American Colonialism in Puerto Rico
Author : Efrén Rivera Ramos
Publisher :
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 35,27 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Law
ISBN :
American Empire and the Politics of Meaning
Author : Julian Go
Publisher : Duke University Press
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 35,78 MB
Release : 2008-03-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0822389320
Book Description
When the United States took control of the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the wake of the Spanish-American War, it declared that it would transform its new colonies through lessons in self-government and the ways of American-style democracy. In both territories, U.S. colonial officials built extensive public school systems, and they set up American-style elections and governmental institutions. The officials aimed their lessons in democratic government at the political elite: the relatively small class of the wealthy, educated, and politically powerful within each colony. While they retained ultimate control for themselves, the Americans let the elite vote, hold local office, and formulate legislation in national assemblies. American Empire and the Politics of Meaning is an examination of how these efforts to provide the elite of Puerto Rico and the Philippines a practical education in self-government played out on the ground in the early years of American colonial rule, from 1898 until 1912. It is the first systematic comparative analysis of these early exercises in American imperial power. The sociologist Julian Go unravels how American authorities used “culture” as both a tool and a target of rule, and how the Puerto Rican and Philippine elite received, creatively engaged, and sometimes silently subverted the Americans’ ostensibly benign intentions. Rather than finding that the attempt to transplant American-style democracy led to incommensurable “culture clashes,” Go assesses complex processes of cultural accommodation and transformation. By combining rich historical detail with broader theories of meaning, culture, and colonialism, he provides an innovative study of the hidden intersections of political power and cultural meaning-making in America’s earliest overseas empire.
Fantasy Island
Author : Ed Morales
Publisher : Bold Type Books
Page : 314 pages
File Size : 31,59 MB
Release : 2019-09-10
Category : History
ISBN : 1568588984
Book Description
A crucial, clear-eyed accounting of Puerto Rico's 122 years as a colony of the US. Since its acquisition by the US in 1898, Puerto Rico has served as a testing ground for the most aggressive and exploitative US economic, political, and social policies. The devastation that ensued finally grew impossible to ignore in 2017, in the wake of Hurricane María, as the physical destruction compounded the infrastructure collapse and trauma inflicted by the debt crisis. In Fantasy Island, Ed Morales traces how, over the years, Puerto Rico has served as a colonial satellite, a Cold War Caribbean showcase, a dumping ground for US manufactured goods, and a corporate tax shelter. He also shows how it has become a blank canvas for mercenary experiments in disaster capitalism on the frontlines of climate change, hamstrung by internal political corruption and the US federal government's prioritization of outside financial interests. Taking readers from San Juan to New York City and back to his family's home in the Luquillo Mountains, Morales shows us the machinations of financial and political interests in both the US and Puerto Rico, and the resistance efforts of Puerto Rican artists and activists. Through it all, he emphasizes that the only way to stop Puerto Rico from being bled is to let Puerto Ricans take control of their own destiny, going beyond the statehood-commonwealth-independence debate to complete decolonization.
Puerto Rico
Author : José Trías Monge
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 14,97 MB
Release : 1997-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780300076189
Book Description
Former Attorney General and former Chief Justice of Puerto Rico, Jose Trias Monge describes his island as one of the most densely populated places on earth, with a severely distressed economy and limited political freedom--still considered a colony of the U.S. Monge claims the island has become too dependent on U.S. money and argues for decolonization and movement toward more independence. 28 illustrations.
War Against All Puerto Ricans
Author : Nelson A Denis
Publisher : Bold Type Books
Page : 402 pages
File Size : 31,3 MB
Release : 2015-04-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1568585020
Book Description
The powerful, untold story of the 1950 revolution in Puerto Rico and the long history of U.S. intervention on the island, that the New York Times says "could not be more timely." In 1950, after over fifty years of military occupation and colonial rule, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico staged an unsuccessful armed insurrection against the United States. Violence swept through the island: assassins were sent to kill President Harry Truman, gunfights roared in eight towns, police stations and post offices were burned down. In order to suppress this uprising, the US Army deployed thousands of troops and bombarded two towns, marking the first time in history that the US government bombed its own citizens. Nelson A. Denis tells this powerful story through the controversial life of Pedro Albizu Campos, who served as the president of the Nationalist Party. A lawyer, chemical engineer, and the first Puerto Rican to graduate from Harvard Law School, Albizu Campos was imprisoned for twenty-five years and died under mysterious circumstances. By tracing his life and death, Denis shows how the journey of Albizu Campos is part of a larger story of Puerto Rico and US colonialism. Through oral histories, personal interviews, eyewitness accounts, congressional testimony, and recently declassified FBI files, War Against All Puerto Ricans tells the story of a forgotten revolution and its context in Puerto Rico's history, from the US invasion in 1898 to the modern-day struggle for self-determination. Denis provides an unflinching account of the gunfights, prison riots, political intrigue, FBI and CIA covert activity, and mass hysteria that accompanied this tumultuous period in Puerto Rican history.
