Category: Puerto Rican history

July 25, 1898 — Invasion of Puerto Rico & the Emergence of U.S. Imperialism

By Carlos “Carlito” Rovira

For the many people who have engaged in the struggle for Puerto Rico’s independence, July 25th has a special significance. On that date in 1898, U.S. troops invaded Puerto Rico, beginning a period of U.S. colonial domination on the island that continues to this day.

The United States invaded Puerto Rico, as well as the Philippines, Guam and Cuba, in the setting of the Spanish-American War. That military conflict was the opening of what would be the menacing role and predatory nature of U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean, Latin America and the entire world.

The seizure of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam and the Philippines signaled the quest of the U.S. capitalist class to become a world power. European powers had pursued a policy of colonial acquisitions since the end of the 15th century.

But only in the late 19th century had the mature and developed capitalist powers virtually colonized the entire planet. The projection of U.S. rulers outside of the North American mainland signified a rush not to be left behind in this global division of markets.

Imperialism was transforming from a policy into a global system. No capitalist power could stand on the sidelines. Eventually this scramble and competition for colonies led to the First World War in human history, from 1914 to 1918, involving all the major capitalist powers.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the renowned leader of the 1917 Russian socialist revolution, noted this trend in the very first sentence of his classic 1916 work Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin wrote: “During the last 15 to 20 years, especially since the Spanish-American War (1898) and the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), the economic and also the political literature of the two hemispheres has more and more adopted the term ‘imperialism’ to describe the present era.”

My portrait of Vladamir Lenin. 24″ X 30″, acrylic paint on canvas.

Until the Spanish-American War, capitalism in the U.S. was focused on the Westward expansion within North America which came from the push to seize Indigenous/First Nation people’s lands and conquest of nearly half of Mexico’s territory in the 1846-1848 U.S.-Mexican War.

Following the overthrow of the system of African chattel slavery with the end of the Civil War in 1865, industrial capitalism was able to grow rapidly. Facilitating trade and the transfer of raw materials by laying railroad tracks throughout the entire stretch of the U.S. territory. Mining of raw materials increased. Factories, ports, bridges and dams were constructed at a greater pace.

Beneath this supposed “progress” in U.S. society, there was a tremendous cost in human suffering. The consolidation and expansion of capitalism in the country could be measured by the many horrific acts of genocide on Indigenous/First Nation people. 

What began at Plymouth Rock proceeded to become a tradition and custom of white supremacy. Outright murder, theft and rape became a requirement for U.S. capitalism’s further development. By the late 1890’s, Indigenous people were virtually annihilated within continental United States, as the so-called “Indian Wars” came to a close.

However, the westward expansionist drive by the white supremacist policies of Washington officials encountered the resistance of many Indigenous tribal nations. Their fighting spirit shall forever be exemplary to the freedom struggles of oppressed people everywhere. Tribal figures like Chief Joseph, Crazy Horse, Captain Jack, Red Cloud, Cochise, Sitting Bull and Geronimo, all stood up with dignity and led their people in many fierce battles against the encroaching white racist conquerors.

The legendary Apache  leader Geronimo (far right) with three of his most trusted warriors.

Eventually the dynamism of capitalism meant that the home market was insufficient. New markets, raw materials and cheaper labor were increasingly required for continuation of a vast increase in productive forces. Capitalist development began to be propelled in the direction of a new kind of expansionism, aimed at subordinating the economies of other lands.

COMPETITION BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES & SPAIN

The more benefits that U.S.-based companies derived from economic investments made in the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico before the war—amounting to $50 million in 1897—the more that U.S. manufacturers and bankers desired direct control of these markets.

Throughout the 1890’s, there was a growing war fever among U.S. capitalists. Prominent bourgeois figures, politicians, journalists and the clergy openly encouraged the military seizure of Spain’s remaining colonies. “Democracy” and “freedom” became the banner for all sorts of demagogic warmongers.

