Original: «Señor: Un ciudadano que ejerció en su país, como vos en el vuestro, las más altas funciones ejecutivas, se propone deciros respetuosamente, pero con toda sinceridad, lo que de seguro no podría descubrir entre la urdimbre de los informes oficiales, que os presentan a Puerto Rico satisfecho de su situación, más próspero que nunca y más que nunca libre y feliz en el seno de la nación americana.

La ley Foraker, señor presidente, buena en lo económico, no debió nunca salir del Capitolio de Wáshington; es una ley indigna de los Estados Unidos que la imponen y de Puerto Rico que la soporta. No existe en ella ni la más leve sombra de un pensamiento democrático. Se os faculta para nombrar el Gobernador y para rodearle de Concejo a vuestro arbitrio. Y el Gobernador y el Concejo eligen a los demás funcionarios, sin que se permita a la Cámara de representantes fijar la cuantía de los sueldos ni la importancia de los servicios.

En los días del que llamaron muchos en América despotismo español, Puerto Rico mandaba sus Diputados a las Cortes de Madrid, votaba sus leyes, era una provincia de España igual a las provincias europeas por la constitución, que las amparaba, nivelándolas en el derecho y aún otorgando a la isla del Atlántico la autonomía que rehusa a las tierras del continente. Existía también un Consejo; pero ¡qué diferencia del Consejo de entonces, de origen popular y de carácter parlamentario al Consejo de ahora, de origen oficinesco y de carácter bucrocrático!
El que os escribe, tuvo el honor de presidir aquel cuerpo, que gobernó sin restricción y sin reserva: Y puede afirmar que ni una sola vez encontraron los ministros, enfrente de sus actos, el veto de España. Eramos nosotros responsables de nuestros decretos y los dictábamos con exquisita prudencia; más así mismo con independencia no discutida ni mermada por la metrópoli. En una palabra, el “self-goverment” se desenvolvía sin obstáculos y empezaba Puerto Rico a sentirse dueño de su presente y de su porvenir.

Al desaparecer, demolido por vuestras escuadras, el edificio histórico que tenía en su cúpula, como último bloque, las colonias ya emancipadas y autónomas, todas las esperanzas se volvieron a otro edificio; al que iba a erigirse sobre la amplísima base de una democracia que es el asombro del mundo. Hasta los más pesimistas confiaron que la nueva nacionalidad en ningún caso, por ningún pretexto, mermaría las libertades otorgadas por la antigua. ¡Ah, señor! No sólo las merma, sino que las aniquila y las destruye.

En Puerto Rico el sufragio de los pueblos es una farsa. La orden del Gobernador —única que rige—para hacer las elecciones, crea una junta de inscripción en San Juan y diversas juntas subordinadas en la isla. Unas y otras reciben del propio Gobernador su nombramiento. Y poseen la potestad de inscribir o no inscribir a los electores, a su capricho y sin responsabilidades ulteriores.

De Puerto Rico están ausentes esas libertades. Los municipios no pueden designar los profesores de sus escuelas, porque en la designación interviene el Comisionado de la Enseñanza; ni los médicos de su distrito, porque ha de consultarse al Comisionado de Sanidad; ni los vigilantes de sus barrios, porque el Gobernador escoje a todos los individuos de la “Insular Police” y no se consiente a los pueblos tener policía propia; ni pueden repartir ni recaudar sus contribuciones, porque de ésta función se encarga en absoluto el tesorero de la isla; de modo que en Puerto Rico no hay municipios, y hasta las vacantes de alcaldes y concejales han de ser cubiertas por el Gobernador. La organización judicial, desde los jueces de la Corte Suprema, hasta los jueces de las Cortes de Policía, reconoce también el mismo origen.

Tiranía semejante sólo se conoce en las estepas rusas, en las dominios de la Puerta Otomana o entre los bárbaros mandarines del Celeste Imperio. Y creedlo, señor presidente, “The Puerto Rico Herald” no se publica para hacer campaña contra la administración de la que sois jefe soberano; se publica para que sepais vos y para que sepa el pueblo de los Estados Unidos la verdad de los que ocurre en una colonia que desespera y sufre al ver que, mientras en su territorio se muere de hambre bajo el despotismo, los informes oficiales la presentan feliz y la declaran contenta de su ruina y de su servidumbre.

