Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Operation Bootstrap


A short video on Puerto Rico which praises Operation Bootstrap. It appears to be propaganda for the PPD and Operation Bootstrap, and presents it as being part of the economic miracle of the island and a model for economic development across the Global South. Since Haitian intellectuals like Cary Hector have called attention to the Puerto Rico model for understanding transformations like the rise of garment assembly factories in Port-au-Prince, a look at Operation Bootstrap in Puerto Rico is useful. Ayala and Bernabe show how it did little to weaken Puerto Rican reliance on the US, but it did play an important role in industrialization. This video, clearly a product of its time, ignores these contradictions but exemplifies the cultural politics of the PPD at the time (praise Puerto Rican culture or identity while maintaining a dependent relationship on the US). 

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