
lay the scheme required.
After Mu~ noz Mar
ın’s attempts to foster a petrochemical industry on the
island failed, he scrambled to work with U.S. lawmakers to create tax incen-
tives to attract pharmaceutical and electronics firms to the island, a venture
that was successful on a limited scale, but did not bring in the number of
jobs that the labor-intensive petrochemical strategy might have attracted.
Once the petrochemical scheme failed to materialize and unemployment
continued to climb, voters aimed their frustrations at the PDP. Since the early
1970s, the United States has had several economic ups and downs, but Puerto
Rico’s economy has not recovered. Once globalization took hold in the 1970s,
international corporations began moving manufacturing to cheaper regions of
the world, particularly to countries where no protections were in place for
workers. In these environments, corporations do not have to contend with
minimum wages, occupational safety and environmental regulations, or legis-
lation prohibiting the employment of children. Flexible trade agreements, such
as the North American Free Trade Agreement, mean that industries that
engage in these practices face no obstacles to markets. In this environment,
Puerto Rico’s relatively cheap labor cannot compete with countries where no
legal controls exist to protect workers’ basic human rights.
The gap in employment has been filled by light industry in the pharmaceuti-
cal and electronic consumer goods markets; an increase in white-collar jobs in
the financial sector, government jobs, and tourism; and a large informal econ-
omy, which includes self-employment, off-the-books labor, and crime.
108 The History of Puerto Rico

EFFECTS OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTION

The 1959 Cuban Revolution resulted in the ouster of leader Fulgencio
Batista by Marxist forces led by Fidel Castro, his brother Ra
ul, and Argen-
tine revolutionary Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara. This event had many conse-
quences for Puerto Rico.
Following the revolution, many Cuban exiles settled in Puerto Rico, bring-
ing with them new influences on art, language, food, music, and politics.
More than fifty years after the revolution, the economic devastation caused
by the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba continues to supply a steady stream of
Cuban immigrants to Puerto Rico. The embargo also serves as a reminder of
the vulnerability of small countries like Cuba in the face of the economic
power of the United States. It is not unusual for Puerto Ricans to point to
Cuba’s weak economy as an example of what might happen if Puerto Rico
does not retain its current political association with the United States.
Perhaps one of the most important consequences of the Cuban Revolu-
tion for Puerto Rico may have been the boost it gave tourism. Prior to the
revolution, Cuba was a leading destination for U.S. tourists. Its luxury
hotels and opulent casinos presented a stark contrast to the poverty that
pervaded most of the island. With completion of the Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın
International Airport in 1955, the construction of several luxury hotels
along the coastline, and the legalization of gambling all established just
prior to the 1959 revolution, Puerto Rico was poised to become the new
playground for wealthy and middle-class U.S. travelers. The strategy
worked. Today, tourism is one of Puerto Rico’s leading industries, making
up a little less than 6 percent of the gross domestic product and providing
73,000, or about one out of every 18, jobs on the island.1
In the 1960s and 1970s, younger members of the independence and labor
movements adopted the Marxist ideology of Castro and Guevara, veering
away from the pro-Catholic, pro-family rhetoric that had traditionally char-
acterized those movements. This Marxist influence seemed to subside after
the 1970s as new social movements—feminism and environmentalism—
became more prominent.

GREEN, FEMINIST, AND GAY ACTIVISTS

Beginning in the 1960s many Puerto Ricans began to question the ecolog-
ical costs of industrialization. In 1967, for example, the Episcopal Church
sponsored the formation of the influential Misi
on Industrial. Groups repre-
senting the interests of labor increasingly adopted environmentalism as
part of their agenda, calling for an end to the exploitation of Puerto Rican
resources by foreign corporations. By the late 1960s criticism from a broad
State of Transition 109

range of organizations forced the government to abandon plans to allow

foreign corporations to mine for copper in the interior sections of the
island. Similar protests were partly responsible for the government’s deci-
sion to halt the most ambitious aspects of its plans to foster petrochemical
industries in the 1970s. Today, environmental activists continue to monitor
development by industry and the tourist sector, demanding that govern-
ment prioritize safeguards for the island’s natural resources when making
decisions. One of the movement’s most pressing concerns is the prediction
by some scientists that global warming will raise sea levels and increase
the frequency and strength of hurricanes throughout the Caribbean.
During the 1960s and 1970s, cross-migration between U.S. and island-
born Puerto Ricans had a hand in island protest movements, particularly
in a radicalizing trend among the youth, who no longer looked to an older
generation for leadership, but began movements and organizations of their
own to express their concerns. Inspired by the anti-war movement on col-
lege campuses in the United States, many Puerto Rican students began pro-
testing the Vietnam War and questioning the legitimacy of the draft in
light of Puerto Rico’s political status and the inability of Puerto Ricans to
vote for the President, who determines war policy, or for a voting delega-
tion to the U.S. Congress that funds military engagements and institutes
military drafts. By the early 1970s, many young Puerto Ricans on the island
were especially inspired by the Young Lords, a political organization
started by Puerto Ricans living in New York. Though the group initially
patterned themselves after the Black Panthers, their agenda quickly
evolved to embrace a wider range of social justice concerns, particularly
issues of gender equity.
The long-dormant feminist movement re-emerged on the island in the
1970s. Prior to that, feminists had been active during the suffrage move-
ment of the 1920s and 1930s. After all women were granted the vote in
1936, pockets of feminist activists remained, many of them working to
ensure women access to birth control, while other former suffragettes took
government and nonprofit posts that allowed them to work with impover-
ished women and children, increasing access to education and health care.
However, the movement remained small and relatively silent until the
1970s, when it was rekindled by the U.S. women’s movement and dissatis-
faction among women in the labor movement over wage inequality and
other issues of equity in the workplace.
Another issue that spurred feminists to speak out was the nearly univer-
sal condemnation among both liberal and conservative Puerto Rican lead-
ers of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that made
abortion accessible on the mainland, and by law, in Puerto Rico as well.
Puerto Rican feminists found themselves the lone voice on the Left in
110 The History of Puerto Rico

support of the legalization of abortion. Also in 1973, the Puerto Rican legis-
lature enacted Law 57, which created the five-member Commission for
Women’s Affairs. The commission is charged with improving equity
through education and advocacy.
One element that has ignited the feminist movement on the island dur-
ing the past several decades has been an increasing amount of archeologi-
cal evidence that suggests that gender equity was a prominent element of
indigenous Ta
ıno culture, where women could take on leadership roles as
healers and chiefs.
Since the 1980s Puerto Rican feminists have concentrated their efforts on
increasing the number of women in political office, an endeavor that
reached fruition with the election of Sila Calder
on as mayor of San Juan in
1997 and governor in 2001. With more women than men in the workplace,
leading feminist activists and scholars continue to focus on improving con-
ditions for working women.
Inspired by the feminist and anti-war movements, gay activists became a
more visible component of Puerto Rico’s political landscape in 1974, when
a group of gay men and lesbians formed the Gay Pride Community. Their
work was especially challenging in a highly religious society where homo-
sexuality was prohibited by law until 2003.

NATIONALISM AND PUERTO RICAN PRIDE

The social unrest of the 1960s and 1970s led to a newly energized and
radicalized independence movement on the island and in the United States.
The most radical and militant activities emanated from two organizations:
the island-based Ej
ercito Popular Boricua-Macheteros (Boricua Popular Army)
and Chicago’s Fuerzas Armadas de Liberaci
on Nacional or Armed Forces of
National Liberation (ALN). Both organizations carried out bombings and
armed attacks against military, government, and corporate targets resulting
in the deaths of police, military personnel, and some civilians. After a long
investigation the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested twenty-five mem-
bers of both militant organizations in Puerto Rico and throughout the
United States in the 1980s.
Nationalism took less violent and visible forms as well. In New York
City and elsewhere, organizations like the Young Lords proclaimed a
Puerto Rican identity, protested discrimination against those living in the
U.S. colonias of New York, Chicago, New Haven, Connecticut, and New
Jersey, as well as the exploitation of Puerto Rican workers on the island by
industry and the military. Resistance to the Vietnam War played a role in
this new activism in the United States and on the island, particularly by
those who argued that Puerto Ricans should not have to fight in a war
State of Transition 111

orchestrated by a president and legislative body that they had no say in

electing. One notable act of civil disobedience took place in October 1977,
when about 25 demonstrators took over the Statue of Liberty in New York
City for several hours, hanging a Puerto Rican flag from the statue’s crown.
Additional protestors gathered below, on the grounds of Battery Park, in
support of the Statue of Liberty demonstrators. Spokesmen for both groups
said they were seeking independence for Puerto Rico, an end to discrimina-
tion against Puerto Ricans, and the release of prisoners serving terms for
the 1954 U.S. Congressional shootings.
Another offshoot of this new form of Puerto Rican nationalism was an
unprecedented interest among Puerto Rican students on and off the island
in their history and heritage. Students in New York City, Chicago, and San
Juan demanded the opportunity to enroll in classes in Ta
ıno history, as
well as the history of slavery and Afro-Puerto Rican culture, and women’s
studies. However, traditional Puerto Rican scholarship had ignored many
of these areas; some had even declared that there was nothing to study—
none of these groups had made a lasting impact on the culture or signifi-
cantly contributed to the island’s history. However, U.S. and Puerto Rican
schools agreed to hold the classes students were asking for and funds were
soon made available to pursue new research to foster the curriculum. New
research funding paved the way for a new generation of feminist, Afro-
Puerto Rican, and indigenous studies scholars to comb through previously
neglected documents. For example, from the U.S. invasion in 1898 until the
mid-1970s, much of the island’s four centuries’ worth of colonial docu-
ments under Spanish rule were housed, but never officially archived, in the
basement of the Library of Congress. Due to the efforts of influential histo-
rian Arturo Morales Carri
on, those documents were turned over to the
Puerto Rican government three decades ago and have provided Puerto
Rican scholars with a wealth of material that is still being mined, re-discov-
ered, and reinterpreted.

MIGRATION BACKLASH, 1970s–1980s

The work of groups like the Young Lords was spurred in part by a back-
lash to the large-scale Puerto Rican migration into the United States that
began in the 1940s and continued into the 1980s. According to critics,
Puerto Ricans could not assimilate into the culture, refused to speak Eng-
lish, and brought with them a culture of poverty. Their concentration in
urban centers led to crime, low educational standards, and the spread of
disease. U.S. Census data show a different story. Puerto Ricans are master-
ing English at about the same rate as past immigrant groups, with func-
tional bilingualism attained by the second generation and, typically, a
112 The History of Puerto Rico

complete loss of Spanish proficiency experienced by the third or fourth

generations. In fact, a large number of Puerto Ricans born in the United
States speak no Spanish. Puerto Rican students’ academic success is corre-
lated to economic status, with some key discrepancies. For example, Puerto
Rican students tend to outperform their peers in some academic areas, such
as their presence in honors and AP classes. In addition, income levels of
Puerto Ricans living in the States increased by 30 percent in the 1980s,
more than any other ethnic group. This success was highly correlated to
enhanced educational attainment. Teen birth rates and other health factors
are also closely aligned with economic status. In other words, poverty, not
Puerto Rican identity, is the root cause of gaps in academic and employ-
ment achievement and accounts for the figures that have often been
employed since the 1970s when social critics first started discussing the
‘‘Puerto Rican problem.’’
On the island some have expressed concern about out-migration. As edu-
cational attainment levels stagnated in the 1980s when the government
decided to stem its fiscal problems by keeping education funding flat and
cutting teachers’ salaries, some expressed concern that these policies would
intensify a ‘‘brain drain’’ of the island’s brightest, most educated, and high-
est-skilled workers, who would choose to migrate to the States in search of
higher paychecks and better educational opportunities. There seems to be
little evidence of a ‘‘brain drain’’ phenomenon in migration figures, as
Puerto Rican migrants represent a cross-section of the population and their
education and professional skills are nearly identical to the overall popula-
tion. However, some professionals are over-represented in migrant num-
bers, including nurses and engineers.

