Island of Enchantment - US Citizenship

US Citizenship

In 1917, the US Congress passed the Jones-Shafroth Act, popularly called the Jones Act, which granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship. Opponents, who included all of the Puerto Rican House of Delegates, which voted unanimously against it, said that the US "imposed" citizenship in order to draft Puerto Rican men into the army as American entry into World War I became likely.

The same Act provided for a popularly elected Senate to complete a bicameral Legislative Assembly, as well as a bill of rights. It authorized the popular election of the Resident Commissioner to a four-year term.

Natural disasters, including a major earthquake in 1918, a tsunami and several hurricanes, and the Great Depression impoverished the island during the first few decades under U.S. rule. Some political leaders, such as Pedro Albizu Campos, who led the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, demanded change in relations with the United States. He organized a protest at the university in 1935, in which four were killed by police.

In 1936 the US Senator Millard Tydings introduced a bill supporting independence for Puerto Rico, but it was opposed by Luis Munoz Marin of the Liberal Party. (Tydings had co-sponsored the Tydings-McDuffie Act, which provided independence to the Philippines after a 10-year transition under a limited autonomy.) All the Puerto Rican parties supported the bill, but Muñoz Marín opposed it. Tydings did not gain passage of the bill.

In 1937, Albizu Campos' party organized a protest, in which numerous people were killed by police in Ponce. The Insular Police, resembling the National Guard, opened fire upon unarmed and defenseless cadets and bystanders alike. The attack on unarmed protesters was reported by the U.S. Congressman Vito Marcantonio and confirmed by the report of the "Hays Commission," which investigated the events. The commission was led by Arthur Garfield Hays, counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union. Nineteen persons were killed and over 200 were badly wounded, many in their backs while running away. The Hays Commission declared it a massacre and police mob action, and it has since been known as the Ponce Massacre. In the aftermath, on April 2, 1943, U.S. Senator Millard Tydings introduced a bill in Congress calling for independence for Puerto Rico. This bill ultimately was defeated.

During the latter years of the Roosevelt–Truman administrations, the internal governance was changed in a compromise reached with Luis Muñoz Marín and other Puerto Rican leaders. In 1946, President Truman appointed the first Puerto Rican-born governor, Jesús T. Piñero.