Militarism and racist arrogance, in the centuries of campaigns to expel Indigenous people from their lands and enforce a genocidal system, were now utilized to justify imperialist expansion. The use of brutal force against people in the invaded lands was justified as “divine will” or “manifest destiny.”

With mounting tensions between Washington and Madrid, the U.S. Navy targeted and harassed any vessel flying the Spanish flag in the open sea. U.S. Navy warships were instructed to stop Spanish freighters, carry out searches, and in many cases seize the cargo. This was despite the fact that a state of war did not yet exist.

Spain was a crumbling feudal power facing severe internal political strife. It no longer had the empire status that it enjoyed centuries ago. The Spanish government was not in a position to engage in hostilities with any country — especially the United States, which was demonstrating its industrial might and was eager to test its military ability.

A PRETEXT FOR WAR

On the evening of February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine exploded while docked in the Port of Havana, Cuba. 266 sailors were killed as they slept in their quarters. The ship’s captain and his close officers ironically were not on board.

Washington officials were quick to blame the Spanish government, claiming that the explosion was caused by a floating mine. The fact that many eyewitnesses saw the force of the explosion coming from within the bow of the ship did not matter to U.S. investigators. Whatever the cause, the Spanish government was in no way responsible.

Artist’s depiction of the U.S. Battleship Maine explosion in the Port of Havana, Cuba.

Despite Spain’s repeated diplomatic efforts and willingness to compensate for the loss of life and the destroyed ship, the U.S. government exploited the situation as a perfect excuse for war.

On April 25, 1898, the notorious U.S. President William McKinley, with the consent of the U.S. Congress, made his infamous declaration of war against Spain. The United States would now be recognized as a world imperialist power.

The military campaigns that followed impacted the lives of millions of people in the Philippines, Guam, Cuba and Puerto Rico. They were now to become subjects of a new colonial oppressor.

THE U.S. MILITARY INVASION & COLONIZATION OF PUERTO RICO

In the early morning hours of May 12, 1898 a fleet consisting of several U.S. Navy warship began the military campaign for the conquest of Puerto Rico. These warships conducted a devastating bombardment on the port city of San Juan, by firing a volley totaling 1,360 shells. Several Spanish Navy vessels were sunk while in the interior of the municipality many buildings were destroyed. What came after was a naval blockade of Puerto Rico’s principal ports.

On May 12, 1898 a fleet of U.S. Navy warships bombarded San Juan, Puerto Rico.

On July 25, 1898, 26,000 U.S. soldiers stormed the shores of Guanica, Puerto Rico — the stepping-stone to the invasion of the entire island nation. The invasion was led by the war criminal U.S. Army General Nelson A. Miles — a reliable servant of the U.S. capitalist westward expansion.

Miles was infamous for his role in the vicious suppression of the 1894 Pullman strike and other labor struggles fighting for the eight-hour day as well as workers right to unionize. He was also known for his capture and mistreatment of Indigenous leaders like Geronimo and Sitting Bull. But among Miles’ most outstanding crimes was the December 29, 1890, brutal massacre of 300 Indigenous men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

troops2.png
PP
Invasion X.png

While American troops began their onslaught on Guanica, U.S. warships entered the Bay of Ponce. These vessels threaten to use their destructive heavy guns on the city if the inhabitants did not surrender.

As the U.S. Army marched through the mountains, they encountered peasants who had been forewarned of the invasion’s brutality. These mountain people (Jibaros), armed solely with machetes, valiantly attacked the U.S. soldiers. The peasants who were captured by the invading forces were often bound to trees and shot by firing squad.

The U.S. military occupations in the Philippines, Guam, Cuba and Puerto Rico were the opening shots of a wave of imperialist invasions over the next decades in the Western Hemisphere and other parts of the world.

U.S. troops were sent to Nicaragua in 1898 and again in 1899, 1907 and 1910, and from 1912 through 1933; Panama from 1901 through 1914 and again in 1989; Honduras in 1903 and again in 1911; the Dominican Republic in 1903 and again in 1965; Korea in 1904 and again in 1950; China in 1911; Mexico from 1914 through 1918; Haiti from 1914 through 1934; Cuba in 1898, 1906 to 1909, 1912 and again from 1917 through 1933; the Soviet Union from 1918 through 1922; Guatemala in 1920; Vietnam from 1955 through 1975; Grenada in 1983, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in Mar 20, 2003 and so on.

