Puerto Rico: The ForgottenColony

America's Secret Colony
The Shame in America's Backyard

On November 19, 1493, Christopher Columbus stumbled onto an island named by its Taino inhabitants Borikén, one of three large islands comprising The Greater Antilles in the Caribbean Sea.

For the next 400 years, it remained a neglected backwater in the far-flung Spanish empire until 1898 when it was invaded and annexed, along with Guam, The Philippines, and Cuba, by the United States as a result of the Spanish-American War.

The United States was completing a century of continental expansion, but this was its first foray into colonial imperialism. In a series of opinions called the Insular Cases, the Supreme Court determined the Constitution would not apply to Puerto Rico. And its people were to be considered "alien races differing from us in religion, customs, ...and modes of thought for whom administration according to Anglo-Saxon principles maybe, for a time, impossible". Interestingly, the man who wrote the lead decision in the case was known racist Justice Henry Billings Brown, who also wrote the lead decision in the separate but equal case in Plessy vs. Ferguson.

Thus the tone was set for over a century of dysfunctional relations between Puerto Rico and the United States.

Though officially a commonwealth with some local legislative control, it remains subject to the full plenary powers of Congress under Article IV, Section 3 of the United States Constitution. Puerto Ricans were granted American citizenship with the Jones Act in 1917, just in time for its young men to be eligible for the draft of World War I. Despite fighting in all of America's wars ever since, Puerto Ricans are forbidden from voting for President.

The US Supreme Court made it official in 1922, declaring Puerto Rico a territory, not a state, The US Constitution's protections, especially those which relate to labor protections, collective bargaining, and the minimum wage, would not be available to the residents of Puerto Rico. As we shall see shortly, this was an opportunity for egregious exploitation that American corporate and bank syndicates wouldn't pass up.

Disaster Relief, American Style
A year after the American invasion, San Ciriaco, the longest-lived Atlantic hurricane in recorded history wreaked havoc on Puerto Rico. It left over 3,00o dead, 250,000 homeless and without food, and thousands of farms and crops destroyed. It was the worst hurricane in Puerto Rican history and an epic disaster. Curiously, the United States offered no aid whatsoever.

The following year the United States outlawed the Spanish peso and declared that it was now worth $.60 to the dollar even though it was equivalent in value. In an instant, Puerto Ricans, who were still desperately trying to recover from the previous year's devastation, lost 40% of their wealth and saw their debts increase proportionately. The next year the US began enforcement of the Hollander Act, which imposed a land tax on already desperate farmers who were now in danger of losing their farms.

Farmers rushed to mortgage their farms in a last-ditch attempt to save them, but their only recourse was The American Colonial Bank. Unencumbered by usury laws, the bank charged rates so high defaults and foreclosures were legion. The result was an enormous land and wealth transfer and the impoverishment of the Puerto Rican masses.

A major transformation would also take place as the previously diversified agricultural economy of coffee, tobacco, fruits, and sugar would become a mono-crop one. Sugar was now king.

By 1930, 45 percent of all arable land in Puerto Rico was transformed into sugar plantations. By 1934, US-owned Central Guánica, Central Aguirre, Fajardo Sugar, and United Porto Rico Sugar comprised over half the island’s arable land. Their possessions included cane fields refining mills, warehouses, railroads, and the insular post office.

One particular criminal bears special mention here: Charles Herbert Allen. He was appointed the first governor of Puerto Rico and used his brief 17-month tenure to take control of the island's entire economy. On his return to the United States, he became president of the American Sugar Refining Company, the largest sugar refining company in the world. You know it today by the name Domino Sugar.

Natural disaster, currency devaluation, land taxes, and usurious banking syndicates by now had reduced the Puerto Rican population to a landless existence and crushing poverty. Many went to work at the principal sugar cane Centrales, but the highly mechanized operation could not absorb the workforce who then sought work in the cities. Wages were less than half those paid under the Spanish. When the Puerto Rican legislature, created by the Jones Act in 1917, tried to give some relief with a minimum wage law, but it was struck down as unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. This pattern of total dominance by US branches of government characterized the colonial relationship which persists to this day.

