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Puerto Ricans and U.S. Citizenship in 1917: Imperatives of Security

2017; University of North Carolina Press; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

1538-6279

Bartholomew H. Sparrow, Jennifer Elizabeth Lamm,

Cuban History and Society

1.IntroductionThirty-eight years ago, Raul Serrano Geyls reviewed Jose Cabranes' Citizenship and Empire ( 1979) and concluded that definitive work on the reasons Congress had when it declared Puerto Ricans citizens of the United States has yet to be written (Serrano 1979, 444-47). Despite the many books, articles, and edited volumes on the U.S.-Puerto Rico relationship, including some that address the 1917 Jones-Shafroth and bestowal of U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans, the definitive study of the reasons for making Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens remains to be written.The purpose here is to advance an understanding of why Congress in 1917 declared Puerto Ricans to be U.S. citizens. We do so by referring to the relevant scholarship on the 1917 Jones-Shafroth (Jones Act hereafter), reviewing official documents, and consulting the personal records of several of the principals. We argue that the dominant reason for why the U.S. Congress and the Wilson administration granted U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans in early 1917 was the looming engagement by the United States in the First War-then the Great or the World of course-thereby forcing the U.S. government to act. German torpedoes sank the Lusitania in May 1915, with the loss of 114 American lives; Congress in June and July 1915 authorized a large expansion of the army, increased the construction of warships, and began to mobilize industry and the American people; and in January 1916 the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Germany (Serrano 1917, 446-47).Military planners and civilian policymakers alike sought to secure the United States' military position in the Caribbean by strengthening the ties between the U.S. government and Puerto Rico. They reasoned that making Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens would induce Puerto Ricans to be loyal to the United States, preempt appeals for Puerto Rico's independence, and help in the future drafting of young (male) Puerto Ricans. Yet the bestowal of U.S. citizenship on Puerto Ricans was only one (Sect. 5) of the Jones Act's 58 sections. The more important feature of the new organic act was to reform the controversial and disliked 1900 Foraker in order to grant the Island greater political autonomy. Doing so, U.S. officials calculated, would stanch Puerto Rican political discontent at a critical moment.Manuel Maldonado-Denis (1969), Efren Rivera Ramos (2001), and Rogers Smith (1997) likewise argue that security concerns were paramount. Maldonado-Denis does not explore the Jones in detail, however, and both Rivera Ramos and Smith do not substantiate their claims. The latter two authors only touch on U.S. strategic interests in the course of making their central arguments on the U.S. government's political subordination of Puerto Rico (Rivera Ramos 2001) and on the differential, tiered citizenship that exists within the U.S. political system (Smith 1997).Others, too, write of the strategic importance of Puerto Rico to U.S. security. Judge Juan Torruella (1985) omits discussion of the First War; however, Frank Gatell (1960) and Cabranes (1979) discount the importance of the spreading world war, and Trias Monge mentions War I only after the United States' declaration of war on Germany (Trias Monge 1979, 78-79). None of the above scholars nor any of those of the preceding paragraph provide the close, empirical argument needed to explain why Puerto Ricans acquired U.S. citizenship.Most scholars of U.S. history of the First War and the Progressive Era simply ignore the 1917 Jones Act. Biographies of Woodrow Wilson focus on the President's role in the First War, but as a rule fail to address the extension of U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans or analyze the Wilson administration's Caribbean policy (Braeman 1972; Heckscher 1991; Knock 1992; Cooper 2008; Berg 2013; Striner 2014). So, too, histories of War I (Gilbert 1994; Chickering and Forster 2000), American conscription and the selective service (Capozzola 2008; Shenk 2005), and wartime mobilization (Kennedy 1980; Ferrell 1985; Tucker 2007) similarly omit discussion of the effects of War I on the extension of U. …