Changing Forms of U.S. Hegemony in Puerto Rico: The Impact on the Family and Sexuality
Author(s)
Safa, Helen
Abstract
It has been more than 100 years since the U.S. took control of Puerto Rico. In that time, the way in which the U.S. perceived Puerto Rico has changed from a colony requiring Americanization to becoming, in the 1950s, its showcase of democracy in the Caribbean, to today, when the island still has geopolitical importance for the U.S., but represents an increasing economic burden to the federal government. The failure of Operation Bootstrap, as the Puerto Rican industrialization program was known, resulted in almost permanent large-scale unemployment, with a population dependent on federal transfers for a living, and a constant source of migration to the mainland, where more than half of Puerto Ricans now live. I trace the outline of these three stages in U.S. hegemony over Puerto Rico, and argue that throughout, the U.S. Congress was reluctant to fully incorporate Puerto Rico because its population was deemed racially and socially inferior to that of the mainland. Though the removal of Spain from Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines was considered part of the U.S. “manifest destiny,” it never intended to incorporate these people so different from the U.S. as part of the American nation, as it did with its earlier acquisitions in Texas, Alaska or even Hawaii.