Resistance and Repression
With wages at a mere 12.5 cents an hour, half of what they were under the Spanish, and many families on the brink of starvation, workers embarked on a series of island-wide strikes. They were led by a man who was to become the iconic symbol of Puerto Rican patriotism and resistance.

Don Pedro Albizu Campos was the first Puerto Rican ever to graduate from Harvard Law School. A brilliant intellectual and orator who spoke six languages, he was ever the freedom fighter, even helping Eamon de Valera draft the constitution for the new Irish Republic. He turned down many lucrative offers to return to his hometown of Ponce to practice poverty law.

He was asked to lead the strike after it was evident that some of the leaders had sold out. The syndicates finally caved in a resounding victory for the agricultural workers who saw their wages doubled, staving off starvation for hundreds of thousands. Albizu Campos, now leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, emerged as the undisputed leader of the island's resistance movement.

In 1934, President Roosevelt appointed General Blanton Winship governor of Puerto Rico with the expressed mission of crushing the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party. He began by militarizing the insular police, issuing them Tommy-guns, tear gas, riot gear, and instituting intense police training modeled after military boot-camp.

Winship appointed E. Francis Riggs Chief of the Insular Police. Riggs was a Yale graduate and military intelligence officer fresh from duties as advisor to Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. He became notorious for the murder of four Nationalists and a bystander in broad daylight in what infamously became known as the Rio Piedras Massacre. Afterward, he called a press conference declaring that if Albizu Campos did not cease his organizing the agricultural workers, there would be "war to the death against all Puerto Ricans."

After two Nationalists retaliated by assassinating Riggs the following year, Don Pedro Albizu Campos along with six other Nationalists were sent to prison for ten years.

The Ponce Massacre
In 1937, a peaceful Palm Sunday demonstration took place in the southern Puerto Rican city of Ponce. Hundreds, many of them Nationalists armed only with palm fronds, were marching in commemoration of the abolition of slavery on the island. Abruptly, Governor Winship rescinds their permit.

While the march's organizers are arguing with police officials, the heavily armed security force positioned themselves along the route, blocking escape routes and forming a killing zone. On Governor Winship's orders, the slaughter commenced, and after a 13-minute fusillade with carbines, rifles, and Thompson submachine guns, 17 are dead and over 200 wounded. Among the dead was 7- year old Georgina Maldonado.

There was outrage throughout the island, and Roosevelt was forced to recall Winship. Despite condemnations from the press and members of Congress, he remained unrepentant and never offered an apology.

The Struggle Continues
Don stayed in jail for ten years. On his release in 1948, Law 53 was enacted. Dubbed La Ley de la Mordaza (The Gag Law), the law made any expression of sympathy for the resistance movement, singing of La Borinqueña, the Puerto Rican national anthem, or even ownership of the Puerto Rican flag punishable with up to ten years in prison.

Undeterred, Albizu Campos and the Nationalists launched in 1950 an uprising that came to be known as the October Revolution. It was put down with the overwhelming might of the US military. Ten P47 Thunderbolt planes indiscriminately bombed the towns of Utuado and Jayuya. This was only time in history that the United States has dropped bombs on its own citizens on American soil.

Don Pedro Albizu Campos, after ten more years in prison and four more under house arrest with round-the-clock FBI surveillance, died in 1965. He remains an inspiration and a powerful symbol of resistance, patriotism, steadfast determination, and courage.

A Legacy of Colonialism
Puerto Rico has endured indignities for being the United States' "secret colony," A perverted application of Law 113, which made sterilization legal on the island, resulted in one-third of all Puerto Rican mothers, ages 20-49, being sterilized, the highest rate in the world. A 1968 study determined that thousands were unaware that the procedure would lead to permanent sterilization.

The US established up to 25 bases on the island, using the outlying island of Vieques as a firing range with devastating ecological impact to residents and the fishing industry upon which they depend. And now, hedge fund vultures are taking advantage of the island's economic crisis to force the sale of public institutions to private hands, all with the complicity of the US government. This has increased the cost of living for a population earning only half that of the poorest state in America.

The United Nation Special Committee on Decolonization has repeatedly called on the United States to provide for the self-determination of the Puerto Rican people, but it has repeatedly ignored it. This is no longer sustainable or justifiable. It's time for Puerto Rico to be free.

Que Viva Puerto Rico Libre.