ues that pertained to them, but Spain always said no. The Americans were seen as a glimmer of hope and promise for a brighter future. They were going to give Puerto Ricans the freedom they all had been craving for so long. Not to mention that it would probably have been suicide to go up against the well equipped U.S. forces. But why not help a people that were eventually going to help you and your situation? And this is exactly what many Puerto Ricans did. General Nelson Miles of the U.S. troops in fact gave a promise to the Puerto Rican people. "We have not come to make war upon the people of a country that for centuries has been oppressed but on the contrary to bring you protection. . . to promote your prosperity, and to bestow upon you the immunities and blessings of the liberal institutions of our government" (Fernandez, 3). But a couple of months later, on February 6, 1899, a treaty was signed that made Puerto Rico and the Philippines colonies of the United States of America. This became known as the Treaty of Paris (Fernandez, 8). The United States also put a heavy burden on Puerto Rico’s economy. Puerto Rico could almost exclusively only trade with the United States and was under their shipping laws now. Many of Puerto Rico’s trading partners now stopped coming because of the high shipping taxes, too. Another thing that the U.S. did to Puerto Rico’s economy was to go back to sugar cane as their biggest export. The last couple of decades, coffee had taken over as the number one product, but the U.S. was not interested in this. They did not like the Puerto Rican’s rich a dark coffee. Instead they changed the island back to a big sugar cane maker. This was the way the U.S. made money off the island (Dietz). It was now time to do something about the government. Puerto Rico was under military control until the Foraker Act came along on April 12, 1900(Trias-Monge, 42). What the Foraker Act did first was...
