Prospects for Latin American Nationalism

Since Puerto Rico is one of the few countries of the world in which colonialism lingers on in its most naked fashion, its case deserves attention in a discussion of the prospects for Latin American nationalism. Puerto Rico is a socio-historical entity that lacks international legal recognition; it is a nation that has not achieved political independence at this late stage of the twentieth century. Such a colonial condition confers on our country's nationalism a certain specificity within the wider context of Latin America. It is necessary therefore to clearly pose the following questions: (1) what are the common elements between general Latin American nationalism and its particular Puerto Rican modality; (2) to what extent has imperialism taken Puerto Rico as a model of Latin American political and economic dependence, especially in connection with the Caribbean area, and (3) what are the prospects for Puerto Rican nationalism in this context? The most adequate framework to deal with such questions is the sociohistorical; thus we intend to first analyze the trajectory of Puerto Rican nationalism as viewed in its social context. The first expressions of Puerto Rican nationalism took place at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The revolution of Bolfvar had left its imprint, if tenuously, in the budding Puerto Rican national consciousness of that era. But the process of Latin American independence movements came to an end without the liberation of both Cuba and Puerto Rico which remained under the colonial yoke of the Spanish metropolis. The Grito de Lares and the Grito de Yara, both in 1868, were the first significant insurrectionary attempts of Puerto Rico and Cuba, respectively, in the nineteenth century. Cuba of course was then, as today, acting as the vanguard of the whole revolutionary process in the Antilles. The Puerto Rican revolutionary movement led by Betances came to understand that its nationalistic hopes and aspirations could only be achieved by means of joint revolutionary action throughout the Antilles against Spanish subjugation. Western Puerto Rico and Eastern Cuba were the scenes of the beginning of these revolutions which were headed by radicalized sectors of the creole hacendados that had come to feel ruined by the economic policies of the Spanish government. In the smaller of the two islands, the revolution was to be no more than an abortive attempt, violently repressed within forty-eight hours, whose revolutionary leadership was either imprisoned or exiled. Yet, it was

Economic history · Ethnology · Latin Americans · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Cuban History and Society · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law

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