In December 1939, just a few months after the outbreak of World War II, the National Geographic reporter E. John Long caught a flight to Puerto Rico. As the Clipper seaplane buzzed over the island’s turquoise waters and densely forested hills, the copilot called Long’s attention to a map. “Now do you see? About 1,000 miles to the Panama Canal, 1,000 miles to Miami, 700 to Bermuda, 550 to Caracas on the mainland of South America, 650 to Trinidad. This is the hub of a wheel. Put enough planes here, and enough land forces to guard your bases, and Puerto Rico becomes the ‘Gibraltar of the West Indies,’ or the ‘Hawaii of the Atlantic.’”Long’s cover story, titled “Puerto Rico: Watchdog of the Caribbean,” captured the attention of Americans at a time when concerns about foreign military encroachment and the security of the Panama Canal gripped Washington. As it appeared in print, engineers and convoys of troops and equipment poured onto the island to build and man new US military bases. With its central position and many miles of usable coastline, Puerto Rico came to be seen by US authorities as a kind of vast, terrestrial aircraft carrier.But Western powers had taken stock of the island’s importance long before the outbreak of World War II or the construction of the Panama Canal. As early as 1502, the Spanish clergyman Bartolomé de Las Casas was noting how many ships bound for the Americas relied on it as a crucial stopover; soon afterward, it was fortified by the Spanish as a key asset in protecting their trade routes from piracy. By the time the United States won the island from Spain — along with the Philippines, Guam, and Cuba — in 1898, its occupation was seen by President William McKinley as a “strategic necessity” because, in the words of one of his most senior generals, it was “the gateway to the Spanish possessions on the Western Hemisphere.”More than eighty years after Long’s article, Puerto Rico has once again come…
