“ADVANCING the KINGDOM”: MISSIONARIES and AMERICANIZATION in PUERTO RICO, 1898-1930S
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“ADVANCING THE KINGDOM”: MISSIONARIES AND AMERICANIZATION IN PUERTO RICO, 1898-1930s by Ellen Walsh B.A., Mount Holyoke College, 1996 M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2000 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of University of Pittsburgh in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2008 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Ellen Walsh It was defended on April 10, 2008 and approved by Dr. George Reid Andrews, UCIS Research Professor, Department of History Dr. Kathleen M. Blee, Distinguished Professor, Department of Sociology & Women’s Studies Dr. Maurine Greenwald, Associate Professor, Department of History Dr. Marcus Rediker, Professor, Department of History Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Alejandro de la Fuente, Associate Professor, Department of History ii Copyright © by Ellen Walsh 2008 iii “ADVANCING THE KINGDOM”: MISSIONARIES AND AMERICANZATION IN PUERTO RICO, 1898-1930s Ellen Walsh, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2008 This dissertation examines the role of Protestant missionaries in Americanizing Puerto Rico from 1898 into the 1930s. It contends that Americanization was a dynamic, contingent, multi- directional, and contradictory process that had unintended consequences. These included the development of insular nationalism and Puerto Ricans’ employment of Americanization’s liberal ideology to make claims against the missionary establishment and the colonial state. Demonstrating that Protestants functioned as an advance guard for the colonial state in the areas of education and health care, it nevertheless argues that many missionaries began to question and then sharply criticized the entire civilizing project because of its harmful effects on most Puerto Ricans’ living and working conditions and on the island’s natural environment. It also argues that, in addition to its disciplinary aspects, the missionary project had emancipatory effects, including an expansion of the public sphere in terms of content and participation and the introduction of new social and occupational roles for women. By focusing on relations between non-elite actors, this dissertation contributes to understanding how imperial relations were constructed on the ground. Though sharing fundamental goals with the colonial state, missionaries, unlike colonial officials, spoke Spanish and interacted with Puerto Ricans of all classes. Additionally, women missionaries played an active, highly visible role in this civilizing venture. This study examines missionary reform efforts and Puerto Rican responses to them, paying particular attention to the ways that iv missionary and local understandings of race, class, and gender shaped the outcomes of those efforts. It argues that local social and material conditions, ideologies, and practices significantly shaped missionaries’ methods and accomplishments or failures. Additionally, it argues the need for carefully historicizing Americanization, for those local actors and conditions were undergoing radical, precipitous changes. Using a case study, for example, it shows how local and metropolitan ideologies of white racial superiority combined to first include and later exclude Afro Puerto Rican women from nursing education. It also argues that some Puerto Ricans embraced the civilizing mission because they, too, were modernizers and advocates of pre-existing reform agendas constructed by Puerto Ricans such as Eugenia María de Hostos. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..........................................................................................................IX 1.0 INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 REVIEW OF AMERICANIZATION LITERATURE.................................... 3 1.2 THIS STUDY’S APPROACH............................................................................ 8 1.3 REVIEW OF LITERATURE ON PROTESTANT MISSIONARIES IN PUERTO RICO.................................................................................................................. 10 1.4 CHAPTER ORGANIZATION......................................................................... 14 2.0 CHAPTER TWO: MANIFEST DESTINY AND THE MISSIONARY PROJECT ...................................................................................................................................... 20 2.1 MANIFEST DESTINY ..................................................................................... 21 2.2 THE MISSION................................................................................................... 31 2.3 THE MISSIONARY ESTABLISHMENT ...................................................... 37 2.4 THE MISSIONARIES ...................................................................................... 43 2.5 CONTESTING THE “CONSECRATED WOMAN”.................................... 49 3.0 CHAPTER THREE: “TEACH, HEAL, PREACH THE GOSPEL”: AN OVERVIEW OF MISSIONARY PROGRAMS...................................................................... 58 3.1 METHODS......................................................................................................... 60 3.2 GOALS ............................................................................................................... 75 vi 3.3 DISCIPLINE...................................................................................................... 83 3.4 COOPERATION WITH OTHER AGENTS OF AMERICANIZATION... 88 3.5 OUTCOMES...................................................................................................... 97 4.0 CHAPTER FOUR: THE GOSPEL OF WORK: THE MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL PROJECT................................................................................................... 109 4.1 THE FIRST MISSIONARY SCHOOLS:| PROXIES FOR THE NEW COLONIAL STATE ........................................................................................................ 111 4.2 MAINLAND AND ISLAND CONTEXTS AND APPROACHES.............. 119 4.3 MISSIONARY SCHOOLS: GOALS AND METHODS.............................. 127 4.4 CONTRADICTIONS IN THE MISSIONARY EDUCATIONAL PROJECT ........................................................................................................................... 139 5.0 CHAPTER FIVE: “A FINER WOMANHOOD, A STRONGER MANHOOD AND A HEALTHIER NATION”: MISSIONARY MEDICAL WORK............................. 153 5.1 PHASE ONE: DISPENSARIES..................................................................... 156 5.2 PHASE TWO: HOSPITALS.......................................................................... 159 5.3 STAGE THREE: NURSING SCHOOLS...................................................... 165 5.4 ROSA A. GONZÁLEZ AND THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF NURSING.......................................................................................................................... 171 5.5 THE LIMITS OF UNIVERSAL UPLIFT: “WE MUST HAVE THE WHITE GIRL.”................................................................................................................ 179 5.6 THE PROBLEMS OF RECRUITING “CONSECRATED WOMEN”..... 193 6.0 CHAPTER FIVE: NATIONALISM, CLAIMS, AND CRITIQUES OF AMERICANIZATION............................................................................................................. 200 vii 6.1 POLYTECHNIC: ICON OF AMERICANIZATION ................................. 203 6.2 SHOOTING THE MESSENGER: CHARLES A. LINDBERGH’S STOP- OVER IN PUERTO RICO.............................................................................................. 207 6.3 POLYTECHNIC: VENUE OF CONTESTATION ..................................... 212 6.4 POPULAR CLAIMS-MAKING .................................................................... 224 6.5 CHANGES IN FUNCTION: THE SETTLEMENT HOUSES ................... 231 6.6 CHANGES IN CONSCIOUSNESS ............................................................... 238 6.7 AMERICANIZATION’S CHANGES ........................................................... 242 7.0 CONCLUSION......................................................................................................... 244 APPENDIX................................................................................................................................ 256 SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 257 viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am and will remain indebted to many people for the development and completion of this dissertation. The members of my committee, Professors Maurine Greenwald, Kathy Blee, Marcus Rediker, and Reid Andrews, have taught me so much, in and outside committee meetings and classrooms. I thank Reid Andrews for his seminars and insights about race; Kathy Blee for showing me the possibilities for theorizing race, class, gender, and imperialism in creative, mutually constitutive ways, the joys of feminist theorizing, and her incisive comments and practical advice; Marcus Rediker for introducing me to an Atlantic perspective and his willingness to challenge someone as opinionated and hard-headed as he is; and Maurine Greenwald for her counsel on the mainland perspectives of my topic, directed interrogations, unequivocal enthusiasm and support, and her personal and intellectual friendship. I am particularly grateful to my advisor, Professor Alejandro de la Fuente, for his enduring patience, critical and repeated readings, insistence that I focus on Americanization, and guidance through the extended,