In 1941, publisher Henry Luce announced the coming of the American Century from the pages of Life magazine. The moment symbolically marked the rise of the United States as a global power. It has been pointed out many times that American influence as proclaimed by Luce in 1941 and as built by U.S. strategists after 1945 did not imply the construction of a new colonial empire following the British or other European models. This is undoubtedly so, but it should not lead us to forget that there were exceptions. For some, the American Century had begun much earlier, on the eve of the twentieth century, when the Spanish-American War of 1898 led to the installation of U.S. colonial governments in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. While the Philippines became independent in 1946, Puerto Rico and Guam remain under U.S. sovereignty to this day. Puerto Rico thus became an anomaly: a colony of a fundamentally noncolonial imperialism. It is this exceptional case that concerns us here. The objective of this book is to acquaint the reader with the history of Puerto Rico since 1898. Such a project is never a neutral or value-free operation. We bring to it a particular perspective and set of interests. While we relay many findings of past contributions in this field, we also depart from some prevalent views regarding many of the events, processes, and historical figures discussed here. But before we go into these, it is appropriate to begin with some facts and a brief overview of the terrain we will cover....There are many good reasons to embark on a project such as the writing of this book. In our case, it has been the most direct of motivations: we are Puerto Rican, and the object of this work concerns us dearly. But we have done our best to keep our affections from dimming our critical faculties. It is for the readers to judge to what extent we succeeded or failed.