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Changing Forms of U.S. Hegemony in Puerto Rico: The Impact on the Family and Sexuality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Helen I. Safa
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Extract

It has been over a hundred years since the U.S. took control of Puerto Rico. In that time, the way in which the U.S. perceived Puerto Rico has changed from a colony requiring Americanisation to, in the 1950s, its showcase of democracy in the Caribbean, to today, an island that still retains geopolitical importance for the U.S., but represents an increasing economic burden. The failure of Operation Bootstrap, as the Puerto Rican industrialization program was known, resulted in permanent large-scale unemployment, with a population dependent on federal transfers for a living, and a constant source of migration to the mainland, where over half of Puerto Ricans now live. I shall trace the outline of these three stages in U.S. hegemony over Puerto Rico, and argue that throughout the U.S. Congress was reluctant to fully incorporate Puerto Rico, because its population was deemed racially and socially inferior to that of the mainland. Though the removal of Spain from Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines was considered part of the its ‘manifest destiny’, the United States never intended to incorporate these people so different from the U.S. as part of the American nation, as was done with its earlier acquisitions in Texas, Alaska or even Hawaii.

Type
Conference: ‘Costs and Benefits of Independence in the Caribbean’
Information
Itinerario , Volume 25 , Issue 3-4 , November 2001 , pp. 90 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2001

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References

Notes

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22 Vázquez Calzada, La Población, 53. On the basis of surveys, Vázquez Calzada (La Población, 63) suggests that the census figures underestimate the number of consensual unions, which in 1982 are closer to 12 per cent. He examines marital histories and shows that consensual unions are more frequent among women in their second or third union.

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30 In the U.S., where the stigma against public housing was even stronger than in Puerto Rico, a number of localities excluded or attempted to exclude pregnant women or unwed mothers from public housing. Solinger, Ricky, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade (New York 2000) 47.Google Scholar

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37 Carmen Angelica Perez, then a graduate student at Rutgers University where I taught, assisted me in this study and conducted the survey of garment workers for her PhD dissertation.

38 Safa, The Myth of the Male Breadwinner.

39 Ibid., 15.

40 Dietz, Economic History, 289.

41 Ibid., 299.

42 Hernandez-Angueira, Mujeres Puertorriqueñas, 53.

43 Ibid.

44 Ibid., chapter 5.

45 Ibid., 94

46 Since the 1980 study was conducted outside the San Juan Metropolitan Area and half the sample lived in rural towns, this would also have made marriage and reproductive patterns more conservative. Female heads of household whose consensual unions have dissolved usually list themseles as ‘separated’, not single.

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51 Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie.

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54 Puerto Rican Planning Board, Informe Económico al Gobernador 1997 (San Juan 1998) Table 15 and 21.

55 Hernandez-Angueira, Mujeres Puertorriqueñas, 35.

56 Duany, ‘Nation on the Move’, 5–30.

57 Rivera-Batiz and Santiago, Island Paradox, 127.

58 Ibid.

59 Department of City Planning, City of New York, Puerto Rican New Yorkers in 1990 (New York 1994).

60 Colón, ‘Reestructuración industrial’, 135–188.

61 Muschkin, Clara and Sandoval, José Miguel, ‘Trabajadores complementarios en families latinas residentes en los Estados Unidos’, Revista de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Puerto Rico 1 (June 1996) 55–82.Google Scholar

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63 City Planning New York, Puerto Rican New Yorkers in 1990, 27.

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65 Puerto Rican Planning Board, Informe Económico al Gobernador 1997, Table 29, A–34.

66 For a full comparison, see my book, The Myth of the Male Breadwinner.

67 Safa, The Myth of the Male Breadwinner, and from the same author: ‘Female-Headed Households’, and: ‘Women Coping with Crisis: Social Consequences of Export-Led Industrialization in the Dominican Republic’ (Agenda paper, Miami 1999) 36. (In press in revised form as ‘Questioning Globalization: Gender and Export Processing in the Dominican Republic’ in special issue edited by Cecilia Menjivar, Journal of Developing Areas (Macomb 2002.)

68 Safa, ‘Female-Headed Households’.

69 Gainesville Sun, 21 February 2001.

70 Hernandez-Angueira, Mujeres Puertorriqueñas.

71 Safa, ‘Female-Headed Households’.

72 Duarte, Isis and Tejeda, Ramón, Los Hogares Dominicanos: El Mito de la Familia Nuclear y Los Tipos de jefaturas de Hogar (Sto Domingo 1995)Google Scholar; Safa, ‘Women Coping with Crisis’.

73 See: Safa, The Myth of the Male Breadwinner, and: ‘Women Coping with Crisis’.

74 Ramirez, Rafael, Dime Capitdn: Reflexiones sobre la Masculinidad en Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras 1993)Google Scholar

75 For example, Cruz-Malave, Arnaldo, ‘What a Tangled Web: Masculinity, Abjection, and the Foundations of Puerto Rican Literature in the United States’ in: Daniel Balderston and Donna Guy, Sex and Sexuality in Latin America (New York 1997)Google Scholar, and: Manuel Guzmán, ‘Pa'la Escuelita con Mucho Cuida'o y por la Orilla: A Journey through the Contested Terrain of the Nation and Sexual Orientation’ in: Negrón-Muntaner and Grosfoguel, Puerto Rican Jam.

76 Duany, ‘Nation on the Move’, 5–30.