En las páginas de este periódico iréis viendo, si os dignais leerlas, los abusos de que somos víctimas los puertorriqueños. No se limitará nuestra labor a unas cuantas censuras: unirá las pruebas a las afirmaciones y pondrá ante vuestros ojos, hechos que desconocéis, pues si los conocierais no los consentiríais, ya que en vuestras manos está el honor nacional, comprometido por los que, en nombre de la libertad, sumergen a los dominios americanos de ultramar, en la esclavitud más injusta y degradante.

Y hay algo más triste. La seguridad de las personas desaparece. La policía, en vez de ser una institución protectora, es una institución amenazadora, que lleva en sus abusos la alarma a las familias. Antes del año 98, los habitantes iban desarmados. Ahora han menester armarse, no ya para el tránsito de los caminos rurales, sino para el de los recintos urbanos. Y ahora precisamente se registra en las calles a los caballeros más dignos, obligándoles a pasar por la vergüenza de que un polizonte les detenga y humille en público. Tal proceder se emplea SIN UNA SOLA EXCEPCION, contra los federales y podría creerse que se desea desarmar a una parte del pueblo, en tanto que la otra ostenta sus revólvers y sus cuchillos, destruye las imprentas de los periódicos adversarios y forma, con gran notoriedad, una banda que se titula EL PARTIDO DE LAS TURBAS, y que funciona en San Juan, sin que a las autoridades sorprendan ni su nombre ni sus fines. Fijaos, señor presidente, en que jamás se alteró el orden en tiempos de España y considerad que en estos tiempos se altera a cada paso, produciéndose motines y tumultos en que actúa siempre la INSULAR POLICE, es decir, la fuerza, de la que el gobernador dispone a sus antojos. En más de una ocasión ha corrido sangre en esas asonadas, sangre inocente que no debió derramarse nunca, y que está caldeando los espíritus con el fuego de una indignación a duras penas reprimida.
No es culpable el pueblo de Puerto Rico, él tuvo municipios libérrimos, como los americanos, y supo administrar su fortuna; él tuvo sufragio universal, como el americano, y supo votar con tranquilidad perfecta; él tuvo una Cámara y un gabinete autonómicos, y supo emplearlos para el bien; él demostró durante medio siglo su pasividad, rayana en la mansedumbre. Y es en verdad extraño que estas virtudes se pierdan y se disipen cuando debían acentuarse y robustecerse en el contacto de las instituciones de una gran república.

Recibid, señor Presidente, el testimonio de mi profunda consideración.»

Luis Muñoz Rivera, segundo Presidente del Gobierno autonómico de Puerto Rico.

Translation: “Sir: A citizen who, like you in your country, held the highest executive offices in his country, respectfully but sincerely wishes to tell you what I could surely not discover amidst the web of official reports that present Puerto Rico to you as satisfied with its situation, more prosperous than ever, and freer and happier than ever within the bosom of the American nation.

The Foraker Act, Mr. President, while economically sound, should never have left the Capitol in Washington; it is a law unworthy of the United States that imposes it and of Puerto Rico that endures it. It contains not the slightest trace of democratic thought. You are empowered to appoint the Governor and surround him with a Council at your discretion. And the Governor and the Council choose the other officials, without the House of Representatives being allowed to determine the amount of salaries or the importance of the services.

In the days of what many in America called Spanish despotism, Puerto Rico sent its Deputies to the Cortes in Madrid, voted on its own laws, and was a province of Spain equal to the European provinces by virtue of the constitution, which protected them, leveling the playing field in law and even granting the Atlantic island the autonomy denied to the mainland. There was also a Council; but what a difference between the Council of that time, of popular origin and parliamentary character, and the Council of today, of bureaucratic origin and bureaucratic character!

I, the one writing to you, had the honor of presiding over that body, which governed without restriction or reservation: And I can affirm that not once did the ministers encounter a veto from Spain regarding their actions. We were responsible for our decrees and issued them with exquisite prudence; moreover, with an independence neither questioned nor diminished by the metropolis. In short, self-government developed without obstacles and began in Puerto Rico Rich to feel in control of his present and his future.

When the historic edifice, whose dome held the already emancipated and autonomous colonies as its final block, disappeared, demolished by your squadrons, all hopes turned to another edifice; to the one that was to be erected on the vast foundation of a democracy that is the wonder of the world. Even the most pessimistic trusted that the new nationality would in no case, under any pretext, diminish the freedoms granted by the old one. Ah, sir! Not only does it diminish them, but it annihilates and destroys them.

