Aquí Se Habla Español: Cultural Identity and Language in Postwar Puerto Rico

In the decades after 1898, Puerto Ricans went through a U.S.-imposed process of Americanization implemented through federal institutions. According to this process, Puerto Ricans would become American colonial subjects through the U.S. control over the curriculum that made English the language of instruction in schools. With still a vague explanation of what Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans meant to the American nation, Puerto Ricans from various backgrounds debated the Americanization practices. However, after the 1952 constitution, defenders of Puerto Rico's limited autonomy within the U.S. Empire divorced Puerto Rican cultural identity from the political identity that defined them as U.S. citizen. This separation perpetuated the colonial status while it calmed the anxieties over the repercussions of this status on Puerto Rican identity.  In this process, the local government created and promoted institutions through Governor Luis Muñoz Marín’s Operación Serenidad (Serenity), which centered the Spanish language as the core of the Puerto Rican identity, and defined the influence of the distinct historical legacy of the Spanish, the African, and the Taíno.

This study explains the duality of the Puerto Rican identity, and the link between culture and language using a borderlands framework that defines Puerto Rico as a periphery of the U.S. empire. This study considers the role of government and civic institutions as well as private individuals in the construction of the cultural identity that defined Puerto Ricans during the second half of the twentieth century. My work will address the widely accepted, but little studied implications of the Caribbean as a conflictive border of U.S. imperial expansion during the 19^th and 20^th century. This study also contributes to the ongoing popular and academic discussion which debates how Puerto Ricans define themselves in context to U.S. colonialism, but more importantly, why Puerto Ricans still accept their status as second-class citizens.