Playing the nation in a colonial island: Sport, culture, and politics in Puerto Rico. Sotomayor Carlo, Antonio. The University of Chicago, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2012. 3513597.

Abstract

This dissertation demonstrates the way in which sport was intrinsically involved in both colonial politics and the formation of a national identity in Puerto Rico between 1898 and 1966. The efforts to develop sport in its institutional organization, ideological constructs, and infrastructural capacities entailed at the same time a desire to raise the island's level of modernization and overcome centuries of colonial peripheral anonymity. By studying not only how sport became institutionalized on the island, but also how the Olympic movement developed, I provide a better understanding of how sport play a profound role in the political and cultural processes of identity imbued in U.S. colonialism, which I call Colonial Olympism. In this regard, Puerto Rico, as the only Latin American nation belonging to the U.S., constitutes a unique and problematic case, too often overlooked.

The accounts presented in this dissertation show that the process of developing sport institutions and programs in Puerto Rico resulted in two distinctive and problematic consequences: first, the continuation of colonialism, and second, the consolidation of a colonial national identity. That is, I will prove that the process of the creation of institutions that organized, regulated, and developed athletic and recreational activities allowed for the perpetuation of a colonial relationship due to the effective social justice platform and pro-American populism of the Popular Democratic Party and its political offspring, the Commonwealth. Having international athletic representation as a Caribbean and Latin American nation and at the same time being U.S. citizens represented the best of both worlds, making the colonial problems of the territorial clauses of the Commonwealth of secondary importance, thus solidifying Colonial Olympism.

While emphasis will be placed on institutions of sport, this should not be taken as a study devoid from attention to groups and individuals, both elite and non-elite, who were the protagonists of the development of these institutions. Therefore, at the center of this modernization of sport lies an intense negotiation between key individuals and groups, all claiming to help Puerto Rican society to progress.

The focus of this study will mainly fall in the twentieth century. While games and sports have been present in Puerto Rico since the Spanish colonial period, it was with the U.S. invasion in 1898 that sport became popularly practiced and governmentally sponsored through the creation of a new public island-wide education system, the University of Puerto Rico (1903), and their athletic and physical education programs. By hosting in 1966 the Tenth Central American and Caribbean Games in San Juan, the first time hosting an international athletic event of this magnitude, Puerto Ricans had consolidated their sport culture in its relation to their political organization, modernization program, and development of a national identity. Hence a rough chronological period for this dissertation falls between 1898 and 1966.

However, the road to the development of sport was not an easy one. Puerto Rican economy was never fully solvent and efforts of modernization always faced shortage of supplies and the realities of Caribbean underdevelopment. In this regard, developing athletics has been a constant political and economic challenge for all parties involved. Moreover, the particularities of Puerto Rico's relationship to the U.S. has been a source of conflict, resentment, and dissension not only locally, but also at the U.S., Latin American, and international levels. Furthermore, Puerto Rico's colonial relation to the U.S. has made the development of a national identity through sport somewhat ambivalent, though by the end of the 1960s it had produced a strong and stable source of nationalism, still alive and well in the present.

Finally, drawing from a diverse array of secondary sources and the critical analysis of newspapers; personal and Olympic Games' memoirs and bulletins; governor and budget reports; official correspondence; government agency's advertisement publications and reports; third party studies; and interviews, this dissertation proves that the development of sport in Puerto Rico constituted a politico-cultural process with ramifications extended well beyond its shores. Puerto Rican sport, rather than encapsulated within the limits of the island, was paramount to the U.S.'s hegemonic project in the Caribbean, Latin America, and even on a global scale was involved in issues such as the Good Neighbor policy, the Cold War, and international decolonization movements. Puerto Rico's uniqueness as a Latin American nation belonging to the U.S., therefore, constitutes a premier case to observe the development of non-sovereign nationalism and Colonial Olympism. Lastly, this study constitutes a major contribution not only to the historiography of Puerto Rican and Latin American sports, politics, and identity, but is an indispensable work in the comprehension of the U.S.'s foreign policy and Empire building.