View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 5-2010 Fighting For the Nation: Military Service, Popular Political Mobilization and the Creation of Modern Puerto Rican National Identities: 1868-1952 Harry Franqui University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Franqui, Harry, "Fighting For the Nation: Military Service, Popular Political Mobilization and the Creation of Modern Puerto Rican National Identities: 1868-1952" (2010). Open Access Dissertations. 229. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/229 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FIGHTING FOR THE NATION: MILITARY SERVICE, POPULAR POLITICAL MOBILIZATION AND THE CREATION OF MODERN PUERTO RICAN NATIONAL IDENTITIES: 1868-1952 A Dissertation Presented by HARRY FRANQUI Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2010 University of Massachusetts/Five College Graduate Program in History © Copyright by Harry Franqui 2010 All Rights Reserved FIGHTING FOR THE NATION: MILITARY SERVICE, POPULAR POLITICAL MOBILIZATION AND THE CREATION OF MODERN PUERTO RICAN NATIONAL IDENTITIES: 1868-1952 A Dissertation Presented by HARRY FRANQUI Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________ Jane Rausch, Chair ____________________________________ Lowell Gudmundson, Member ____________________________________ José Angel Hernández, Member ____________________________________ John Higginson, Member ____________________________________ Guillermo Irizarry, Member ____________________________________ Agustín Lao-Montes, Member __________________________________________ Audrey Altstadt, Chair History Department DEDICATION A mi madre, por sacrificar tanto por el bienestar de sus hijos. A mis hermanos y hermanas, por el orgullo que sienten al ver los suyos tener éxito y por siempre estar prestos a tender una mano. A mi esposa y compañera Patricia, por ver en mi cualidades que yo desconocía, por su fe en mi y por su incansable apoyo. A mis hijos, por inspirarme a ser mejor persona. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the graduate School of the University of Massachusetts for granting me a Graduate Diversity Writing Fellowship for the year 2009-2010. This fellowship facilitated the completion of this project in many ways. The research for this project was done during the summer periods and abroad, in Puerto Rico, at several locations. I was able to conduct extensive and sustained archival research thanks to the generosity of the Bauer-Gordon Summer Research Fellowship, (2004, 2006); and the support of Robert and Jeanne Potash, via their Latin American and Iberian Travel Award, (2004, 2005). The UMass Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies also contributed to my research by offering me a Research Grant in 2006. The ALANA Fellowship for Underrepresented Minorities, which I was granted for the year 2003-2004, allowed me for the first time in my life to focus solely on my studies. I believe that in that year I matured as a scholar. For those reasons, I am ceaselessly obliged. I would also like to recognize the professionalism and courtesy of the staff at Centro de Investigaciones Históricas de la Universidad de Puerto Rico and at the Archivo Fundación Luis Muñoz Marín. The latter went out of their way to make sure I could get all the documents I requested as speedily and as inexpensively as possible. I owe much to the Professor Jane Rausch. She was patient, understanding and supportive, and helped me stay on track. Thank you Jane. Professor José Hernández, through many conversations and readings of outlines and abstracts, helped me to focus and develop my project since his first days at UMass Amherst. Gracias José. Last but not least, I am thankful and everlastingly indebted to the Puerto Rican veterans and their families for sharing their memories, for opening a window into history for me, and for the warm welcome they offered me. ¡Muchas gracias, no se les olvida! v ABSTRACT FIGHTING FOR THE NATION: MILITARY SERVICE, POPULAR POLITICAL MOBILIZATION AND THE CREATION OF MODERN PUERTO RICAN NATIONAL IDENTITIES: 1868-1952 MAY 2010 HARRY FRANQUI B.A., UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO, MAYAGÜEZ M.A., TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, PHILADELPHIA Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Jane Rausch This project explores the military and political mobilization of rural and urban working sectors of Puerto Rican society as the Island transitioned from Spanish to U.S. imperial rule. In particular, my research is interested in examining how this shift occurs via patterns of inclusion-exclusion within the military and the various forms of citizenship that are subsequently transformed into socio-economic and political enfranchisement. Analyzing the armed forces as a culture-homogenizing agent helps to explain the formation and evolution of Puerto Rican national identities from 1868 to 1952, and how these evolving identities affected the political choices of the Island. This phenomenon, I argue, led to the creation of the Estado Libre Asociado in 1952. The role played by the tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans in the metropolitan military in the final creation of a populist project taking place under colonial rule in the Island was threefold. Firstly, these soldiers served as political leverage during WWII to speed up the decolonization process. Secondly, they incarnated the commonwealth ideology by fighting and dying in the Korean War. Finally, the Puerto Rican soldiers filled the ranks of the army of technicians and technocrats attempting to fulfill the promises of a modern industrial Puerto Rico after the returned from the wars. In contrast to Puerto Rican popular national mythology and mainstream academic discourse that has marginalized the agency of subaltern groups; I argue that the Puerto Rican soldier was neither cannon fodder for the metropolis nor the pawn of the Creole political elites. Regaining their masculinity, upward mobility, and political enfranchisement were among some of the incentives enticing the Puerto Rican peasant into military service. The enfranchisement of subaltern sectors via military service ultimately created a very liberal, popular, and broad definition of Puerto Rico’s national identity. When the Puerto Rican peasant/soldier became the embodiment of the Commonwealth formula, the political leaders involved in its design were in fact responding to these soldiers’ complex identities, which among other things compelled them to defend the “American Nation” to show their Puertorriqueñidad . vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1. BIRTH OF A NATION: FROM 1868 TO 1898, A LABOR OF THIRTY YEARS ....................................16 2. PUERTO RICAN A LÀ AMERICANA: AN ALTERNATIVE NATION? 1898-1914.........................................................63 3. “A NEW DAY HAS DAWNED FOR THE PUERTO RICAN JIBARO”: WORLD WAR I AND MOBILIZATION OF THE PUERTO RICAN PEASANT .............................................................................109 4. ECONOMIC WRETCHEDNESS AND THE NATIONALIST CHALLENGE: PRELUDE TO THE BATTLE OVER MODERN PUERTO RICO ...................170 5. EDUCATION, INDUSTRIALIZATION AND DECOLONIZATION: THE BATTLEFIELDS OF THE PUERTO RICAN SOLDIER DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR ...........................................................................213 6. FIGHTING FOR THE “NATION”? WAR AT HOME AND ABROAD AND THE CREATION OF THE ESTADO LIBRE ASOCIADO DE PUERTO RICO ...........................272 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................312 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................332 vii INTRODUCTION Every day tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans drive by the Monumento al Jíbaro in Cayey Puerto Rico. Unbeknownst to them, this monument, hidden in plain view, guards a key for understanding Puerto Rico’s past. The monument overlooks the modern highway P.R.52, which cuts through the Cordillera Central and its extension, the Sierra de Cayey, linking the San Juan metropolitan area with south-western Puerto Rico. Very tellingly, the monument depicting a humble but proud peasant family, with a mountain range as its background and faced by the highway system and the Caribbean Sea rests in a foundation of Korean dirt drenched in Puerto Rican blood. More than a bridge between the “Island” and the capital, this highway and the monument guarding it serve as a historical bridge. Far from being a sad reminder of the disappearance of the Jíbaro before