TWO MORE PLEBISCITES, 1993 AND 1998

Like Puerto Ricans on and off the island, the U.S. courts have spent sev-
eral decades trying to determine exactly what Freely Associated State/
Commonwealth status means in the lives of everyday Puerto Ricans and in
the island’s legal relationship with the United States. In 1980, for example,
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress could treat Puerto Rico differ-
ently than a state. In 1987, the First Circuit Court of Appeals stated that
Puerto Rico is a sovereign entity, separate from the United States. In 1993,
the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals seemed to rule the opposite. The
Puerto Rican people seem equally confused, or perhaps frustrated, as evi-
denced in the last two plebiscites.
In 1993 the pro-statehood governor held a plebiscite that rendered mixed
results: 48.8 percent voted for ‘‘improved’’ Commonwealth status, 46.2 per-
cent for statehood, and 4.4 percent for independence. With no one option
State of Transition 113

garnering more than 50 percent of the vote, there was no clear consensus
among voters for leaders to advocate to Congress. A change toward some
irrevocable path, such as independence or statehood, many argued, should
not be undertaken until a nearly unanimous agreement was reached.
In 1998, the pro-statehood leaders in power thought they could garner
such an agreement on the statehood path. The results of the 1998 plebiscite
were even more ambiguous than the 1993 vote: 50.3 percent of voters chose
‘‘None of the Above’’; 46.5 percent voted for statehood; 2.5 percent for in-
dependence; 0.1 percent for Commonwealth status; and 0.3 percent for free
association.
Some journalists and political pundits theorized that the mixed results
were a way for the electorate to express its frustrations with the New Pro-
gressive administration’s attempts to privatize public services such as the
state-owned telephone company, which had prompted widespread strikes
and pro-labor demonstrations in 1997 to 1998.
This page intentionally left blank
 8
Puerto Rico Today (1999–2009)

NONE OF THE ABOVE

The 1998 Plebiscite offered voters five choices arrayed in the following
order: (1) territorial commonwealth, (2) free association, (3) statehood,
(4) independence, and (5) none of the above (though none of the preceding
would be a better translation of the wording). Over 50 percent of voters
opted for choice number 5.
The cultural and political fallout from the 1998 Plebiscite is still the talk
of the Puerto Rican community on and off the island. In conversation,
many Puerto Ricans proudly claim that this is the option they chose. Politi-
cal analysts have argued that voting for the option was a way of maintain-
ing the status quo, but it could just as easily be seen as a way of
questioning the plebiscite and the officials who administered it. It can also
be interpreted as a way for Puerto Rican voters to question the U.S.
governmental mechanisms surrounding island governance, including U.S.
government officials who had stated prior to the vote that they would do
nothing to facilitate statehood if that were the option selected by the major-
ity. In addition, the fifth option, ‘‘ninguna de las anteriores’’ does not quite
translate as ‘‘none of the above’’ but rather closer to ‘‘none of what has
116 The History of Puerto Rico

come before.’’ Clearly, the pro-statehood politicians who had drafted the
wording and presentation of the ballot meant to communicate that this was
the choice for those voters who were not satisfied with any of the choices
enumerated before, but the voters may have taken this to mean—or chosen
to interpret it to mean—none of the political solutions that have come
before in the island’s history.
A commonly stated phrase among Puerto Ricans is that in his heart ev-
ery Puerto Rican desires independence but in his brain and for the good of
his wallet he wants some form of continued association with the United
States. It is a joke, told with a smile, but often it is followed up by a
caveat—that the form of association must allow the Puerto Rican to retain
his dignity. An increasing number of Puerto Ricans are said to be unhappy
with the current state of the government arrangement with the United
States; however, at least 90 percent of Puerto Ricans say that any future
form of government must allow them to retain U.S. citizenship.

CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
Life expectancy increased from 46 in the 1940s to 75 by 1990 and over 78
in 2009. Infant mortality rates improved and the birth rate has dropped as
people are having smaller families and waiting longer to start them.
Though the island has seen a substantial increase in the number of high
school graduates, the graduation rate was only 50 percent by 1990 and 66
percent in 2006. Just over 20 percent of the population had college degrees
by the 1990s, while less than 2 percent were college educated in 1950.
Though education has improved, education rates still lag behind more
highly developed economies.1
In surveys most young Puerto Ricans see themselves as Puerto Rican first
and U.S. citizens second. Popular and youth culture share as much, if not
more, in common with the cultures of other Caribbean and Latin American
populations as they do with U.S. youth or pop culture. This is also true in
areas of traditional culture, dance, music, painting, sculpture, poetry and
many forms of literature. All of these forms illustrate a pastiche of African,
European, Amerindian, Caribbean, and U.S. influences to create a culture
that is uniquely contemporary and uniquely Puerto Rican. U.S. cultural
influences are most obvious in hip hop and consumer culture, such as fash-
ion and beauty. Even in these forms of endeavor, Puerto Ricans tend to
imprint their own identity onto new forms. In turn, Puerto Ricans’ inven-
tions and accommodations influence wider consumer culture, from music
to fashion to film.
The traditional marker for Puerto Ricanness, Spanish, is evolving, as edu-
cation levels improve and more young Puerto Ricans are becoming
Puerto Rico Today 117

proficient in both Spanish and English. Circular migration (migration back

and forth to the United States) has contributed to this bilingualism. It has
been argued that the younger generations on the island are almost as likely
to employ Spanglish (a combination of English and Spanish via a process
sometimes called ‘‘code-switching’’) as Puerto Ricans born and/or raised
in the United States. This code-switching between English and Spanish has
long been a hallmark of Puerto Rican literature produced in the States, but
is now beginning to be seen in music lyrics and literature produced by
artists and writers living on the island as well. Many young Puerto Ricans
describe themselves as hybrids, negotiating a space between Latin Ameri-
can and Anglo-American cultures, just as past Puerto Rican artists and cul-
tural agents blended Hispanic, African, and Amerindian traditions into a
new culture that is uniquely Puerto Rican.

TA
INO CULTURE
The emergence of evidence supporting the continued influence of the
Ta
ıno and Carib cultures in the lives of modern-day Puerto Ricans has cre-
ated pride as well as controversy. Many Puerto Ricans think of themselves
as a mix of cultures and ethnicities—primarily Spanish, African, and Ta
ıno.
However, some have argued that Ta
ıno inheritance is minimal and the
Puerto Rican tendency to embrace this heritage is a way of negating more
probable African ancestry. Conversely, others have argued that negating
Ta
ıno-Carib cultural and hereditary presence is a way of attempting to
sever Puerto Ricans’ connection to their land, their cultural inheritance,
and their claims of sovereignty.
There are several regional tribal groups who claim direct lineage to Ta
ıno
and Carib ancestors, including several bands, many unrecognized by the
government. The United Confederation of Ta
ıno People, which is recog-
nized by the U.S. government, works in association with local Ta
ıno com-
munities on the island as well as some tribal bands that have formed on
the mainland, notably in New Jersey. Since 2000, Ta
ıno communities have
occasionally had disputes with the government, particularly over the dis-
play of human remains at archeological sites that are open to tourists.
Tribal bands have also negotiated to maintain continued access to excava-
tion sites, such as ball courts and villages, during research and construction
projects so that they can perform rituals that honor their ancestors. Tribal
leaders have advocated that U.S. federal legislation guiding American
Indian research, such as the Native American Graves Protection and Repa-
triation Act, be recognized and adhered to by the Puerto Rican government
and leading educational and cultural institutions.
118 The History of Puerto Rico

Despite such controversies, most Puerto Ricans have welcomed each new
discovery made by scholars about the history of the Ta
ıno and their contin-
ued cultural relevance, and are hungry to learn more. Reclaiming and cele-
brating Ta
ıno culture has become an increasingly important part of Puerto
Rican identity, with a growing tendency among Puerto Ricans on and off
the island to refer to themselves, according to Ta
ıno custom, as Boriquas or
Borinquenos.

ECONOMY
Puerto Rico is considered a middle-income country, according to the
World Bank. Though manufacturing jobs have migrated to regions with
even cheaper labor and fewer protections for workers, the Puerto Rican
economy has been bolstered by an informal economy that includes off-
the-books labor, social welfare, credit card debt, and crime, which some
economists theorize makes up nearly one-third of the income on the island.
This informal income makes it possible for Puerto Ricans on the island to
continue to fulfill their consumer aspirations. The role of culture consumer
has in turn forged identity, particularly in the younger generation. From
this perspective, Puerto Ricans have been successfully ‘‘Americanized’’ in
that they are, according to many economic indicators, just as addicted to
shopping and credit card debt as consumers of all ethnic backgrounds
living in the States.
Puerto Ricans on and off the island are still grappling with the legacy of
racial stratification that took hold of the country during the nineteenth cen-
tury. There are large disparities in wealth, with about 50 percent of the
population living below the poverty level. The government is the largest
employer on the island and the average income is about one-third as high
as the average U.S. income and 75 percent of the income earned by Puerto
Ricans living in the United States. However, the median standard of living
is higher in Puerto Rico than in many other countries in Latin America and
the Caribbean.
In the 1940s two-thirds of the island’s population lived in rural areas
and nearly half of the population worked in agriculture. By the late 1990s
two-thirds of the population lived in urban areas and less than 4 percent of
the workforce worked in agriculture. Today, more than half the job market
is white collar, although one-third of the jobs are contingent—temporary or
part-time. Because the population on the island has more than tripled since
1900, unemployment rates would be much higher without continued large-
scale migration to the United States. It is estimated that there are as many,
if not more Puerto Ricans living in the States than on the island. However,
the number may be even greater depending on how one counts ‘‘Puerto
Puerto Rico Today 119

Ricans’’—those who were born on the island or whose parents were born
on the island; if one counts as Puerto Ricans anyone of Puerto Rican
descent then the number of ‘‘Puerto Ricans’’ living off the island is
higher—about 4 million according to the 2000 Census. The effect of migra-
tion to the States has been balanced by migration of Puerto Ricans back to
the island. In some cases these in-migrations are native-born Puerto Ricans
who stay in the States for two to three years or less, while in other cases
Puerto Ricans whose parents or ancestors are from the island are returning
to work or retire. This migration pattern is called circular migration, which
Puerto Ricans sometimes refer to as el vaiven or ‘‘the coming and going.’’
In addition, the island has become a destination for immigrants from other
countries, especially from the Dominican Republic. Over 9 percent of the
population on the island was born in another country.

CIRCULAR MIGRATION AND DIASPORA

Just under 4 million people live on the island, with another 3.4 million
Puerto Ricans living in the United States, according to the 2000 U.S. Cen-
sus. These numbers are not expected to increase significantly by 2010.
However, within this population each decade more than 300,000 Puerto
Ricans leave the island and settle in the United States, while just over
200,000 have tended to return from the United States to reside on the
island. The numbers have varied slightly over the past two decades, but
are generally consistent, so that in the 1990s, Puerto Rico experienced a net
migration of just over 110,000 with a similar number projected for the years
2000 to 2010.
Puerto Ricans who return to the island after years spent in the United
States affect the culture as well as the economy. Though many of these
‘‘immigrants’’ are returning to the island after leaving to work in the
United States for years, sometimes decades, others are the descendents of
island-born Puerto Ricans. Born in the United States, many have never
lived on the island before. These Puerto Ricans bring their cultural influen-
ces with them, from Spanglish to music to cuisine.
One of the most prominent examples of the cultural and artistic give-
and-take created by Puerto Rico’s cross-migration pattern can be found in
the realm of music. Though the origins of salsa music are hard to pin
down, some of the genre’s most prominent and innovative artists have
been Puerto Ricans living in the U.S. Diaspora, particularly in New York
City. Combining elements of traditional Cuban music and Afro-Puerto
Rican bomba and plena with touches of African American jazz, salsa
emerged in the mid-twentieth century as a musical tradition largely engi-
neered in the United States and adopted by Puerto Ricans on the island,
120 The History of Puerto Rico

where artists added their own touches, which were, in turn, taken up by
U.S.-based artists, and so on.
The same pattern has been seen in the evolution of Puerto Rican hip
hop, reggaeton, and other contemporary music genres. In fact, it may be
misleading to speak of ‘‘Puerto Rican hip hop’’ since the emergence of hip
hop and rap in the 1970s came out of New York neighborhoods where
African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans lived side by side and
where Caribbean-imported reggae, particularly the practice of ‘‘toasting’’ or
speaking over rhythmic music, had a transformational influence on African
American musicians and disc jockeys.
Similar examples of cross-cultural influence can be found in other art
forms, such as literature, or in such contemporary cultural phenomenon as
fashion.

