Puerto Rico and the United States, 1917-1933

From 1917 to 1933, the United States kept Puerto Rico in limbo, offering it neither a course toward independence nor much hope for prompt statehood. The Jones Act of 1917 gave Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, but the status of the island didn't change. In 1922, a Supreme Court decision reaffirmed the 1901 principle that island possessions had no right to equal treatment with continental territories and states. Clark unfolds with clarity the painful truth of the United States' unsavory attempt at