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Empire and Migration: Coastwise Shipping, National Status, and the Colonial Legal Origins of Puerto Rican Migration to the United States1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2012

Robert C. McGreevey
Robert C. McGreevey*
Affiliation:
The College of New Jersey
*
mcgreeve@tcnj.edu
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Abstract

This article examines colonial legal categories such as “national status” and “coastwise shipping” that shaped the movement of goods and people between U.S. colonies and the metropole. Focused on the case of Puerto Rican migration to the U.S. mainland in the early twentieth century, it argues that these legal categories conditioned migration patterns and that migrants, in turn, actively shaped new legal categories. Drawing on sources from both U.S. and Puerto Rican archives, this article contributes to an emerging body of literature on U.S. imperialism, law, and migration in the Americas. It shows that colonial legal categories are critical to understanding enduring migration streams to the United States that have long been embedded in imperial relationships.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 553 - 573
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2012

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Footnotes

1

Thanks to Jacqueline Jones, Michael Willrich, Christopher Capozzola, Silvia Arrom, Miriam Shakow, and the journal's reviewers for their comments on this article.

References

2 Minutes of the Board of Special Inquiry, Ellis Island, Aug. 4, 1902, folder 18848, box 3299, Supreme Court of the United States, Record Group (RG) 267, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NA).

3 “In the Matter of the Petition of Isabella Gonzalez for a Writ of Habeas Corpus,” to the U.S. Supreme Court, Feb. 4, 1903, folder 18848, box 3299, RG 267, NA. See also, “Assignment of Errors, In the Matter of the Petition of Isabella Gonzalez for a Writ of Habeas Corpus,” Jan. 15, 1903, folder 18848, box 3299, RG 267, NA.

4 “A Puerto Rican Detained: Citizenship Questioned at Barge Office,” New York Times, Apr. 4, 1900.

5 Memorandum of Charles E. Magoon, Law Officer, Bureau of Insular Affairs, to the Secretary of War, 58th Cong., 2nd sess. (Apr. 5, 1904), H. doc. 660.

6 “Porto Ricans Not Aliens,” New York Times, Jan. 5, 1904.

7 Immigration historians such as Carmen Whalen have largely focused on migrants’ experience on the mainland. Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia: Puerto Rican Workers and Postwar Economies (Philadelphia, 2001)Google Scholar. Foreign policy historians such as Emily Rosenberg have examined U.S. policies on the island. Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930 (Cambridge, MA, 1999)Google Scholar. Also Ngai, Mae, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, 2004)Google Scholar; Jacobson, Matthew Frye, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876–1917 (New York, 2000)Google Scholar. Saskia Sassen, perhaps the leading social theorist of migration, has long suggested that foreign policy shapes immigration. Sassen, Saskia, Mobility of Labor and Capital: A Study in International Investment and Labor Flow (Cambridge, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See esp. Choy, Catherine Ceniza, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (Durham, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fujita-Rony, Dorothy B., American Workers, Colonial Power: Philippine Seattle and the Transpacific West, 1919–1941 (Berkeley, 2003)Google Scholar.

9 Greene, Julie, “The Labor of Empire: Recent Scholarship on U. S. History and Imperialism,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 1 (Summer 2004): 113–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ends with a call for historians to explore the specific relationships between colonialism and migration.

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12 Other recent works that bring together the study of migration, law, and empire include: Erman, Sam, “Meanings of Citizenship in the U.S. Empire: Puerto Rico, Isabel Gonzalez, and the Supreme Court, 1898 to 1905,” Journal of American Ethnic History 27 (Summer 2008): 5–33Google Scholar; Burnett, Christina Duffy, “‘They say I am not an American’: The Non-Citizen National and the Law of American Empire,” Virginia Journal of International Law 48:4 (2008): 660–718Google Scholar; Burnett, Christina Duffy, “Empire and the Transformation of Citizenship” in Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State, ed. McCoy, Alfred W. and Scarano, Francisco A. (Madison, 2009), 332–41Google Scholar.

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15 For a critique of U.S.-centric accounts of colonialism and the Spanish-American War, Pérez, Louis A. Jr., The War of 1898: the United States and Cuba in History and Historiography (Chapel Hill, 1998)Google Scholar.

16 On how the Puerto Rican state changed under U.S. rule, Caban, Pedro A., Constructing a Colonial People: Puerto Rico and the United States, 1898–1932 (Boulder, 1999)Google Scholar.

17 Statement of General Davis, Governor of Puerto Rico, during the Hearings before the Committee on Pacific Islands and Puerto Rico of the U.S. Senate on Senate Bill 2264, “To Provide a Government for the Island of Puerto Rico, and for other purposes,” (Washington, 1900), 26, box Y6005, RG 287, NA.

18 On the coffee crisis, Picó, Fernando, Al filo del poder: Subalternos y dominantes en Puerto Rico, 1739–1910 (Rio Piedras, 1993), 159–60Google Scholar; Baralt, Guillermo A., Buena Vista: Life and Work on a Puerto Rican Hacienda, 1833–1904 (Chapel Hill, 1999), 113–30Google Scholar; Diffie, Bailey W. and Diffie, Justine Whitfield, Porto Rico: A Broken Pledge (New York, 1931), 140Google Scholar.