The list of U.S. military invasions continued throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries. With hundreds of military bases and interventions around the world it became a constant feature of world affairs to the present day.

CONTINUED ANTI-COLONIAL STRUGGLE

The corporate media has always made every effort to disguise the foreign subjugation of Puerto Rico. But events occasionally occur that push the truth to the surface, especially when the colonized people are driven to rise up and rebel.

Due to colonial circumstances Puerto Rico is one of the most plundered inhabited territorial entities on the globe. Giant U.S. corporations extract an average of $30 billion dollars annually in profits. For a country with a population less than 4 million makes the rate of exploitation one of the highest per capita in the world. This is why Puerto Rico continues to suffer economic devastation, especially after Hurricane Maria and since the COVID pandemic.

Because the United States is the most advanced capitalist country in the world, for it to use the oldest form of foreign subjugation dating back to the Assyrian, Greek and Roman Empires, says volumes about the barbarity of U.S. colonial policy.

Denying the right of self-determination and independence justifies the continued people’s resistance, in Puerto Rico and throughout the diaspora. And with growing discontent throughout the world, the Puerto Rican liberation struggle shall inevitably contribute to the global elimination of the imperialist system.

QUE VIVA PUERTO RICO LIBRE!

Impact of the African American Struggle on Puerto Ricans

Para la version en español: https://carlitoboricua.blog/?p=7385&preview=true&_thumbnail_id=7386

by Carlos “Carlito” Rovira

Racist Oppression Gives Rise to Solidarity

The historical struggle of the African American people was the inevitable consequence of the introduction of slavery by capitalists in the Western Hemisphere. The collective experience of the African American people over the course of many generations ran parallel to the development of U.S. capitalism at every stage. Their plight, from the era of the slave trade to the present day, reveals inherent oppression within capitalism.

Racist terror, degradation, and discrimination were the objective circumstances that compelled into existence the militant traditions of resistance among the African American masses. Their steadfastness in many key moments in history proved exemplary to the U.S. working-class movement, and particularly to other oppressed nationalities. African American history is replete with displays of genuine solidarity with other liberation struggles.

The Spanish-American War had a significant impact on African Americans, especially Black soldiers who were sent to wage colonial conquest on behalf of U.S. imperialism. Black troops resented their white officers using racial slurs against Filipino people, which were reminiscent of their own experience in the United States. Many Black soldiers defected to join the anti-colonial Filipino guerrilla army. The most notable of them was David Fagan, of the 24th Infantry Division. Fagan won the admiration and respect of the Filipino people and was made a commander in their guerrilla army.

David Fagan, of the 24th Infantry Division

The Black press, the Black church and outspoken African American figures such as W.E.B. DuBois, openly condemned the motives behind the 1898 Spanish-American War. The U.S. government and giant banking enterprises sought military conflict with Spain to win colonial control of Guam, the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.

Black Puerto Rican scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg devoted his entire life to compiling vast collections of writings documenting significant events in Black history. Before moving to New York City’s Harlem community, Schomburg was a member of the clandestine Revolutionary Committees of Puerto Rico, which organized the famous 1868 Grito de Lares uprising — a revolt that called for the abolition of slavery and the independence of Puerto Rico. Schomburg eventually became a prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance, which challenged the ideological facets of white supremacy through the literary, visual and performing arts.

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

At many of his performance appearances, renowned African American singer, actor and Communist Paul Robeson would call upon his audience for a moment of silence to express solidarity for the incarcerated Puerto Rican revolutionary Nationalist leader, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos.

The young Pedro Albizu Campos gained recognition among African American figures for being very critical of the racism in the United States. Campos’s mother was Black, which gave him first-hand insight into the impact of racist oppression. Campos’s outspoken oratory against the “racist practices in the house of the empire” caught the attention of renown Pan-Africanist leader Marcus Garvey, who traveled to Puerto Rico to meet the Puerto Rican Nationalist leader.

