Yanuell continued his research and reading about the history of Puerto Rico in today's social studies session. Yanuell began reading about February 1898, a time when Puerto Ricans had a lot to celebrate. Finally, after centuries of Spanish colonial rule, they had just become an independent part of Spain, complete with a Constitution and voting rights. Yanuell was thrilled to read this wonderful news, but it did not last long. Within only a few years, the U.S. would throw all that asunder, paving the way for Puerto Rico’s nonvoting territory status today, a topic that we will be analyzing tomorrow. For today, Yanuell researched and studied about how Puerto Rico moved from a Spanish territory to US control. It all started with the Spanish-American War, which began in the spring of 1898, when Puerto Rico was a Spanish territory. The U.S. invaded Puerto Rico not only because it was a Spanish territory, but also due to its interests in developing a sugar market there. When the Americans arrived, General Nelson Miles issued, very famously, a decree manifesto in which he promised to protect the life, liberty, and happiness of Puerto Ricans, and their property. At this time, a lot of Puerto Ricans who were poor, who were working-class, who were peasants, took this as an invitation to side with the Americans in what was still a war against Spain. To support the U.S., Puerto Ricans began to attack Spanish-owned businesses and property. But to their great shock and awe, the Americans did not keep their promises after they won the war, when Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the U.S. in the Treaty of Paris. The U.S. ignored the new, democratically-elected local parliament of Puerto Rico in favor of creating its own colonial system. With the westward expansion of the 19th century, the U.S. established “incorporated territories” that could and did become formal American states, like the Colorado Territory. But in 1901, a series of legal opinions known as the Insular Cases argued that Puerto Rico and other territories ceded by the Spanish were full of “alien races” who couldn’t understand “Anglo-Saxon principles.” Therefore, the Constitution did not apply to them, and Puerto Rico became an “unincorporated territory” with no path forward to statehood. This did not make Yanuell happy. In fact, we were both pretty outraged as were the citizens of Puerto Rico. In addition, the U.S. disrupted Puerto Rico’s coffee industry, implementing a sugar economy and creating massive poverty among the population. Within the first 10 years of the U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico, U.S. sugar interests had pretty much taken over, and the Puerto Rican coffee class has been displaced entirely. Instead of becoming citizens, Puerto Ricans were in limbo. They didn’t even have a passport; they didn’t have any legal standing in the U.S. system until 1917. Yanuell processed this information, as it was quite heavy and plans to continue his studies tomorrow.