Crossing Empire: Inter-Colonial Elite Politics in Puerto Rico and the Philippines during U.S. Rule

In 1909, the Puerto Rican legislative assembly, known as the House of Delegates, rejected an appropriations bill pushed by American officials in the Executive Council. This was an act of resistance against an American colonial regime that had become recalcitrant to the Puerto Rican elites’ policy demands. It was also a weapon of the weak, a legislative formality that could be deployed against the American “tutors” who purported to teach the Puerto Rican elites the ways of American democracy. In 1911, halfway around the Pacific, the Philippine Assembly used the exact same tactic to stir nationalist sentiment and protest the entrenched American regime. This was no coincidence. It is one example of others whereby the Puerto Rican elite and their counterparts in the Philippines implicitly collaborated and, at times, contested each other. This paper explores the hidden cross-colonial collaborations, contests, and dialogues between the Puerto Rican and Filipino political elite during the first decade and a half of US occupation. Members of the elites in the two colonies only rarely met: their paths crossed as “resident commissioners” in D.C., as St. Louis Fair exhibitors, as students in the US, and formerly in Spain. This paper traces some of those connections and the cross-colonial convergences and divergences that resulted.