7 — Unraveling the Mystery of the Consent to Domination
During more than 125 years of U.S. presence and domination, a constant has been its acceptance by at least eight generations of Puerto Ricans. Resistance to the regime, which has existed and has taken different forms, has never given way to, or been part of, a social and political process that culminates in putting an end to imperial domination. That longevity of the present colonial regime cries out for explanations.
In the previous chapter, I elaborated on why I sustain that our anti-political way of life has contributed to the colonial paralysis. I now face a related problem: our acquiescence to the kind of domination we call “imperialism” or “colonialism.” What factors have contributed to our acceptance of such a regime? How and why has it been reproduced, generation after generation? I already argued that, in order to begin understanding our aversion –or indifference– to sovereignty, to the task of constituting a nation-state, it is necessary to consider the economic, cultural and social history of the dominated country, and that history’s psychological and political effects. The circumstances and ideas that sustain this attitude developed organically, from the time of Spanish imperial domination. I add to that discussion in this chapter.
In elaborating further on that inquiry, I assess whether the concept of hegemony explains our consent to the U.S. presence in Puerto Rico. My exploration steers me toward arguing that the explanation lies, not in the “strategies of domination” emphasized by hegemony theorists –or in the particular strategies implemented by the United States– but in the historical, cultural, and psychological circumstances of the subordinate nation. Forged under Spain, the same precede the U.S. presence and dominance.
Moreover, other factors that should not be overlooked include: 1) the power asymmetries and power dynamics that arise from the U.S. presence; 2) the reactions to those power dynamics on the part of the dominated; and, above all, 3) the conditioning of such reactions by the economic, socio-political, but above all cultural and psychological realities of the subordinate society. As mentioned in the previous chapter, those realities gave way to a cultural nationality, but did not generate in the population an aspiration for constituting an independent, national state.
Reflecting on this problem requires, among other avenues of inquiry, an examination of Puerto Rican culture as a set of ideas, attitudes, and ways of doing and not doing. Such an examination forces us to take into account the historical evolution of the human group that we call the “Puerto Ricans” –a trajectory that I began to discuss in chapters 1 and 6. In short, we must take into account the integral history of the country, without losing sight of the fact that it has taken place in a context of subordination under two empires.
I submit that there are continuities –of ideas, attitudes, worldviews, and practices– which connect the present period of subordination to the United States with the colonial period under Spain, shedding light on the reasons for the longevity of U.S. domination. Therefore, I return to the Puerto Rican 19th century, when the political struggles of what the inhabitants of this archipelago have called “the country” (el país) began taking shape. I state upfront my conviction that it is preposterous to use the effects on us of colonial subordination to argue that aspiring to end it is pointless. That is the greatest possible defeatism into which we can and do fall.
A Nation that Has Not Attempted to Constitute a State
The manifestation in the 19th century of a Puerto Rican culture and of our first political forays was not joined by a generalized separatist sentiment. From the imperial point of view, the repressive measures that Spain implemented during that century were justified by the rebelliousness of the Cuban elites; but they were less justified in Puerto Rico, given the absence of a tenacious or effective independence movement here. Isolated separatist episodes –notably the Grito de Lares of 1868 –seem to confirm the weakness of the separatist faction. But there was also repression in Puerto Rico, beyond that which came in the wake of the Lares insurrection, and it has been plausibly argued that it had a major effect on the collective psyche of those and future generations.
So, repression took place in Spanish times, despite the marginality of the so-called “separatists,” which worsened during the last quarter of the 19th century. It is perhaps significant that the conspirators of Lares insurrection were spared; and were not for long in jail –although many arrested across the island did die in prison. In 1887, many “autonomists” (autonomistas) were brutally repressed, despite the fact that they always limited themselves to asking for mere reforms that did not include a break with the metropolis. That repression was unnecessary and even vicious, but we are talking about monarchical and autocratic Spain, which had already lost most of its empire because it had been, according to its vision, “too tolerant”. In addition, the treatment of the leaders of Lares versus that of the autonomist leaders is perhaps another instance of the greater contempt felt for people who accommodate themselves with those in power.
The sharpest repression under the U.S. occurred in the 1930s and 1950s, in reaction to the activities of the Nationalist Party. In addition, members of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP, founded in 1946), and those of other parties and groups, were repressed at least until the 1980s, including by the police apparatus of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Estado Libre Asociado, its unhappy “translation”), which since its creation in the early 1950s played a significant role in that repression.
The so-called carpetas (dossiers of thousands of Puerto Ricans, with all kinds of information about each one) were part of a dirty war by the federal authorities, and by the Puerto Rican police and its infamous Intelligence Division. That dirty war, waged since the 1930s, created the conditions that culminated in the political, vile and cowardly assassinations of 23-year-old Santiago Mari Pesquera (in 1976), 18-year-old Carlos E. Soto Arriví, 24-year-old Arnaldo D. Rosado Torres (in 1978), and 25-year-old Carlos Muñiz Varela (in 1979). The F.B.I. and the U.S. Justice Department did not care to investigate those murders, which were transgressions of the U.S. criminal statutes codifying civil rights violations. It’s not hard to know why.
Even if seemingly paradoxical, the violence of the U.S. government and the San Juan-based colonial state has been a legitimizing factor for the regime, to the extent that the bulk of the Puerto Rican population has codified it as follows: such violence “must be for a reason”; the recipients of such violence “are not little angels.” Colonialism is a crime, in large part because it distorts everything.
Here it has never crystalized a critical mass that could lead to independence. Our case is quite sui generis in that sense, along with other U.S. colonies –also with small territory (and less population than us), and weak “separatism,” such as Samoa, Guam, and the Virgin Islands (which invites exploring the psychological effect of “size” as an aggravating factor in situations of power asymmetry). Hence, even as colonial rule hit rock bottom in the extremely miserable 1930s, Pedro Albizu Campos (1893–1965) failed to achieve a change of course, while his arrest and conviction did not translate into further rebellion.
