Placing U.S. Colonialism within Gendered Terms

In Reproducing Empire, Laura Briggs examines the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico by connecting discourses on poverty, race, and nationalism with sexuality, reproduction, and science.  While analyzing all of the previously mentioned aspects, I believe the heart of Briggs argument centers on the idea of sexuality, and bringing the ideas of colonialism into a gendered conversation.  She argues that “Puerto Rican sexuality has been defined by its deviance, and the island as a whole has been defined by its sexuality” (4).  From here she is able to outline the rest of the book.  Issues of prostitution, birth control, the myth of overpopulation, and race all come from this central argument.

By beginning with prostitution, specifically during the First World War, Briggs sets the foundation for the association of Puerto Rican difference and sexuality with deviance and criminality.  This allows for “othering” and the ethnocentrism that she speaks about later in the book.  Issues of what constitutes whiteness also arises in this section, as the United States views whiteness as a particular visual skin color, while Puerto Ricans often saw it as something more fluid, which included status.  Paternalistic views of the United States led to the involvement of science and experiments in birth control.

In a turn of what I have typically read concerning sterilization, Briggs slightly disagrees with the idea that mass involuntary sterilization occurred in Puerto Rico. While she does not discount that some involuntary sterilization took place and the faulty reasoning behind “experiments” in population control as a way to keep down the populations of undesirables, she does seem to find some room for increased agency on the part of Puerto Rican women.  She also goes on to state that the campaigns of women in the United States against sterilization failed to take into account the fact that some women actually chose the procedure. This argument fits in line with our previous articles which discuss the ethnocentric view of U.S. women when it comes to the issues of women in other countries and/or cultures.  Regardless of the groups in Puerto Rico or the United States involved in the conversation, Reproducing Empire demonstrates the dialogue of reproduction and overpopulation revolves around the bodies of poorer, working class women.  Throughout the sections on sterilization, reproduction, and birth control, Briggs complicates assumptions about reproductive rights in Puerto Rico and the groups that argued for or against these rights and procedures. 

-Briana