19 Petition of T. Larrinaga and Twelve Others to the U.S. Congress, Feb. 20, 1900, folder Sen 56A-J27, box 196, United States Senate, RG 46, NA. The petition, for example, explains, “The laws which now compel us to use American ships only, as there are few in our harbors, give them the advantage of a monopoly at advanced freight rates.”

20 Free trade between Puerto Rico and the United States was not signed into law until July 25, 1901. “Free Trade Granted to the Porto Ricans,” New York Times, July 26, 1901.

21 Ayala, César J. and Bernabe, Rafael, Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898 (Chapel Hill, 2007), 38–51Google Scholar.

22 Statement of General George Davis, (Washington, 1900), 35, copy in box Y6005, RG 287, NA.

23 Petition of T. Larrinaga and Twelve Others to the U.S. Congress, Feb. 20, 1900, folder Sen 56A-J27, box 196, RG 46, NA.

24 Statement of General Davis, 48.

25 Statement of Henry Curtis made during the Hearings before the Committee on Pacific Islands and Puerto Rico of the U.S. Senate on Senate Bill 2264, “To Provide a Government for the Island of Puerto Rico, and for other purposes.” (Washington, 1900), 102, copy in box Y6005, RG 287, NA.

26 Statement of General Davis, 99.

27 Statement of Henry Curtis, 64.

28 Statement of Lucas Amadeo made during the Hearings before the Committee on Pacific Islands and Puerto Rico of the U.S. Senate on Senate Bill 2264, “To Provide a Government for the Island of Puerto Rico, and for other purposes.” (Washington, 1900), 128, copy in box Y6005, RG 287, NA.

29 Ibid.

30 Statement of General Davis, 48.

31 Ibid., 75.

32 Senator Knute Nelson, who emigrated from Norway to America as a young child in 1849 with his then poor and single mother, surely had views on immigration shaped by his own experience.

33 Much of the scholarship on Puerto Rican migration to the United States has focused on the post-WWII period, for example, Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia; Morales, Julio, Puerto Rican Poverty and Migration: We Just Had to Try Elsewhere (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Grosfoguel, Ramón, Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective (Berkeley, 2003)Google Scholar; Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Labor Migration Under Capitalism: The Puerto Rican Experience (New York, 1979), 93–164Google Scholar.

34 For more on the early labor migrations from the island, Iglesias, Igualdad, El obrerismo en Puerto Rico: Epoca de Santiago Iglesias, 1896–1905 (Palacia de Castilla, 1973)Google Scholar.

35 Puerto Rican scholars Carmelo Rosario Natal and Raquel Rosario Rivera have begun to examine the early twentieth-century experience of migrants to Hawaii: Natal, Carmelo Rosario, Exodo Puertorriqueño: las emigraciones al Caribe y Hawaii: 1900–1910 (San Juan, 2001)Google Scholar; Rivera, Raquel Rosario, “Pasaporte a la angustia: sufrimintos de los emigrados y familiares con destino a Hawaii,” Horizontes, Revista De La Pontificia 87 (Oct. 2002): 211–43Google Scholar. For an early scholarly treatment of this subject, Clarence Senior, Puerto Rican Emigration (Rio Piedras, 1947)Google Scholar.

36 “Puertorriqueños que van a Hawaii,” La Correspondencia, Dec. 17, 1900.

37 “Por que no debe irse al Hawaii,” La Correspondencia, Aug. 9, 1900, 3.

38 Secretary Lyman Gage to the Commissioner of Immigration, Barge Office, New York, Apr. 4, 1900, folder Sen 56A-F25, box 103, RG 46, NA; “Puerto Rican Allowed to Land,” New York Times, Apr. 5, 1900.

39 Peck, Gunther, Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880–1930 (New York, 2000), 101–03Google Scholar.

40 Despite the prohibitions of the Foran Act, contract labor agents managed to bring large numbers of foreign contract laborers into the U.S. Southwest illegally. See Gunther Peck, Reinventing Free Labor, 82–114.

41 Miguel Serrano of Ponce to the Governor of Puerto Rico, May 22, 1901, folder 1421, box 17, Fortaleza Collection, Archivo General de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

42 J.C. Bills, Second Annual Report of the Bureau of labor to the Legislature of Porto Rico, San Juan, Feb. 10, 1914, 99.

43 The name “Mary Coy” represents the Anglicization of Puerto Rican names commonly found in colonial documents.

44 Federico Degetau to the Treasury Secretary, Sep. 16, 1903, folder 51637/1b, box 123, Immigration and Naturalization Service, RG 85, NA.

45 Ibid.

46 Minutes of the Board of Special Inquiry, Ellis Island, Aug. 5, 1902, folder 18848, box 3299, RG 267, NA. Domingo Collazo lived at 163 St. Nicholas Ave, New York City. His wife was an aunt of Isabel Gonzalez.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., Aug. 7, 1902.

