Friday, December 24, 2010

A History of Puerto Rico for Gringos

The more-tax-obsessed-Encyclopedia!


I have not been able to post much because I have been scouting images for a  educational film. The film regards the history of the United States, and the images had to be public domain. So no matter what I was searching for, the war o 1820, Benjamin Franklin, or Sputink, I came upon the same damn images over again. America, I don't want to look at your political cartoons anymore. I don't care if you think Obama is a mixture of Hitler, Stalin and Heath Ledger's Joker. I just want to find images of Eleanor  Roosevelt talking!
Public Domain images of Eleanor Roosevelt. How's that feel, now?


But my contact with America's political viewpoints isn't all a waste of time. I came upon this site I had heard about Conservapedia. I don't know if that's supposed to mean "Serving Corporate interests" ipedia. Like I said, I'm fairly confused by my search.

Still, I wanted to see a conservative take on my homeland of Puerto Rico. I mean, surely there's something to say on our status, our history our...

No. It's a meager School Report length discussion that ends somewhere before Puerto Rico became a territory of the U.S.

This is unacceptable! Is the conservative idea of us that the last 100 years of our history didn't happen?
I'll give you a C if you work in the last century!

So, here's the lowdown on our history, BGEver style.

Spain was feeling pretty fine. It had just just kicked major Moor ass and reclaimed it's land after many decades. So they decided, "Hey, now that we're the world's largest superpower, let's start sending ships and shit over the ocean."

So they arrive at the island. And it's full of brown people and gold.  But gold prospection is haaaaard, and besides, in Spain they have brown people to do that shit. So they killed two birds with one stone by enslaving the brown people to fish for gold. Preety sneaky, huh?
Spain! Without love! Spain! Can't get enough!



The natives played along because they totally thought they where dealing with the gods here. But after one of the gods failed at not being killed by them, it became clear some motherfuckers needed to be clubbed.

The Wars went on for a bit, with natives from other islands joining. But Spain had guns, and also had diseases the Natives weren't prepared for.

Most natives where killed, or had children with the Spaniards. Because, hey, if a green man showed up today, I bet all you ladies would be throwing panties at him.
He's a ladykiller. Seriously, ladies, get away from him.

So Spain took all the gold and all the hot bitches. But the Island was still good for growing veggies and for flipping the finger to the Dutch. But somebody had to harvest the crops and build the forts and that's booooooring. So they brought African slaves to do the hard part for them.
Spaniard. Just saying.

Eventually, all the hot Spaniard on native on  African sex lead to a unique culture. This people came to be known as criollos.

The Criollos had a strained relationship with Spain, because they didn't care  about  them, like at all. Eventually, the locals brewed up a strike against the man, for freedom.

Then they died. They where being spied, they had their weapons intercepted. They had no chance, but I guess they would rather die than to hold up the revolution another day.

Eventually, Spain started giving concessions, and they even had a an autonomy granting  bill in the works.

This is the part where you come in.

Apparently you had some beef with Spain because of Cuba or something. Or maybe needed to sell newspapers. Point is, the Hispanoamerican wars happened.

Remember those, Conservapedia? When the American Government  went to war with Spain to liberate Cuba, and ended up with Puerto Rico as War bounty? Well, you can add that to the page about Puerto Rico.
Julien K and Linkin Park did the soundtrack?

So then there was the military government, then the guys that rebeled against that, and when you shot radiation into their dicks, when you tried to teach us  english  when our soldiers helped out in your asian War, and when they didn't want to fight defending rocks, and when your doctor gave our women cancer, and then you gave him a time magazine  cover? Or the time some of our guys shot up your senate, or when they protested the military base?

And Puerto Rican people thought their salvation was at hand! Turns out it was just 50 plus years of unilateral government with prechosen leaders, then they instituted us as a 'Estado Libre Asociado' and we spent the next 50 years arguing over something we have no say in.

No, I am not bitter. But it's been 100 years, guys. Acknowledgment isn't too much to demand, right?

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