Nearly 100 years later, Puerto Rico is going through its biggest socioeconomic crisis since the Depression era that began with the crash of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929. The effects on the colonial status, if any, of the current debacle remain to be seen. Two of the current individual responses to the debacle are: not having children, and/or emigrating. Both not only leave the crisis intact, but worsen it, as they deepen the demographic abyss –thus paving the way for those who aspire to a Puerto Rico without Puerto Ricans. That infamous “ambition” was articulated by Edwin Miranda, one of the publicists of PNP governors Luis Fortuno and Ricardo Rosselló, in the Telegram chat that caused the fall-in-disgrace and quitting of the latter in 2019.
The Latin American independence movements were the creation of colonial elites. That was also the case of the United States of America, as the population of “the thirteen colonies” was not interested in the “grievances” stemming from the actions of the British parliament, which motivated the wealthy colonists to secede. That population was aware of the pre-eminence of those colonial elites, which for them was more relevant than any abuses perpetrated by the distant British government.
To combat the apathy of the “populace,” and to enlist soldiers and support from the masses, the elites of the United States, and Latin America, used the rhetoric of rights derived from the ideas of the European Enlightenment, while appealing to nascent nationalist sentiments. Thus, they branded the imperial monarchies as enemies of the people as a whole, while articulating promises of freedom. But what these elites wanted was to exercise the power that monarchies had over them, and thus enhance their economic and political development and dominance.
For the first three centuries under Spain, Puerto Rico was not economically exploited. There were reforms at the end of the 18th century that caused, among other modest effects, an increase in population. But it was not until the 19th century, as a result of additional measures approved Madrid, that glimpses of a “creole” elite finally emerged, which was incipient and weak, as economic activity was just taking off. For this reason, the argument goes, That elite was either “liberal-autonomist” or “conservative-annexationist.” The majority of the latter faction was made up of peninsulars. The “separatist” sector was in the minority. González observed that Lares’s failure made Ramón E. Betances (1827–1898) aware that the “native ruling class” of the time “did not want independence”; and, he adds, “could not want it, because its weakness as a class, fundamentally determined –which is not to say exclusively– by he scant development of the productive forces in Puerto Rican society, did not allow it to go beyond the reformist aspiration that always characterized it.”[1]
The economic activity that took place in the 19th century produced winners and losers. The exploited proletariat of the coast and the mountains and the small farmers ended up resenting the sugar and coffee planters, as well as merchants and moneylenders. Since then, there has been a glimpse of a people who have not wanted this elite to really rule. Under the United States, that alignment was maintained. But everything comes at a price, and preferring the rule of an external power would be no exception to such truism.
The discussion in Chapter 6 and the one that follows is an attempt to go beyond observing or arguing that the Puerto Rican elites and the population in general “have never wanted independence”; or that the material conditions did not exist at the time for those elites to aspire to lead an independent country. Below, I concentrate on exploring the robustness of the notion that U.S. imperial power has obtained our consent to its domination through tactics aimed at establishing and reinforcing its hegemony, where “hegemony” is defined as the kind of domination in which the dominated ones end up consenting to, or accepting, their status as such.
In Search of Explanations
There is a widespread acceptance of U.S. presence, government, and domination in Puerto Rican society. Such acceptance has meant that we remain more or less undaunted by its monolithic structure, which has remained unscathed decade after decade, century after century.
The acceptance of this subordination should be perplexing, not only because of its intergenerational repetition, but because the essence of U.S. domination has remained unchanged for more than a century. That reality denotes a significant degree of stagnation, of social and political inaction –and also shows that the actions that have been undertaken failed to produce changes, for they embody recycled, ineffective tactics.
As I emphasized in the previous chapter, recycling the same tactics that have not worked is tantamount to inaction. Furthermore, being divided since the 19th century into partisan tribes has not yielded any important results for the Puerto Rican community.
The Concept of Hegemony or Power as Domination
Efrén Rivera Ramos and Steven Lukes examined the phenomenon that the former calls “hegemony,” and Lukes dubs “power as domination.” The Puerto Rican jurist argues that the material foundation of hegemony is linked to the satisfaction of needs. [2] Lukes makes similar claims, while defining this power as the kind that features the capacity to prevent “people, to whatever degree, from having grievances” about their subordination, “by shaping their perceptions, cognitions, and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things.” [3]
According to Lukes, this requires answering: “How do the powerful secure the compliance of those they dominate?” and, more specifically, “how do they ensure their willing compliance?”[4] Those may be relevant questions. I argue, however, that in the case of Puerto Rico, the first thing to examine is whether the society encountered by the United States in 1898 could be dominated, and was dominated, without exerting much effort.
Rivera Ramos examines the material, ideological, cultural, and legal framework of U.S. domination, telling us that the effect of power structures and strategies has been to produce, consolidate, and reproduce Puerto Ricans’ consent to the overwhelming presence of the United States. At the same time, he identifies the most important legal events: the insular cases, and the unilateral collective “naturalization” of Puerto Ricans as U.S. citizens.
To be sure, the United States implemented policies that produced enormous changes in all areas of Puerto Rican life. [5] But, I argue, the fact that these policies were implemented, with little or no resistance, suggests that the nature of those policies is less important than the ease with which they were implemented. [6] Indeed, as Barbosa and Muñoz Rivera exemplify, the so-called elites –and also a large part of the population– showed enthusiasm and hope in the presence of the new empire, before it had the chance to implement its policies.
