Puerto Rico: Operation Bootstrap

Hispania ◽  
1964 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 438
Author(s):  
Marian Templeton
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Operation Bootstrap

US Imperialism and Puerto Rican Needleworkers: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Women's Labor in a Deep History of Neoliberal Trade

2020 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 142-172
Author(s):  
Aimee Loiselle
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
Puerto Rican Women ◽  
Us Imperialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Operation Bootstrap ◽  
A Site

AbstractIn 1898, US occupation of Puerto Rico opened possibilities for experimentation with manufacturing, investment, tariffs, and citizenship because the Treaty of Paris did not address territorial incorporation. Imperial experimentation started immediately and continued through the liberal policies of the New Deal and World War II, consistently reproducing drastic exceptions. These exceptions were neither permanent nor complete, but the rearrangements of sovereignty and citizenship established Puerto Rico as a site of potential and persistent exemption. Puerto Rican needleworkers were central to the resulting colonial industrialization-not as dormant labor awaiting outside developmental forces but as skilled workers experienced in production. Following US occupation, continental trade agents and manufacturers noted the intricate needlework of Puerto Rican women and their employment in homes and small shops for contractors across the island. Their cooptation and adaptation of this contracting system led to the colonial industrialization, generating bureaucratic, financial, and legal infrastructure later used in Operation Bootstrap, a long-term economic plan devised in the 1940s and 1950s. Labor unions and aggrieved workers contested and resisted this colonial industrialization. They advocated their own proposals and pushed against US economic policies and insular business management. Throughout these fights, the asymmetrical power of the federal government and industrial capital allowed the colonial regime to assert US sovereignty while continually realigning exemptions and redefining citizenship for liberal economic objectives. Rather than representing a weakening of the nation-state, this strong interventionist approach provided scaffolding for Operation Bootstrap, which became a model for the neoliberal projects called export processing zones (EPZs).

Changing Forms of U.S. Hegemony in Puerto Rico: The Impact on the Family and Sexuality

Itinerario ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 90-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen I. Safa
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The Family ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Operation Bootstrap ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Constant Source ◽  
The U.S

It has been over a hundred years since the U.S. took control of Puerto Rico. In that time, the way in which the U.S. perceived Puerto Rico has changed from a colony requiring Americanisation to, in the 1950s, its showcase of democracy in the Caribbean, to today, an island that still retains geopolitical importance for the U.S., but represents an increasing economic burden. The failure of Operation Bootstrap, as the Puerto Rican industrialization program was known, resulted in permanent large-scale unemployment, with a population dependent on federal transfers for a living, and a constant source of migration to the mainland, where over half of Puerto Ricans now live. I shall trace the outline of these three stages in U.S. hegemony over Puerto Rico, and argue that throughout the U.S. Congress was reluctant to fully incorporate Puerto Rico, because its population was deemed racially and socially inferior to that of the mainland. Though the removal of Spain from Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines was considered part of the its ‘manifest destiny’, the United States never intended to incorporate these people so different from the U.S. as part of the American nation, as was done with its earlier acquisitions in Texas, Alaska or even Hawaii.

The Thinking Voice: When Listening Trumps Celebrity

PMLA ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 126 (4) ◽  
pp. 1092-1101
Author(s):  
Licia Fiol-Matta
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Medical Center ◽  
Residential Construction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Industrialization Process ◽  
Cattle Ranch ◽  
Milk Industry ◽  
Operation Bootstrap ◽  
The City ◽  
Golden Mile

In the brief span of 1952–68, Puerto Rico sped through its industrialization process. Middle-class residential construction dotted the city of San Juan. Hotels replaced the mansions along its Condado waterfront. The spanking new Medical Center promised health for the sickly, undernourished population, a health that the developmentalist program of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico—Operation Bootstrap—desperately needed, as it endeavored to offer a cheap, obedient, and presumably bilingual labor force to American capital. The “Golden Mile,” the financial district established in the area of the sometime royal hacienda, Hato Rey, emerged as the centerpiece of a new downtown. The mythic mall of Plaza Las Américas (formerly a cattle ranch that bred cows for the milk industry) became the social hub of a polis that increasingly turned to consumerism for its exercise of citizenship. Newspapers and magazines were filled with consumer fantasies of every variety. Along with everything else that was dazzling and new, Puerto Rico consumed a new object for sale, the celebrity pop star.

Shattering the Illusion of Development: The Changing Status of Women and Challenges for the Feminist Movement in Puerto Rico

1998 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice E. Colón-Warren ◽  
Idsa Alegria-Ortega
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Lower Cost ◽  
The United States ◽  
Feminist Movement ◽  
Women's Labor ◽  
Operation Bootstrap ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Status Of Women ◽  
Activity Areas

In this paper we examine the weaknesses of development strategies which have been applied in Puerto Rico. The process of industrialization by invitation, referred to as Operation Bootstrap, was instituted by the United States of America by the end of the 1940s. This involved tax incentives and subsidies for companies and was dependent on industrial peace and low wages in labor-intensive, low-wage industries, especially those of textile and clothing. Naturally, women's labor was encouraged as a result of the lower cost, as well as assumed dexterity, of the female in such areas. While these new activity areas for women also allowed other benefits in the form of legislation and increased social services, the inherent problems of rapid, labor-intensive industrialization also led to displacement and increased underemployment and impoverization of female headed families from the 1960s onwards. The paper explores some of the changes in gender relations which resulted from these policies and looks at the challenges which the feminist movement in Puerto Rico has made, particularly with regard to state processes to bring about beneficial changes in the economic, legal, political and social status of women in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico: A Cultural Crossroads

ASHA Leader ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 38-40
Author(s):  
Albert Villanueva-Reyes
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico
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