Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World
Friday, 10th 2004f September 2004
Jose Trias Monge, Puerto Rico: The Trials of the Oldest Colony in the World. Yale Univesity Press, 1997. 228 pages. It’s available in Spanish edited by the UPR.
Accurate accounts of political events can be most entertaining. Don Pepe reworked his previous books on the constitutional history of Puerto Rico into a very personal story in which he was a prime participant.
He follows the political history of Puerto Rico from the end of the 19th century to the near present. His wit and loss of innocence is best gauged in the titles he gives to the various chapters; for example, the creation of the Commonwealth he calls “The Big Sleep.” The Chapter on the Jones Act he follows with the “Jones Blues.” In “Clearing the way for a second look,” he says of the fractured colonial society and relationship with the U.S., “This well preserved fossil of a dead or an almost extinct species can be best admired on this Galapagos of the colonial world.” You can’t get any better!
The book is disarmingly candid; but, when he refers to corporate America’s influence on status, obfuscation is more likely. Too near the nerve endings! But you are in for a ride in a volume written for non-Puerto Ricans, by someone as knowledgeable as Muñoz of American political character and ways.