Unveiling the Mystery of Acquiescence to Colonial Rule
The most salient feature of the regime that keeps Puerto Rico subordinated to the United States is its longevity. What accounts for the acquiescence of Puerto Ricans to that regime? How has that consent been reproduced for generations, up to the present day?
Here, I examine the explanatory power of the concept of hegemony to account for the consent to the American presence in Puerto Rico. My main contention is that the explanation lies, not in the domination strategies of the empire, but in the historic and cultural circumstances of the subordinated nation.
Hegemony and the Satisfaction of Needs
Efrén Rivera Ramos and Steven Lukes examined “hegemony,” which Lukes calls “power as domination.” According to Rivera Ramos, the material foundation of hegemony is connected to the satisfaction of needs. Lukes makes a similar point, while defining power as domination as “the power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their rule in the existing order of things.”
That requires answering, he elaborates, “how do the powerful secure the compliance of those they dominate –and more specifically, how do they secure their willing compliance?” For Lukes, “power as domination” works as long as it creates in the subordinated group the perception that its interests are being advanced.
Rivera Ramos identifies three domination strategies that have contributed to the acquiescence of Puerto Ricans to their condition of colonial subjects of the United States: the discourse of rights, the ideology of the rule of law, and the experience of a partial democracy. The first two, he elaborates, “have been key features of the American hegemonic project and constitutive parts of the legitimation process.”
Rivera Ramos emphasizes the centrality of the perception of the subordinated group that the dominant one possesses “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 [dominant] group’s worldview.”
Moreover, he elaborates, hegemony rests upon the willingness of the dominant group “to incorporate the demands of other groups and satisfy them, at least partially.” Allow me to examine this theoretical framework in the case of Puerto Rico and its relation of subordination to the United States
First, the image of the United States as a liberal champion of human rights bedazzled the Puerto Rican elite at the turn of the twentieth century, and attracted the oppressed classes. However, it is also true that monarchical, illiberal Spain had not faced in Puerto Rico the unrest and governance problems that it had in Cuba. In searching for explanations accounting for the stability of American rule over Puerto Rico, I do not see how that history can be underestimated; much less ignored.
Second, since 1900 the United States has displayed little or no interest in “incorporating the demands” or satisfy the needs of Puerto Ricans or their elites. In the political realm, Puerto Rico is still in the same colonial limbo in which it found itself with the enactment by the U.S. Congress of the 1900 Foraker Act.
Since then, the three branches of the U.S. government have concurred in attaining the objective that was expressly articulated from the outset: To indefinitely keep Puerto Rico as a colony (an “unincorporated territory”); and to never carve a path leading to either statehood or independence.
In short, the political demands of Puerto Ricans have never been satisfied. In the face of that truth, perceptions among the subordinated people, in which the United States shines as a beacon of democracy, fairness and justice, indicate the presence of cultural features that allow the hegemony of the American empire. Those features are, I sustain, independent of whatever “domination strategies” the hegemonic nation implements.
Even though I propose that such dissonance is not created by strategies of domination, it is not less true that the same –the ideology of the rule of law, the discourse rights, the dogmatic image of liberalism and democracy– are an integral part of the rationalizations and justifications for the subordination (what Rivera Ramos calls its legitimation. It is significant that Puerto Rican political actors are the ones who constantly articulate those reasons and justifications).
Third, in the social and economic realm the situation has not been much better. Besides the political ignominy, the first four decades of the twentieth century were characterized by economic ruin and widespread suffering, while American capitalists made millions. The first meaningful resistance in the 1930s came from the Nationalist Party, which was brutally and swiftly crushed. But, the balance was one of resignation in the face of widespread misery. There was no satisfaction of needs there, such as a more dignified life, with less exploitation, less desolation.
Today, Puerto Rico is under a new wave of appalling and unnecessary impoverishment. The long crisis, social and economic, of the post-war model of American capitalist, largely industrial expansion, has lasted for more than five decades now. But the deterioration has been joined by all kinds of material, psychological, and ideological palliatives and rationalizations, all in the context of a society in which, as José Luis González put it, “misery has been disguised as opulent consumerism and dismay as indifference and frivolity.”
