Language Wars in Puerto Rico

[YAUTIAPR]

It is a difficult task but most of the documentation about
language wars as it relates to English and Spanish begin
with the conquest of PR by the US on October 18, 1898 when the US established a military government in Puerto Rico.

A report was written to establish a new colonial school system and thus begins the language wars between Puerto Ricans and the US establishment.

"Their langue is a patois almost unintelligible to the native of Barcelona and Madrid. It possesses no literature and has little value as an intellectual medium. There is a bare possibility that it will be nearly as easy to educate this people out of their patois into English as it will be to educate them into the elegant tongue of Castile..."

Little did the Anglos know that in Barcelona they did not speak "the elegant tongue of Castile"

Thus the language wars began.

Yautia