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A review by yikesbmg
War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony by Nelson A. Denis
5.0
This book is really damning, and imperialism is truly wild. I’d recommend to anyone who is curious about Puerto Rico, U.S. imperialism, medical torture, and state violence.
The book is really easy to read — the author is a good writer. Sometimes it felt more like a novel then a history book, which was fine except I couldn’t be sure how much detail the author *actually* gather from sources. It touches on a lot: American corruption and white supremacy, agriculture and labor, state violence and people’s revolution, oppression in schools, hospitals, and and jails.
There’s so much about state-authorized police and military violence against *literal American citizens* — it reminded me a lot of the Erik Loomis book on American labor history I read earlier this year. The US bombed its own citizens in Utuado, PR. The police literally massacres unarmed, civilian Puerto Ricans in a peaceful Palm Sunday march in Ponce, and then staged photos to try to change the narrative. This book is really damning. There’s also a ton of examples of how *absolutely corrupt* the governors the American government imposed on the island were. This book really nailed the coffin shut on a few lessons for me: (1) we are long overdue for PR self determination, (2) the carceral system is inhumane, (3) Imperialism and it’s inherent corruption are so intrinsically tied to capitalism.
However, it glosses over how Puerto Rican women experienced imperialism and does not dig into their role in the independence movement. There are only 3-5 pages or so that women are mentioned in a non-romantic context and they’re all towards the end of the book. In general, the book could have paid less attention to individual leaders and more to organized peoples and the movement. It definitely could have replaced all that information about Muñoz Marin’s childhood with more information on boricua women. I want to learn a lot more about how imperialism shaped and decimated PR agriculture, and how that ties into the climate catastrophe the island continues to endure.
The book is really easy to read — the author is a good writer. Sometimes it felt more like a novel then a history book, which was fine except I couldn’t be sure how much detail the author *actually* gather from sources. It touches on a lot: American corruption and white supremacy, agriculture and labor, state violence and people’s revolution, oppression in schools, hospitals, and and jails.
There’s so much about state-authorized police and military violence against *literal American citizens* — it reminded me a lot of the Erik Loomis book on American labor history I read earlier this year. The US bombed its own citizens in Utuado, PR. The police literally massacres unarmed, civilian Puerto Ricans in a peaceful Palm Sunday march in Ponce, and then staged photos to try to change the narrative. This book is really damning. There’s also a ton of examples of how *absolutely corrupt* the governors the American government imposed on the island were. This book really nailed the coffin shut on a few lessons for me: (1) we are long overdue for PR self determination, (2) the carceral system is inhumane, (3) Imperialism and it’s inherent corruption are so intrinsically tied to capitalism.
However, it glosses over how Puerto Rican women experienced imperialism and does not dig into their role in the independence movement. There are only 3-5 pages or so that women are mentioned in a non-romantic context and they’re all towards the end of the book. In general, the book could have paid less attention to individual leaders and more to organized peoples and the movement. It definitely could have replaced all that information about Muñoz Marin’s childhood with more information on boricua women. I want to learn a lot more about how imperialism shaped and decimated PR agriculture, and how that ties into the climate catastrophe the island continues to endure.