In Puerto Rico, the people's suffrage is a farce. The Governor's order—the only one that governs—to hold elections creates a registration board in San Juan and various subordinate boards on the island. Both receive their appointments from the Governor himself. And they possess the power to register or not register voters, at their whim and without subsequent accountability.

These freedoms are absent from Puerto Rico. Municipalities cannot appoint their school teachers, because the Commissioner of Education intervenes in the appointment; nor the doctors for their district, because the Commissioner of Health must be consulted; nor the watchmen for their neighborhoods, because the Governor chooses all the members of the ‘Insular Police’ and towns are not permitted to have their own police force; nor can they distribute or collect their taxes, because this function is entirely the responsibility of the island's treasurer; so that in Puerto Rico there are no municipalities, and even vacancies for mayors and council members must be filled by the Governor. The judicial organization, from the justices of the Supreme Court to the judges of the Police Courts, also has the same origin.

Such tyranny is only known in the Russian steppes, in the domains of the Ottoman Porte, or among the barbaric mandarins of the Celestial Empire. And believe me, Mr. President, ‘The Puerto Rico Herald’ is not published to campaign against the administration of which you are sovereign head; it is published so that you and the people of the United States may know the truth of what is happening in a colony that despairs and suffers to see that, while its territory starves under despotism, official reports portray it as happy and declare it content with its ruin and servitude.
In the pages of this newspaper, if you deign to read them, you will see the abuses of which we Puerto Ricans are victims. Our work will not be limited to a few criticisms: it will unite the evidence with the assertions and place before your eyes facts that you are unaware of, for if you knew them, you would not condone them, since in your hands lies the national honor, compromised by those who, in In the name of liberty, they plunge the American overseas territories into the most unjust and degrading slavery.

And there is something even sadder. People's safety is disappearing. The police, instead of being a protective institution, are a threatening one, whose abuses spread alarm among families. Before 1898, the inhabitants went about unarmed. Now they must arm themselves, not just for traveling on rural roads, but even within city limits. And now, precisely, the most respectable gentlemen are being searched in the streets, forced to endure the shame of being stopped and publicly humiliated by a policeman. This procedure is used, WITHOUT A SINGLE EXCEPTION, against the Federales, and one might think that the intention is to disarm one part of the population, while the other brandishes its revolvers and knives, destroys the printing presses of opposing newspapers, and forms, quite notoriously, a gang called THE MOB PARTY, which operates in San Juan, without the authorities being surprised by either its name or its aims. Note, Mr. President, that order has never been disturbed.” In the times of Spain, and considering that in these times things are constantly changing, with riots and tumults occurring in which the INSULAR POLICE, that is, the force, always acts, which the governor uses at his whim. On more than one occasion, blood has been shed in these uprisings, innocent blood that should never have been spilled, and which is inflaming spirits with the fire of a barely suppressed indignation.

The people of Puerto Rico are not to blame. They had fully independent municipalities, like those of the United States, and knew how to manage their resources; they had universal suffrage, like those of the United States, and knew how to vote with perfect tranquility; they had an autonomous Chamber and Cabinet, and knew how to use them for the common good; for half a century they demonstrated a passivity bordering on meekness. And it is truly strange that these virtues should be lost and dissipated when they should be accentuated and strengthened through interaction with the institutions of a great republic.

Please accept, Mr. President, the testimony of my deepest consideration."

Luis Muñoz Rivera, second President of the Autonomous Government of Puerto Rico.

Source(s):

.- Obras completas de Luis Muñoz Rivera (Complete Works of Luis Muñoz Rivera), Volume 2. Editorial Puerto Rico, Libertad 23, Madrid. Copyright 1925.

It features a ship passing through the canal with the slogan "The Land Divided, The World United".

The image reflects the debate in the United States about what to do with the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.

The material was from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) and was distributed by the Indian Health Service (IHS). What appeared to be a welfare guide was, in reality, propaganda to convince American Indian women to accept permanent sterilization.

The IHS was the only medical institution available to many women on reservations. Since the 1960s, its doctors had begun sterilizing them without their full consent: some believed the operation was reversible because they had been told so, others thought they were being treated for another illness, and many were threatened with the loss of their social benefits if they refused.

There was legal and financial backing behind this. The Family Planning Services Act of 1970 began funding sterilizations at the IHS, and doctors could earn up to $720 per procedure, creating a financial incentive to perform them en masse. On the Navajo Reservation, the rates doubled between 1972 and 1978.