VIEQUES
On April 19, 1999 a civilian guard, David Sanes, was killed during mili-
tary exercises held at the U.S. Navy base on Vieques. For years local fisher-
men and other islanders had protested the presence of the base on the
island, and in the wake of Sanes’ death, local citizens’ protests were soon
joined by Puerto Ricans from throughout the island and then by Puerto
Ricans in the States. A coalition of groups held rallies, marches, and strikes.
Hundreds of civilians built camps on beaches that were property of the
Navy. Over the next year, thousands came to visit the camps and show
their support for the protesters and the people of Vieques. Residents
pointed to a history of health problems that they said were caused by
materials used in weapons testing. They demanded that the Navy leave
Vieques or at least stop exercises and weapons testing. President Bill
Clinton offered a compromise—a referendum on the issue would be held
on the island in 2000 and if a majority of the people of Vieques voted for a
termination of operations, the Navy would leave by 2003. In the meantime,
the protestors would be removed and weapons tests using conventional
payloads would be held for only 90 days each year until the base was
closed. Though the Puerto Rican government in San Juan agreed to these
terms, the demonstrators were not satisfied with the referendum’s two
options. Protests continued, including large-scale marches in Puerto Rico
and the United States—some reaching attendance of up to 150,000 by some
estimates—and visits to the campsites by thousands more, including Puerto
Rican celebrities like actors Edward James Olmos and Rosie Perez.
In 2003 the Navy halted operations on Vieques and the base was closed
in 2004. The U.S. government designated the property formerly owned by
the Navy as a natural preserve and the island is now a popular tourist
Puerto Rico Today 121

destination, known for its bioluminescent bays (the presence of organisms

in the water that appear to glow at night).

PUERTO RICO SUCCUMBS TO THE WORLDWIDE RECESSION

The worldwide recession has had devastating results for Puerto Rico,
where economic growth was stagnant in 2006 and the overall economy
actually contracted in 2007, 2008, and the beginning of 2009. As the interna-
tional debt crisis continued to play out in the world financial markets, the
island contended with its own debt crisis, which was exacerbated by rising
unemployment figures, a government budgetary deficit, and high rates of
personal debt, as well as billions of dollars in government debt, all of
which led to a sinking bond rating, making it more difficult to find cred-
itors willing to back debt. In response, the island’s newly elected New Pro-
gressive governor, Luis Guillermo Fortu~ no-Burset, implemented an
austerity package that included large layoffs of government workers,
prompting widespread demonstrations. The governor also proposed tax
increases and the creation of a new type of government bond that he
hoped would attract investors and alleviate the government’s interest pay-
ments on its debt. As this book was heading to press, Fortu~ no-Burset
seemed to have enticed at least some mutual funds into considering pur-
chase of his bonded debt instrument.2

THE PRESIDENT’S TASK FORCE ON PUERTO RICO’S STATUS

In 1992, President George H. W. Bush ordered that all governmental
departments should treat Puerto Rico as a state unless doing so would dis-
rupt programs and operations. In 2000 President Clinton established a Task
Force to identify options for Puerto Rico’s future status. By 2003, President
George W. Bush ordered the Task Force to issue reports every two years,
the most recent in 2007. The Task Force reiterated previous findings that
limited Puerto Rico’s options to its current territorial status, statehood, or
independence. The analysis of the constitutional options seemed to negate
PDP claims that the current Commonwealth status represents a mutually
agreed-on governance by mutual consent. However, it seemed to suggest
that Puerto Rico could opt for a form of independence, called freely associ-
ated statehood that would allow Puerto Ricans to retain their U.S. citizen-
ship and the U.S. military to provide security for the island. Interestingly,
despite the use of the term Estado Libre Asociado to describe the current
Commonwealth status, according to the Task Force report, Puerto Rico is
not actually one of the countries that officially has this status. If Puerto
Ricans opted for this status, they would need to understand that it is a
122 The History of Puerto Rico

form of independence and can be terminated unilaterally by the United

States at any time.
The Task Force recommended holding a series of plebiscites in the com-
ing years to make sure the options are clear to voters. For example, the first
plebiscite would simply ask voters if they did or did not want to continue
being governed under the current Commonwealth status. If the voters
chose to change their status, the second plebiscite would ask voters to
choose between statehood and independence. If they selected independ-
ence, then a third plebiscite would allow voters to select from a range of
options, including an actual, legally sanctioned freely associated state. Even
if voters chose to retain the Commonwealth condition, the Task Force urges
the government to continue holding plebiscites periodically until the issue
is ‘‘solved.’’ Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner Pedro Pierluisi seemed
to be following the recommendations of the Presidential Task Force to the
letter when he submitted the Puerto Rico Democracy Act of 2009 (H.R.
2499) to Congress in May 2009. The bill called for a plebiscite that would
contain two options for Puerto Rican voters—remaining under the island’s
present commonwealth status or opting for a follow-up plebiscite with a
range of governance options, ranging from statehood to independence. The
pro-statehood New Progressive party favors the bill, while the pro-
commonwealth and pro-independence parties have voiced opposition to it.
In June 2009, the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources held hear-
ings on the bill with Governor Fortu~ no and other Puerto Rican leaders as
featured speakers. In July, the committee approved the bill and sent it to
the U.S. House of Representatives for a full vote. At the time this book was
going to press a majority of U.S. Congressmen and Senators reportedly
favored the bill.3
 Notable People in the History
of Puerto Rico

Ralph Abercromby (1734–1801)—British general who attempted to capture

the island in 1796.

Agueybana (?–1510)—Ta
ıno chief who served as battle commander in the

Ta
ıno Uprising of 1510 and was killed in battle before his force’s ultimate
defeat by Governor Juan Ponce de Le

on.

Pedro Albizu Campos (1893–1965)—Harvard-educated lawyer, World

War I veteran, president of the Nationalist party, and the island’s most
famous independence activist and revolutionary spokesman.

Pope Alexander VI (1431–1503)—Declared that any future discoveries in

the New World (the Americas) were Spain’s by divine right.

Charles Herbert Allen (1848–1934)—Puerto Rico’s first U.S. civilian

governor.

Jos
e Celso Barbosa (1857–1921)—An Afro-Puerto Rican doctor and foun-

der of the first pro-statehood party after U.S. occupation, whose enthusiasm
for the United States was based in large part on his admiration for Abraham
Lincoln.
124 Notable People in the History of Puerto Rico

Antonio R. Barcel
o (1868–1938)—Founder of the Federal party, later the

Union and Alliance parties, both of which he led. After a dispute with Luis
Mu~noz Mar
ın over the nature of Puerto Rico’s possible autonomous relation-
ship with the United States, Barcel
noz Mar
ın from the Alliance
o expelled Mu~
party and Mu~ noz Mar
ın founded the present-day Popular Democratic Party.

Segundo Ruiz Belvis (1829–1867)—Abolitionist and one of the organizers

of the 1868 Grito de Lares uprising.

Ram
on E. Betances (1827–1898)—Abolitionist, physician, nationalist, orga-

nizer of the 1868 Grito de Lares uprising, and author of the Ten Command-
ments of Free Men.

John R. Brooke (1838–1926)—U.S. general who in 1898 became Puerto

Rico’s first governor under U.S. military occupation.

Julia de Burgos (1917–1953)—Puerto Rican poet and independence activist.

e Campeche (1751–1809)—Painter, famous for his religious works and

Jos

portraiture, particularly of important members of Puerto Rico’s eighteenth-
century elite.

Bartolom
e de las Casas (1484–1566)—Catholic priest famous for describing

atrocities committed against the Ta
ıno and Carib people by the Spanish in A
Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and other documents.

Ram
on de Castro y Gutierrez (Governor from 1795–1804)—Spanish gen-

eral and governor of Puerto Rico who successfully led an outnumbered force
consisting of Spanish soldiers and native volunteers to defend the island
against the British forces of General Ralph Abercromby in 1796.

Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558)—Son of Queen Juana of

Castile and grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella I, whose reign united the king-
doms of Aragon and Castile into a geographic entity resembling modern-day
Spain and witnessed the expansion of Spain’s colonization of the Americas.

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972)—Professional baseball player and humani-

tarian who died in a plane crash while attempting to deliver medial supplies
to Nicaragua.

George Clifford, the Earl of Cumberland (1558–1605)—English admiral

who invaded Puerto Rico in 1598.

Roberto Cofres
ı y Ram
ırez de Arellano (1791–1825)—Pirate who started

out as a Spanish patriot attacking U.S. and British ships, but later favored
independence and attacked Spanish ships as well until he was captured and
executed.
Notable People in the History of Puerto Rico 125

Christopher Columbus (1451–1506)—Italian explorer voyaged to the

Americas under the flag of Castile (one of the kingdoms of Spain); he is often
credited with ‘‘discovering America.’’ Born Genoese Cristoforo Colombo, he
was called Crist

obal Col

on by the Spanish.

Diego Columbus (1479/80?–1526)—Son of Christopher Columbus who

spent much of his life trying to hold the Spanish monarchs to the agreements
that were made with his father, which would have given his family significant
control over the Americas. He served as governor of Spain’s Caribbean hold-
ings, including Puerto Rico, in the early 1500s and was a political enemy of
Puerto Rico’s first governor Juan Ponce de Le
on.

Sir Francis Drake (1540–1596)—Considered a pirate by the Spanish and a

hero by the English, he attempted to invade Puerto Rico in 1595.
Ferdinand II (1452–1516)—King of Aragon and co-ruler with his wife, Isabel
I, of the Iberian nation that would become unified Spain under their grandson
Charles. He ruled during the time that Christopher Columbus first encountered
Puerto Rico in 1493 and during much of its early colonization.

Luis A. Ferr
e (1904–2003)—Governor of Puerto Rico from 1969 to 1973 and

leader of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party.
Luis Guillermo Fortu~ no-Burset—Former Resident Commissioner and
ninth elected Governor since the establishment of Puerto Rico’s Common-
wealth status. Since becoming governor in January 2009, Fortu~ no-Burset, a
member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, has testified on behalf
of the Puerto Rico Democracy Act, a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives
that would institute a fourth island-wide plebiscite on Puerto Rico’s status,
and instituted controversial measures to curb government spending in
response to the worldwide credit crisis.
Boudewijn Hendriksz—Dutch commander who attempted to capture
Puerto Rico in 1625.
Docoudray Holstein (1763–1839)—A German national who fought in
Sim
on Bol
ıvar’s wars to evict Spain from Latin America until the two had a
falling out. In 1822 Holstein attempted to lead an elaborate attack on Puerto
Rico that he hoped would spur a large-scale uprising and simultaneous slave
revolts with the objective of ousting the Spanish. His plot was discovered as
he was sailing toward Puerto Rico and he and about 400 fellow would-be rev-
olutionaries, most of them from the United States, were arrested in Curacao.

Isabella I (1451–1504)—Queen of Castile and co-ruler with her husband

Ferdinand II of the Iberian nation that would become unified Spain under
126 Notable People in the History of Puerto Rico

their grandson Charles. She ruled during the time that Christopher Columbus
first encountered Puerto Rico in 1493.

Juana I (1479–1555)—Queen of Castile, daughter of King Ferdinand and

Queen Isabella, she was accused of insanity and spent much of her adult life
in a power struggle with her father. Her son Charles, the Holy Roman Em-
peror, united Aragon and Castile as well as other provinces under his reign,
making him the first sovereign to rule over the region typically thought of as
‘‘Spain.’’ She is sometimes referred to as ‘‘La Loca’’ or ‘‘the mad one.’’

