Role of Superpowers (continuation)

Two of the strongest super powers ever to exist on earth have maintained a tight grip on Puerto Rico since the late 1400s. Spain at its heights dominated much of the European land, held control of the Atlantic ocean, and its presence was to be felt over much of the North American continent, Central and South America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean region. However, as it happens with every great power, it could not sustain its control over its vast holdings as it began to lack on man-power and money. And, as Spain’s power waned over many lands, it tried to exert an even tighter hold on the affairs of the island of Puerto Rico. Thus, Spain retained effective control over the island and the populace was not able to organize any effective revolt against its mandate. In effect, this European power maintained almost absolute control of the island for four hundred years. The end of this unparalleled rule over this territory, without concession for its independence or for becoming an integral part of the dominating nation, made a short pause in 1898; when Spain, overly extended and exhausted from revolts and wars, sustained a defeat at the hands of the new emerging super-power, the United States of America. The historical background leading to the Spanish-American War, at a time when Spain had fallen to a mere skeleton of its former colossal status, tends to point a finger at the capitalistic interests of the United States; and, the question whether the Maine was blown up at the Havana harbor by war-mongers, in the service of capitalists, is not purely rhetorical. With the closing of the Nineteenth century, Spain was an almost prostrated shell of its former self. When the United States decided to make war against Spain, the resistance and war effort capability from this earlier behemoth was feeble and superficial at best. Thus, already weakened by its over extension, Spain sustained what appeared to have been an easy defeat at the hands of the United States. With this defeat, it was forced to agree to many conventions to include the devolving of the island of Porto Rico to the United States, under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, signed on December 10, 1898. Therefore, the signatories of the Treaty with the strokes of their pens abnegated the provincial status provided to Puerto Rico by the Spanish Cortes on November 25, 1897. The conclusion of the war and the reparations provided were to exact a significant political blow to the islanders, as they were to become mere wards of the United States. That is, the residents of Puerto Rico sustained the loss of their Spanish citizenship granted on July 14, 1812; and, its provincial status disappeared from the Spanish maps. And, for nineteen years, under the absolute control of the United States, the islanders were not even considered to merit the recognition of their own existence. They merely were inhabitants of an island without a nation that would provide them a national marker--they were totally disfranchised. They were effectively denationalized and deprived of their citizenship. Officially, the people of Puerto Rico became nonpersons and totally existing at the whims of the United states for almost twenty years.