Creating Tropical Yankees

Social Science Textbooks and U.S. Ideological Control in Puerto Rico, 1898-1908

By: Jose-Manuel Navarro

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Hardcover | 20 May 2002 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
240 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.42

Hardcover

$528.75

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After acquiring Puerto Rico in 1898, the United States engaged in a systematic ideological conquest of the Puerto Rican population through the social science textbooks used in the public school system. Textbooks portrayed the United States as a beneficent imperialist power and preached the superiority of US culture, stressing the inferiority of all other contemporary world cultures in 1898-1908. Moreover, the textbooks taught students that their own Puerto Rican culture was inadequate and inferior. The educational practices put into effect by US policy makers were based, in part, on the domestic models used for the education of 'inferior peoples' in the United States. Specifically, those experiments were the models of education used to train and teach freed blacks at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and the Tuskegee Normal and Agricultural Institute, and Native Americans at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. To ensure American cultural and educational hegemony, patriotic exercises and songs were used to imbue affection, allegiance and loyalty towards the US, its culture and institutions. Further, educational conferences and teacher training programs fostered Americanization, assimilation into the United States culture and de-Puerto Ricanization. The United States hegemonic project during the first decade of its colonial control of Puerto Rico was ideologically, though not culturally successful. In thought and orientation, Puerto Ricans did become 'tropical yankees'.

Industry Reviews

"Navarro's book is based on careful research of the reports of the commissioners of education in Puerto Rico, and the author quotes at length from original documents. This is most useful, as it gives today's reader the actual flavor of the debates at the time. The citations offer a window into the world views of the colonizers."

- Cesar J. Ayala, The Journal of American History

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