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To understand the reality of colonialism in Puerto Rico, it is important to understand the diversity of colonialism around the world since 1492. Direct colonialism sought to build the nation by imitating the European nation-building process: the idea was to get the colonized people to accept becoming members of the colonists. Then in the 19th century a new model of colonialism emerged: the method of indirect governance and rule and the model most relevant to Puerto Rico is indirect territorial colonialism. Under indirect colonialism, the governance of the colony is managed through local elites and authorities. This local authority gives the illusion of autonomy for the colonized, but in reality it is just a local authority supervised and dominated by the imperial central government. In the case of Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth is a local authority managed by cartel parties and small local elites, but in reality the Commonwealth is just a facade, and the real dominant power above the Commonwealth is the core power of the US federal government. . That is, indirect colonialism here requires the existence of the Commonwealth: literally, this strategy of rule requires the creation of a local government that acts as a projector of the illusion of autonomy, while the real overarching power resides in the central authority.
Furthermore, indirect colonialism is based on the fact that the emphasis is no longer on the language of explicit exclusion (civilized vs. uncivilized): it is now on the language of cultural difference. Indirect colonialism works by imposing new colonial subjectivities: the central authority defines and redefines the colonized, and rules in this way. It seeks to create new subjectivities for the entire population of the colony. These new subjectivities consist of redefining the identities of the population subject to the colonial system. Many are moving from identifying unthinkingly as “Puerto Rican” to identifying as “Latino” or “Hispanic”: these are racialized ethnic categories imported from the United States, an indirect approach that seeks to create permanent minorities, monitored and indirectly controlled by the colonizer’s power. .
The methods of indirect colonialism have a genealogy that spans many centuries. The Roman Empire used a form of indirect colonialism, from where it jumped to the British Empire, which followed suit. Finally, from there he turned to the practice of domination and colonialism in the United States, and perfected this practice in two stages: implementing it to rule the first states in North America, and then implementing it in Puerto Rico. Let’s start with Rome: Rome established “municipalities” in the west of the empire and “colonies” in the east. Rome, in alliance with local elites, ruled the eastern colonies with a primitive form of indirect colonialism and selective, differentiated Roman citizenship. Rome preached the idea of ”humanism” and saw itself as the guardian of historical progress, similar to the “civilizing mission” ideology of modern European empires. From there, the British Empire saw itself as the modern successor of the Roman Empire: Henry Maine and Lord Lugard helped promote the British practice of indirect colonialism. Lugard was a great pioneer of this practice in Africa and perfected it in northern Nigeria.
Then, starting in the second half of the 19th century, the United States became the modern promoter of this approach: the reservation system for Native Americans was established in California in 1850, and later perfected by Ulysses S. Grant. The great American colonial project of indirect governance began with the first contacts between Europeans and Native Americans. As Hegel wrote in 1820, the attempts of Europeans in North America to expand their territories as settler-colonists led to the virtual extermination of millions of indigenous peoples. With the creation of “Indian reservations” after the 1850s, the first North American settlers became “internal dependent nations” gathered in internal colonial territories, where they remain to this day. The permanent majority of the United States subjected the first North American peoples to colonial rule and turned them into permanent minorities.
The second great experiment in indirect colonial governance of territories, as far as the United States is concerned, is Puerto Rico. Direct colonial rule was established here from the arrival of the United States until the 1940s. After the transition to the ELA in 1952, the method of indirect territorial colonialism was established here until now.
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