According to Professor Rivera Ramos, three domination strategies have contributed to Puerto Ricans’ acceptance of their status as colonial subjects of the United States: the “discourse of rights,” the “ideology of the rule of law,” and living under a regime of “partial democracy.” He emphasizes that the first two factors “have been key features of the American hegemonic project and constitutive parts of the legitimation process.” [7]
For Lukes, “power as domination” creates in the subordinate group the perception that their interests are being served and satisfied. Agreeing with Lukes, Rivera Ramos emphasizes the importance of the subordinates’ perception that the dominant group “has the requisite knowledge, resources, and experience to manage the general affairs of society. The group’s hegemonic position is possible to the extent that the ‘common sense’ prevailing in the general population can be shaped by the group’s worldview.” [8]
In parallel with Lukes, Rivera Ramos elaborates that hegemony also depends on the willingness of the dominant group “to incorporate the demands of other groups and satisfy them, at least partially.”[9] I proceed to examine the application, validity and usefulness of that theoretical scheme to the Puerto Rican case.
The Limitations of the Concept of Hegemony in the Case at Hand
First, as I pointed out, monarchical and autocratic Spain did not have in Puerto Rico the governance problems that it faced in Cuba. In seeking explanations for the stability of U.S. domination over Puerto Rico, the realities of Spanish rule should not be underestimated; much less ignored. Inheriting a colonial population with grievances that did not translate into separatist action is not the same as governing a militant population in favor of its political freedom.
Second, the image of the United States as a “liberal” defender of individual rights seemed to dazzle the Puerto Rican political elite of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nonetheless, I find it plausible that the Puerto Rican elite used that image of the United States to explain, and justify itself, its acceptance of the presence of the new imperial power. Of course, that image also attracted popular sectors, oppressed by landowners, merchants and usurers, who saw with hope the presence of the supposed champion of democracy. [10] Hope can be a dangerous sentiment.
Why were “the Americans” greeted with hope? Why did it become easy for them to establish their domination? Why was the violence of the “seditious bands” (partidas sediciosas) aimed at the landowners and merchants of the mountainous region? Why, after the disappearance of the partidas sediciosas, did violence and intimidation become a tactic of the “Republican mobs”? Regarding the violence against landowners and merchants, the main key seems to lie in the resentments that José Luis González emphasized in his essays, which would have been the cause of the violence perpetrated by those groups, mainly in the mountainous interior. In fact, Picó found in his research that “revenge” was the main motivation of this bands. [11]
As for the reasons for Spain’s poor image, which could largely answer the first two previous questions, it is pertinent to point out the historical irrelevance of the Madrid government in the lives of a large part of the inhabitants (until in the 19th century royal decrees were approved that disrupted their way of life); and the weakness of Spain (as it lost almost all of its empire in the Americas during the first quarter of the 19th century). Almost nothing commands less respect than an objectively and subjectively decadent government, which when it acts it does so in an arbitrary and despotic manner. By the time that the Madrid made itself felt, it had already lost its empire in America (except Cuba and Puerto Rico); and the measures it took were received with displeasure by the population of the mountains, who lost their access to land and their way of life, becoming an army of laborers working for and exploited by mostly foreign landowners.
Whatever negative attitudes Puerto Ricans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries displayed toward Spain could be explained as follows: The first three centuries of the Spanish presence were characterized by the abandonment of the population. The metropolis only paid attention to the needs of the fortified citadel, and never cared to develop the island. When this began to change, at the end of the 18th century and, above all, in the 19th century, the economic measures and stimulus of certain types of immigration had effects that the mountainous settlers perceived as being disastrous. From occupying and using land unimpeded, they became laborers of foreign landowners. Such circumstances could not lead to an attachment to the Spanish government or to the foreigners who became exploiters. Added to this were the military governors –the captains general (capitanes generales)– who, quartered in fortified San Juan, treated the islanders with contempt and occasional repression.
The fact is that we went from the tutelage of a virtual ex-empire, a country in political and economic decline, to an empire on the rise, with its overwhelming capitalism and image of “champion of democracy” and purveyor of “modernity.” However, as I elaborate ahead, it would be necessary to inquire whether the ease with which the United States established its domination in Puerto Rico was more a consequence of its “luck” than of its power.
In 1900, the bulk of the island’s “ruling” elite went from hope to confusion. It remained there to this day, in a state that seems to include a species of catatonic enrapture. At first, it was under the illusion that we would become a state of the American union. That expectation was connected to the fact that those factions led by Barbosa and Muñoz Rivera conceived the United States as a “republic of republics.” But this conception was already problematic when the Constitution was ratified in 1787, which created a single sovereignty and a single source of supreme norms.
Barbosa and Muñoz Rivera ignored, or pretended to ignore, that this idea of sovereigns participating in a confederation had been altered as early as 1788, when the Articles of Confederation were repealed with the ratification of the Constitution that was drafted the previous year; and, in any case, it ended up vanishing with the fundamental consequence of the Civil War of 1861–1865: the consolidation of the supremacy of the federal government. So, from the perspective of more than 12 decades of U.S. imperial and capitalist domination, it is remarkable that the feverish fantasies of our country’s politicians began to manifest themselves as early as 1900, which they have seemingly transmitted to the Puerto Rican population.
Third, the U.S. has never “incorporated the demands” or “met the needs” of the Puerto Rican popular classes and elites. Despite this, its refusal to promote greater social justice or to decolonize Puerto Rico never translated into significant opposition to the regime, whether massive or by the Puerto Rican elite. Politically, Puerto Rico finds itself today in the same colonial limbo in which it was when the first organic law, the Foraker Act of 1900, was passed. That is why the perception that the United States has been democratic, fair and benevolent in the political aspect of its relationship with Puerto Rico does not match reality. This divergence between perception and reality requires explanations, beyond calling it “cognitive dissonance” or some analogous construct. The explanation, I propose, lies largely in the culture of the country, as it had taken hold since before the United States invaded through Guánica in 1898: a culture that has featured the absence of an emotional response to the prospect or need of national sovereignty.