Manuel Mac
ıas y Casado (1845–1937)—Last Spanish governor of Puerto

Rico; as general he led the troops that surrendered to the U.S. forces during
the Spanish-American War.

William McKinley (1843–1901)—President of the United States during the

Spanish-American War.

Nelson Miles (1839–1925)—General who led the U.S. invasion during the
Spanish-American War and captured Puerto Rico.

Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın (1898–1980)—First democratically elected governor of

Puerto Rico, primary author of the constitution that established the island’s
current commonwealth form of government, founder of the pro-common-
wealth Popular Democratic Party, and architect of Operation Bootstrap, the
economic program that transformed the island from an agricultural to an
industrial economy in the mid-twentieth century.
Luis Mu~ noz Rivera (1859–1916)—Puerto Rico’s most prominent advocate
for independence during the waning years of Spanish colonialism and the
early years of U.S. occupation.

Alejandro O’Reilly (1722–1794)—Special Envoy of the Spanish King who

conducted a detailed census of the island in 1765.

Nicolas de Ovando (1460–1518)—Territorial governor of the Indies (the por-

tion of the Caribbean Islands that had been discovered by the Spanish in the
early sixteenth century), known for his brutal treatment of indigenous people,
particularly on Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

Genara Pagin (?–1963)—A Puerto Rican suffragist and labor activist who
worked as a garment worker in New York City. After the 19th Amendment
was passed, she traveled to Puerto Rico and attempted to vote in the 1920 elec-
tion, claiming that if she had the right to vote as a U.S. citizen in the United
States, then she should also have the right to vote in the U.S. territory
of Puerto Rico. The U.S. Department of Interior ruled that she did not have
this right.
Notable People in the History of Puerto Rico 127

Juan de la Pezuela y Caballos (1809–1906)—Spanish governor who issued

the 1849 law of libreta or Reglamento de Jornaleros (Workers’ Regulations),
which required all farm workers to carry a passbook to prove that they were
employed by a large landowner.

Jes
nero (1897–1952)—First Puerto Rican appointed governor.

us T. Pi~

Juan Ponce de Le
on (1474–1521)—Puerto Rico’s first governor, he was the

first European to voyage to Florida, where he was killed by the Calusa people.

Ram
on Power y Giralt (1775–1813)—Abolitionist and Puerto Rican dele-

gate to the Spanish Parliament in 1810, he was elected vice president of Parlia-
ment and played a substantial role in the composition of the first Spanish
Constitution in 1812.

Juan Prim (1814–1870)—Governor of Puerto Rico and author of the Black

Code, which encouraged the abusive treatment of slaves and free blacks as
well. He later went on to earn fame and multiple titles for his involvement in
numerous wars and court intrigues in Spain.

Montgomery Reily (1866–1954)—U.S. civilian governor to Puerto Rico

(1921–1923) who the legislature tried to impeach. He declared speech in favor
of independence and the bearing of the Puerto Rican flag to be acts of treason
because they advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government, reasoning that
would be used in the decades to come by later governors to silence dissent.

Francis E. Riggs—Unpopular police commissioner assassinated in 1936; his

death resulted in a crackdown on pro-independence activists and island-wide
unrest.

Manuel Rojas (1820–?)—One of the leaders of the 1868 Grito de Lares

uprising.

Carlos Romero Barcel
o (1932–)—Two-term governor who is credited with

redefining and strengthening the pro-statehood New Progressive Party.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (1887–1934)—Popular U.S. civilian governor who

tried to raise money from the public and private sector to alleviate Puerto
Rico’s economic crisis in the early 1930s.

Arturo A. Schomburg (1874–1938)—Born in Puerto Rico, he became a fol-

lower of African separatist Marcus Garvey and a member of the Revolution-
ary Committee of Puerto Rico after moving to New York City. His vast
collection of papers and artifacts relating to Africans and members of the
African Diaspora became the cornerstone of the archives now kept at the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.
128 Notable People in the History of Puerto Rico

Miguel de la Torre (1783–1843)—Governor from 1823 to 1837, whose auto-

cratic style made him unpopular with the Puerto Rican people.

Rexford Guy Tugwell (1891–1979)—Last non-Puerto Rican appointed gov-

ernor; he formed a partnership with then-president of the legislature Luis
Mu~ noz Mar
ın to make sweeping changes in the island’s social and economic
institutions.

Urayo
an—Ta
ıno chief involved in the ultimately devastating Ta
ıno Upris-

ing of 1510, which killed as many as 200 settlers before its leaders were
defeated by Governor Juan Ponce de Le
on.

Blanton Winship (1869–1947)—U.S. civil governor who implemented a

strict law-and-order approach to the growing independence and labor activ-
ism of the 1930s.
 Glossary of Selected Terms

AUTONOMIC CHARTER—An agreement between Spain and Puerto Rico

signed in 1897 that was designed to place Puerto Rico on the road toward
autonomy. It created a democratically elected legislature, independent
judiciary, and the power to negotiate trade agreements and alter the
nature of the relationship with Spain at any time, making it far more
autonomous by many measures than Puerto Rico’s current relationship
with the United States.
BANDA CONTRA LA RAZA AFRICANA—Often called the Black Code,
Governor Juan Prim created this set of rules in 1848 that decimated the
human rights of both slaves and free blacks on the island and indemni-
fied whites in confrontations with Afro-Puerto Ricans. Its stated purpose
was to prevent slave uprisings and conspiracies.
BATEY—Court on which the indigenous Ta
ıno people played a game using
a rubber ball. This ball game was the centerpiece of inter-community fes-
tivals called areytos.
BEHIQUE—Ta
ıno (indigenous Puerto Rican) healer or shaman, could be
male or a post-menopausal female.
BOHIO—House of Ta
ıno (indigenous Puerto Rican) laborers; a term that is
still used to describe a simple rural dwelling in some parts of the island.
130 Glossary of Selected Terms

BORINQUEN—The name used by the indigenous Ta
ınos for Puerto Rico

that is still used (with a multitude of spelling variations) by many con-
temporary Puerto Ricans when referring to the island. It means ‘‘Land of
the Noble Lord.’’
CACICAZGOS—Communities or villages inhabited by the Ta
ıno, the indig-
enous people of Puerto Rico.
CACIQUE—Ta
ıno (indigenous Puerto Rican) chief, both men and women
could hold this title.
CANEY—The house of a Ta
ıno (indigenous Puerto Rican) chief and his or
her family.
CARIB—Also called the Kalinago or Island-Carib, this warrior community
from South America’s Orinoco River basin were at war with the Ta
ıno
when the Spaniards arrived in the late 1490s. Later they formed an alli-
ance with the Ta
ıno in an effort to expel the Spanish from Puerto Rico
and the rest of the Caribbean.
CASSAVA—This root vegetable, also called manioc or yucca, was the sta-
ple food of the Ta
ıno, who inhabited Puerto Rico prior to the arrival of
the Spanish.


CEDULA DE GRACIAS (WARRANT OF OPPORTUNITY)—This 1815
decree granted free land and tax exemptions to new settlers and was
designed to encourage immigration to Puerto Rico.
CHARDON PLAN—A plan devised in the mid-1930s by economist Carlos
Chardon, Governor Rexford Tugwell, and Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın to reorient the
Puerto Rican economy away from large industrial farms toward smaller
family farms, and to diversify industrial endeavors based on local resources.
COLONIAS—Colonies, used to describe Puerto Rican enclaves in U.S. cities,
such as New York, Chicago, and Boston.
CONQUISTADORES—Spanish settlers, literally ‘‘conquerors.’’
CORTES—Spanish parliament.
CRIOLLO—Native-born Puerto Rican. In Spanish this term is also used to
refer to anyone born in the Americas. It does not have the same meaning
as the word ‘‘creole’’ has in formerly French colonial regions of the
Americas.


EJERCITO POPULAR BORICUA-MACHETEROS—Militant island-based
nationalist organization that orchestrated bombings and other violent
forms of resistance in the 1970s.
ENCOMIENDO—A parcel of land given to a Spanish settler by decree of
the king or queen.
Glossary of Selected Terms 131

FORAKER ACT—These guidelines enacted in 1900 by the U.S. Congress

replaced U.S. military occupation with a government largely presided
over by U.S. civilians appointed by the President, approved by the Con-
gress, with bureaucratic oversight provided by various divisions of the
War Department and limited local input provided by a democratically
elected lower legislative chamber.
FUERZAS ARMADAS DE LIBERACION
NACIONAL (FALN; ARMED
FORCES OF NATIONAL LIBERATION)—Chicago-based militant pro-
independence organization that staged bombings and other forms of vio-
lent insurgent activities in the 1970s.
GAG LAW—Adopted in 1947, it prohibited anyone from advocating the
violent overthrow of the U.S. government by arguing for Puerto Rican in-
dependence or displaying a Puerto Rican flag.
GRITO DE LARES—Translated as the ‘‘shout at Lares,’’ was an uprising in
1868 in which approximately 600 men and women took up arms against
the Spanish colonial government in the town of Lares and declared
Puerto Rico a republic.
GUANAHATABEYES—A pre-ceramic people who inhabited Puerto Rico
about 4,000 years ago; their descendents were still living in the Caribbean
Islands when the Spanish arrived, nearly 3,500 years after their first
appearance in the region.
HIDALGOS—Low-ranking Spanish nobles who made up the bulk of the
early settlers to Puerto Rico and other Spanish colonies in the Americas.
IBERIAN PENINSULA—The section of Europe currently comprised of the
nations of Portugal and Spain.
IGNERI—An indigenous Caribbean people, who made up the majority of
the brides captured by the mobile Carib warrior culture prior to the ar-
rival of the Spanish. The women and children of the remaining Carib
tribes still speak the Igneri language, which is believed to be closely
related to the Ta
ıno.
INSTITUTO CULTURA DE PUERTORRIQUENA—Institute ~ created to
focus on the Spanish, Ta
ıno, and African heritage of the Puerto Rican peo-
ple in 1955; its first director was historian Ricardo E. Alegr
ıa, famous for
his study of the Ta
ıno.


JIBARO—Mountain peasant or farm worker; a national symbol of pride
once used by the Popular Democratic Party as its emblem.
JONES ACT—This set of provisions enacted by Congress in 1916 expanded
on the Foraker Act, allowing Puerto Rico slightly more control over local
government and granting U.S. citizenship to its inhabitants.
132 Glossary of Selected Terms

LAW OF LIBRETA—Popular name for the Reglamento de Jornaleros

(Workers’ Regulations) that required all rural residents who did not have
large amounts of property to work for wealthier landowners and to carry
a passbook with them at all times to prove that they were employed.
LAWS OF THE BURGOS—Queen Juana of Castile announced this set of
rules in 1512. Designed to curb the brutal treatment of the indigenous
peoples of the Americas by the Spanish, they were largely ignored.
MESTIZO—Term typically referring to someone of European and Amerin-
dian ancestry; this Spanish adjective is also sometimes used to describe
persons of any and all mixed-race heritage.
MONA PASSAGE—Portion of the Caribbean Ocean separating Puerto Rico
and Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
MULATO—Someone of European and African or sometimes Amerindian
and African ancestry; it does not necessarily have the same negative con-
notations that the word ‘‘mulatto’’ has in English.


NABORIAS—Labor class of the Ta
ıno, the indigenous people of Puerto
Rico.
NATIONALIST INSURRECTION OF 1950—A series of violent uprisings
intended to disrupt the formation of the Estado Libre Asociado (Common-
wealth) by pro-independence activists, including assassination attempts
on Governor Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın, President Harry Truman, and attacks on
at least seven Puerto Rican towns.
NEW PROGRESSIVE PARTY (PARTIDO NUEVO PROGRESISTA OR
PNP)—Pro-statehood party that has rivaled the Popular Democratic Party
in popularity since the late 1960s.


