U.S. v Puerto Rico: 100+ years betrayal, plunder, injury, insults

As Hurricane Dorian bears down on Puerto Rico, the U.S. President fires attacks on the island

History of U.S. Betrayal

Puerto Ricans have begged for independence, dignity, and equality dating back to the Spanish-American War when Puerto Rico sided with the Americans and received from the Americans 121 years of betrayal, plunder, insult, aggression, occupation, suppression, oppression.  

  

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800s plea for independence rebuffed, ignored

With the 1898Treaty of Paris ceding Puerto Rico to the United States, vocal Puerto Rican leaders “expected the United States to grant the island its independence”; some Puerto Ricans at the time “proclaimed Puerto Rico to be a republic.”

What they received from the United States was betrayal, oppression, occupation.

Not unlike the current insults by Washington (spoken out loud or under cover), U.S. Senator George Frisbie Hoar in 1899 “described Puerto Ricans as

‘uneducated, simple-minded and harmless people who were only interested in wine, women, music and dancing’.” And pushing “Americanization” of the islanders, the senator promoted the English-language-only in the schools and abolition of the Spanish language, thus causing, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophesy, large numbers of students to drop out of school.

In addition to forced English on a Spanish country, the U.S. assumed possession of rich lands that influenced Puerto Rico’s economy (sugar cane was king and considered one of the few strategic commodities in which the United States was not fully self-sufficient). So American sugar companies pushed local sugar plantation owners out of business with low interest loans American companies obtained from commercial banks in Wall Street while locals had to depend on local banks’ high interest rates; tariffs also forced many local sugar plantation owners to go bankrupt or to sell their holdings to the more powerful sugar companies. 

This practice is seen today in the U.S. officials’ failure to plan ahead and shore up changing industrial conditions, failure to self produce and compete fairly; so they threaten and strangle other countries and their economies with sanctions and tariffs.

“The U.S. occupation brought about a total change in Puerto Rico’s economy and polity and did not apply democratic principles to the colony. Puerto Rico was classified as an ‘unincorporated territory’,” meaning “that the protections of the United States Constitution did not automatically apply because the island—belonged to the United States.” But “was not part of the United States.”

1

900s plea for independence rebuffed, ignored

In 1901, an American politician and businessman, Charles Herbert Allen, seated as the first civilian U.S. governor of Puerto Rico, “installed himself as president of the largest sugar-refining company in the world, the American Sugar Refining Company,” thus “(leveraging) his governorship of Puerto Rico into a controlling interest over the entire Puerto Rican economy.”

U.S. President Donald Trump would be well acquainted with this kind of maneuver.

In the 1940s through the 1960s outspoken Puerto Rican political parties “favored independence from the United States.”

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000s pleas independence, statehood rebuffed

Throughout the centuries various leaders, politicians and ordinary citizens among the Puerto Rican people have fought for equality, independence, and or statehood with the United States but, selfishly, none of these have been even seriously considered by U.S. politicians and their partners.

The movement for statehood with the United States has undergone repeated referenda and resolutions with no change in forward movement. 

• Resolutions introduced in both houses of the U.S. Congress in 2014 died in committee. 
• The Trump administration has interfered with referenda ballot content. 
• U.S. Rep. (Resident Commissioner in Washington) Jenniffer González in June 2018 sponsored “a bill that would pave the way for Puerto Rico to become a state in 2021” but the bill received no further action after her introduction.

In June 2016, a UN Special Committee report “called for the United States to expedite the process to allow self-determination in Puerto Rico.

More specifically, the group called on the United States to expedite a process that would allow the people of Puerto Rico to exercise fully their right to self-determination and independence….” And “allow the Puerto Rican people to take decisions in a sovereign manner, and to address their urgent economic and social needs.”

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uerto Rico remains dependent, colonized, demonized and subject to the whims of U.S. officials.  

 Located in the northeastern Caribbean in a history extending from the 2000-3000 BC through Columbus and the Europeans imported infectious diseases through the Spanish imperialism through the American imperialism, Puerto Rico (officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico) is a non-state under U.S. sovereignty whose citizens may fight U.S. wars but not vote or be represented in the U.S. houses of Congress. Puerto Rico’s residents since 1917 have been considered “American citizens.” But they “are disenfranchised at the national level and do not vote for the U.S. president or vice president; nor do they “pay federal income tax on Puerto Rican income.”

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urricane Season News from the U.S. Commander in Tweet to Puerto Rico

As another giant storm bears down on Puerto Rico, the U.S. president, blinded by the entrenched corruption and incompetence among public officials in Washington, chooses to demonize  the U.S. Commonwealth as “one of the most corrupt places on Earth.”

 

Perhaps the president meant as part of, or second only to, the pandering, kick-back, bribe-taking business-as-usual rampant corruption in the United States of America.

A hundred years suffering U.S. injury and betrayal is not enough for a U.S. president who broadcasts daily his deliberate ignorance of history.

He wants Puerto Ricans, including (in his words) “the incompetent Mayor of San Juan!” to “give … a big Thank You” to the U.S.

The president’s usually erroneous eruption inflated Congressional appropriations received by the island colony and what he called “Crooked Pols” and deified himself as “the best thing that’s ever happened to Puerto Rico!”

Sources

Spanish-American War: April 21, 1898 – August 13, 1898; Location: Cuba and Puerto Rico (Caribbean Sea); Philippines and Guam (Asia-Pacific)

 Result: American victory• Treaty of Paris of 1898

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War

The Puerto Rico Campaign (American military sea and land operation on the island of Puerto Rico during the Spanish–American War); May 8, 1898 – August 13, 1898; Location: Puerto Rico, Atlantic Ocean; Result: Militarily inconclusive; Spain cedes Puerto Rico in accordance with the accords of the Treaty of Paris of 1898; United States post-war occupation of Puerto Rico

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico_Campaign

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statehood_movement_in_Puerto_Rico

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico

Elnuevodia “Trump has come under criticism again: He slams Puerto Rico and its politicians as tropical storm Dorian skirts the island”: WASHINGTON – While Hurricane Dorian’s winds and rains were sideswiping the east coast of Puerto Rico, U.S. President Donald Trump was firing off attacks on the island and made it clear yesterday, among other things, that he doesn’t forget criticism over the slow and inefficient federal response to Hurricane Maria.”  August 29, 2019 https://www.elnuevodia.com/english/

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