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1898: La guerra después de la guerra
Fernando Picó, a todas luces historiador de vocación, es como los detectives. Habiendo husmeado una pista interesante, es capaz de perderle el rastro hasta extraerle todos los secretos posibles. Esta doble vocación de detective-historiador es cualidad indispensable para la pesquisa que se ha propuesto la nueva historiografía puertorriqueña; abordar nuestra realidad con nuevas preguntas hasta lograr destapar los procesos fundamentales de la gente misma. Se entreteje así una historia que en vez de predicar, explica, pues escudriña los hechos no ya sólo desde afuera y desde arriba, sino primordialmente desde adentro y desde abajo. 1898; La guerra después de la guerra trata sobre las partidas llamadas "sediciosas" o de "tiznados" que en los meses después de la invasión norteamericana a Puerto Rico atacaron las fincas y las tiendas rurales, de españoles primero, y a la larga, de criollos. Las "partidas" constituyeron la más amplia y vigorosa manifestación de sentimiento popular como reacción al resultado de la Guerra Hispanoamericana en Puerto Rico.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
215 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 8, 2026
Since I wanted to start delving into the history of Puerto Rico and the colonialism imposed on the island by the United States, I thought I would start here. This book was short but very informative, and was quite surprising for me.
I suppose it is an indication of how strong the mantra of nationalism is that, even though I've long been critical of the concept and have known of recent developments in scholarship like national indifference, I still was quick to assume that the bandits in Puerto Rico after the takeover of the island were opposed to the US Army.
Much to my astonishment they were not, though Pico mentions that some myths have emerged around Aguila Blanco in particular as a sort of freedom fighter against US imperialism. The evidence does not support the notion.
This is all the more intriguing to me because I read a number of works by Charles Esdaile about the guerrilla in Spain during the Napoleonic invasion. Much of his work centers around explaining and contextualizing the motives of the insurgents, which were much more nuanced than simple hatred for the French.
In the same way, the tiznados in Puerto Rico had complex motivations that were not simply anti-American, for in fact they didn't fight the Americans at all. Instead their actions were directed at landowning Peninsulares, and, eventually, towards any landowners whatsoever. This included Creoles and Europeans of non-Spanish origin.
So nationalism doesn't really explain the phenomenon. It could be seen initially as creole nationalism against the Peninsular Spaniard that characterized the revolts against Spain earlier in the century elsewhere in Latin America, but it became more of a social movement of the poor against the rich than a national movement.
To add to the irony, the creoles and European landowners turned to the US for protection against their own lower classes, making one doubt their nationalist credentials as well.
There is two interesting episodes that Pico juxtaposes and compares which would lead one to strongly suspect that the people of Puerto Rico were characterized by national indifference, as scholars would call it today since the pioneering work of Tara Zahra.
One involves the American capture of Utuado. Prior to the American capture of this town, its citizens had proclaimed their undying allegiance to Spain. Shortly after they declared their euphoria in welcoming the American soldiers as liberators.
The second one involves the American capture of Fajardo, where they were initially enthusiastically received by the inhabitants. After a brief occupation the Americans felt constrained to withdraw, so the Spanish soldiers retook the town, where they were suitably welcomed as heroes.
Pico asks what the historian is supposed to make of all this, and proposes a number of explanations but carefully refrains from making any assumptions. He questions the sincerity of the townspeople, but in my opinion it is likely that they did not know much about either Spain or the United States and were just trying to survive as best they could.
Pico mentions that the traditional narrative of the island's conquest is that the people of Puerto Rico were apathetic and could not care less about who owned the island. The above seems to support this contention, but Pico notes that this interpretation has been influenced by the debate in the US on imperialism.
The anti-imperialists prefer this argument because the alternative is that the people of Puerto Rico actively assisted in the expulsion of the Spanish. Many of them did. Few of them resisted the Americans. The pro-imperialists also push this narrative because they didn't like to admit that the success was due to anything other than the adroit strategic planning of General Miles.
