A History for Liberation
January 23, 2025
Let’s Talk Globally Discusses Colonization in Puerto Rico
At 5:30 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, nearly every household in Puerto Rico lost power, darkening the island as people prepared to celebrate. Routine blackouts have become a regular and much-lamented part of Puerto Rican life since the island’s electrical grid was privatized in 2014 and handed over to the LUMA—a company who has done little to repair the grid after it was decimated by Hurricane Maria in 2017. The rolling blackouts have come to symbolize the local government’s inability to adequately address the needs of residents, as well as the United States’ colonial attitude toward the territory, which—despite Puerto Ricans being made U.S. citizens since 1917 without their consent or consultation—has habitually alternated between neglect and exploitation. At the November gathering of Let’s Talk Globally, President Javier Viera, Hispanic/Latinx Center Director Professor Emma Escobar, and Ph.D. student Adriana Rivera analyzed how that ongoing history still afflicts the island—to help the Garrett community understand what brought us here, and the way to chart a better future.
It’s not just the blackouts. “Puerto Rico pays the highest prices for food anywhere in the world because of laws like the Jones Act,” President Viera explained. While the indigenous Taíno people used to grow enough food to feed the island’s population, Spanish colonists forcibly transitioned all agricultural production toward coffee and sugar production—a monoculture that continued when the U.S. assumed control after the Spanish-American War. Already forced to import more than 80% of its food, the Jones Act required U.S. ships to carry all imports to the island, further increasing food costs.
It may seem odd for a seminary presentation to focus so heavily on economic and legislative policy, but the presenters wanted everyone to draw explicit connections between legislative choices and residents’ ongoing suffering. Further, President Viera pointed out the complicated history of how Protestant Christianity was introduced to the largely Catholic population, and served to advance U.S. economic and political interests and ideologies. If theology is grounded in concern for the flourishing of God’s people, theologians must identify what inhibits abundant life. “It’s important to use language that describes Puerto Rico as a colony so we can question and push back against its colonial status,” noted Rivera. “We want freedom for all colonized people. If we can bring awareness to what’s happening in Puerto Rico, then we can start talking about Hawaii, Palestine, the Congo—such similar situations across the globe.”
President Viera emphasized that the U.S. has often afforded legal protections to the Puerto Rican people when it benefited U.S. interests, and that federal exploitation has been a tragically bipartisan affair. Even extending citizenship served an imperial function. “Citizenship was imposed on Puerto Ricans in 1917 so they could immediately be drafted to fight in a world war for a country not their own, in a language they didn’t understand, on shores that had nothing to do with their reality—all so that we could fight the U.S.’s war for them,” he explained. “To this day, Puerto Rico has one of the highest rates per capita of participation in the U.S. armed forces.” While the U.S. has been glad to profit from Puerto Rican lives and labor, any act of self-determination has met fierce oppression. “The U.S. effort to quell and eliminate the nationalist independence movement in Puerto Rico was violent from day one,” he noted. “In 1950, the U.S. enacted a brutal military crackdown on nationalists, even bombing the city of Jayuya to destroy where people were organizing for independence—if you travel there today, the town you will see is not the same town that existed in 1950. Much of it was destroyed by U.S. bombs. Even owning or displaying a Puerto Rican flag was considered an act of defiance against the colonial regime, punishable by 10 years of imprisonment.”
When outright force was insufficient, the United States employed surveillance of the population, organized by the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, keeping detailed files called “carpetas” on the movements and activities of over 100,000 Puerto Ricans suspected of having independence sympathies. The U.S. also used economic means to control Puerto Rican self-sufficiency. In the 1940’s the government implemented Operation Bootstrap, which seized farms to convert the island’s economy from agriculture to industrial manufacturing—eliminating nearly 50% of jobs. As a result, millions of Puerto Ricans, like Rivera’s grandparents, were forced to migrate to the mainland to seek work. Depopulation of the island was official government policy. “Like so many, my grandparents had to come to the States. For them it was the Indiana steel mills,” she shared. “When that mass exodus happened, it left the island more vulnerable for people outside to come and take over.” Indeed, in 1947 the federal government passed the Industrial Incentives Act, eliminating all corporate taxes for businesses on the island, creating a rush for foreign investors to buy land that once belonged to Puerto Ricans.
When outright force was insufficient, the United States employed surveillance of the population, organized by the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, keeping detailed files called “carpetas” on the movements and activities of over 100,000 Puerto Ricans suspected of having independence sympathies. The U.S. also used economic means to control Puerto Rican self-sufficiency. In the 1940’s the government implemented Operation Bootstrap, which seized farms to convert the island’s economy from agriculture to industrial manufacturing—eliminating nearly 50% of jobs. As a result, millions of Puerto Ricans, like Rivera’s grandparents, were forced to migrate to the mainland to seek work. Depopulation of the island was official government policy. “Like so many, my grandparents had to come to the States. For them it was the Indiana steel mills,” she shared. “When that mass exodus happened, it left the island more vulnerable for people outside to come and take over.” Indeed, in 1947 the federal government passed the Industrial Incentives Act, eliminating all corporate taxes for businesses on the island, creating a rush for foreign investors to buy land that once belonged to Puerto Ricans.
All of these actions—from conscription into the army to suppressing nationalism, forced migration, and transfer of governance to private corporations—are mutually reinforcing. “U.S. policy for Puerto Rico has been to build a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans,” Escobar summarized, echoing independence activist Pedro Albizu Campos’ famous words. “There has been systemic corruption that has prioritized profit over the welfare of the people.” Nor is one political party responsible for this campaign, consistent throughout both Democratic and Republican presidencies. The privatization of the island’s governance, for example, occurred mostly under the Clinton and Obama governments, and it was President Obama who appointed a non-elected Fiscal Control Board that to this day has veto power on all government spending and policies. “Yes, Trump came and insulted us after Hurricanes Irma and Maria, threw paper towels at us,” President Viera observed. “But his history is not any different or worse from the history that came before.”
There is hope, however, in a new generation of social entrepreneurs and activists—informed by the long tradition of Puerto Rican independence struggles and grounded in international solidarity against all forms of colonization. “In the Reader for Latina Feminist Theology, Teresa Delgado has a chapter called ‘Prophecy Freedom’ that discusses the importance of Puerto Rican women’s literature, how their cuentos and novels proclaim the coming of a new era for the Puerto Rican people—to create a vision for collective freedom, dignity, and justice,” Rivera said. “I also want to return to using Borinquen, the name that the Taíno people used for the island. There’s an indigenous history we cannot lose.” Rivera also noted how artists like Bad Bunny have further strengthened the call for freedom, using the power of their celebrity to call attention to the island’s colonial status, and the possibility for a just and liberatory future.
Indeed, acts of storytelling like Let’s Talk Globally form part of an ongoing effort to re-story a history that has been suppressed. “One of the first things the U.S. did when they invaded Puerto Rico in 1898 was to change the language of education from Spanish to English, and to teach American history instead of Puerto Rican history,” President Viera recounted. “For more than 60 years, Puerto Rican history wasn’t taught in public schools. My parent’s generation, for example, knows almost nothing of this history. That’s beginning change and the stories are being recovered. An awakening is happening that has been a long time in coming. Resistance to it will be fierce for sure, but a new generation is reclaiming land and identity and as a result the future is full of possibility and promise.”