Abstract

This article puts forth the concept of colonial state terror as a category for the analysis of political violence in the Puerto Rican colonial conflict by US and Puerto Rican governments and pro-state organizations. To this end, the article is divided into four parts. First, it provides a short historical overview of Puerto Rico's colonial history; second, it explores US colonialism through the concept of the colonial state of exception; third, it explicates the concept of colonial state terror; and fourth, it develops a brief history of the uses of colonial state terror in the long history of US colonialism in Puerto Rico. In doing so, this article seeks to contribute to the development of a more nuanced research agenda focused on the relationship between colonialism, political violence, law and processes of depoliticization.

Highlights

  • This article proposes the concept of state colonial terror as category for the analysis of political violence against Puerto Rican anticolonial and social movements by the American and Puerto Rican governments and pro-state organizations1 in the context of the Puerto Rican colonial conflict

  • I intend to show how state political violence and terrorism were used in the colonization of Puerto Rico to legitimate US colonialism, and to control and demobilize Puerto Rican anticolonial movements

  • A precedent of the analysis proposed here, can be found in Venator’s (2006) historical, constitutional and political study of US colonialism and imperialism in terms of the state of exception and global empire

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Summary

Introduction

This article proposes the concept of state colonial terror as category for the analysis of political violence against Puerto Rican anticolonial and social movements by the American and Puerto Rican governments and pro-state organizations in the context of the Puerto Rican colonial conflict. A considerable number of authors have tackled the issue of repression, state violence and the criminalization of Puerto Rican anticolonial movements (Acosta 1998; Bosques Pérez and Colon Morera 1997; Nieves Falcón 2002, 2009; Paralitici 2004, 2011) Despite their rich and valuable contribution to the analysis of colonial state violence in Puerto Rico, these approaches fail to address the complexity of colonial state terror. To achieve this deeper analysis of the dynamics of colonial state violence in Puerto Rico, I incorporate the analytical narrative of the colonial state of exception as a foundational aspect of the superstructure or colonial power matrix To this end, the article will illustrate how the Puerto Rican and US governments have implemented various forms of colonial state terrorism to preserve the colonial-exceptional structure. I show how the laws and colonial state terror implemented by the US and Puerto Rican governments criminalized and demobilized the Puerto Rican anticolonial movements

A Short History of US Colonialism in Puerto Rico
Conclusion

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