In 1890, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, a member of the Navy War Board and leading U.S. strategic
thinker, wrote a book titled The Influence of Sea Power upon History, in which he argued for the creation
of a large and powerful navy modeled after the British Royal Navy. Part of his
strategy called for the acquisition of colonies in the Caribbean Sea,
which would serve as coaling and naval stations. They would serve as strategic
points of defense with the construction of a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, to allow easier passage of ships between the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans.[38]
William H. Seward, the former Secretary of State under presidents Abraham Lincoln
and Ulysses Grant, had also stressed the importance of building a canal in Honduras,
Nicaragua
or Panama.
He suggested that the United States annex the Dominican Republic and purchase
Puerto Rico and Cuba. The U.S. Senate did not approve his annexation proposal,
and Spain rejected the U.S. offer of 160 million dollars for Puerto Rico and
Cuba.[38]
Since 1894, the United States Naval War College had been developing contingency plans for a war with Spain. By 1896, the Office of Naval
Intelligence had prepared a plan that included military operations in Puerto
Rican waters. This prewar planning did not contemplate major territorial
acquisitions. Except for one 1895 plan, which recommended annexation of the
island then named Isle of Pines (later renamed as Isla de la Juventud), a recommendation dropped in later planning, plans
developed for attacks on Spanish territories were intended as support
operations against Spain's forces in and around Cuba.[39]
Recent research suggests that the U.S. did consider Puerto Rico valuable as a
naval station, and recognized that it and Cuba generated lucrative crops of
sugar – a valuable commercial commodity which the United States lacked.[40]
On July 25, 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the U.S. invaded Puerto Rico with a landing at Guánica. As an outcome of the war, Spain ceded Puerto Rico, along
with the Philippines and Guam, then under Spanish sovereignty, to the U.S. under the Treaty of Paris. Spain relinquished sovereignty over Cuba, but did not cede
it to the U.S.[41]
The United States and Puerto Rico
began a long-standing metropoli-colony relationship.[42]
In the early 20th century, Puerto Rico was ruled by the military, with
officials including the governor appointed by the President of the United States.
The Foraker Act of 1900 gave Puerto Rico a certain amount of civilian
popular government, including a popularly elected House of Representatives.
(The upper house and governor were appointed by the United States; at the time,
the US did not have popular election of senators. Until passage of the
Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, most US senators were elected by their
respective state legislatures.
Its judicial system was constructed
to follow the American
legal system; a Puerto
Rico Supreme Court and a United State District Court
for the territory were established. It was authorized a non-voting member of
Congress, by the title of "Resident Commissioner", who was appointed.
In addition, this Act extended all U.S. laws "not locally
inapplicable" to Puerto Rico, specifying specific exemption from U.S.
Internal Revenue laws.[43]
The Act empowered the civil
government to legislate on "all matters of legislative character not
locally inapplicable", including the power to modify and repeal any laws
then in existence in Puerto Rico, though the U.S. Congress retained the power
to annul acts of the Puerto Rico legislature.[43][44]
During an address to the Puerto Rican legislature in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt recommended that Puerto Ricans become U.S. citizens.[43][45]
In 1914, the Puerto Rican House of
Delegates voted unanimously in favor of independence from the United States.[46]
US
citizenship
In 1917, the US Congress passed the Jones-Shafroth Act, popularly called the Jones Act, which granted Puerto
Ricans U.S. citizenship.[47]
Opponents, who included all of the Puerto Rican House of Delegates, which voted
unanimously against it, said that the US "imposed" citizenship in
order to draft Puerto Rican men into the army as American entry into World War
I became likely.[46]
The same Act provided for a
popularly elected Senate to complete a bicameral Legislative Assembly, as well
as a bill of rights. It authorized the popular election of the Resident
Commissioner to a four-year term.
Natural disasters, including a major
earthquake in 1918, a tsunami
and several hurricanes, and the Great Depression impoverished the island during the first few decades under
U.S. rule.[48]
Some political leaders, such as Pedro Albizu Campos, who led the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party,
demanded change in relations with the United States. He organized a protest at
the university in 1935, in which four were killed by police.
In 1936 the US Senator Millard Tydings
introduced a bill supporting independence for Puerto Rico, but it was opposed
by Luis Munoz Marin of the Liberal Party.[49]
(Tydings had co-sponsored the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which provided independence to the Philippines
after a 10-year transition under a limited autonomy.) All the Puerto Rican
parties supported the bill, but Muñoz Marín opposed it. Tydings did not gain
passage of the bill.[49]
In 1937, Albizu Campos' party
organized a protest, in which numerous people were killed by police in Ponce. The Insular Police, resembling the National Guard, opened
fire upon unarmed[50]
and defenseless[51]
cadets and bystanders alike.[50]
The attack on unarmed protesters was reported by the U.S. Congressman Vito Marcantonio and confirmed by the report of the "Hays
Commission," which investigated the events. The commission was led by Arthur Garfield Hays, counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union.[50]
Nineteen persons were killed and over 200 were badly wounded, many in their
backs while running away.[51][52]
The Hays Commission declared it a massacre and police mob action,[51]
and it has since been known as the Ponce Massacre.
In the aftermath, on April 2, 1943, U.S. Senator Millard Tydings
introduced a bill in Congress calling for independence for Puerto Rico. This
bill ultimately was defeated.[43]
During the latter years of the Roosevelt–Truman
administrations, the internal governance was changed in a compromise reached
with Luis Muñoz Marín and other Puerto Rican leaders. In 1946, President Truman
appointed the first Puerto Rican-born governor, Jesús T. Piñero.
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