Again, the question is whether that shows signs of cultural and cognitive maladies, which are independent of the “domination strategies” of the hegemonic nation on which Rivera Ramos focuses his attention. In short, I sustain that the United States has not allowed Puerto Rico to attain political or economic development. The satisfaction of needs is an illusion, a mirage which in turn is tied to a static, fearful, and myopic society.
Other Psychological, Historical and Cultural Clues
Another factor to consider is the psychological need for self-esteem. In the case of Puerto Ricans, our sense of self-worth has dispensed with attaining a separate, political nationhood. The opposite seems to be true: that such need has, to a large degree, been tied to the domination of the powerful American empire.
We should not underestimate the importance of our perception that we have been part, albeit a modest one, of American global power. That perception has been reinforced by the presence of hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans in the United States armed forces and wars. Then there is the no less crucial perception that all that is American is about good, progress and modernity, a view that began to develop in the early twentieth century. Given the current desolation, that perception is, again, revealed as pure folly.
Recent developments, and others still to crystallize, may weaken those and other factors in the equation of our consent to colonialism; or may not, given the weakened state in which Puerto Rico finds itself today, which is accentuated by tribal divisions, a simplistic worldview, and ancient fears; all in the context of a social, economic, ethical, and demographic dead end.
After 122 years of US colonial rule, we are still skeptical of independence. Some authors have also pointed to the relationship between that skepticism and ancient class resentments, which go back to the nineteenth century, under Spanish rule. However, I believe that the explanatory power of the deeply-rooted resentment by the Puerto Rican popular classes toward the Island’s elites, more than accounting for not desiring national sovereignty, is part and parcel of our characteristic cultural stasis.
Accounting for the dread for independence by pointing to old class resentments reveal a post hoc justification, based on feelings and perceptions that developed more than 170 years ago. That rationalization is disconnected from new circumstances of imperial exploitation, which began to unfold immediately following the 1898 cession of Puerto Rico to the United States.
Meanwhile, eight generations of Puerto Rican politicians have been aware that their political viability rests upon tempering aspirations, ambitions and actions, in order not to offend a conservative electorate, allergic to the prospect of substantial changes. In turn, that static electorate has denied our politicians the possibility of extorting American political actors by pointing to a latent, vibrant desire of opting for independence. Those attempts of extortion have taken place, and have never been fruitful. The timidity and paralysis of Puerto Ricans and their politicians still reinforce and cancel each other, in a vicious feedback loop.
Puerto Rico has Signs of Being a Static Society
Given that framework, what if the central explanation for 120 years of colonial limbo is a visceral, preexistent tendency toward stagnation? Such stasis may be the outcome of, among other factors, fear and old social divisions, and the absence of optimism, that is, of an ethos of critical thinking and innovation.
Optimism, following David Deutsch, is in this context the realization that, although problems are inevitable, they are also soluble. The toolkit for solving problems includes, not only an ethos of criticism and innovation, but the relentless search for good explanations.
I propose that the acquiescence to colonial domination comes from a set of ways of being, of doing and of not doing, which are embedded in our culture, as they have been transmitted from brain to brain countless times, through the enactment of ideas and whole worldviews. The transmission mechanisms of what we call “culture” are hard to detect, which makes them even more formidable.
Conclusion
We must confront the likelihood that, as the dominant, exploitative nation, the United States benefited from finding in Puerto Rico a certain cultural and social order. That order had been coalescing in the subordinate nation for hundreds of years, and it is characterized, among other things, by the kind of pessimism that is typical of static societies. Given the inherent stability of a static culture, Puerto Rico did not require specific, elaborate domination strategies, which the United States implemented anyway, mostly by default, as it brought them along.
I discussed here factors pointing to the likelihood that Puerto Rico is a static culture, full of fears and divisions, lacking an ethos of criticism, innovation and optimism. As such, it has not required “domination strategies” to be ruled and exploited, because it has already been under the thumb of its fears, taboos, and lack of critical thinking. If that is the case, then the theoretical frameworks of Rivera Ramos and Lukes are of limited use in explaining our continuous, multigenerational acquiescence to American colonial rule.