NITAINOS—Ruling

class of the TaOno, the indigenous people of Puerto
Rico.
NUYORICAN—Members of the Puerto Rican Diaspora who live in or near
New York City. Coined by poets and activists in the El Barrio section of
New York in the 1960s and 1970s and used with pride by those who fit this
cultural definition; it is also sometimes used with some derision as a term
to refer to all U.S. Puerto Ricans by Puerto Ricans living on the island,
though most often there is an element of humor and/or affection intended.
OPERATION BOOTSTRAP (OPERACION
MANOS A LAS OBRA)—
Policy implemented by Governor Mu~ noz Mar
ın and the Popular Demo-
cratic Party to attract foreign industrial investment in the island.
PENINSULARES—Spanish-born settlers to Puerto Rico, particularly those
who arrived in the nineteenth century. The term was also sometimes
applied to any recent immigrants from Europe or the British Islands.
Glossary of Selected Terms 133

PLEBISCITE—Referendums on Puerto Rico’s status that typically offer vot-

ers a choice between statehood, independence, and some form of mutual
association or Commonwealth status; there have been three since 1967, all
of them calling for Commonwealth status or some unspecified option not
expressly articulated.
PONCE MASSACRE—Shooting incident at a planned 1937 Nationalist
(pro-independence) Party march in Ponce that resulted in 19 deaths and
100 people wounded.
POPULAR DEMOCRATIC PARTY (PDP IN ENGLISH, PARTIDO POP-
ULAR DEMOCRATICO
OR PPD IN SPANISH)—Founded by Puerto
Rico’s first democratically elected governor, Luis Mu~ noz Mar
ın this party
presided over the formulation of the island’s Constitution and formulated
its present governance system, the Estado Libre Asociado (Freely Associated
State or Commonwealth).
PUERTO RICAN INDEPENDENCE PARTY (PARTIDO INDEPENDEN-
TISTA PUERTORRIQUENO ~ OR PIP)—Officially approved independ-
ence party that has garnered few votes in island-wide elections; does not
include outlawed parties and organizations that favor independence.
PRE-CONTACT—The era prior to the arrival of Europeans in the
Americas.
PUERTO RICO EMERGENCY RELIEF ADMINISTRATION (PRERA)—
An initiative aimed at rebuilding the Puerto Rican economy; it was a
component of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
REGLAMENTO DE ESCLAVOS (SLAVE REGULATIONS)—The first set
of regulations in 1789 was designed to protect slaves from the brutality of
owners, while the second set of regulations, decreed in 1826 by autocratic
Governor Miguel de la Torre, was designed to encourage slave owners to
use austere tactics, including brutal corporal punishment, to prevent slave
revolts.
REPARTIMIENDO—Isabella I of Castile first ordered this apportionment or
distribution of the Ta
ıno into divisions of labor. These groups of Ta
ıno
laborers were expected to work in an assigned mine or farm for part of the
year and be given time to harvest food for their own families the rest the year;
it was a system that was abused or ignored by most of the Spanish settlers.
RESIDENT COMMISSIONER—The Foraker Act in 1900 created this post;
the Resident Commissioner is elected by the people of Puerto Rico to
articulate their concerns to U.S. government officials. In 1904, the role of
the Resident Commissioner was expanded making the office holders non-
voting member of the U.S. House of Representatives, which is the post’s
current status.
134 Glossary of Selected Terms

SALADOID—A group of people, probably from South America, famous

for their skill in ceramics who settled in Puerto Rico about 2,500 years
ago; they are sometimes referred to as the Hacienda Grande people.
SAN JUAN BAUTISTA—The original Spanish name for Puerto Rico.
SITUADO—Subsidy supplied to colonial Puerto Rico by Spain to pay for
the island’s fortifications and soldiers’ salaries.
SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR—From April to December 1898 the United
States carried out a swift defeat of Spanish troops that ended in Spain
retreating from Cuba and ceding Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines
to the United States.
SPANISH MAIN—Spain’s holdings in the Americas during the Age of Ex-
ploration, including Puerto Rico as well as most of South America, Cen-
tral America, the Caribbean, Mexico, and parts of the United States.
STIPULATIONS OF SANTA FE—Promises made to Christopher Colum-
bus at the court of Santa Fe by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Had
they been followed, Columbus’ descendents would have governed over
North, South, and Central America and the Caribbean in perpetuity and
controlled 10 percent of its wealth.
TA
INO—Indigenous people of Puerto Rico, whose complex system of gov-
ernment, religion, and culture dominated much of the Greater and Lesser
Antilles prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1493. In the Ta
ıno language,
it literally means ‘‘the good people.’’
TA
INO UPRISING OF 1510—Sometimes called the Ta
ıno-Carib Uprising,
this series of battles led by an alliance of Ta
ıno chiefs that included
Agueybana and Urayo
an resulted in the deaths of as many as 200 Spanish
settlers before it was thwarted by Governor Juan Ponce de Le
on. Some of
the surviving warriors joined their former Carib enemies and waged peri-
odic battles against the Spanish from 1510 to 1513.
TEN COMMANDMENTS OF FREE MEN—Manifesto of liberation enu-
merating the rights that free people must be given by a just government.
According to their author, revolutionary Ram
on E. Betances, if these
rights do not exist then the people have the right to take up arms against
their government.
VIEQUES—Island that was home to a U.S. Navy base until a military exer-
cise killed a civilian guard in 1999 and set off more than a year of pro-
tests, forcing the United States to close the Navy base in 2004.
ZEMIS—Carved likenesses of Ta
ıno and Carib gods, also called cemis,
which are also characteristic of other Arawak peoples.
 Notes

PREFACE
1. Kathleen Deagan, ‘‘Reconsidering Taı́no Social Dynamics after Span-
ish Conquest: Gender and Class in Culture Contact Studies.’’ American An-
tiquity, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Oct. 2004), pp. 597–626.

CHAPTER 2
1. Arguments and interpretations by contemporary archeologists and
ethnohistorians whose work is still evolving both in support of and in con-
tradiction to the mid- to late twentieth-century work of Rouse, Alegrı́a, and
others can be found in Ancient Borinquen: Archeology and Ethnohistory of
Native Puerto Rico, Peter E. Siegel (ed.) (Tuscaloosa: The University of Ala-
bama Press, 2005). For more on debates involving the pre-ceramic to Salad-
oid transition, please see the Bibliographic Essay.
2. As with the emergence of the Saladoid people, the emergence of the
Taı́no as a separate culture is another area of dispute among archeologists
and ethnohistorians. More information about the leading theories—that the
Taı́nos were direct descendents of the Saladoid people, that they repre-
sented an influx of new immigrants from the northeastern coast of South
136 Notes

America, that they represented an influx of immigrants and/or cultural

influence from Mesoamerican cultures such as the Maya, or that they were
the culmination of a combination of influences—can be found in Ancient
Borinquen: Archeology and Ethnohistory of Native Puerto Rico, Peter E. Siegel
(ed.) (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2005); The Indige-
nous People of the Caribbean, Samuel M. Wilson (ed.) (Gainesville, FL: Univer-
sity Press of Florida, 1997); and Irving Rouse, The Taı́nos: The Rise and
Decline of the People who Greeted Columbus (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1992).
3. More on the matrilineal nature of the Taı́nos’ political and religious
hierarchy, as well as on the importance of the feminine deity Attabeira, can
be found in Ancient Borinquen: Archeology and Ethnohistory of Native Puerto
Rico, Peter E. Siegel (ed.) (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press,
2005). See particularly the chapters ‘‘An Introduction to Taı́no Culture and
History’’ by Ricardo E. Alegrı́a and ‘‘Just Wasting: Taı́no Shaman and Con-
cepts of Fertility’’ by Peter G. Roe.
4. Irving Rouse provides a well-argued defense of the Carib culture in
The Taı́nos: The Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). Another account of Carib culture
prior to and just after Contact is provided in ‘‘The Caribs of the Lesser
Antilles,’’ by Louis Allaire in The Indigenous People of the Caribbean, Samuel
M. Wilson (ed.) (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1997).
5. Juan Carlos Martı́nez Cruzado, ‘‘The Use of Mitochondrial DNA to
Discover Pre-Columbian Migrations to the Caribbean: Results for Puerto
Rico and Expectations for the Dominican Republic,’’ Kacike: Journal of Carib-
bean Amerindian History and Anthropology, Vol. 3, No.1 (2002), pp. 37–47.
6. Kathleen Deagan, ‘‘Reconsidering Taı́no Social Dynamics after Span-
ish Conquest: Gender and Class in Culture Contact Studies,’’ American
Antiquity, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Oct. 2004), pp. 597–626.

CHAPTER 3
1. Contemporary biographies of Queen Juana, written for scholarly and
general audiences, in English and Spanish, have tended to examine the role
gender and inter-family rivalries may have played in her depiction as
‘‘mad.’’ Nevertheless, many educated in traditional Latin American school-
rooms might have a hard time shaking the colorful archetypal image of
‘‘Juana La Loca’’ from their recollections of history class.
2. Robert H. Fuson, Juan Ponce de Le
on and the Spanish Discovery of Puerto
Rico and Florida (Blacksburg, VA: McDonald and Woodward Publishing
Company, 2000).
Notes 137

3. J.R. McNeill, ‘‘Foreword.’’ In The Columbian Exchange: Biological and

Cultural Consequences of 1492: 30th Anniversary Edition, Alfred W. Crosby, Jr.
(Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2003).
4. See Fernando Pico, ‘‘Commercial Traffic between Puerto Rico and
Seville, 1512–1699, by Number of Ships and Known Tonnage,’’ in History of
Puerto Rico: A Panorama of Its People (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publish-
ers, 2005).

CHAPTER 4
1. Olga Jim
enez De Wagenheim, Puerto Rico: An Interpretive History from
Pre-Columbian Times to 1900 (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers), p. 137.
2. Economist Andr
es S
anchez Tarniella (trans.) in James L. Dietz, Eco-
nomic History of Puerto Rico: Institutional Change and Capitalist Development
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 12.
3. Eileen J. Suarez-Findlay, Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and
Race in Puerto Rico: 1870–1930 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).

CHAPTER 5
1. James L. Dietz, Economic History of Puerto Rico: Institutional Change and
Capitalist Development (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986),
p. 129.

CHAPTER 7
1. World Travel and Tourism Council, Country Reports, Puerto Rico
www.wttc.org

CHAPTER 8
1. Most economic, education, and health statistics in this chapter are
from the U.S. Census Bureau, CIA World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/
library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rq.html, and Francisco Riv-
era-Batiz and Carlos Enrique Santiago’s Island Paradox: Puerto Rico in the
1990s (Russell Sage Foundation, 1997).
2. Stan Rosenberg, ‘‘Puerto Rico to Sell Debt: Issue of $4.5 Billion Is via Better-
Rated Tax Agency,’’ Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/
article/SB124459322396500275.html.
3. Govtrack.us, http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2499
This page intentionally left blank
 Bibliographic Essay

TEXTS AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH

Perhaps the most pleasurable read in English on Puerto Rico is Puerto Rico
in the American Century: A History Since 1898 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2007) by Cesar J. Ayala and Rafael Bernabe. This
book synthesizes the work of other contemporary historians; uncovers new
primary source material; examines events from economic, political, social,
cultural, and multicultural perspectives; and weaves in illuminating anec-
dotes and references to Puerto Rican literature, all in clearly written, at
times nearly poetic prose that turns a century of history into a riveting,
still-unfolding saga. Its rigorous scholarship, accessible style, and extensive
bibliography make it an ideal source for students and researchers inter-
ested in Puerto Rico’s history as a U.S. territory and commonwealth.
There are several good standard histories of the island written in English
for a general audience. I found History of Puerto Rico: A Panorama of Its Peo-
ple (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2006) by Fernando Pico and
An Economic History of Puerto Rico: Institutional Change and Capitalist Devel-
opment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) by James L. Dietz com-
prehensive and accessible. Puerto Rico Past and Present: An Encyclopedia
140 Bibliographic Essay

(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998) by Ronald Fernandez and Serafin