In the 19th century, an elite emerged that included an “autonomist” sector, which the Popular Democratic Party has plausibly presented as its political and historical ancestry. Like the PDP, the nineteenth-century Autonomist Party fought for some degree of self-government, while advocating for keeping the political ties with the Spanish metropolis. The predecessor of the Autonomist Party, the Liberal Reform Party, was the first party to be founded in Puerto Rico, on November 24, 1870. [12] The reformist liberals aspired to a certain degree of administrative decentralization, beginning with “the extension of the powers of the Provincial Council and the municipalities.” [13]
Trías Monge tells us that the reformist liberals chose and defined their purposes “with extreme care to avoid as much as possible the imputation of separatism.” At the same time, [14] Ayala and Bernabe affirm that, “for more than a century, the autonomist current has sought to install itself in that subordinate and at the same time different political-cultural space.” [15]
In the face of the disappointment represented by the 1900 Foraker Act, this political current seemingly acquired a new impetus, soon abandoning any hope of statehood. However, Muñoz Rivera led a rhetorical and ineffective opposition to the new stingy and tyrannical paternalism, this time dressed in the flag of stars and stripes. In the so-called autonomist faction, timidity and pusillanimity have been a constant from then until today. The ambivalent and ineffective political stance of those who for many decades have been called estadolibristas (pro-commonwealth status) is another constant that dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In his material analysis, González emphasizes that the disenchantment of the sector led by Muñoz Rivera was not due to the Foraker Act and the decisions in the first insular cases. Rather, the disappointment “only came when the new metropolis made it clear that the invasion did not imply annexation, did not imply the participation of the Puerto Rican propertied class in the sumptuous banquet of the expansive U.S. capitalist economy, but its colonial subordination to that economy.”[16] Above all, because “it became clear that the new economic regime –that is, the supplanting of the [coffee] hacienda economy by a plantation economy– meant the ruin of the insular landowning class and the beginning of the independent participation of the working class in the political life of the country.”[17]
Barbosa’s Republicans had a different reaction to the 1900 Foraker Act, at the same time as they gained access to positions within the regime. Since then, the pro-statehood camp has displayed a visceral hostility to any criticism of the United States. It is also true that this sector was hostile to that of the old landowners, who were aligned with the Muñoz Rivera faction.
Barbosa and his party accepted and adopted the imperial rationalization that Puerto Ricans needed a period of tutelage before being admitted as a state, so that they could learn the art of governance and life in a democracy. In doing so, Puerto Rican Republicans echoed the discourse of racist U.S. senators, congressmen, and bureaucrats, who in turn repeated the notions of racial inferiority that the Supreme Court justices articulated in the early insular cases. That is, early 20th-century Puerto Rican “Republicans” adopted a rationalization for the Foraker Act that amounted to repeating and validating the racist expressions that the Supreme Court articulated since 1901, in its decision in Downes v. Bidwell. The contradictions and surrealism of the colony seem to know no bounds.
Indeed, such justification for subordination to the United States should always have been grounds for apprehension. It did not bode well that the new empire –which had already used rationalizations based on racial hierarchy to explain its right to, and its success in, subjugating the natives and slaves– would use them to treat us as colonized (for more than twelve decades now). [18] Today, Americans –in Congress, in the U.S. executive, in the current, in the all-powerful Fiscal Control Board, in the expressions of the John Paulsons of this life– point to the debt and the deterioration of Puerto Rico to reinforce those notions, telling us that we must get our house in order. They do so in total abstraction from the predominant role of American capitalism and greed in that debacle, today in its financial incarnation, while also “forgetting” that the role of U.S. policies in the present ruin. Besides their greed and policies, American rhetoric, ignorance and selective memory are also obnoxious.
It illustrates the tortuous and futile path of reforming the colonial regime that, since the 1910s, Unionists (from the Muñoz Rivera party) and Republicans (from the Barbosa party) sought to make the office of governor elective. Of course, with the Jones Act of 1917 Congress kept the presidential appointment of the governor’s office, as it had been since 1900. It wasn’t until 1947 that Congress passed the “Elective Governor Act.” After the approval of Law 600 of 1950 –through which Congress “authorized” the drafting of a supposed constitution, which would replace parts of the Jones Act (those dictating the structure of the colonial state)– the current governmental structure was implemented, whose longevity has already exceeded seven decades.
The Foraker Act was in effect for seventeen years; the Jones Act for twice that time, thirty-five years. In turn, in 2024 the E.L.A. or “commonwealth” turned 72 years old, surpassing in longevity, by more than twice, the sections of the Jones Act that dictated the structure of the colonial government. It should be recalled that many of the provisions of the Jones Act, which came from t4he Foraker Act of 1900, became the Federal Relations Act –which is still in force. So, neuralgic sections of the Jones Act, which in turn stem from its predecessor the Foraker Act, have been in place since 1900, including the general applicability of federal laws.
For more than seven decades, multiple attempts to expand Puerto Rico’s “powers of self-government” under commonwealth failed. The reality is that the demands for greater “self-government,” for “more autonomy” have been crashing down for more than a century against the refusal of U.S. rulers to even conceive that Puerto Rico can or should obtain more powers –much less obtain powers that the states do not possess. The same has happened with the claims of statehood, since American rulers did not conceive and still don’t conceive of a “State of Puerto Rico” either. That this refusal and indifference have been joined by condescension, seemingly good manners, and lobbying — much of it paid for with money from the Puerto Rican treasury — does not make them any less obvious, but do make them more cynical.
