Weekend Economists Visit Borinquen, La Isla del Encanto May 15-17, 2015

[Demeter]

9. The Man Who Stole Puerto Rico

http://waragainstallpuertoricans.com/2015/05/08/the-man-who-stole-puerto-rico/

General Nelson A. Miles

“Porto Ricans are a heterogenous mass of mongrels incapable of self-government… savages addicted to head-hunting and cannibalism.”

– Senator William B. Bate (D-Tennessee)

“The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact. By virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally.”

– President William Howard Taft

On May 12, 1898, twelve US Navy ships bombarded San Juan for three hours. The sky turned black with cannon smoke. Homes were hit. Streets were torn. El Morro lighthouse and La Iglesia de San José, a 16th century church, were shelled repeatedly. Thirty thousand people fled the town in abject terror. A few weeks later, planting his flag in the Ponce town square, US commander Gen. Nelson A. Miles, declared that:

“The chief object of the American military forces will be…to give to the people of your beautiful island the largest measure of liberties consistent with military occupation.

We have not come to make war against a people of a country that for centuries has been oppressed, but on the contrary, to bring you protection, to promote your prosperity, to bestow upon you the immunities and blessings of the liberal institutions of our government…and to give the advantages and blessings of enlightened civilization.”

The “blessings” and “advantages” were few. Instead, immediately after the US invasion of 1898, a wave of carpetbaggers swarmed over the island like a plague of locusts. Within forty years, they picked her clean of her natural resources. Any Puerto Rican who opposed this too vigorously was shot, imprisoned, or simply “disappeared.”

Every few years, the US government sent four men to ensure this colonial relationship: the Chief Auditor of the island, the Treasurer, the Chief of Police, and the Governor.

The Governor had the greatest authority, since he could hire and fire the other three...