An American Icon in Puerto Rico
Author : Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 199 pages
File Size : 21,34 MB
Release : 2022-02-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1800733879
Book Description
Focusing on multigenerational Puerto Rican women and girls, Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez masterfully illustrates how Barbie dolls impact femininity, body image, and cultural identity. Since her debut in 1959, Barbie has transcended boundaries and transformed into a global symbol of femininity, capturing the imaginations of girls all around the world. An American Icon in Puerto Rico offers a captivating study of that iconic influence by focusing on a group of multigenerational Puerto Rican women and girls. Through personal narratives and insights, author Emily R. Aguiló-Pérez unveils the emotional attachment that these women and girls have formed with the doll during their formative years. This connection serves as a powerful lens to explore the intricate relationships girls have with their Barbie dolls and the complex role Barbie plays in shaping their identities. Aguiló-Pérez boldly confronts the challenges and contradictions that arise, offering a compelling analysis of how playing with Barbie dolls can impact a girl's perception of femininity, body image, race, and even national identity. Through these nuanced explorations, she unearths the potential pitfalls of these influences, encouraging readers to reflect on their own relationships with the iconic doll. By weaving together personal anecdotes, historical context, and sociocultural analysis, Aguiló-Pérez masterfully illustrates how these women and girls navigate the diverse landscapes of femininity, body image, and cultural identity, with Barbie serving as both a facilitator and a reflection of their growth. In doing so, she redefines the significance of Barbie in the lives of Puerto Rican women and girls, prompting readers from all around the world to reevaluate their perceptions of femininity and embrace a more inclusive understanding of beauty, body image, and self-expression.
Reproducing Empire
Author : Laura Briggs
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 35,98 MB
Release : 2003-01-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520936317
Book Description
Original and compelling, Laura Briggs's Reproducing Empire shows how, for both Puerto Ricans and North Americans, ideologies of sexuality, reproduction, and gender have shaped relations between the island and the mainland. From science to public policy, the "culture of poverty" to overpopulation, feminism to Puerto Rican nationalism, this book uncovers the persistence of concerns about motherhood, prostitution, and family in shaping the beliefs and practices of virtually every player in the twentieth-century drama of Puerto Rican colonialism. In this way, it sheds light on the legacies haunting contemporary debates over globalization. Puerto Rico is a perfect lens through which to examine colonialism and globalization because for the past century it has been where the United States has expressed and fine-tuned its attitudes toward its own expansionism. Puerto Rico's history holds no simple lessons for present-day debate over globalization but does unearth some of its history. Reproducing Empire suggests that interventionist discourses of rescue, family, and sexuality fueled U.S. imperial projects and organized American colonialism. Through the politics, biology, and medicine of eugenics, prostitution, and birth control, the United States has justified its presence in the territory's politics and society. Briggs makes an innovative contribution to Puerto Rican and U.S. history, effectively arguing that gender has been crucial to the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, and more broadly, to U.S. expansion elsewhere.
How to Hide an Empire
Author : Daniel Immerwahr
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 28,31 MB
Release : 2019-02-19
Category : History
ISBN : 0374715122
Book Description
Named one of the ten best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune A Publishers Weekly best book of 2019 | A 2019 NPR Staff Pick A pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories—the islands, atolls, and archipelagos—this country has governed and inhabited? In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress. In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.
Puerto Rico under Colonial Rule
Author : Ramon Bosque-Perez
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 17,92 MB
Release : 2006-06-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 079148338X
Book Description
Puerto Rico, one of the last and most populated colonial territories in the world, occupies a relatively unique position. Its lengthy interaction with the United States has resulted in the long-term acquisition of expanded legal rights and relative political stability. At the same time, that interaction has simultaneously seen political intolerance and the denial of basic rights, particularly toward those who have challenged colonialism. In Puerto Rico under Colonial Rule, academics and intellectuals from the fields of political science, history, sociology, and law examine three themes: evidence of state-sponsored political persecution in the twentieth century, contemporary issues, and the case of Vieques.
Borderline Citizens
Author : Robert C. McGreevey
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 350 pages
File Size : 49,45 MB
Release : 2018-09-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1501716158
Book Description
Borderline Citizens explores the intersection of U.S. colonial power and Puerto Rican migration. Robert C. McGreevey examines a series of confrontations in the early decades of the twentieth century between colonial migrants seeking work and citizenship in the metropole and various groups—employers, colonial officials, court officers, and labor leaders—policing the borders of the U.S. economy and polity. Borderline Citizens deftly shows the dynamic and contested meaning of American citizenship. At a time when colonial officials sought to limit citizenship through the definition of Puerto Rico as a U.S. territory, Puerto Ricans tested the boundaries of colonial law when they migrated to California, Arizona, New York, and other states on the mainland. The conflicts and legal challenges created when Puerto Ricans migrated to the U.S. mainland thus serve, McGreevey argues, as essential, if overlooked, evidence crucial to understanding U.S. empire and citizenship. McGreevey demonstrates the value of an imperial approach to the history of migration. Drawing attention to the legal claims migrants made on the mainland, he highlights the agency of Puerto Rican migrants and the efficacy of their efforts to find an economic, political, and legal home in the United States. At the same time, Borderline Citizens demonstrates how colonial institutions shaped migration streams through a series of changing colonial legal categories that tracked alongside corporate and government demands for labor mobility. McGreevey describes a history shaped as much by the force of U.S. power overseas as by the claims of colonial migrants within the United States.