So, the United States found itself in Puerto Rico in an auspicious situation, different from that of the Philippines, a nation that was subdued by appalling violence, notorious for the racist and murderous sadism of U.S. troops. Philippine resistance led to the U.S. government promising independence in 1916, and granting it in 1946. [19] In contrast, the explanation goes, Puerto Rico was a divided, demobilized society, with economic development that was barely taking off, which had not given way to the emergence of a solid propertied class, for which independence appeared advantageous.
It has also been emphasized that Puerto Rico’s elite (Creole and Peninsular) was weakened by the “change of sovereignty,” from Spain’s to that of the U.S. government. Indeed, the latter’s policies decimated coffee planters, and coastal plantation owners had to cede the bulk of control of the sugar industry to U.S. capitalists. Without a pro-independence elite, [20] the argument goes, there could be no independence from Spain or the United States, and well into the 20th century, an important sector of the country’s even weaker, powerless elite — divided as it was — aligned their interests with the political and economic domination of the United States. Therefore, independence from the United States would have to be achieved by dispensing with the wealthiest sector of the country and its allies in the local parties, which has always seemed to be an uphill task.
The end of the colony would have to be willed and achieved “from below.” Whether that is impossible or not, atypical or not, it remains for us to inquire why the group we call the people of Puerto Rico was not convinced of the desirability of putting an end to the dominant regime, the capitalist-colonial regime of the United States, so that there was no opportunity for a conviction of such desirability to percolate to the local party leaders; or for enough leaders emerging “from below”, dedicated to the task of national sovereignty.
The low expectations of Puerto Ricans in 1898, and their disinterest in sovereignty, had been shaped by historical and material conditions, among them: The relative weakness of the propertied sector; the population’s class divisions and resentments; underdevelopment and misery; the fatality of the frequent hurricanes and epidemics; and the illiteracy of the bulk of the Puerto Rican people. Those and other conditions in turn yielded: the people’s indifference and detachment from libertarian ideas and ideals; their immediatism and pragmatism; and their particular rationalizations and psychological reactions to the socio-political status of subordination.
Thus, particularly during the first half of the 20th century, the new dominant power did not have to implement, as a “strategy” to obtain or maintain the consent of its subordinates, measures that included transforming the living conditions of those impoverished and illiterate people, whose potential to improve their lives had not been untapped. Nor has it required, to this day, to recognize it powers of “self-government.”
Is it a matter of emotions? That is, is it a question of lack thereof? Consonant with Benedict Anderson, we would say that the circumstances that percolated in what we call the “Puerto Rican culture” failed to produce humans whose emotions are stirred by the idea of political self-determination and independence. Without emotion, without passion, there is no action. Which is the same as saying that action is preceded by emotion.
Fourth, Rivera Ramos does not take into account that, under Spain, the legitimizing discourse revolved around the Motherland and its identity elements: the monarchy, Hispanicity, and Catholicism. Such “justifications” for the previous colonial regime are extremely different from those Rivera Ramos identifies under the U.S. regime; but they were more than enough, in the context of a population that did not even require such rationalizations, while living day to day, precariously.
Since there have been no political concessions, no important political reform of the colonial regime, any perception that the United States government has treated us “democratically” or fairly is divorced from the truth, and reveals a conformism embedded in very low expectations about what we deserve or need. Again, I doubt that this dissonance between reality and perception is the product of strategies of domination implemented by the hegemonic nation.
I propose, instead, that this dislocation is indicative of several factors, including those already mentioned, that translate into cultural reasons, even deficiencies of expectations, which in turn are independent of the “strategies of domination” of the hegemonic nation.[21] Let us not lose sight of the aforementioned detachment from ideals and idealism and our pragmatic and narrow-minded immediatism, which does not take into account the social whole, but the immediacy of each one’s situation or worries. Again, perhaps all of this boils down to the fact that the idea of sovereignty does not produce emotions of the type that would move us to collective action and sacrifice.
In any event, at the height of 1898 Puerto Rico’s social and cultural reality was not magically altered by the “change of sovereignty”. During the first five decades of U.S. domination, most Puerto Ricans continued to live from day to day, too many of them in appalling misery –even worse than under Spain. It is therefore necessary to explore whether their subordination, their lack of rebellion, was not the product of new discourses designed to legitimize the political regime or misery; but of other factors that have been dragging on since Spanish times. Today, Puerto Rico’s relative poverty is still a factor that reinforces, rather than weakens, imperial rule. We prefer what is known, however bad, to what is yet to be known –however promising.
During the first five decades of the 20th century, the U.S. regime did not translate into better living conditions for the majority of the population. The rationalizations identified by Rivera Ramos, others that are repeated today on a daily basis, and those that were articulated in the 19th century, have been created or reproduced by elites that which have supported the regime, with or without some reform here or there. The purposes of those rationalizations have been and still are, rhetorical, psychological, and political. It is perhaps difficult to determine whether they arise –then and today– organically, although they are the object of a significant degree of popular consumption and assent. For this reason, they are part of the fabric of domination –although they come mainly from Puerto Ricans themselves, through the basic formulation that we would be obliterated without the presence of the “Americans.”
Fifth, I agree with Rivera Ramos that certain “strategies” he identified –the discourse of rights, the idea of the rule of law, and the dogma that we live under a liberal and democratic government– are part of the ideological framework of the U.S. imperial regime. That is to say, they are used as part of the discourse that seeks to legitimate the regime of colonial subordination; or they are implicitly present in apologies for the U.S. presence. But I qualify this agreement with my professor as follows: The fact that Puerto Rican political actors –defeated since 1898 in their supposed aspirations for changes to the colonial status– still articulate the idea that all good things are thanks to the U.S. presence, responsible for the “democracy” we enjoy, provides a window into their important role in the duration of the long colonial night.
