Status Updates From Puerto Rico: The Trials of ...

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The Puerto Rican leadership did not display great vision, either. Their petty squabbles, posturing, strange political alliances, and flitting from one position to the next lessened the essential dignity of their demands. There’s was a just cause, but poorly pleaded. The main parties were able to speak with one voice on occasion, but most of the time they were at each other’s throat‘s.

What was needed, according to the [Bureau of Insular Affairs], was simply a stronger resolve not to give in for some time to any of the foolish demands for more self-government, to concentrate instead on more Americanization, more effective discouragement of outlandish feelings for independence, and sound exhortations to the natives to help themselves.

He thus explained the birth of the Americanization policy: “Like most countries, we were convinced that we had the best form of government ever devised in the world and that our customs and habits were the most advisable… The logical consequence, therefore, was that we felt that we could do no higher and nobler work than to model these other people on ourselves.“

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., was the first governor of Puerto Rico who publicized in the United States the intolerable living conditions prevalent in Puerto Rico and strongly attacked the United States colonial policy, of which his own father had been one of the principal architects...He was the first American governor of Puerto Rico who applied himself to learn Spanish until he was able to communicate with the people...

Porto Rico is at once the perfect example of what economic imperialism does for a country and of the attitude of the imperialist towards that country. Ragged, hungry, diseased Porto Rico has just been examined by the President of the United States and has been given his official approval. Its land owned by absentee capital; its people in the depths of deprivation, it has been told to help itself.