49 Petition of Domingo Collazo to the U.S. Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, Aug. 18, 1902, folder 18848, box 3299, RG 267, NA.

50 Legal Brief of William B. Anderson, Counsel for William Williams, U.S. Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York, before the U.S. Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, Sep. 17, 1902, folder 51637/1, box 45, RG 85, NA.

51 U.S. Circuit Court Decision in the Matter of Isabella Gonzalez, Oct. 7, 1902, folder 18848, box 3299, RG 267, NA.

52 Quoted in the Order of the Supreme Court to the Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, Jan. 4, 1904, folder 1848, box 3299, RG 267, NA.

53 E.P. Sargent to the Commissioner of Immigration, Ellis Island, Oct. 9, 1902, folder 51637/1, box 45, RG 85, NA.

54 “In the matter of the Petition of Isabella Gonzalez for a Writ of Habeas Corpus,” Feb. 4, 1903, folder 18848, box 3299, RG 267, NA. Also in the same folder, Assignment of Errors, In the Matter of the Petition of Isabella Gonzalez for a Writ of Habeas Corpus, Jan. 15, 1903.

55 Motion to Advance Hearing in the Supreme Court, submitted by the Courdert Brothers, attorneys for Isabella Gonzalez, Mar. 11, 1903, Ibid.

56 Prior to being named secretary of the Department of Commerce and Labor, Cortelyou had been President Theodore Roosevelt's private secretary (analogous to the later position of chief of staff). Cortelyou's involvement shows that questions of colonial migration reached the highest level of government. Philander Knox to Cortelyou, 1903, folder 51637/1b, box 123, RG 85, NA.

57 Amicus Brief of Federico Degetau, 1903, folder 18848, box 3299, RG 267, NA. See also Degetau's protest of the detention of other Puerto Ricans on Ellis Island, including Mary Coy: Protest of Puerto Rican Resident Commissioner, Federico Degetau, Sep. 16, 1903, folder 51637/1b, box 123, RG 85, NA.

58 “Porto Ricans Not Aliens,” New York Times, Jan. 5, 1904.

59 Dorothy Fujita-Rony, American Workers, Colonial Power; Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 100.

60 Editorials in The Nation in this period adopted an anti-imperialist position for a variety of reasons, including the American principle of self-determination. Wreszin, Michael, Oswald Garrison Villard: Pacifist at War (Bloomington, IN, 1965), 19–25Google Scholar.

61 Nation, Jan. 7, 1904, 2.

62 Cortelyou to William Dillingham, Apr. 19, 1904, folder 51637/1b, box 123, RG 85. NA.

63 Ibid.

64 Eugenia Arbona, “Puerto Ricans in St. Louis Requesting Aide,” Jan. 11, 1905, folder 2437, box 258, Fortaleza Collection, Correspondence, AGPR.

65 New York and Porto Rico Steamship Company to the Governor of Puerto Rico, Jan. 30, 1905, folder 2437, box 258, Fortaleza Collection, Correspondence, AGPR; Arbona, “Puerto Ricans in St. Louis Requesting Aide,” 1905, Fortaleza Collection, Correspondence, AGPR.

66 Arbona, “Puerto Ricans in St. Louis Requesting Aide,” 1905, AGPR.

67 N.C. Dauron, “Letter in Support of Puerto Ricans in St. Louis,” Jan. 19, 1905, folder 2437, box 258, Fortaleza Collection, Correspondence, AGPR.

68 N.C. Dauron, 1905, AGPR. See also letters of Mrs. P.J. Toomey, Miss Mary F. Mulcahy, Miss Mary Ames of Queen's Daughters, a Catholic charity in St. Louis. Queen's Daughters, “Letter in Support of Puerto Ricans in St. Louis,” Jan. 30, 1905, folder 2437, box 258, Fortaleza Collection, Correspondence, AGPR.

69 Maria Casalduo, “My Sister Abandoned in St. Louis,” Jan. 21, 1905, folder 2437, box 258, Fortaleza Collection, Correspondence, AGPR.

70 Ibid.

71 Arturo Cordova, “Letter in Support of Puerto Ricans in St. Louis,” Jan. 20, 1905, folder 2437, box 258, Fortaleza Collection, Correspondence, AGPR.

72 Matos Bernier, “Commission Appointed to Investigate Puerto Ricans in Saint Louis,” Jan. 21, 1905, ibid.

73 St. Louis Cordage Co., “Letter to the Governor of Puerto Rico,” Feb. 2, 1905, ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid.

76 Federico Degetau to Governor William H. Hunt, May 27, 1904, Feb. 10, 1905, folder 1276, box 17, Fortaleza Collection, Correspondence, AGPR.

77 Justice Joseph P. Bradley, dissent in the Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. 36, 21 L. Ed. 394, 1873.

78 Baldoz, Rick, The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898–1946 (New York, 2011), 75–77Google Scholar.