The country’s politicians have always played a key role in setting the framework of public discourse, and therefore of the debates. The inhabitants of Puerto Rico have no contact, for all intents and purposes is non-existent, with U.S. political actors. In any case, this contact has always been mediated by our politicians in the archipelago. It is the platitudes and stupidities that are articulated by Puerto Rican politicians which we have always attended to with greater or lesser consistency, and that have exacerbated our emotions and served as the basis for our own debates –also of a very low category– with other Puerto Ricans.
It is also worth pondering whether the lack of leadership makes it very difficult, or impossible, to mobilize the masses. The country’s partisan elite has been pusillanimous in the extreme, but always looking out for their well-being. During the moments of greatest misery, both in the 1930s and today, the bulk of this ruling class has limited itself to clinging to the perks they obtain with their access to the diminished, but not contemptible or despised power of the colonial state. It should not cause perplexity that during the current era of the Fiscal Control Board under the PROMESA Act, approved by Congress in 2016, corruption and cynicism of those who today have less power over that colonial state have skyrocketed. As I argued in the previous chapter, powerlessness also corrupts.
Sixth, as I have stated, the social and economic situation has not been more auspicious. In addition to political ignominy, the first five decades of the 20th century were characterized by economic misery, as U.S. capitalists –and some Puerto Rican “good families” like the Serrallés and the Roig– exploited the population and made millions. Apart from the occasional demands and workers’ strikes, the first reaction of resistance did not occur until the fourth decade, with Albizu Campos and the Nationalist Party –who, it must be acknowledged, were repressed through the use of considerable violence (recall, among other episodes, the Ponce Massacre of 1937).
The fact is that, between 1898 and the end of the Second World War in 1945, the balance was one of patience and resignation in the face of a gloomy picture of misery. There was no satisfaction of interests, such as a more dignified life, with less exploitation and less misery. With the exception of the small Nationalist Party, the country presented then no major challenge to exploitation or to the metropolitan government.
However, of course, there was a major crackdown on Albizu and nationalism in both the 1930s and the 1950s. The dirty war against the independence movement raged on, and took different forms and tactics, from persecution, surveillance and harassment, to assassination. [22] Just as significant as the repression have been the reactions of Puerto Ricans, which have not been monolithic, but have mostly featured complicity, fatalism, passivity, and conformism. The effects of repression include having provided additional rationalizations for doing nothing. Although it may sound paradoxical, in Puerto Rico state violence seems to reinforce the legitimization of the regime, rather than delegitimizing it. [23]
It is plausible to argue that, by using the police apparatus of the E.L.A. to repress the independence movement, the dominant parties contributed to colonial stagnation. In doing so, they would have contributed to decimate the political and social forces that were seen as threatening the stability of the status quo. They would also have contributed to the futility of their efforts in favor of reforms that would liberalize the colonial regime, or that would grant some degree of participation in the political-electoral processes of the metropolis that governs us. At the same time, more than repression, from the end of World War II until today, the relevant factor is found in the surreptitious but effective mechanisms of collective daze, which disabled any capacity or resistance that could have developed –that could be the basis for pressuring or encouraging the U.S. government to reform or abolish the colonial regime.
Today, Puerto Rico is plunged into a new stage of poverty, as even the precarious middle class that emerged in the post-war period has been decimated. The response of many has been to migrate to Florida and other states, thus decreasing the population of the archipelago. The U.S.-Muñocista model began to show signs of exhaustion in the 1960s, and had its first major crisis in the 1970s. But the society in which this has occurred is one where, as José Luis González put it, “misery has been disguised as consumerist opulence and anxiety with unconcern and frivolity.”[24] Our insertion into post-war American industrial and financial capitalism has also come at a very high cost. The high price we are paying is no more evident, nor more ominous, than the current demographic catastrophe: more deaths than births. In 2023, 17 thousand children were born, while 30 thousand people died.
Again, there are to be discerned factors which are independent of the “strategies of domination” that Rivera Ramos emphasizes. We have not been able to develop immunity to the capitalist-advertising complex, to which has been added an anti-human urbanism that hinders or neutralizes the capacity for healthy and stimulating socialization and the possibility of concerted and effective action. That way of life that was imposed on us after the Second World War has contributed to perpetuating our paralysis and isolation from each other, not to mention from the rest of the world.
This “modernity” enslaves us with too much underpaid work and little free time, with materialism, consumerism, isolation, banality, ill-conceived and poorly implemented pragmatism, and conformism. All of that has been reinforced by the media, the whole network of socialization and acculturation, and the fragmented cities where the tyranny of the automobile, atomization and uprooting reign. There is no mention of the devastating emotional effects of this unhealthy way of life, as it even damages the physical health of the human beings who live as shadows in this archipelago, many of whom have emigrated to the United States –a society that is also sick and in decline. In short, we have suffered the consequences of imperialism, and those of capitalism –which has also devastated non-colonial societies. [25]
A culture featuring too little search for, and appreciation of, beauty; displaying scarcity of intellectualism, critical thinking, ethics, and dynamism, lacks the acuteness of vision that opposes the blindness of conformism. And this has not been due to lack of talent, but to the want of conditions that would enhance that talent and would make way to collective and transforming action.
In short, the empire has not given way to economic or political development. Colonies exist to exploit them, not to be developed. Any perception that our demands and needs have been satisfied would be an illusion, emanating from a society that crystallized after a particular historical process. That process was characterized by the circumstances already discussed, including divisions produced by the diverse experiences that were lived since the attempt was made to develop its economic potential. This suggests that the perception of the supposed goodness of the regime is sufficient and powerful, a perception that is tied to the need to hold on to what exists here and now, for fear of what may come. Our fears and low expectations have made easier the job of the American empire.
In view of all of that, and more, I propose that the perception that the empire is benevolent has been a product, above all, of the culture that the United States encountered in Puerto Rico, whose reproduction did not stop in 1898. It is worth pondering, therefore, whether the ease with which the United States established its domination over Puerto Ricans is a case of luck, rather than of power or of “power as domination.”
