- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2137
Popular dancing in Puerto Rico. Photo: Jaime Olmo – flickr.com (CC BY 2.0)
US President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on 2 March 2025, that designates English as the United States’ official language. This has created much concern within Puerto Rico, a Spanish-speaking US territory. The order rescinds the Clinton mandate requiring agencies and recipients of federal funding to provide language assistance to non-English speakers. As a territory, Puerto Rico is under the plenary control of Congress, which makes rules on the language for the territory. For now, Spanish remains the language of the island’s government, its public affairs and its schools.
While English is a mandatory academic course, less than a quarter of Puerto Ricans speak it with any proficiency. Puerto Rico identifies intrinsically with Spanish, especially in the debate of Puerto Rican territorial status to statehood. When Congress debated the Puerto Rico Status Act, the Power 4 Puerto Rico coalition advocated to preserve Spanish as the island’s language. If Puerto Rico becomes a state, it will have control over what will be its official language. If Puerto Rico gained independence Spanish would be its official language.
Trump has a track record of equating English use with identity. In 2015, Trump criticised Jeb Bush for speaking Spanish at rallies in Florida: “This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish.” The Trump administration claims that speaking English “opens doors economically” and will help people “engage in their communities,” both true enough, but for Trump the priority is to reinforce white ruling class dominance, and display his trademark xenophobia.
Trump does not like Puerto Rico or its people. In his now-infamous rally at Madison Square Garden in 2024, which critics saw as an equivalent to a 1939 Nazi rally, Trump called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” Trump had earlier opposed the federal disaster agency FEMA paying the US$20 billion federal funding that Congress had allocated for the 2017 Hurricane Maria disaster.
For Puerto Rico, English as the official language has underscored its political relationship with the US since the US militarily occupied the island in 1898, during the Spanish American war. In 1900 the US government anglicised the island’s name to ‘Porto Rico’ and set about ‘civilising’ Puerto Ricans by converting the island’s political and legal system to that of the US. This process aimed to turn Puerto Ricans away from their native culture and identity by adopting the US way of life, against their will.
The public education system was a part of this assimilation. English, the language of their occupiers, became compulsory in schools. US teachers were sent to Puerto Rico to instruct in English, while Puerto Rican teachers were sent to the US to learn English. Teachers who refused had their employment terminated. Resistance to US policies increased. In 1912 the Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rican Teachers Association) was created to resist US ideology and its attack on national identity. During the 1930s, with unemployment at 65 per cent, the population faced overwhelming poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy and disease. Popular resistance led Puerto Rican officials to identify Spanish as the national language and Congress allowed the island to elect its own governor in 1947.
From 1949 the Nationalist Party prepared for an armed revolt in 1952, when the US Congress was set to create the Free Associated State (Estado Libre Associado) for Puerto Rico. Anti-US passions came to a head in 1950 with the Utuado Revolt (El Grito de Utuado). The US government responded by sending ten P-47 Thunderbolt fighter planes from Ramey Air Force Base to bomb the town of Jayuya. US infantry and the Puerto Rico National Guard attacked the towns involved in the nationalist uprising, killing 28 people and wounding 50. The last major attempt by the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party to draw attention to Puerto Rico’s colonial situation was in March 1954.
Puerto Ricans remain a proud people, despite their poverty and President Trump’s ridicule. English, while useful, is a symbol of oppression by an occupying power that denigrates them and their culture, and is not something Puerto Ricans need shoved down their throats to satisfy Trump’s xenophobia. The great majority of Puerto Ricans, 76 per cent, prefer to speak Spanish. For many there is hope for independence from the US.
