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ABSTRACT
This paper examines the 1930 student insurrection at the Instituto Politecnico, an icon of Americanization established by Protestant missionaries in Puerto Rico in 1912. Students' militant direct action, including occupation, engendered heated interventions by both insular nationalists and supporters of Americanization. The paper argues that these events represented dynamics particular to the third decade of U.S. occupation, including resistance to Americanization and the increased political power of pro-Americanizing Puerto Ricans. Demonstrating the contingency of colonizing relations, it argues the need for carefully historicizing Americanization and responses to it, for it was a fluid, contested, contradictory process. [Key words: nationalism, student strike, Americanization, anti-Americanism, Puerto Rico, missionaries]
On may 19, 1930, a crowd of students strode down the steep, green santa marta hills surrounding the polytechnic Iinstitute and marched a mile to the center of san germán, a town in southwestern puerto rico. Carrying black flags, setting off fireworks, and making music, they clamored for the resignation of the Dean of Students, Charles Leker. They paraded to City Hall and past the house of an insular legislator, shouting "Down with Dean Leker!" A manifesto distributed to townspeople accused the "despotic" Leker of "trampling on the sacrosanct rights of all students" and proclaimed the righteousness of their "search for justice." Hearkening back to Puerto Rican patriots, the manifesto dramatically proclaimed
I will not fall, but if I do
I will fall blessing the cause
On which I have based my whole life.
Our protest is just,
Forward, always forward!1
This protest and consequent events, at a school founded by mainland Protestant missionaries, represented complex dynamics particular to the third decade of U.S. occupation of the island. These included both growing insular nationalism and the increased political power of Puerto Ricans who embraced Americanization, a multifaceted program initiated with the U.S. invasion in 1898. Both formal and informal, this modernization project included new U.S.-designed systems of governance, education, law, finance, and commerce. It also facilitated mainland corporations' access to Puerto Rico's resources through concessions and tax and tariff policies, producing radical changes in the insular political economy.
A central theme in Puerto Rican historiography, Americanization has been variously interpreted. Historian José-Manuel Navarro, for example, describes it as "assimilation and de-Puerto Ricanization" (Navarro 2002: 194-5). In contrast,...