President Ronald Reagan ran for office with the slogan “Make America Great Again,” but President Trump may have more in common with President Theodore Roosevelt than with President Reagan. Roosevelt wanted to make the United States into a world power — for the first time — and was willing to do so with a mix of economic pressure, military bluster, and America-first propaganda that focused on ideas of manliness and protecting weaker nations.

Roosevelt’s plans for America

The Monroe Doctrine had already established that the United States would object to any aggression by European powers in the New World. Roosevelt added the position that the U.S. could support its own strong positions in the hemisphere by stepping in when a South American nation seemed to need economic or military boosting. The United States got to decide when such a boost might be needed.

Roosevelt certainly included Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba in these ideas in ways that 21st century Americans might until recently have considered uncomfortably imperialistic.

Roosevelt and his government provided loans to Latin American nations in exchange for influence in government decision making.  He believed that these governments were likely to be unstable and weak. by shoring up the governments, including by taking on some of their traditional powers, Roosevelt considered that he was stabilizing the governments, making the loans safer, and making the world safer for Democracy to boot.

Roosevelt’s America, a young, manly American alternative to the colonial empires of Europe, was supporting the Americas while vastly extending the global influence of the United States and the Americas in general. For Roosevelt, this view had to do with U.S. security as well. “Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may finally require intervention by some civilized nation,” he said, “and in the Western Hemisphere the United States cannot ignore this duty.”

Puerto Rico

Roosevelt admired Puerto Rico, speaking of its beauty, the quality of the government and the workers, and of its people. “There is a matter to which I wish to call your special attention, and that is the desirability of conferring full American citizenship upon the people of Porto Rico,” he said in a speech in 1906. “I most earnestly hope that this will be done. I cannot see how any harm can possibly result from it, and it seems to me a matter of right and justice to the people of Porto Rico. They are loyal, they are glad to be under our flag, they are making rapid progress along the path of orderly liberty. Surely we should show our appreciation of them, our pride in what they have done, and our pleasure in extending recognition for what has thus been done, by granting them full American citizenship.”

He also spoke admiringly of the government of the Island. While his words sound paternalistic and condescending to modern ears, they also appear to be sincerely positive. “They are providing a government based upon each citizen’s self-respect and the mutual respect of all citizens–that is, based upon a rigid observance of the principles of justice and honesty. It has not been easy to instill into the minds of the people unaccustomed to the exercise of freedom the two basic principles of our American system–the principle that the majority must rule and the principle that the minority has rights which must not be disregarded or trampled upon. Yet real progress has been made in having these principles accepted as elementary, as the foundations of successful self-government.”

Roosevelt intended to offer U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans, and he considered the Island an important part — along with Panama and the Panama Canal — of U.S. strategic planning in the Western Hemisphere. Today, Puerto Ricans continue to be U.S. citizens and Puerto Rico is considered part of the American family, but Puerto Rico has still not become fully integrated into the United States as an equal partner with the states. Imperialism, expansionism, and colonialism is more likely to be called out than during Roosevelt’s time, but such philosophies and policies nonetheless continue to persist.

The post Teddy Roosevelt, American Imperialism, and Puerto Rico appeared first on PUERTO RICO REPORT.