“For a small country under imperialist control these issues remain relevant today. The long domination of the US-leaning political current also has resonance for us.”
By Simon Korner
Steve Howell’s analysis of American colonial rule in Puerto Rico is both politically informative and highly readable. It presents a history of the Puerto Rican independence struggle and the repression of the 1940s and 50s through the story of Brandon Howell, the author’s father, a leftwing Californian architect and town planner interested in shaping the built environment for social good, who played an important role in Puerto Rican politics.
What comes to light from the FBI reports uncovered by Steve Howell’s persistent Freedom of Information requests is the shocking extent of the FBI surveillance on Brandon, even after his political exile in the UK, where he remained under close watch by the authorities.
An admirable activist and talented cartoonist, Brandon inspired loyalty from his comrades but was also betrayed by his ex-wife, whose therapist broke patient confidentiality by reporting on their sessions to the FBI. This led to her full written testimony against Brandon.
Brandon Howell lived in Puerto Rico from 1941-48, moving there at the invitation of the Rooseveltian New Deal US Governor of the island, Rexford Tugwell, to work as a progressive planner. He soon became involved in the island’s independence movement and Communist Party, and contributed incisive political cartoons to the Party paper as well as other publications – under a pseudonym Diego Muñoz or DM.
We get a vivid picture of the small but significant Party – 600 members in 1943, according to one account – and its leading lights, who resisted persecution and built an organisation influential enough to worry the FBI. Among these were César Andreu Iglesias and Jane Speed, central figures in Puerto Rican politics for many decades, and internationally recognised writer José Luis González.
The book takes us into the struggle for independence and the differences within the movement – for instance, between the nationalists’ support for the 1950 insurrection against a sell-out deal with the USA (including Puerto Ricans’ conscription to the Korean war) and the Communists who urged a longer-term strategy of resistance but who were punished nevertheless. For a small country under imperialist control, these issues remain relevant today. The long domination of the US-leaning political current also has resonance for us.
US repression succeeded – using anti-Communist machinery, both in preventing national sovereignty for Puerto Rico – as it did in other countries such as Malaya – and in suppressing domestic political dissent in the US itself. The manoeuvrings of Hoover’s FBI, the intimidating House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the secret tactics of COINTELPRO – used later against the US civil rights movement including the Black Panthers – are highlighted through individual cases.
But why has Puerto Rico long been so important to the USA? A conquest from an earlier empire, Spain, which used the island as a slave plantation, Puerto Rico under US control became economically important as a monocrop provider of sugar, cheap labour, cannon fodder for the US military and as a fortress guarding the chokepoint between Latin America and North America, like Britain’s Gibraltar.
The advent of the Cold War, followed by the Cuban revolution, reinforced US determination to prevent any revolutionary spread in its ‘backyard’.
Nowadays, Puerto Rico provides a strategically important base for enforcing Trump’s ‘Donroe’ Doctrine – total control of the western hemisphere. In 2025, the US used the island to prepare for its military strikes against Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro.
Trump’s brazen boasting about US power – including the fact that stolen oil from Venezuela paid for the Iran war – has removed the veneer of respect for sovereignty with which the US attempted to distinguish itself from the European-style colonial powers. His offensive remarks about Latinos repeated the racist attitudes of colonial rule, as expressed in a late 19th century text that states that the Puerto Ricans “must be trained” in democracy whereas the “Anglo-Saxon race” had had “centuries of discipline under the supremacy of law.”
In 2015, Puerto Rico – prevented from developing for over a century by US colonialism – could no longer service its debts and the US imposed direct economic rule via a Financial Oversight and Management Board. To this day, while Puerto Ricans have US passports, the islanders cannot vote for president or elect representatives to Congress. What they have instead is a toothless resident commissioner. Their commonwealth status has served them badly, leaving the majority impoverished.
This is not the end of the story, however. An instructive episode in 1959 shows what can happen. When the FBI attempted to launch repressive HUAC hearings in Puerto Rico itself where it had no jurisdiction, resistance stirred. For a period, US bullying was confounded by the patriotic resistance of Puerto Rican politicians and people to US interference.
Recent elections have shown a hopeful revival of pro-independence and socialist views, despite US economic blackmail.
A cartoon by Brandon Howell highlights the strategic unity that is needed if Puerto Rico is to gain sovereignty – it shows workers from different unions pushing together a car out of the mud of division.
His son’s devoted history is both clear-eyed and moving.
- In Britain and Ireland only, the paperback of Cold War Puerto Rico is available at the author’s special offer price of £20.00 including postage via Steve Howell’s website. It can also be ordered through bookshops and online.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
