Puerto Rico In The Late 1800s

222 Words1 Pages
As a Puerto Rican citizen, I do not fit in to that part of our history very much. In the late 1800’s, Puerto Rico was not a U.S. territory; instead, it formed part of the Spanish empire. It wasn’t until the end of the Spanish-American war that Puerto Rico became a U.S. property. Even then (after being conquered by the U.S. in the year 1900), the common American belief was that Puerto Ricans weren’t inherently equal any more than they thought that blacks were racially equal to whites. Rather, because the American public wouldn’t consent to treating Puerto Ricans as equals or granting them citizenship, the U.S. had trouble keeping the island as an imperial possession. Nevertheless, Puerto Rico was granted some, but not all constitutional rights