Between Cane Fields and Concrete: Puerto Rico in the 1930s and 1940s
- Daniel Holland
- 50 minutes ago
- 4 min read
In the early 1930s, Puerto Rico stood at a crossroads that was economic, political, and deeply human. The island had been under United States rule since 1898, but by the time the Great Depression arrived, that relationship was being tested by hunger, unemployment, and a growing sense that Puerto Rico was being shaped by forces far beyond its own control. What followed over the next two decades was a period of upheaval and reinvention that quietly transformed the island’s society.
The Great Depression Reaches the Caribbean
When the Wall Street crash of 1929 rippled outward, Puerto Rico felt the shock almost immediately. Sugar dominated the island’s economy, accounting for the vast majority of exports. By 1932, global sugar prices had collapsed, wages had fallen sharply, and unemployment soared. Rural poverty became acute. Contemporary observers estimated that more than half of Puerto Rican families were malnourished, with hookworm, tuberculosis, and anaemia widespread in the countryside.
Governor Theodore Roosevelt Jr., appointed in 1929, toured the island and was reportedly struck by what he saw. “I had never seen such poverty anywhere under the American flag,” he later wrote. His observations helped push Puerto Rico to the forefront of New Deal experimentation.
The New Deal Comes to Puerto Rico
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reached Puerto Rico with unusual intensity. Programmes such as the Puerto Rico Emergency Relief Administration and later the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration pumped federal money into public works, housing, electrification, and agricultural reform. Roads were built, schools expanded, and some land was redistributed away from the largest sugar corporations.
Yet these reforms came with limits. The island remained heavily dependent on sugar, and US owned companies continued to dominate production. Critics argued that New Deal programmes softened the worst effects of poverty without addressing the deeper colonial structure of the economy.
One of the most striking initiatives was the effort to modernise public health. Clinics spread across rural areas, campaigns targeted malaria and hookworm, and infant mortality began to fall. These changes laid important groundwork for later social transformation, even as economic insecurity remained entrenched.
Nationalism and Political Tension
The 1930s were also marked by rising political tension. Pedro Albizu Campos and the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party called openly for independence, framing US rule as economic exploitation. This rhetoric alarmed colonial authorities.
In 1937, tensions reached a breaking point in Ponce. During a peaceful Nationalist march, police opened fire on the crowd, killing 19 civilians and wounding over 200. The event became known as the Ponce Massacre and remains one of the most traumatic episodes in modern Puerto Rican history. A subsequent investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union concluded that the killings amounted to a police massacre.
Albizu Campos was arrested and imprisoned soon after. For many Puerto Ricans, the message was clear. Calls for independence would be met with force.
War and Strategic Importance
The outbreak of the Second World War altered Puerto Rico’s position dramatically. The island’s location made it strategically vital to the defence of the Caribbean and the Panama Canal. US military investment expanded rapidly. Bases were built, infrastructure improved, and thousands of Puerto Rican men were drafted or volunteered for service.
Military wages and construction jobs brought a temporary economic lift. At the same time, wartime demand for sugar stabilised prices. For some families, this was the first period of relative financial security in years.
Yet the war also reinforced Puerto Rico’s subordinate status. Decisions were made in Washington, not San Juan. Puerto Rican soldiers served in segregated units, and political rights on the island remained limited.
The Rise of a New Political Vision
By the mid 1940s, a new political figure had emerged. Luis Muñoz Marín, the son of a prominent independence leader, offered a different path. Rather than immediate independence, he argued for economic transformation first. His newly formed Popular Democratic Party promised land reform, education, and industrial development.
Muñoz Marín’s message resonated with rural voters exhausted by decades of hardship. In 1948, he became the first elected governor of Puerto Rico, marking a major shift in the island’s political life.
This period also laid the foundations for Operation Bootstrap, a post war programme that would push Puerto Rico away from agriculture and towards manufacturing. Factories, urbanisation, and mass migration to the US mainland would soon reshape Puerto Rican society in profound ways.
A Society on the Edge of Change
By the end of the 1940s, Puerto Rico was no longer the same island that had entered the Depression two decades earlier. Illiteracy had fallen, public health had improved, and political participation had expanded. At the same time, economic dependence and questions of sovereignty remained unresolved.
The era was defined less by dramatic revolutions than by steady, sometimes painful transition. Cane fields still stretched across the countryside, but concrete factories were rising nearby. The old rural Puerto Rico was fading, even as a new and uncertain future took shape.
