Week 2
Building the Empire
Readings (Download Packet)
Puerto Rican Nationalism by Pedro Albizu Campos
The Spanish Borderlands and the Making of An Empire by Juan González, Chapter 2 of Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America
The Making of Colonial Migrant Farmworkers by Ismael García-Colón, Chapter 1 of Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire
Movable Empire: Migration, and U.S. Global Power During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era by Julie Greene
In America Life Is Given Away”: Jamaican Farmworkers and the Making of Agricultural Immigration Policy by Cindy Hahamovitch
Manifest Destiny and the Building of Empire in Puerto Rico
Wednesday 11.8, 6:30PM ET
1898 was a historic year. Following the end of the Spanish-american War, the U.s. invaded Puerto Rico, establishing a military dictatorship and making the start of U.S. colonial domination in the island to this day. This expansion of the U.S. empire came on the tails of the push west and the seizure of the land of the Native American population and the theft of nearly half of Mexico’s territory in 1846.
Migration and Labor in the Caribbean
Thursday 11.9, 6:30PM ET
Throughout the early 20th century, individuals from North America, the Caribbean, Southern Europe and Asia were recruited to labor in the service of building U.S. global power. They built roads and canals, served in the military to assist in the colonization and pacification of other nations, and cultivated crops like bananas and sugar cane, all to generate profits for global capitalism. The U.S. empire was built on the backs of these laborers from the Caribbean and Latin America.
