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Friday, March 14, 2014

What a mess, Spanish and Babel - How Can We Get Rid of Puerto Rico?

Not to mention that Woodrow Wilson worked overtime in really screwing up the USA. m/r

How Can We Get Rid of Puerto Rico? - Taki's Magazine

March 13, 2014
Is a baseball mitt a toy? How about a trampoline? Is a goose a farm animal or a wild animal? Is chess-playing an art or a science? Do I shelve a novel about China with my fiction books or my China books?
These are problems of categorization. Each of us approaches the matter differently. “Hard” categorizers insist that everything should go into one bucket or another, while “soft” categorizers are more tolerant of ambiguity, more willing to leave objects in some fuzzy middle ground. ...
Puerto Rico is a case of soft categorization, that’s what it is. It used to be a good old-fashioned colony of Spain back in the days when civilized nations weren’t ashamed to have colonies. The USA acquired it in 1898 by the Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War.
A succession of American military men ran the place for a couple of years, starting with Brigadier General Guy Henry, a leathery old Puritan who, according to one historian, thought the Puerto Ricans “had acquired very liberally the Spanish habit of lying and cannot be trusted.” Then Congress got around to dealing with the issue, making Puerto Rico a sort-of territory under a governor, but with its own House of Representatives.
In 1917 Congress passed the Jones Act, giving US citizenship to all Puerto Ricans. Folklore says, and Puerto Ricans believe, that Woodrow Wilson wanted Puerto Ricans as soldiers to beef up his army for World War I, which the USA entered a few weeks later. ...

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