109th Anniversary of U.S. Puerto Rican Colonialism

By Hiram José Irizarry Osorio, Research Associate at the Kirwan Institute

On July 25, 1898 the U.S. armed forces landed on the Bay of Guánica at the outbreak of The Spanish-American War; the landing represented a military invasion of Puerto Rico by the U.S. On that day Puerto Rican coloniality started a metropolis transition: from Spain’s Empire to the U.S. young Empire in formation.

Why is it relevant to remember this day? Why should non-Puerto Ricans care about this day? Does it have any relevant repercussions beyond the confines of the Puerto Rican archipelago? Does this have anything to do with race?

The honest answer to the first three queries is that it depends. It depends on your implicit or explicit view of life and reality as hierarchical or not. Nevertheless, I would venture to say that it has everything to do with race (i.e., race perceived and defined as an othering process; in which this othering is hierarchical and containing a valuing system of what and who is worth it). The reason I state that the Puerto Rican situation has everything to do with race (i.e., as an othering process) is because in a colonial situation, by definition, there is a hierarchical relationship between the colonizer and the colonized (as eloquently theorized, among others, by Franz Fanon). With this statement I am not arguing that there is lack of internal racial hierarchies in Puerto Rico.

It also matters because Puerto Rico remains a colony of the U.S. in an era where supposedly colonies are extinct. It matters because Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans by international standards are part of the U.S.; however, people from the U.S. tend to have only a vague idea of what Puerto Rico is and who Puerto Ricans are, and how the U.S. ended up with this territorial possession. Furthermore, there tends to be a lack of knowledge of the different changes that the U.S.-Puerto Rico political relationship has experienced from 1898 to the present. My point is not to blame the U.S. population in general, but both the U.S. and Puerto Rican leadership and elites for the lack of knowledge and understanding they have engendered. This has created a stasis on the decolonization process of Puerto Rico, manufacturing a limbo identity for Puerto Ricans which has power, wealth, and status repercussions (see Jorge Duany’s The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States, among other issues, discussion of the 1940s and 1950s mass migratory deal among U.S. and Puerto Rican elites; these “encouraged” migrants came from the marginalized class).

Hence, my call today is for far more than remembrance for remembrance sake. My call is first to inform ourselves of a plethora of situations that might remain hidden unless those who have been marginalized are not given a voice, a space to become recognized. Because from that recognition, from that interest, we complete (or help complete) our day-to-day truncated humanity and by doing so race (as a hierarchical othering) might start to be transcended unto something else, unto something different. And who knows, we might even achieve a democratic society, we might even envision in practice and reality that beloved community…

What do you think?