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But this is hardly the first time Puerto Rico has been preyed upon by US capital. In the lead-up to the New Deal, nearly half of Puerto Rico’s land — and most of its productive agricultural land — was owned by wealthy Americans. This phenomenon helped fuel a left-leaning populist movement among some of the island’s poorest residents. In part as a result of anger over US ownership, each of the island’s four political parties collapsed between 1932 and 1940 as populism gained traction. Massive strikes rolled through the island as unemployment soared, and workers specifically targeted several US corporations that had set up shop there. Such disputes often fused with demands for nationhood, and some of the period’s most influential labor leaders were prominent nationalists, like Pedro Albizu Campos. As New Dealer Rexford Tugwell put it at the time, “The materials for a class war were all present.”
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