US Imperialism: Reconstructing Reality

     Like Mary Renda's Taking Haiti, Laura Briggs illustrates early on in her work Reproducing Empire how the idea of Puerto Rico as a site for U.S. imperialism is not seen as a reality in the mainland. In fact, the othering of the island nearly makes it to where Puerto Rico is not considered part of the United States. Inhabitants of the island migrating the United States might well even be considered as much immigration as an expatriate from another country, rather than a citizen of the U.S. merely relocating as one might from state to state. In order for U.S. imperialism to be successful, it must reconstruct senses of reality for both Americans and their notion of whether U.S. imperialism even exists and the role of U.S. territories in the advancement of the country.
     Another interesting part of U.S. imperialism culture is how it is a descendant of British colonialism. As a country once colonized by the British, the idea of U.S. colonialism is wordplay that would not please most. However, the United States has used Puerto Rico as the site of sex (including prostitution) policing, restriction of population growth based on the belief that birthrates were too high, and the scientific research of birth control. Briggs states, in regards to prostitution policy, "U.S. imperialism was anything by exceptional; national policy simply reiterated British policy (33)."
     Why such an interest in the sexual lives of Puerto Ricans? From a eugenic perspective, the notion of overpopulation on the Puerto Rican island and the strain it placed on the American welfare system with the migration of large numbers of Puerto Ricans to the United States, especially New York, immigrants of color were the much needed scapegoat for the seeming  lack of resources in the country. Furthermore, notions of defective family traditions - including too many children and absence of fathers - was based more on stereotyping than actual social findings. Such stereotyping is usually pushed on families of color, including African American, as proof of the inability to embrace the ideal nuclear family structure of white or ideal American citizens.
     Syphilis, a disease that at one point in United States history plagued a large portion and vast area of the country, was successfully reconstructed, along with other venereal diseases as a plague of the other, such as other races, ethnic groups, or classes. Those to blame would be people of color, Latinos, and the poor. Even prostitution, jokingly referred to as the world's longest profession, was reconstructed as a problem "over there" in other countries, that might only harm the US via military servicemen fighting abroad who might bring home unwanted diseases. In that sense, the concern was not for the global negativity of prostitution, but what it would do to deteriorate American culture. (Briggs 38)
     As stated earlier, this reconstruction of reality was necessary in order to justify the role that Puerto Rico would play in the advancement of the nation, including as a test tube land for science and birth control. In order to science on subjects to be successful, said subject must be made more subjected and othered and less human, or at the most, not like us. Puerto Rico, even as a U.S. territory, is not the United States -- that is the reconstructed reality necessary for U.S. imperialism to succeed.