It is a mistake, argues Dowding, to presume that those who benefit from certain results or conditions used their power to produce them; for sometimes it is more a question of luck than of power. [26] Here we are dealing with what he calls the “systematic luck” of those groups that benefit from the way the structural characteristics of the societies or groups they seek to dominate and exploit. That kind of “luck” denotes “the fact that [groups] may get what they want without trying and this property attaches to certain locations within the social and institutional structure. Luck in this sense is closer to fortune or destiny than to simple chance.”[27]
The United States found in Puerto Rico a social order, divisions and attitudes, which facilitated, rather than hindered, its capitalist and military expansion. Of course, U.S. military prowess allowed it to wrest the archipelago from Spain. But the new empire did not need to establish the conditions that would facilitate its total control, for these already existed. The image of Dr. Santiago Veve Calzada, almost swimming to an American warship –begging them to invade Fajardo, imagining in the northern power all the goodness and no defects, and then conforming all his psychology and practices to that delusion– could very well be emblematic of that “luck” of which Dowding speaks. Such behavior seems extreme, but it contains much of the essence of the ignominious history of the colonized Puerto Ricans.
Other Psychological, Historical and Cultural Keys
Among other factors we find the psychological need for self-esteem. In our case, feeling good in our skin, creating a rewarding sense of individual and collective identity, has been shaped in such a way that dispenses with a separate political nationality. The opposite seems to be true, that such a need has been linked to a significant degree, and has adapted, to the perception that we have been participating in the power of the U.S. empire. I believe that the role of the idea that we have been a part, however modestly, of American global power should not be underestimated. That perception has been reinforced by the presence of hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. military and wars.
The picture should be cause for perplexity: Members of a people that is oppressed by American capitalist imperialism have been soldiers of the violent, killing department of that imperialism. Then, there’s the idea that everything American is synonymous with modernity, progress, and goodness.
Recent developments, and others yet to occur, may undermine these and other factors in the equation of acquiescence to colonialism; or they may not have major effects, given Puerto Rico’s current weakness, accentuated by tribal divisions, a simplistic and incomplete view of reality, long-standing fears, and a demographic imbalance that jeopardizes the very viability and existence of the Puerto Rican nation. The recent invasion of crypto-mafiosi and financiers –and the gentrification they have been implementing with the brazen alliance of Puerto Rico’s wealthiest, ruthless and ambitious “good” families and politicians– have been added to the ignominy of the dismantling of educational, health, and general welfare services that has been taking place since the 1990s. Neoliberalism serves the hoarders and the ruthless, of course.
As I have already discussed, it has been argued that there is a causal relationship between long-standing class resentments dating back to the 19th century, and skepticism about the desirability of national sovereignty. The work of historian Fernando Picó provides the data that explains the nature and origins of these resentments. [28] José Luis González observed that the oppressed classes of the mountains and the coast had no interest in an independence that would maintain their oppression at the hands of the coffee and sugar planters, and of greedy merchants and usurious moneylenders. [29]
But, I propose, any explanatory power of these ancient resentments, rather than rationalizing the fact that we have not opted for national sovereignty, suggests that not embarking on the path of political nationhood on that basis is another example of the weight of history, as reflected in culture. That is, if there is an important degree of truth in that explanation, then old resentments and mistrusts –subcutaneous entities present in our cultural ethos– should be, but are not, overcome in the face of changing circumstances and the reality of U.S. capitalist-imperialist exploitation. After all, that exploitation has been just as abusive, if not more so, than any at the hands of the Puerto Rican or Spanish elites of the 19th century –and more relevant, more enduring, pervasive from 1898 to today; present and constant, not something from the past. It has also been more insidious, that is, less obvious or not obvious at all for most of us, which has contributed to its permanence.
Again, the resentment explanation is based on perceptions that emerged in the 19th century; but those perceptions are detached from the new circumstances that began to take shape with the so-called change of sovereignty. The constant since 1898 has been that the main exploiter is American capitalism and the U.S. government apparatus, not in small part because it has greater power than the dwindling and servile Puerto Rican elite.
My argument does not necessarily deny that we may recognize the reality of the abuses inflicted on us by the “Americans” –the exploitation in the sugar mills, in the factories, at the hands of the financiers– but that we prefer it to a “local” exploitation, to being abused by other Puerto Ricans with pretensions of superiority. That is, we may, to a certain extent, be aware of U.S. capitalist-imperialist exploitation; but, viscerally and instinctively –as a deep, culturally transmitted reflex– we prefer it to the one we could receive from the wealthy Puerto Rican elites in a hypothetical, sovereign Puerto Rico.
In turn, that mentality would contain an inability to act, based in no small degree to the dreading of a post-American future, in which we would be ruled by a Puerto Rican oligarchy or elite. It is hard to conceive of greater pessimism than that, immersed in the rationalizing of the inaction that keeps us stuck in the colonial swamp. All that invites to wonder, again, whether at the core of the Puerto Rican dilemma what is to be found is our emotional numbness to the idea of national, political sovereignty. It would not be a matter of “docility,” as René Marqués famously wrote, but of want of passion. We have filled the resulting void with all kinds of fears and rationalizations, which are tailormade to resist the prospect of independence. Everything else would follow from that.
Coda
Beginning in 1898, the United States benefited from a pre-existing socio-cultural order. That order, which had been brewing for hundreds of years in the subordinate nation, has been stable and auspicious enough to American domination, so that it has not required elaborate strategies of domination. The regime of a previous imperial power was not seriously questioned or challenged; a pattern that has been maintained for more than twelve decades under another empire.
