"Some Porto Ricans As Our Artist Saw Them," Li-Om Our Islands and Their People, /899

"Some Porto Ricans as our artist saw them," li-om Our Islands and Their People, /899. 32 Their Islands and Our People: U.S. Writing About Puerto Rico, 1898-1920' Felix V. Matos Rodriguez "Indications are not wanting of an approaching change in the thoughts and policy of Americans as to their relations with the world outside their own borders." Captain Alfred T. Mahan, Atlantic Monthly, December 1890 The Spanish-American-Cuban War brought the islands of Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico into direct U.S. influence. As a result of acquiring these new "possessions"—either through formal colonial control or through indirect economic and political influence a large literature emerged in the U.S. focusing on the territories taken after the war.' This literature included quite diverse yet often overlapping genres: military histories (Richard Harding Davis, The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns [1898]), resource assessment and investment guides (Frederick A. Ober, Porto Rico and Its Resources [1899]), academic studies (Leo S. Rowe, The United States and Porto Rico [1904]), popular histories (R. A. Van Middledyk, History of Porto Rico [1898]), official government reports (Henry K. Carroll, Report on the Island of Porto Rico [1899]), journalistic accounts (William S. Bryan, ed., Our Islands & Their People [1899]), and even children's and juvenile books (Oscar Phelps Austin, Uncle Sam's Soldiers [1899]). There were, of course, books on all or some of these genres published in the U.S. about these islands prior to 1898. The ample Cuban travel literature published in the United States during the second half of the nineteenth century is an example of pre-1898 publications.' Yet it is undeniable that the volume of writing about Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the U.S. increased both in terms of numeric quantity and of diversification of literary genres after 1898. The centennial of the Spanish-American-Cuban War has encouraged the publication of several important studies regarding the writing published in the United States immediately before and after the war.' In this essay, I focus specifically on the literature regarding Puerto Rico produced in the U.S. during the first three decades of the twentieth century.' I address two sets of questions here. The first, and perhaps most basic one, deals with the authors and the conditions that prompted and facilitated their writing and publication. Who was writing these books? Why? Was knowledge of Puerto Rico the realm of the journalist, the travel writer, or the historian? How were these people connected to Puerto Rico'? Or were they? How did the writing about Puerto Rico affect, or not affect, the historiographical debates occurring in the U.S. at the turn of the century? The second set of questions focuses on the agenda(s)—shared and/or contradictory—that these books had. What were some of the main concerns of those writing about Puerto Rico at the turn of the century? What kind of portrayal were these books presenting to the different U.S. audiences that they targeted? What kinds of rhetorical strategies were authors employing to represent Puerto Rico and the Puerto Ricans? How was this writing connected to the agenda(s) the U.S. had for the island? How were these books trying to portray Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans before the U.S. public? In the first part of this essay, I present some of the U.S. authors who wrote about Puerto Rico and some of the literary genres employed by these authors. I also include some brief bio- graphical data, where available, on these authors. In the second part of the paper, I utilize ana- lytical concepts emerging from the field of post-colonial studies to decipher and decode the agenda(s) of U.S. writers.' I explore how these agendas were achieved through the use of different rhetorical strategies or tropes. These strategies were vital in shaping the early corpus of 33 knowledge about Puerto Rico that was bein g produced for different audiences in the United States and the world. Authors and Genres The Spanish-American-Cuban War attracted the attention of the U.S. public like few late- nineteenth-century events did. There was extensive—if very biased and sensationalist coverage of the struggle for independence by the Cuban rebels prior to the war.' Such attention led to a number of journalist accounts printed in newspapers and leading magazines, such as Harper's Weekly and The Atlantic Monthly—from 1895 to 1898. The writings coming from Cuba were combined with the techniques of photojournalism, insuring U.S. readers a glimpse of the exotic scenery and people that inhabited the crumbling remains of the Spanish Empire in We Caribbean and Pacific. Photographs also served to familiarize, throu gh the "real" images of the camera, the U.S. public with their newly acquired territories. Scant news arrived from either Puerto Rico or the Philippines until the very beginning of