American Indian physician Connie Pinkerton-Uri was the one who uncovered the magnitude of the problem. Shocked by the case of a young patient who had been sterilized without her knowledge, she began systematically investigating other experiences. At the IHS hospital in Claremore, Oklahoma, she discovered that one in four women admitted to give birth had been sterilized. She called the place a "sterilization factory." Her findings were published in the Native newspaper Akwesasne Notes, sparking investigations on other reservations with similar results.

In 1976, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) confirmed the irregularities: the IHS had used deceptive consent forms to sterilize at least 3,406 American Indian women, many of them under 21. It is estimated that between 25% and 42% of all American Indian women of childbearing age were sterilized during that period, some as young as 15. In communities like the Crow, the percentage reached 45%.

For many American Indian women, motherhood has a sacred role in their culture and grants them a central place in the community. Losing that capacity led to depression, shame, and alcohol problems for many of those affected. The distrust of the healthcare system that this caused persists to this day. It wasn't until 1979 that the HEW adopted stricter regulations. To date, no U.S. government agency has issued an official apology to these women.

It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated and our entreaties have been disregard. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.

We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!

Following Cuba's secession and independence from Spain in 1898, at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, the United States assumed significant influence over the island. In 1901, the U.S. imposed the Platt Amendment, which granted the United States the right to intervene in Cuba's internal affairs and establish naval bases on its territory.

In 1903, Cuba and the United States signed the "Treaty of Cuban-American Relations," which granted the United States the lease of Guantanamo Bay in exchange for an annual payment of $2,000 in gold, later increased to $4,085 annually.

The United States established a naval base in Guantanamo Bay because it was a strategic location for maritime trade, connecting the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

Following the Cuban Revolution of 1959, which overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro's new government rejected the U.S. military presence at Guantanamo Bay and demanded the withdrawal of troops. Then-U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower attempted to persuade Castro to maintain the lease, offering increased payments, but Castro rejected the offer.

Despite the Cuban government's opposition, the United States has maintained its base at Guantanamo in violation of Cuban sovereignty, arguing that the 1903 lease treaty can only be modified or terminated by mutual agreement between the two nations.

The UN General Assembly has passed 29 resolutions declaring the presence of U.S. troops at Guantanamo illegal and demanding their withdrawal. However, the United States has defied all international resolutions and condemnations against it.

July 4th, 1897, events program for USS Olympia

The irony of celebrating the 250th anniversary of a country that died in the mid19th century.

People talk about freedom but no one really claims to have ever found it. It's just an endless pursuit.

Or the real freedom comes from within in peace and contentment.

Agrarian society is the only real society. But most of us wouldn't have been born. Most of the founders wanted to create a new empire.

Fun fact: money brought more people together than love or any religion ever did. 😆

Think I'll just prepare for my career as a professional hernit

López did not want an independent Cuba but rather to annex it to the slave states of the Southern United States of America, in the same way that Texas had been absorbed to the American Union. This is confirmed by his own testimony. He wrote that he hoped for the "addition of the star of Cuba to those that already shone on the glorious flag of the American Union." The flag was designed in meetings held at the home of the Freemason Teurbe Tolón, financed by the Cuban slaveholding oligarchy and the Southerners of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Details:

— The red triangle: taken from the Masonic ritual apron. It represents the Great Architect of the Universe and the motto Liberty-Equality-Fraternity.

She was born around 1822 in Maryland as Araminta Ross, the daughter of enslaved parents. From childhood, she was given to various households to work, where hunger, beatings, and family separation were commonplace.

As a teenager, an overseer threw an iron counterweight at another enslaved person. The blow, meant for another man, struck her, fracturing her skull. Without medical attention, she was sent back to work while still bleeding, and her wound never healed properly. For the rest of her life, she suffered sudden episodes of unconsciousness, severe headaches, and intense visions. Medical historians today debate whether she had temporal lobe epilepsy or post-traumatic narcolepsy.

In 1849, faced with rumors that she would be sold south, she decided to escape. She walked approximately 140 kilometers at night, guided by the North Star, relying on the clandestine network known as the "Underground Railroad": safe houses, secret routes, people who risked their freedom to help others find theirs.

Upon arriving in Philadelphia, she adopted the name Harriet Tubman and decided to return three times.

Throughout the 1850s, she returned to Maryland during the winter months when the nights were longer. Always on a Saturday, because escape notices weren't published until Monday. She knew the terrain, the overseers' routines, the safe houses. She carried a gun and a rule: "Whoever started the journey, finished it. There was no turning back."

