Abstract
This paper argues that the United States’ occupation of Puerto Rico is a colonial state of exception. By examining the case of Downes v. Bidwell, I demonstrate the role that race played in the establishment of the state of exception. This unprecedented legal situation and the United States’ inequitable policies toward the island led to the emergence and growth of the Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico. The movement posed such a threat to U.S. hegemony on the island that the U.S. government unleashed a campaign of violent repression against the Party and its leader, Pedro Albizu Campos. Such repression too had a racialized dynamic that worked to mythologize and flatten Albizu Campos into an angry black man. This repression and violence could occur on the island because of the existence of a colonial state of exception where the usual operation of law did not exist.
Resumen
Este trabajo arguye que la ocupación de Puerto Rico por parte de los Estados Unidos constituye un estado de excepción colonial. Mediante un examen del caso Downes v. Bidwell, demostramos la función que ha desempeñado la raza en el establecimiento del estado de excepción. Esta situación legal sin precedentes y las políticas injustas de los Estados Unidos con respecto a la isla llevaron a la fundación y el auge del Partido Nacionalista de Puerto Rico. Este movimiento amenazó de tal forma la hegemonía de los Estados Unidos sobre la isla que el gobierno de ese país desató una campaña de represión violenta en contra del partido y de su líder, Pedro Albizu Campos. La represión también se caracterizaba por una dinámica racializada dirigida a mitologizar y reducir la imagen de Albizu Campos a la de un hombre negro rabioso. La represión y la violencia pudieron ocurrir en la isla dada la existencia de un estado de excepción colonial donde el funcionamiento normal de la ley no existía.
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Notes
All discussion of materials contained in the FBI archive were obtained from “FBI Files on Puerto Ricans,” Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Hunter College, name file: “Pedro Albizu-Campos, with aliases: Pedro Albizu Campos, Pedro Albizu,” no. HQ-105-11898, vol. 2.
Speech of Representative James Slayden (1907), available in Congressional Record, House, 61st Congress, 1st Session. 7 June 1909 at 2919.
Although an in-depth discussion and comparison of the US colonial projects in Puerto Rico and the Philippines is outside the scope of this article, nevertheless, it is imperative to note that though the US government set out to establish parallel colonial structures in both locations, the islands’ inhabitants had radically different responses to the US presence (Go 2011). As a result, the violence of the US state of exception was most visible in its treatment of Filipino dissent and the archipelago’s quest for independence and in the bloody war the US fought to suppress it. These actions fit neatly into Mbembé’s categorization of colonial wars in which the usual rules of engagement did not apply.
For a fuller discussion of the Insular Cases, see Gerald L. Neuman and Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Reconsidering the Insular Cases: The Past and Future of the American Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015); Christina Duffy Burnett and Burke Marshall, eds., Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); Bartholomew H. Sparrow, The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006).
The Insular Cases: Comprising the Records, Briefs, and Arguments of Counsel in the Insular Cases of the October Term, 1900, in the Supreme Court of the United States (Washington: GPO 1901).
In contrast to Puerto Rico and the other insular territories acquired after the Spanish-Cuban-American War, Hawai‘i became incorporated territory of the United States in 1898 shortly before the signing of the Treaty of Paris. Over the course of the nineteenth century, disease and harsh labor conditions had caused the native Hawaiian population to dwindle down to about 40,000. In 1893, a powerful planter class overthrew Hawai‘i’s monarchy and established a republic led by white settlers from the United States and Europe. This ruling class saw integration of Hawai‘i into the United States as integral to the success of their capitalist schemes on the islands and immediately began lobbying Congress for annexation. By 1898, Hawai‘i had become an integral supplier of sugar to the US and an important military outpost. Incorporation of Hawai‘i, with which the US had had increasing economic dealings over the course of the nineteenth century and which had a small native population and a powerful and wealthy white ruling class, was more easily digestible to US officials than incorporating the Philippines or Puerto Rico, islands which were populated by alien races with strange customs and language (Poblete 2014).
Interview given to J. B. Lamarche, El Mundo, 12 July 1927 (translation my own). Available in Pedro Albizu Campos, Obras Escogidas, 1923–1936, Tomo I. (Torres 1981).
FBI file no. HQ-105-11898, vol. 2; F.B.I. file no. HQ-105-11898, vol. 1, “Report of 02/19/1936,” at 7.
FBI File no. HQ-105-11898, vol. 2, “Memorandum of April 21, 1937,” at 2.
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This article has been a long-time in the making and as a result has benefitted from the comments and feedback of numerous friends, colleagues, and mentors. I am grateful.
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Jiménez, M.A. Puerto Rico under the colonial gaze: Oppression, resistance and the myth of the nationalist enemy. Lat Stud 18, 27–44 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-019-00238-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-019-00238-3