A community that is characterized by the want of political nationalism, or divided between the few who are passionate about sovereignty and those who are not (the majority so far), has not required “strategies of domination” to be subjugated. That community’s immunity to the emotional appeal of political nationalism has been followed by rationalizations accounting for that numbness. The rationalizations have featured myriad arguments against independence. All that has facilitated the longevity of American rule. Therefore, for the reasons already discussed, I argue that the theoretical schemes of Rivera Ramos and Lukes do not account for the longevity of our more-than-one-century-old acceptance of the U.S. colonial regime.
All of the above leads me to further reflection. To say that the future cannot be known is an inaccurate statement, inasmuch as in our short lives we are allowed to know the future of the child, adolescent and young adult that we were. The same is true of peoples, albeit in an intergenerational way. There is also the notion of the inevitability of our historical and cultural trajectory, which is the product of the conditions that existed in the formative centuries of our people, unleashing a particular causality.
From today’s perspective, this causality emerges as inevitable: it could not be otherwise. If it were, it would be a different story; the current situation would be different. On the other hand, in order not to fall into fatalism, it would be necessary to internalize that action provides the only possibility of breaking that chain of causality, which has produced a significant degree of devastation to what we call the people of Puerto Rico; devastation that is worsening by the minute.
[1] José Luis González, El país de cuatro pisos y otros ensayos 15 (1980; 13th rev. ed. 2018) (translation mine; italics in the original text).
[2] Efrén Rivera Ramos, The Legal Construction of Identity: The Judicial and Social Legacy of American Colonialism in Puerto Rico 15 (2001). Following Antonio Gramsci, this author uses the category of hegemony “to explain the process by which a social class or bloc of social groups wins consent to its historical project from other classes or groupings in society relying mostly on noncoercive mechanisms.” Rivera Ramos, at 14–15.
[3] Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View 11 (2nd ed. 2005).
[4] Lukes, supra note 3, at 12.
[5] For a detailed discussion of these policies, see Pedro A. Cabán, Constructing a Colonial People: Puerto Rico and the United States 1898–1932 (1999).
[6] The fact is that “the United States designed a structure for colonial administration without the involvement of the subject population. This colonial state was neither representative of nor accountable to the colonized people. It was set up to administer the colony, promote economic growth, preserve political stability, and legitimize colonial rule.” Cabán, supra note 5, at 8.
[7] Rivera Ramos, supra note 2, at 193.
[8] Rivera Ramos, at 15.
[9] Id.
[10] Rivera Ramos, at 211: The “subordinate sectors of Puerto Rican society felt attracted to the new regime. Many workers, women, and Blacks and mixed-race Puerto Ricans saw in the forms and symbols of American legal and political discourse an opportunity to shed the state of social oppression they identified with Spanish colonialism and with the Creole elite that had exploited and marginalized them.” See also González, supra note 1, at 34–36.
[11] Fernando Picó, 1898: La guerra después de la guerra 81–124 (1987). See also César J. Ayala & Rafael Bernabe, Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898 15–16; 19 (2007).
[12] 1 José Trías Monge, Historia constitucional de Puerto Rico 57 (1980).
[13] Trías Monge, supra note 12, at 58. The Provincial Council “was not a legislative body in the strict sense”. Among its “modest powers,” it proposed “public works and measures deemed necessary for the promotion of agriculture, commerce, industry, and education; examined the accounts of the municipalities, established the tax distributions; and oversaw the investment of public funds.” Trías Monge, at 27.
[14] Trías Monge, at 58.
[15] Ayala & Bernabe, supra note 11, at 10.
[16] González, supra note 1, at 29.
[17] González, at 30.
[18] See, e.g., Mark S. Weiner, Americans Without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship (2006); Roberto Ariel Fernández, Racism, Culture, Law, and the Judicial Rhetoric Sanctioning Inequality and Colonial Rule, 53 Rev. Jur. U.I.P.R. 609, 671–677 (2019).
[19] See, e.g., José A. Cabranes, Citizenship and the American Empire: Notes on the Legislative History of the United States Citizenship of Puerto Ricans, 127 Pa. L. Rev. 391, 393–394 n.5 (1978).
[20] González, supra note 1, at 29–30.
[21] Marqués wrote about “this notorious incapacity for the intellectual association of situations, facts, and ideas,” which “is a trait that must already be considered typical of the personality of the Puerto Rican.” René Marqués, El puertorriqueño dócil y otros ensayos 168 (4th ed. 1993).
[22] See, e.g., Rivera Ramos, supra note 2, at 200–203; Arcadio Diaz Quiñones, La memoria rota 76 (1993).
[23] Rivera Ramos, at 203: “Important sectors of the Puerto Rican population have come to perceive many of the actions and practices described as illegitimate. But others have ‘validated’ those actions and practices, at various moments, with reference to the notion that they are appropriate ways of dealing with ‘subversives.’ In that sense, the continuation of these practices has depended on the existence of a social understanding, with varying degrees of extension and depth, sanctioning their legitimacy.”
[24] González, supra note 1, at 140.
[25] On the adverse effects of capitalism on the mental health of much of the population in “first world” countries, see Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? 35–38 (2009).
[26] Keith Dowding, Power 71 (1996).
[27] Id.
[28] See Fernando Picó, Libertad y servidumbre en el Puerto Rico del siglo xix (1979); ____, Amargo Café: Los pequeños y medianos caficultores de Utuado en la segunda mitad del siglo xix (1981); ____, 1898: La guerra después de la guerra (1987). See also Ayala & Bernabe, supra note 11, at 15–16; 19.
[29] See, e.g., González, supra note 1, at 22–24. González stated: “The Puerto Rican working class… also welcomed the U.S. invasion, but for reasons very different from those that encouraged the landowners at the time. With the arrival of the Americans in Puerto Rico, the workers saw the opportunity for a settling of accounts with the propertied class in all areas.” González, at 31–32.