Despite their differences in goals and tactics, this meeting was highly symbolic for that period in history. The Russian Revolution emboldened workers’ struggles and nationalist movements throughout the world, including the United States and Puerto Rico, and instilled a sense of vulnerability in the U.S. capitalist class.

Black Struggle Inspires Puerto Rican Militancy

Puerto Ricans have migrated to New York City and surrounding counties since the mid-1800s—in most cases, to escape Spanish colonial persecution. But in the years after World War II and well into the 1960s, Puerto Ricans migrated to U.S. industrial centers at an annual average rate of 63,000 due to economic hardships caused by U.S. colonial policy.

What the Puerto Rican migrants encountered was not what they expected when uprooting in search of a better life. In addition to the agony of coming to a strange land where an unfamiliar English language was spoken, the Puerto Rican experience now included greedy racist landlords, housing and job discrimination, cultural stigma by the mass media, police brutality and the terror of racist white gangs.

While Puerto Ricans began their exodus in the late 1940s African Americans were already in their “Great Migration” from southern states where they had been historically concentrated. Fleeing racist Jim Crow laws and Ku Klux Klan terror, more than 5 million Black people migrated to the North, Northeast and California between the 1920s and the 1960s.

The instinct of any oppressed people is to seek allies and find ways to resist. Puerto Ricans facing the realities of colonialism and impoverishment were able to relate to the demands of the Civil Rights movement and became attracted to its boldness.

The experiences of these two distinct oppressed communities came together in the social and cultural realms as well, especially in the performing arts. This phenomenon was most notable among Black and Puerto Rican musicians. No one can dispute the African American influence in the rise of Latino musical genres which the Puerto Rican diaspora of New York City developed during the 1960s & 70s, like Latin Jazz, Boogaloo, and Salsa. The affinities the two ethnicities had for each other was also attributed to their mutual historic connections to African culture.

The Nation of Islam, under Malcolm X’s leadership, began to approach the newly arrived immigrants with the aim of politicizing them. And when the Black Panther Party began organizing in the Puerto Rican community of Chicago, it transformed a street “gang” known as the Young Lords.

The Young Lords were the first Puerto Rican revolutionary organization to rise up based on the concrete circumstances of oppression in this country. They were a decisive factor in the spread of militancy in Puerto Rican communities of various U.S. cities. Like the Black Panthers, they advocated for a multinational revolution in the United States.

As this movement gained momentum, Puerto Ricans gained a sense of hope and became inspired to fight for their political and economic rights. By the second half of the 1960s, Puerto Ricans in the United States had become much more politically adept, thanks to the struggles of the African American masses.

African Americans and Puerto Ricans gained affinity to one another based on resistance to racist oppression. In cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, at street demonstrations and on college campuses, African American and Puerto Rican masses instinctively aligned in common struggle. It was not unusual for the Black liberation flag (red, black & green) to be accompanied by the Puerto Rican flag.

A significant example of this solidarity that alarmed the ruling class, was the April 1969 student takeover of City College in Harlem, New York City and renamed it “University of Harlem.” Black and Puerto Rican students shocked many throughout the U.S. by defiantly uniting to seize control of 17 campus buildings to demand free tuition for all in the City University system. To further demonstrate their boldness, these students lowered the U.S. flag from a flagpole and hoisted the Black Liberation Flag and the Puerto Rican Flag. It was an imagery of resistance never before seen in this country.

Black and Puerto Rican students seized control of 17 buildings at City College in Harlem, NYC.

The great lessons gained from these experiences are still relevant today. Black oppression was instrumental in the economic rise of U.S. capitalism, and African Americans have confronted it head-on. The Black liberation struggle will continue to be a source of inspiration to all working people and shall be instrumental in forging genuine unity required for the fight against this system.

LONG LIVE BLACK & PUERTO RICAN SOLIDARITY

Y!