the war. After the war, journalists were joined by several other groups in writing about the newly acquired colonial possessions. War veterans became active in publishing their anecdotes about the "splendid little war."' Travel writers, businessmen, scholars, missionaries, and many oth- ers also joined the task of interpreting, presenting, and masking the new imperial reality to the U.S. public. Many of the authors writing about Puerto Rico during the first decades of the twentieth century were eyewitnesses of sorts: war correspondents, photographers, war veterans, ex-military or civil service officials, academics, and missionaries. Another set of writers had more ephemeral contact with the island's reality, as they were "professional" travel writers, writers of children's books, or prominent writers who took advantage of the post-1898 interest in the former Spanish colonies. The first group of books published about Puerto Rico and about Cuba and the Philippines—at the war's end were, for the most part, the work of journalists and military men. Numerous journalists covered the war for different newspapers and magazines and proceeded to shape the first impressions of the islands to their fellow Americans." Many of the books published between 1897 and 1914 were actually re-collections of the articles written by these journalists during the course and the aftermath of the war. The rush for news coverage about the Cuban independence struggle and the potential war with Spain was such that some journalists were dispatched prior to the conflict and their hooks came out almost concurrently with the war. This was the case of A. D. Hall's Cuba: Its Past, Present and Future (1898), which acknowledges in its concluding chapter that: "It is unnecessary to refer except in a brief man- ner to the Spanish-American war, as the struggle is at the present time of writing only in its inception."'" Hall had no problems, however, predicting the future U.S. victory in the war. Perhaps the best known of the war correspondents of the Spanish-American-Cuban War was Richard Harding Davis. Davis was a prolific and very successful newspaper reporter, mag- azine editor, and fiction writer. He had been involved in the Cuban insurrection as early as 1896, covering the atrocities committed by the Spaniards against the Cuban rebels. Harding Davis later witnessed the military campaigns in Santiago de Cuba and in Puerto Rico. Some argue that it was Harding Davis who professionalized and created the "war correspondent" genre, one in which "the gentleman reporter [went] in search of action and adventure, establishing the world as his heat.' In one of his early books which included vignettes of the Spanish-American- Cuban War, the Greek-Turkish War, and the South African War Davis included a chapter enti- tled "A War Correspondent's Kit."' After the 1898 conflict Harding Davis published The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns 11898), based on his war coverage.' The book became, and has remained, one of most celebrated and quoted hooks regarding the war. Other journalists who covered the war were Stephen Crane, Trumbull White, William Dinwiddic, and Albert Gardner Robinson. Crane, a renowned writer and author of the classic The Red Badge of Courage (1895), was dispatched by the New York Journal to cover the war.'4 Crane became very upset at the media attention received by the celebrities fighting in the war, such as Teddy Roosevelt and some of his Ivy League–educated Rough Riders. Crane's dis- patches and subsequent fiction championed the bravery of the regular army soldier. :\lbert Gardner Robinson was the correspondent for The Evening Post in Puerto Rico. His Porto Rico 34 of Today (1899) is based on the letters Robison wrote as a war correspondent between August and October 1898.' 5 It is of interest to note that on the back cover of Robinson's Porto Rico of Today, there is an advertisement for two commercial guides to Cuba and the Philippines and of two memoirs of the 1898 conflict. Trumbull White was another prolific war correspondent. Upon returning from covering the war in Cuba and Puerto Rico, he quickly published Our New Possessions (1898) and United States in War with Spain and the History of Cuba (1898). White's preface to the United States in War outlines the reasons why U.S. journalists and photographers ventured into the Spanish possessions in the Caribbean: Demand always creates supply, even if material is scant. When the war began, the people of the United States wanted to know something of the people who were striv- ing for their freedom, of their characteristics, their conditions and their personality. Moreover, it was an immediate necessity to know the geography of Cuba, its history, its natural conditions, its material resources, and a host of things that unite to make a comprehensive knowledge of any country:6 White continues in his preface to laud the journalists covering the Spanish-American-Cuban War for their personal and professional heroism.

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