This is given some treatment, for example his reasoning for landing at Guanica. Initially the Americans had planned to land at Fajardo but General Miles felt that the Spanish were aware of this, so changed the point of disembarkation to Guanica on the south coast.
He was probably correct in calculating that here the Spanish presence was weak, and the landing was conducted unopposed. Miles was determined not to repeat the clumsy operations that characterized the landings at Daquiri and Ciboney in Cuba.
But Pico suggests that the reason Miles chose Guanica was so that he could gradually take the island and secure each municipality one at a time from the Spanish without an interval of local rule.
In this context there was a revolt against the Spanish in the countryside, and it was put down. This might have been all to the advantage of the US. One could compare it to the landing at Manila, where the Americans secured the capital of the Philippines but the Filipinos set up a de facto independent republic throughout the rest of the islands.
It is possible that Miles was determined to avoid this in Puerto Rico. Instead of rushing to secure San Juan, which would have decapitated Spanish authority but would not have replaced it with an American administration, allowing the Puerto Ricans to establish their own government (however brief), he chose to secure the island through a direct transition from Spanish to American rule incrementally.
In this he succeeded. Much of the rest of the book involves the American relations with the landowners, the actual attacks on the landowners, relations between American soldiers and the locals (which recalled to me the book by Rebecca Herman I recently read, with the Puerto Ricans making many of the same complaints as others in Latin America at a later date), the American military governors that ruled the island until the Foraker Act, and the state of the Puerto Rican economy.
In this last regard Pico attacks other nationalist myths, such as that Puerto Rico was a paradise before the Americans. In fact, he argues, the economy was already in decline, and though Puerto Rico had a more diverse economy at the time, selling coffee and tobacco as well as sugar, the trend was already leaning towards a sugar monoculture economy.
I felt this book was a good place to start learning about the conditions in Puerto Rico and the changes wrought by the American takeover. It explodes some nationalist myths about Puerto Rican pre-American prosperity, and shows that the lower classes were more resentful of their own upper class than of the Americans.
It suggests that the landowners exploited the Americans to cement their own rule, though the book does not continue beyond the Foraker Act and whether this landowning class maintained its privileged position under the American insular government or whether it was displaced.
The book is very short, clocking in at only about one-hundred and thirty pages of text. So it won't take long to read, but will give you a lot to think about.
I suppose it is an indication of how strong the mantra of nationalism is that, even though I've long been critical of the concept and have known of recent developments in scholarship like national indifference, I still was quick to assume that the bandits in Puerto Rico after the takeover of the island were opposed to the US Army.
Much to my astonishment they were not, though Pico mentions that some myths have emerged around Aguila Blanco in particular as a sort of freedom fighter against US imperialism. The evidence does not support the notion.
This is all the more intriguing to me because I read a number of works by Charles Esdaile about the guerrilla in Spain during the Napoleonic invasion. Much of his work centers around explaining and contextualizing the motives of the insurgents, which were much more nuanced than simple hatred for the French.
In the same way, the tiznados in Puerto Rico had complex motivations that were not simply anti-American, for in fact they didn't fight the Americans at all. Instead their actions were directed at landowning Peninsulares, and, eventually, towards any landowners whatsoever. This included Creoles and Europeans of non-Spanish origin.
So nationalism doesn't really explain the phenomenon. It could be seen initially as creole nationalism against the Peninsular Spaniard that characterized the revolts against Spain earlier in the century elsewhere in Latin America, but it became more of a social movement of the poor against the rich than a national movement.
To add to the irony, the creoles and European landowners turned to the US for protection against their own lower classes, making one doubt their nationalist credentials as well.
There is two interesting episodes that Pico juxtaposes and compares which would lead one to strongly suspect that the people of Puerto Rico were characterized by national indifference, as scholars would call it today since the pioneering work of Tara Zahra.