Mendez Mendez, and Gail Cueto is a useful reference work.
Olga Jim
enez de Wagenheim has written many books on Puerto Rico (as
has her husband, Kal Wagenheim). Together, the couple authored the
document collection, The Puerto Ricans: A Documentary History (Princeton,
NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002), a useful source for students looking
to incorporate primary sources into their research. Her Puerto Rico: An
Interpretive History from Precolumbian Times to 1900 (Princeton, NJ: Markus
Wiener Publishers, 1997) is an extremely useful and accessible guide to
Puerto Rican history from Pre-Contact through the nineteenth century, and
her concise volume, Puerto Rico’s Revolt for Independence: El Grito de Lares
(Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1993), offers a book-length exami-
nation of Puerto Rico’s only significant armed uprising.
Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History, edited by Arturo Morales
Carri
on (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983), is highly regarded and included
in most bibliographies on Puerto Rico, but students should be aware that
some material is dated and the book’s writing style may seem slightly old-
fashioned. Nevertheless, its chapters are exhaustive and well-researched.
This collaboration between six of the era’s most distinguished Puerto Rican
scholars is doubly valuable because the project’s lead author was also a
public servant. As a special advisor to the Organization of American States’
secretary general and as a deputy assistant secretary of state, Morales
Carri
on helped to shape the political and social policy he and his col-
leagues write about. Viewed in this context, the book almost serves two
purposes: as sound social history testifying to what was known at the time
of its printing and as a primary document relating the views of one of the
era’s most prominent public servants and some of the 1980s most illustri-
ous faculty members from the University of Puerto Rico.
Important work on the history of the indigenous people of Puerto Rico
has been conducted by many archeologists and ethnohistorians, particularly
in the final decades of the twentieth century. Though much of this work
involved researchers from the University of Puerto Rico, nearly all of it is
available in English. Some important articles in the field include Ricardo
E. Alegrı́a’s ‘‘On Puerto Rican Archaeology,’’ American Antiquity, Vol. 31,
No. 2, Part 1 (Oct. 1965), pp. 246–249; Kathleen Deagan’s ‘‘Reconsidering
Taı́no Social Dynamics after Spanish Conquest: Gender and Class in Culture
Contact Studies,’’ American Antiquity, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Oct. 2004), pp. 597–626;
and ‘‘The Use of Mitochondrial DNA to Discover Pre-Columbian Migrations
to the Caribbean: Results for Puerto Rico and Expectations for the Domini-
can Republic,’’ by Juan Carlos Martı́nez Cruzado, Kacike: Journal of Caribbean
Amerindian History and Anthropology, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2002), pp. 37–47.
Bibliographic Essay 141

Ancient Borinquen: Archeology and Ethnohistory of Native Puerto Rico, edited

by Peter E. Siegel (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2005),
mostly consists of reports from individual archeological projects under-
taken from the late twentieth century to the present. Although reports from
the various archeological sites are detailed and specific, the collection is
largely free of jargon and accessible to non-specialist readers. Readers look-
ing for more context and connections between archeological discoveries
should start with Taı́no: Pre-Columbian Art and Culture from the Caribbean,
edited by Fatima Bercht, Estrellita Brodsky, John Alan Farmer, and Dicey
Taylor (New York: The Monacelli Press and El Museo del Barrio, 1997),
which contains a wealth of attractive photographs of a large exhibit of
Taı́no artifacts held in the late 1990s at El Museo del Barrio in New York
City. The text consists of chapters on various aspects of Taı́no culture writ-
ten by some of the top scholars in the field, many whose work is not read-
ily available in English, including Ricardo E. Alegrı́a and Marcio Veloz
Maggiolo.
The Indigenous People of the Caribbean, edited by Samuel M. Wilson (Gains-
ville: University Press of Florida, 1997), also contains contributions from
some of the most prominent late twentieth-century archeologists, including
Louis Allaire, William F. Keegan, and Jos
e R. Oliver. The book is the result
of the Virgin Islands Humanities Council’s response to the 500th anniver-
sary of Columbus’ First Voyage. The Council held a series of symposia
examining the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and the legacy of
Columbus’ voyages to the Americas
The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus by Irving
Rouse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) offers a comprehensive
look at all the indigenous people of Puerto Rico culminating with the
Taı́no. Rouse, along with Ricardo Alegrı́a, was a pioneer in pre-Columbian
Caribbean archeology
There are many Spanish explorers’ accounts of the Taı́no written during the
period of exploration and early colonization, which are considered classics of
Hispanic literature and history. An Account of the Antiquities of the Indians by
Fray Ram
on Pane was originally written in 1497, and there are several edi-
tions in Spanish. English editions include A New Edition, with an Introductory
Study, Notes, and Appendices by Jos
e Juan Arrom (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2000). Historia de las Indias (The History of the Indies) by Bartolom
e
de Las Casas, written circa 1525, has numerous volumes, including An
Apologetic History of the Indies. De Las Casas’ A Short Account of the Destruction
of the Indies, translated by Nigel Griffin, is available from Penguin Classics
(New York: 1992, rev. ed. with chronology, 2004). Other accounts include
Historia Natural y General de las Indias by Gonzalo Fern
andez de Oviedo y
142 Bibliographic Essay

Vald
es and Historia del Almirante by Ferdinand Columbus (c. 1539). Historia
Geogr
afica, Civil y Natural de la Isla de San Juan Bautista de Puerto Rico by Fray

I~
nigo Abbad y Lasierra, considered the first real history of the island, was
written by a Benedictine monk in 1788. Excerpts of many of these texts can be
found in English in various compilations of Caribbean or Hispanic literature.
Many of these classic texts are likely to be digitized and placed on the Internet
through free Web sites in the coming years as there are no copyright issues.
Contemporary translations would still be covered by copyright and most are
not widely available in recent English editions, although older translations
may be available in some libraries.
More information on the kingdoms of Spain during the discovery and
early colonization of Puerto Rico can be found in Medieval Iberia: An Ency-
clopedia, by E. Michael Gerli (New York: Routledge, 2002). Among the
many recent re-examinations of Queen Juana of Castile (called Juana La
Loca or the Mad One in her day), are Juana the Mad: Sovereignty and
Dynasty in Renaissance Europe, by Bethany Aram (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2005) and Juana of Castile: History and Myth of the Mad
Queen, edited by Maria A. Gomez, Santiago Juan-Navarro, and Phyllis
Zatlin (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2008).
Juan Ponce De Le
on and the Spanish Discovery of Puerto Rico and Florida
(Blacksburg, VA: McDonald and Woodward Publishing Company, 2000),
written by translator and maritime scholar Robert H. Fuson, attempts to
rehabilitate Ponce de Le
on’s reputation through the extensive use of his-
toric documents from the early colonial period, particularly correspondence
between the conquistadores and King Ferdinand. Though his language is
argumentative, often relying on the extensive employment of exclamations
to make his case with a tendency to rely on documents as facts without
examining the political context that might surround or influence letter writ-
ers and chroniclers from the colonial era, the book is an interesting exercise
and a fascinating read. Students should be cautious of the author’s tend-
ency to employ speculation and his reluctance to present viewpoints that
would tend to refute his argument on Ponce de Le
on’s behalf. Still, it is
accessible and includes many interesting details from previously untrans-
lated Spanish records. The details of Ponce de Le
on’s life are riveting and
Fuson makes a lively case on his subject’s behalf.
The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, 30th
Anniversary Edition, by Alfred W. Crosby, Jr. (Westport, CT: Praeger Publish-
ers, 2003), caused an uproar when it first appeared, changed the course of
debate in several fields of study, and still manages to provoke new ways of
thinking about colonialism more than 30 years after it was first published.
Students should keep in mind that recent scientific studies, most notably on
the Taı́no and Carib cultures and particularly new evidence of their
Bibliographic Essay 143

agricultural practices, have replaced some the theories offered in the book.
Nevertheless, Crosby’s examination of the biological consequences of 1492
and the subsequent interactions between Europeans, Africans, and indige-
nous Americans bridges the fields of history, epidemiology, agriculture, and
ecology. Students looking for up-to-date information on the ecology of the
Caribbean should look elsewhere, but those interested in the history of
debate in the fields of biological history and indigenous American history
will find this a useful resource and an entertaining read.
The examination of race within the context of Puerto Rican history is an
area of vibrant scholarship among contemporary scholars. Most books in
this field examine issues of race, particularly the lives of slaves and free
black wageworkers in specific municipalities or even on individual planta-
tions. As more documents on the slave trade, post-emancipation working
conditions, and the free black communities become available there are
likely to be broader-ranging, less specialized titles available for students
and general readers. For now, students can get an idea of what life was
like for Afro-Puerto Ricans through such titles as Guillermo A. Baralt’s
Slave Revolts in Puerto Rico (1982; Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers,
2007 for English translation). Bilingual students may want to skip the
awkward translation and seek the original Spanish text.
Regional studies include Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth Century
Puerto Rico by Luis A. Figueroa (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2005), a useful and detailed study of slave and post-emancipation
labor in Guyama; Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in
Puerto Rico: 1870–1930 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), by Eileen J.
Suarez-Findlay, a well-written study of conditions faced by free women of
color in Ponce in the generation after the abolition of slavery; and Sugar
and Slavery in Puerto Rico: The Plantation Economy of Ponce, 1800–1850 by
Francisco A. Scarano (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984). Ces
ar
J. Ayala’s well-regarded American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of
the Spanish Caribbean, 1898–1934 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1999) examines the plantation economies of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and
the Dominican Republic in the early twentieth century.
Puerto Rico: The Four Storyed Country, by Jos
e Luis Gonz
alez (Princeton,
NJ: Marcus Weiner Publishers, 1993), first written in 1980, examines the
legacy of racial tensions on the island. More of a philosophic approach than
a historical look at race, Gonzalez’s theories on race and class have influ-
enced generations of Puerto Rican historians, political scientists, race theo-
rists, and social scientists, many of whom have followed up with research
that contradicts Gonzalez’s more general claims.
Neglected by Spain after Mexico, Peru, and wealthier sources of gold
and silver were discovered in the Americas, Puerto Rico depended on
144 Bibliographic Essay

pirate ships to transport their goods to overseas markets and for needed
food and supplies. Many recent books celebrate the Golden Age of
Caribbean Piracy as a precursor to democratic rebellion, claiming that piracy
was an egalitarian response to the monarchies of the Old World and the bru-
tal hierarchies that existed on most naval ships and privately owned mer-
chant vessels of the time. Among the books in this category are The Republic
of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the
Man Who Brought Them Down, by Colin Woodard (Orlando, FL: Harcourt,
2007) and Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, by Marcus
Rediker (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004). Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas
1500–1750, by Kris E. Lane (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), part of Sharpe’s
Latin American Realities series, examines piracy from the perspective of the
Spanish colonists who were often the victims of the trade.
Students looking for a basic, complete account of the Spanish-American
War from the perspective of military history will find an accessible read in
The Spanish-American War by Kenneth E. Hendrickson, Jr. (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 2003). Fernando Pico’s Puerto Rico 1898: The War After
the War (1987, translated into English by Sylvia Korwek [Princeton, NJ:
Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004]) looks at the two-year military occupa-
tion that followed the U.S. invasion through military correspondence,
newspaper accounts, and legal documents. A range of well-known scholars
look at the political aftermath of the Spanish-American War and U.S.
expansionism in Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American
State, edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco A. Scarano (Madison,
WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2009). This volume’s essays look at
the Philippines, Cuba, and other former and current U.S. territories in
addition to Puerto Rico. Among the many books that look at Puerto Rico
under U.S. rule and the transition to Commonwealth status are Puerto Rico:
The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World, by Jos
e Trı́as Monge (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) and The Disenchanted Island: Puerto Rico
and the United States in the Twentieth Century, by Ronald Fernandez (West-
port, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996), both of which are well-researched,
detailed, and present convincing arguments for re-examining Puerto Rico’s
current political status. Sherrie L. Baver’s The Political Economy of Colonial-
ism: The State and Industrialization in Puerto Rico (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1993) covers similar ground from a more intensely economic perspective
and with a more academic tone. Toward a Discourse of Consent: Mass Mobili-
zation and Colonial Politics in Puerto Rico, 1932–1948 (Westport, CT: Praeger,
2004) by Gabriel Villaronga is similarly academic in tone and concentrates
on the era that marked rapid political change on the island in anticipation
of the transition from the Foraker-Jones era to Commonwealth status. A
variety of top scholars (many whose scholarship is not otherwise available
Bibliographic Essay 145

