cause 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 to set up a government for Puerto Rico. The President of the United States appointed a governor of his choosing who was always answerable to him. Six departments were also set up under the governor, where each head of the departments were also appointed by the United States President. The U.S. government also retained the right to revoke any laws passed by the Puerto Rican legislature (Trias-Monge, 43). What the act in fact had done for the Puerto Rican people was take away what little form of government they fought so hard to attain from the Spanish. 400 years of fighting for something and it was gone with the simple stroke of the pen. Puerto Rico was not given their own government because they were seen as unfit to rule themselves yet. They could not argue much about their situation either, because they were under the rule of a military power, one in which they surely could not push back and rise up against. But the key word in the above statement is "yet". This word implies that the U.S. would not be there for long and they were there to just over see things until Puerto Rico got on their feet. A very important thing to note here is that the U.S. government never stated when they had to pull out, so they were strictly working on their own timetable. But though Puerto Rico belonged ...
