What stood out to me in the article, “Looking for Empire in the U.S. Colonial Archive” by Javier Morillo-Alicea, was how the images portrayed an ‘Americanized’ Puerto Rico post 1898. The connection I found between the article and the image I chose to post was the understanding of how photographs can hold so much history and how that can help others learn the history of a place or people that may be unclear or hard to understand in text. The photo I chose includes a group of school children standing outside their schoolhouse. The children appear serious in the photo, unsmiling. The girl in the front with her arms folded speaks volumes as to how the children felt about this modernization. Similar images to the one I chose were discussed in the article and depict this time in Puerto Rican history. Just as the article explains, and just as this image shows, children would pose in front of school buildings (usually with their teachers) in order to show that “The photos of children tell the story of Puerto Rico’s modernization, of the U.S. narrative that assured islanders and the world that they were being moved out of the barbarianism and into modernity” (Morillo-Alicea 138). In considering this statement, along with the image, it becomes clear how much we can learn through images. The image I chose illustrates the modernization that the U.S. forced upon Puerto Rico.
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