The effect of colonialism on a colonized people can often result in a situation better known to us in today's time as an "identity crisis."" Studying the history of Puerto Rico under Spanish rule helps us to identify the problems found within the modern notions of Puerto Rican identity. Such notions of national identity start from the belief that Puerto Rico is a "self-defined community of people who share a sense of solidarity based on a belief in a common heritage and who claim political rights that may include self-determination". However, such modern notions of solidarity contradict the fact that by 1898 Puerto Rican society was characterized by great racial and class differences. As claimed by José Luis Gonzalez in his Puerto Rico: The Four Storeyed Country, these differences made "Puerto Rico a country so divided racially, socially, economically, and culturally that it should be described as two countries rather than one". The rise and fall of the international sugar market, and the rise of the coffee market in the Puerto Rican economy, helped to create the "foreign elements" within Puerto Rico that make modern views of Puerto Rican identity extremely problematic. .
The study and use of history has played an important role in helping to construct the concept of Puerto Rican national heritage. Francisco Scarano, in his Sugar and Slavery in Puerto Rico, 1815-1949: An Overview, asserts that notions of Puerto Rican national heritage have been portrayed as being an "anomalous case" within the Americas. He writes that many historians have claimed that Puerto Rico had an "economy and society which developed an advanced sugar industry during times of fairly open Atlantic slave trade, yet did not rely to any significant degree on the labor of African slaves". This suggests that the racial "heritage" of Puerto Ricans is not predominately black, and cause of that other races must have attributed to this as well.
A Developmental Analysis Of The Main Character In The Book "When I Was Puerto Rican" By Esmeralda Santiago Negi's childhood home in Macun was in a community which had few ties with the rest of society. ... Yet she was driven to shape an identity separate from her family, and in her heart still remain the "jibara" she was raised as. ...
However, this document would be resurrected time and time again, evolving and taking on a new identity with each of its appearances in U.S. history. ... With fighting between the European nations, there were disputes as to who would receive the lands of Cuba and Puerto Rico. ... He declared "neither Cuba nor Puerto Rico could be transferred to any other powers by Spain." ... Later written in the Roosevelt Corollary, this identity of the doctrine would be used time and time again throughout history. ... Roosevelt's perversion of the Monroe Doctrine changed the identity of the doctrin...
By the end of the 1800s, Spain had lost all of its New World colonies except Cuba and Puerto Rico. ... After an economic crisis in 1866, people began to see the need for reform, which set the stage for the indepenentistas (Buckman 111). ... Of course the United States kept a hand in Cuba's independence with the Platt Amendment, which gave the United States the right to intervene in case of crisis (Buckman 111). ...
I will then address the crisis of masculinity, hegemonic masculinity, and female criminality and will finish on concepts of sport and masculinity. ... Moving onto the crisis of masculinity, Ray evaluates that over the past 10 years, there has been much attention towards the research of 'problems of men's health, boys' educational attainment and the unsettling of traditional masculine expectations' (2011: 92). ... Hatty suggests that the rapid decline in 'traditional working class males' and employment rates, provokes a 'crisis on masculinity' (2006). ...