One involves the American capture of Utuado. Prior to the American capture of this town, its citizens had proclaimed their undying allegiance to Spain. Shortly after they declared their euphoria in welcoming the American soldiers as liberators.
The second one involves the American capture of Fajardo, where they were initially enthusiastically received by the inhabitants. After a brief occupation the Americans felt constrained to withdraw, so the Spanish soldiers retook the town, where they were suitably welcomed as heroes.
Pico asks what the historian is supposed to make of all this, and proposes a number of explanations but carefully refrains from making any assumptions. He questions the sincerity of the townspeople, but in my opinion it is likely that they did not know much about either Spain or the United States and were just trying to survive as best they could.
Pico mentions that the traditional narrative of the island's conquest is that the people of Puerto Rico were apathetic and could not care less about who owned the island. The above seems to support this contention, but Pico notes that this interpretation has been influenced by the debate in the US on imperialism.
The anti-imperialists prefer this argument because the alternative is that the people of Puerto Rico actively assisted in the expulsion of the Spanish. Many of them did. Few of them resisted the Americans. The pro-imperialists also push this narrative because they didn't like to admit that the success was due to anything other than the adroit strategic planning of General Miles.
This is given some treatment, for example his reasoning for landing at Guanica. Initially the Americans had planned to land at Fajardo but General Miles felt that the Spanish were aware of this, so changed the point of disembarkation to Guanica on the south coast.
He was probably correct in calculating that here the Spanish presence was weak, and the landing was conducted unopposed. Miles was determined not to repeat the clumsy operations that characterized the landings at Daquiri and Ciboney in Cuba.
But Pico suggests that the reason Miles chose Guanica was so that he could gradually take the island and secure each municipality one at a time from the Spanish without an interval of local rule.
In this context there was a revolt against the Spanish in the countryside, and it was put down. This might have been all to the advantage of the US. One could compare it to the landing at Manila, where the Americans secured the capital of the Philippines but the Filipinos set up a de facto independent republic throughout the rest of the islands.
It is possible that Miles was determined to avoid this in Puerto Rico. Instead of rushing to secure San Juan, which would have decapitated Spanish authority but would not have replaced it with an American administration, allowing the Puerto Ricans to establish their own government (however brief), he chose to secure the island through a direct transition from Spanish to American rule incrementally.
In this he succeeded. Much of the rest of the book involves the American relations with the landowners, the actual attacks on the landowners, relations between American soldiers and the locals (which recalled to me the book by Rebecca Herman I recently read, with the Puerto Ricans making many of the same complaints as others in Latin America at a later date), the American military governors that ruled the island until the Foraker Act, and the state of the Puerto Rican economy.
In this last regard Pico attacks other nationalist myths, such as that Puerto Rico was a paradise before the Americans. In fact, he argues, the economy was already in decline, and though Puerto Rico had a more diverse economy at the time, selling coffee and tobacco as well as sugar, the trend was already leaning towards a sugar monoculture economy.
I felt this book was a good place to start learning about the conditions in Puerto Rico and the changes wrought by the American takeover. It explodes some nationalist myths about Puerto Rican pre-American prosperity, and shows that the lower classes were more resentful of their own upper class than of the Americans.
It suggests that the landowners exploited the Americans to cement their own rule, though the book does not continue beyond the Foraker Act and whether this landowning class maintained its privileged position under the American insular government or whether it was displaced.
The book is very short, clocking in at only about one-hundred and thirty pages of text. So it won't take long to read, but will give you a lot to think about.
November 13, 2023
Un “must” para todo el que tenga interés por la historiografía puertorriqueña. Fernando Picó es el historiador puertorriqueño por excelencia.
July 8, 2019
Picó demuestra su calidad como profesional una vez más.
November 17, 2019
Parece casi un escrito detectivesco
April 18, 2023
Great period piece by the historian Fernando Picó.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews