Volume 30, Number 13 · August 18, 1983
Our Colony
By Raymond Carr
Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History
by Arturo Morales Carrión, with María Teresa Babín, by Aida R. Caro Costas, by Arturo Santana, by Luis González Vales
Norton, 384 pp., $19.50
Historical parallels are often misleading, never exact, and they have been much abused by historians who follow fashion. Nevertheless the fate of Puerto Rico as a Spanish colony, described in the first seven essays of this collection, does cast a light on—or one might say a shadow over—the experiences of the island as a colony of the United States since 1898. Under Spain, as the vast fortifications of Old San Juan testify to this day, Puerto Rico was a presidio—a garrison outpost protecting the sea lanes to the richer colonies of Mexico and Central America. To Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, disciples of Captain Mahan who conceived of Puerto Rico as an American Malta, the island was desirable 'war booty' in 1898 because of its utility as a naval base.
Review, 2470 words
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