in English) weigh in on Puerto Rico’s status issue in Colonial Dilemma: Crit-

ical Perspectives on Contemporary Puerto Rico, edited by Edwin Mel
endez
and Edgardo Mel
endez (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1993).
Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women’s Struggle for Reproductive Freedom,
by Iris Lopez (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008) examines the
legacy of birth control and sterilization policies in Puerto Rico, drawing on
25 years of research on sterilized women from five families in Brooklyn.
An interesting document from Puerto Rico’s industrialization period is
The Stricken Land: The Story of Puerto Rico, a memoir and harsh critique of
U.S. policy toward Puerto Rico written by the island’s last non-Puerto
Rican governor, Rexford Guy Tugwell (Charlottesville, VA: University of
Virginia Press, 1946).
Legal scholar Efren Rivera Ramos presents a detailed account of Puerto
Rico’s status issue from 1898 to the present in American Colonialism in
Puerto Rico: The Judicial and Social Legacy (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener
Publishers, 2007, revised from a paper presented by the author in 2001).
University of Puerto Rico professor Edgardo Mel
endez’s text, Puerto Rico’s
Statehood Movement (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988), based on his
doctoral dissertation, is still considered a classic, comprehensive look at the
origins of the contemporary statehood movement.
For students interested in historiography, Puerto Rico: A Socio-Historic
Interpretation, by Manuel Maldonado-Denis (New York: Random House,
1972) provides an interesting look at the rhetoric of ethnic studies and his-
tory in the 1970s. The author calls his work an ‘‘essay’’ and the entire book
can be seen as an argument for independence within the context of the late
1960s and early 1970s. From that perspective it has interesting things to say
about class, race, and the island’s colonial social inheritance. Interestingly,
Maldonado-Denis is dismissive of the Taı́no culture.
Economists Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz and Carlos E. Santiago provide
detailed analysis of U.S. Census data from the 1950s to 1990s in Island Para-
dox: Puerto Rico in the 1990s (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997).
Also in the 1990s, Nancy Morris conducted focus groups with Puerto Rican
leaders as well as everyday voters on a range of topics, including political
status, and presented the findings in the accessible, jargon-free Puerto Rico:
Culture, Politics, and Identity (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1995).
None of the Above: Puerto Ricans in the Global Era, edited by Frances
Negr
on-Muntaner (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), is a compilation
of essays from a series of symposia hosted by the editor between 2000 and
2004. These academic papers tend to be more focused on cultural issues
than the 1998 Plebiscite results. However, for those interested in the status
question, two essays make bold cases for and against the need to solve
the issue: ‘‘‘None of the Above’ Means More of the Same: Why Solving
146 Bibliographic Essay

Puerto Rico’s Status Problem Matters’’ by Christine Duffy Burnett and

‘‘The Political Status of Puerto Rico: A Nonsense Dilemma’’ by Carlos
Pab
on. Other chapters examine contemporary identity issues, with a focus
on youth culture.
Students interested in the protests on Vieques in the late 1990s and early
2000s will find a book-length treatment in Military Power and Popular Pro-
test: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico by Katherine T. McCaffrey (Piscat-
away, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002).
Though the current volume only mentions the Puerto Rican Diaspora in
the United States briefly in contexts where the U.S. Puerto Rican community
most directly affected events on the island, it should be remembered that
Puerto Ricans have been living in the United States since well before the
Spanish-American War. There are many texts on this topic, including The
Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives, edited by Carmen Teresa Whalen
and Victor V
azquez-Hern
andez (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005),
Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Contemporary Portrait by Edna Acosta-Bel
en
and Carlos E. Santiago (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006), Puerto
Rican Voices in English: Interviews with Writers, by Carmen Dolores Hern
andez
(Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1997), and From Colonia to Community:
The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City, 1917–1948, by Virginia Sanchez
Korrol (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983).
Among the many government documents available on Puerto Rico is
Puerto Rico: A Guide to the Island of Boriqu
en, part of the Federal Writers Pro-
ject (1940), much of which is now accessible online. Also available as a
PDF is Report by the President’s Task Force on Puerto Rico’s Status, December
2007, http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/documents/2007-report-by-the-president-
task-force-on-puerto-rico-status.pdf.

TEXTS AVAILABLE IN SPANISH

Those looking for historical information about Puerto Rico will find their
task easier if they can read Spanish. Puerto Rico: Cinco Siglos de Historia,
third edition (Bogot

a: McGraw Hill Interamericana, 2008) by Francisco Scar-
ano is a well-respected general history, which has been used for years as
the most popular standard textbook in many high school and college his-
tory classes on the island. As of this printing there is no English edition.
Blanca G. Silvestrini and Marı́a D. Luque de S
anchez’s Historia de Puerto
Rico: Trayectoria de un pueblo (San Juan: Cultural Puertorrique~ na, 1987) is
another frequently used text in college courses on the island, as is Francisco
A. Scarano’s Puerto Rico: Una Historia Contempor
anea (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 2000).
Bibliographic Essay 147

Aida Negron de Montilla’s La Americanizaci
on de Puerto Rico y el Sistema

de Instrucci
on P
ublica 1900–1930, (San Juan: Universidad de Puerto Rico,
1977) is one of several classic texts that examine how the Puerto Rican
school system was used to advance U.S. culture and political aims while
suppressing traditional cultural expression among Puerto Rican school chil-
dren, teachers, and families. Historian and educator Lidio Cruz Monclova’s
work covers some of the same ground, but also includes a focus on nine-
teenth century island history.
In Biodervsidad de Puerto Rico (San Juan: University of Puerto Rico, 2008),
Rafael L. Joglar, a biology professor with dual appointments at the Univer-
sity of Kansas and the University of Puerto Rico, examines the natural his-
tory of the island through a series of photographs and essays. Panorama
historico forestal de Puerto Rico by Carlos Dominguez Cristobal (San Juan:
University of Puerto Rico, 2000) provides a comprehensive look at the
island’s most remote ecologies.
For a look at the history of women and feminism on the island, Spanish-
speaking students may want to start with Yamila Azize Vargas’ La mujer en
Puerto Rico (Rı́o Piedras: Editorial Hurac
an, 1987).
The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America’s report on
Puerto Rico’s economy, Globalizaci
on y Desarrollo: Desafı́os de Puerto Rico
Frente al Siglo XXI, was published in 2004.
For those looking to tackle primary document research from the early
Spanish colonial period, among the 42 volumes that make up the Colecci
on
de Documentos In
editos Relativo al Descubrimiento (Collection of Unedited Docu-
ments Related to Discovery) published in Spain between 1864 and 1884, are
decrees, contracts, and correspondence between explorers in the Americas
and officials in Castile, Aragon, and later Spain. It is believed that there is
much un-mined source material in the collection, both for research and
translation into English. Scholars generally agree that the new edition of
Crist
obal Col
on: Textos y Documentos Completes (Christopher Columbus: The
Complete Texts and Documents) (Madrid: Alianza, 1992), edited by Consuelo
Varela and Juan Gil, is far more complete and free of errors than previous
comparable compilations.

ELECTRONIC SOURCES
Gobierno de Puerto Rico (the Puerto Rican government’s Web site)
http://www.gobierno.pr/gprportal/inicio
CIA World Factbook, Puerto Rico
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/RQ.html
148 Bibliographic Essay

The Puerto Rico Encyclopedia (Web site of the Puerto Rican Humanities
Foundation)
http://enciclopediapr.org/ing/
The Pew Hispanic Foundation
http://pewhispanic.org/
The Centro de Estudios Puertorrique~ nos at Hunter College, The City Uni-
versity of New York (Access to the Centro journal is available in PDF).
www.centropr.org
Teodoro Vidal Collection of Puerto Rican History at the Smithsonian Insti-
tute’s National Museum of American History
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/group_detail.cfm?key=1253&gkey=78
El Nueva Dia, Puerto Rico’s highest circulation daily, can be accessed at
www.elnuevodia.com/
El Vocero, the newspaper with the second highest circulation on the island,
can be accessed at www.elvocero.com
U.S. Census, Statistical Abstract, 2009, Section 29, Puerto Rico and Island
Areas, www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/09statab/outlying.pdf
More Census data can be found at Census Information Centers, http://
www.census.gov/cic/
Archivo General de Puerto Rico, part of the Instituto de Cultura de Puerto
Rico, http://www.icp.gobierno.pr/agp/index.htm
Museo de las Am
ericas, Puerto Rico, http://www.prtc.net/~musame/
Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, http://
www.ceaprc.org/
The Puerto Rico Water Resources and Environmental Research Institute is
another U.S. government-funded initiative, working with scholars from the
University of Puerto Rico’s College of Engineering and throughout the
United States to share information on water resources, http://prwreri.
uprm.edu/
National Institute for Latino Policy frequently hosts information on Puerto
Ricans living on and off the island, http://www.latinopolicy.org/
There are a number of documentary films about Puerto Rico and the Puerto
Rican Diaspora, among them, The Borinquineers, an award-winning exploration
of Puerto Rico’s 65th Infantry Regiment and Puerto Ricans in the military from
Bibliographic Essay 149

World War I to the present, with an emphasis on World War II and Korea.
Directed by Noemi Figueroa Soulet and Raquel Ortiz, the film’s web site is
www.borinqueneers.com. Yo Soy Boriqua, pa’que to lo sepas? is a bilingual explo-
ration of Puerto Rico’s past and the history of the Puerto Rican Diaspora pre-
sented through vignettes hosted by actress, dancer, and co-director Rosie
Perez. Co-directed by the prolific documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus, the film
explores cultural and historic connections between the island and the
Diaspora.
This page intentionally left blank
 Index

Abercromby, Ralph, 48–49 Arroyo, 72

Afro-Puerto Ricans, 3–4, 35–38, 44, Attabeira (Ta
ıno goddess), 14–15
47, 52, 54, 56, 57, 61–65, 83–84, autonomy, 52–53, 60, 66–67, 73, 74,
85, 86, 90, 93, 111, 119 77, 78–79, 87–88, 92, 95–98;
Agriculture, 11–12, 38–39, 55–58, Autonomic Charter, 66–67, 81;
79–80, 95–96; Cassava, 12, 13, 14, Partido Autonomista
23; cattle, 39; coffee, 4, 36, 39, Puertorriqueno, 66–67
55–57, 79–80, 96; land owner-
ship, 13, 54, 56–57, 74–75, 79–80, Barcel

o, Antonio R., 106
95–96; land reform, 75, 92, 95–96; Betances, Dr. Ram
on E., 58–61, 64
rum, 4, 55, 95; sugar, 4, 36–41, Black Code (Banda Contra la Raza
52, 55–57, 61–62, 64–65, 79–80, Africana), 63–64
82, 89, 93, 96; tobacco, 4, 12, 15, Borinquen, 11–23
36, 39, 55–57, 79, 82, 83, 96, 100 Brooke, General John, 76
Aguadilla, 19, 59, 62
Agueybana, Chief, 22 Caguas, 73
Albizu Campos, Pedro, 4, 85, Calder

on, Sila, 100
89–91, 97, 98–99 Caparra, 21–23, 32–35
American expansionism, 70–73, 75, Caribs (Kalinago), 16–18, 19–20,
77–78 21–23, 24–25, 31, 34–35, 117
152 Index

