US' Control Over Puerto Rico

This meant that Puerto Ricans were often depicted as primitive, poor, dependent and childlike. This was reinforced by the racist views rampant in the early 20th century in America.

Thousands of images from that era ar representative of the "humble home life of our Puerto Rican cousins" as they be referred to by Underwood and Underwood (Portraying 90). The images of two collections described in Portraying the Other both depict the Puerto Ricans as " domestic colonial subjects, redeemable through hard work, public wellness and education." This paternalistic view of Puerto Ricans persists today, and Puerto Ricans are still seen as contrasting from Americans.

In the documentary La Operation, it is revealed that more than one-third of Puerto Rican women of vaginal birth age have been sterilized (La). The procedure began in the thirties to curb the "surplus population," and has been reinforced in subsequent decades. It is secure to American interventionist economic policies, and women are encouraged to undergo the mental process without macrocosm informed about its consequences. The campaign of female sterilisation was intensified in the 1950s, when the Operation Bootstrap program failed to break the jobs it promised. Later, in the 1960s, Puerto Ric

Returning from the Vietnam struggle to the same prejudice in the U.S., some Puerto Ricans were drawn into grouping politics and many became influential community leaders (Puerto 91). The first of all times Puerto Ricans in the U.S. accepted their second-class citizenship, the second times received a better education and began to assimilate, whereas the third generation became part of the melting pot that is America. In the seventies, a sweet generation of Puerto Rican scholars arose and challenged the notion portrayed by America of Puerto Ricans being unavailing to govern themselves. However, the new economic recession of the 1970s brought a new wave of immigrants, a mixture of college graduates unable to find work on the island and the poorest and least-skilled urban slum dwellers.

At the same time, first generation immigrants, who had learned English and amass wealth in the U.S., began returning to the island for their retirement years and to ask jobs in the tourist industry, which was booming at the time, and required a good command of English. In the U.S., the inner cities were disintegrating in the 1980s, well over by the poor, and the lack of jobs and decent schools. Third generation Puerto Ricans grew up without an identity, still not accepted as full Americans in America.

United States: Puerto Rico. 2001. 11 Oct. 2005.

Second generation Puerto Ricans generally went to college and pursued careers, but were still considered second-class citizens (Puerto 91). Skin color mulish the fate of many while racial tensions were rampant in this country. Those with lighter skins could pass as white and settle in better neighborhoods, abandoning their culture and language: those with darker skins formed all-Puerto Rican neighborhoods.

Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic remove man. San Francisco, CA: Barrett Kohler Publisher
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