Major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National

Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, and the Robert and

Joseph Cornell Memorial Foundation.

From Virginia Humanities, this is backstory.

Welcome to backstory, the American History Podcast. I'm Brian Ballow. I'm Mad

Ers. And I'm Nathan Connolly. It's been one year since Hurricane Maria

devastated Puerto Rico, causing the worst electrical blackout in US history and

leaving more than 3,000 people dead. Puerto Rico is part of the United States

and Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but many Americans feel that the government's

response to the disaster was not only slow, it was negligent. It made many

people ask, are Puerto Ricans really citizens in the eyes of the federal

government? To answer that question, let's return to the moment when Puerto Rico

became part of the United States. Puerto Rico had been a Spanish colony since the

16th century. By 1898, the island had taken a big step towards self-government

with the establishment of a democratically elected legislature, but many

Puerto Ricans, including political exiles in the United States, wanted to see

the island free. The United States can save us, making us independent, and the

majority of the people will determine in the future whether or not to ask

annexation to the American Union. Jose Julio Enna advocated for

independence for Puerto Rico until he was banished from the island when he was 18

years old. In New York City, Enna studied medicine at Columbia University and

became an influential leader in a community of Puerto Rican exiles. In 1898,

...