Casas, Bartolome de las, 20, 102, 107; PRERA (Puerto

Castro y Gutierrez, Ramon de, 49 Rican Emergency Relief
Catholicism, 28, 54, 78, 85–86 Administration), 89–90;
cattle ranches, 36, 37 strikes, 82, 88, 89–90, 91, 97,
C
edula de Gracias (Warrant of 113, 120; tourism, 4, 101,
Opportunity), 54, 64 107–108
Chardon Plan, 90, 95 Encomiendo, 20, 21–22, 23
class structure, 37–38, 52, 55–57, environment, 2–3, 106, 107,
75, 78 108–110; climate, 2–3;
Clifford, George, Earl of environmental activism, 106,
Cumberland, 46 107, 108–110, 120–121;
Columbian Exchange, 23 geography, 2–3; natural
Columbus, Christopher, 12, 18–19, resources, 2–3, 57, 70, 90, 107,
27, 29–32; First landing in 108–110; petrochemicals, 107
Puerto Rico, 19, 31; Second
Voyage (1493), 18, 30–31 Ferdinand II, 12, 18, 21, 22,
Columbus, Diego, 31–35 27–34
Cortes (Parliament), 53, 62, 65, 67 Ferdinand VII, 51, 53–54
Cuban revolutions, Ten Years War, Ferre, Luis A., 103, 106
60, 71–74; 1959 Cuban Foraker Act, 80–81, 82
Revolution, effects of, 108
culture, 4, 11–12, 84–85, 102–103, Gag Law, 97
108, 116–118, 119–120; art, 4, Garc
ıa de Salazar, Martin, 21
10, 18, 49, 108, 116–117, Government structure, 4–5, 97
119–120; contemporary culture, Grito de Lares, 58–61, 64, 65, 99
116–117; Ta
ıno culture, Guanahatabeyes (Culture of the
11–12 Crab), 10

Drake, Sir Francis, 46 Hendriksz, Boudewijn, 46–47

Hidalgos, 29, 31, 33
economy, 4, 38–41, 48, 55–58, Holstein Conspiracy, 69–71
79–80, 88–90, 99–101, 107,
118–119, 121; Chardon Plan, 90; Igneris (Hacienda Grande People),
credit rating and recession, 121; 10–11, 16, 17, 18
debt-based economy, 39, 56–57, indigenous peoples (see also Caribs;
75–76, 79; depression, 83, Guanahatabeyes; Igneris; Salad-
88–90; FOMENTO (Economic oid/Hacienda Grande People;
Development Administration), Ta
ınos), 3–4, 7–25, 28, 31, 35, 110,
100; Industrialization, 95–96, 111, 117–118; early human habi-
99–101; Operation Bootstrap tation, 9–11; pre-contact, 8–18;
(Operacion Obre de las Manos), post-contact, 18–23
99–101, 105; pharmaceuticals, Isabella I, 12, 18, 20, 27–31
Index 153

Jibaro, 3–4, 92 National Liberation), 110–111;

Jones Act, 81–83, 87 Independence Movement,
Juana I (La Loca), 18, 27–29, 31, 58–61, 74, 82, 85, 90–93, 98–99,
32–33, 34–35 106, 110–111; Nationalist
Insurrection of 1950, 98–99
language, 3–4, 12, 16–17, 78, 81, New Progressive Party (Partido
84–85; 93, 108, 116–117; Nuevo Progresista), 87, 103,
bilingualism, 111–112, 116–117, 105–107, 122
119; mandatory English as a
tool in acculturation, 84–85; Operation Bootstrap (Operaci
on
Spanish as an aspect of culture, Manos a las Obra), 96, 99–101,
3–4, 84–85; Ta
ıno, 12, 117 103, 105–106
Lares, 58–61 O’Reilly Census, 47–48
law of libreta (Reglamento de
Jornaleros or Workers’ Pagin, Genara, 86
Regulations), 56, 59, 65 Pane, Father Ramon, 15–16
Laws of the Burgos, 22–23, 31, 34 Partido Autonomista
Liberal Reform Party, 66 Puertorrique~ no, 66–67
Pezuela y Caballos, Governor Juan
Macias y Casado, Manuel, 73 de la, 56
Manifest Destiny, 70 Pirates, 41–45, 48; buccaneers, 43;
Martinez Cruzado, Dr. Juan Cofres
ı y Ram
ırez de Arellano,
Carlos, 24–25 Roberto, 45; Corsairs, 41;
Mayaguez, 73 La flota (flotilla), 41–42; Golden
McKinley, President William, 71, 73 Age of Piracy, 43–44;
Miles, General Nelson, 72, 76 Henriquez, Miguel, 45; De la
military, 5, 38–41, 45–47, 74–80, Torre, Pedro, 45; War of
82–83, 84, 93, 109, 120–121; Spanish Succession, 43–44, 47
fortifications, 38, 45–47; Plebiscites: of 1967, 102–103; of
invasions, 45–47; Puerto Ricans 1993, 112–113; of 1998, 112–113,
in the U.S. military, 5, 82–83, 93, 115–116
109; Spanish conquest, 182–3; Ponce, 61, 63, 64, 66, 72, 73, 90–92
Ta
ıno-Carib War, 16–18; U.S. Ponce de Leon, Juan, 3, 10, 21–23,
military occupation, 74–80, 28, 30, 32–34
84, 85 Ponce Massacre, 90–92
Mu~noz Mar
ın, Luis, 4, 88, 92–93, 95, Popular Democratic Party (Partido
96, 97–98, 99–100, 103, 105–108 Popular Democratico; PDP),
Mu~noz Rivera, Luis, 67, 77, 78, 81 92–93, 96, 102, 103, 106, 107,
121
nationalism, 58–61, 74, 82, 85, population, 3, 11, 17, 23, 25, 35, 36,
90–93, 98–99, 106, 110–111; 37, 43, 48, 55, 58, 61, 64, 74, 86,
ALN (Armed Forced of 101, 116, 118–119
154 Index

Power y Giralt, Ramon, 53, 62 (Banda Contra la Raza Africana),

Prim, Juan, 63 63; emancipation of African
Pro-Spanish movement, 53–55, slaves, 38, 56, 65; emancipation
58–61, 66; Unconditionals, 66 of Ta
ıno-Caribs, 23, 37; enslave-
Puerto Rico Emergency Relief ment of Ta
ıno-Caribs, 20,
Administration (PRERA), 21–23, 37; Slave Regulations
89–90, 91, 95–96 (Reglamento de Esclavos), 63;
slave revolts, 61–65
race relations, 37–38, 61–65, 77–78, socialism, 87, 97
83–84; interracial marriage, 23, Sotomayor, Cristobal de, 22, 33
24–25, 37–38, 64–65; racial Spanish-American War, 71–74;
social stratification, 373–8; Puerto Rican invasion, 72–73;
treatment of free blacks, 63 Treaty of Paris, 73–74, 86; U.S.
Reconquest (Reconquista) of Spain, Maine, 71
28 status, 5, 80, 88, 89, 93, 95–96,
Repartimiendo, 20, 34 97–98, 102–103, 112–113,
Report by the President’s Task 115–116, 121–122;
Force on Puerto Rico’s Status, Commonwealth status (Estado
121–122 Libre Asociado), 95–96, 97–98;
Revolutionary Committee of Independence, 3, 42, 56–61,
Puerto Rico, 58–59, 84 69, 74, 82, 85, 87, 88, 90–93, 97,
Riggs, Francis E., 90–92 99, 102, 106, 110–111, 112,
Rojas, Manuel, 59 116, 121–122; public law, 97;
Romero Barcel
o, Carlos, 106 self-rule, 5, 74, 98; Statehood
Roosevelt, President Franklin, movement, 78, 80, 84, 86, 87,
89–90, 92 92, 102, 103, 106, 112, 113, 116
Roosevelt, Governor Theodore Jr., Stipulations of Santa Fe, 30, 32
88
Ruiz Belvis, Segundo, 58 Ta
ınos: abuses by conquistadores,
18–23, 31, 35; agriculture,
Saladoid, 10–11, 13, 21 11–12; batey (ball courts), 13–14;
San Germ
an, 21, 22, 23, 32, 35, 42 Columbian exchange, 7, 21;
San Juan, 3, 5, 21, 33, 34, 42, 45–47, culture, 11–16; genetic links to
49, 58, 62, 72, 73, 76, 83, 103, present-day Puerto Ricans,
110, 120 24–25; Legacy, 24–25; origins,
Santeria, 86 11; politics, 12–14; religion,
Schomburg, Arturo A., 83–84 14–16; uprisings, 22, 33; war
Situado, 39–40, 45 with Caribs, 16–18
slavery, 20, 21–23, 36–37, 38, 42, 56, Ten Commandments of Free Men,
58, 61–65; abolition, 38, 56, 58, 58
64, 65; African slave trade, Torre, Governor Miguel de la,
36–37, 56, 58, 61–65; Black Code 54–55
Index 155

Tugwell, Governor Rexford Guy, White Eagle, 76

93–96, 98 Winship, Governor Blanton, 90,
Tydings Bill, 92 91–92, 94, 97
women’s rights, 47, 85, 86–87,
Urayoan, Chief, 22 101–102, 109–110; birth
U.S. migration, 83, 89, 101, control, 85, 101–102, 109;
111–112, 117, 118–119; machismo and marianismo,
cross-migration, 109, 119; 87; Roe v. Wade, 109; Second
migration backlash, 111–112; wave feminism, 109–110;
U.S. military occupation, 74–76 in Spanish society, 47;
Suffrage, 86–87; in
vagrancy laws, 56, 65–66; law of Ta
ıno society, 13
libreta, 56, 59, 65, 66; Reglamento
de Jornaleros (Workers’ Ya~
nez Pinz

on, Vicente, 21
Regulations), 56, 59 Young Lords, 109, 110, 111
Vieques, 120–121 Yucahu (Ta
ıno god), 14–15
This page intentionally left blank
Other Titles in the Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations
Frank W. Thackeray and John E. Findling, Series Editors

The History of Afghanistan The History of France

Meredith L. Runion W. Scott Haine
The History of Argentina The History of Germany
Daniel K. Lewis Eleanor L. Turk
The History of Australia The History of Ghana
Frank G. Clarke Roger S. Gocking
The History of the Baltic States
The History of Great Britain
Kevin O’Connor
Anne Baltz Rodrick
The History of Brazil
Robert M. Levine The History of Haiti
Steeve Coupeau
The History of Cambodia
Justin Corfield The History of Holland
Mark T. Hooker
The History of Canada
Scott W. See The History of India
The History of Central America John McLeod
Thomas Pearcy The History of Indonesia
The History of Chile Steven Drakeley
John L. Rector The History of Iran
The History of China Elton L. Daniel
David C. Wright
The History of Iraq
The History of Congo Courtney Hunt
Didier Gondola
The History of Ireland
The History of Cuba Daniel Webster Hollis III
Clifford L. Staten
The History of Israel
The History of Egypt Arnold Blumberg
Glenn E. Perry
The History of Italy
The History of El Salvador Charles L. Killinger
Christopher M. White
The History of Japan, Second
The History of Ethiopia Edition
Saheed Adejumobi Louis G. Perez
The History of Finland The History of Korea
Jason Lavery Djun Kil Kim
The History of Kuwait The History of Saudi Arabia
Michael S. Casey Wayne H. Bowen
The History of Mexico, Second The History of Serbia
Edition John K. Cox
Burton Kirkwood The History of South Africa
The History of New Zealand Roger B. Beck
Tom Brooking The History of Spain
The History of Nigeria Peter Pierson
Toyin Falola The History of Sri Lanka
The History of Pakistan Patrick Peebles
Iftikhar H. Malik The History of Sweden
The History of Panama Byron J. Nordstrom
Robert C. Harding The History of Turkey
The History of the Philippines Douglas A. Howard
Kathleen M. Nadeau The History of Ukraine
The History of Poland Paul Kubicek
M.B. Biskupski The History of Venezuela
The History of Portugal H. Micheal Tarver
James M. Anderson The History of Vietnam
The History of Russia, Second Julia C. Frederick
Edition The History of Vietnam
Charles E. Ziegler Justin Corfield
About the Author

LISA PIERCE FLORES began her journalism career at El Nuevo Pais, a daily
newspaper in Caracas, Venezuela, and has since worked as a staff writer
and editor at various newspapers, magazines, and trade and academic
publishers. Her writing has appeared in The Charlotte Observer, Inkwell,
Stand Magazine, and The New York Times. She teaches writing and journal-
ism at Norwalk Community College. As editor of Greenwood/ABC-Clio’s
American Mosaic project [http://am.greenwood.com], she helped develop
a suite of web sites and blogs exploring multiethnic America.