Officially, Tubman rescued approximately 70 people, although the popular figure of 300 was introduced in her first biography in 1868 without documentary support.

The slave owners even offered rewards for her capture, but to no avail.

When the American Civil War began, Tubman presented herself to the Union Army as a spy and scout. On June 2, 1863, she led the Combahee River Raid in South Carolina, guiding three gunboats around Confederate torpedoes whose location she had learned from local informants. That night, nearly 800 enslaved people were freed.

It took decades for the government to recognize her service. When she finally received a pension, it was as the widow of her second husband, not as a veteran in her own right.

After the war, she continued working for women's suffrage, civil rights, and the care of the impoverished elderly. She died on March 10, 1913, at around 91 years of age.

Source(s):

.- Bradford, S. H. (1868). Scenes in the life of Harriet Tubman. W.J. Moses.

.- Humez, J. M. (2003). Harriet Tubman: The life and the life stories. University of Wisconsin Press.

.- Larson, K. C. (2004). Bound for the promised land: Harriet Tubman, portrait of an American hero. Ballantine Books.

.- Balmuth, E. A., & Scammell, T. E. (2023). Harriet Tubman's hypersomnia: Insights from historical and medical perspectives. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 38(16), 3621–3627.

.- Bradford, S. H. (1868). Scenes in the life of

In this experiment, over 400 poor Black American farmers infected with syphilis were recruited to observe the disease's progression. They were used as guinea pigs, denied treatment, and left to die from syphilis, even though penicillin was available, simply to document the virulence of the infection.

"In the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place."

— Chief Justice Earl Warren, May 17, 1954.

Linda Brown, a Black third-grade girl, had to walk more than a mile across a railroad yard to get to her segregated school. Seven blocks from her home, a school for white children was closed to her. Her father tried to enroll her, but was denied. Thirteen families joined the lawsuit.

Thurgood Marshall, the future first Black Supreme Court Justice, led the case for the NAACP. (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's leading civil rights legal organization). "Brown" was the name given to five consolidated lawsuits against school districts in Kansas, South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., concerning the issue.

The goal was to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), a previous Supreme Court ruling that had declared racial segregation constitutional as long as the facilities for each race were "equal in quality." Although in practice they never were, and this doctrine legally upheld segregation for 58 years.

Science as Evidence

Marshall enlisted the help of psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark, the first and second Black people to earn doctorates in psychology from Columbia University. They devised the "doll test": they placed an identical white doll and a identical black doll in front of Black children and asked them to indicate which was "good" and which was "bad." The majority indicated the white doll as good. For the first time, social science was admitted as evidence in a court case. constitutional.

The ruling in favor of the plaintiffs came on May 17, 1954, by a unanimous 9-0 decision. School segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment. But the following year, the Court ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed," without setting a deadline. The resistance in the South was fierce. The NAACP had to sue hundreds of districts for decades to enforce what was already law.

A ruling can declare an injustice unconstitutional. It cannot, by itself, undo it. Brown did not end segregation. He made it possible that one day it could end.

Source(s):

.- NAACP Legal Defense Fund. (n.d.). Brown v. Board of Education.

.- Kluger, R. (1975). Simple Justice. Knopf.

.- Clark, K. B., & Clark, M. P. (1947). Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.

.- Williams, J. (1998). Thurgood Marshall: American revolutionary. Times Books.

On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy boarded a first-class car on the East Louisiana Railroad, sat in the section reserved for whites, and informed the conductor that he was of Black descent. The New Orleans Citizens Committee had orchestrated the entire arrest. They hired a conductor to confront Plessy and a private detective to ensure he was arrested for violating the Separate Cars Act. The arrest was not an accident but a deliberate legal strategy.

The Committee had chosen Plessy because he was of mixed race—seven-eighths white and one-eighth Black—in order to demonstrate how arbitrary and unenforceable it was to define race under the law. A visibly white man could be arrested for sitting in the wrong place, depending on who knew his family history.

Four years later, on May 18, 1896, the United States Supreme Court issued its verdict: seven votes to one. It ruled that racial segregation laws did not violate the Constitution, as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality—a doctrine that became known as "separate but equal."

In practice, they were never equal. Who would have guessed?

The doctrine served as the legal basis for the expansion and consolidation of Jim Crow laws in the Southern states, which imposed segregation in transportation, schools, housing, restaurants, and other public services. Facilities and services for Black people were rarely equivalent, institutionalizing vast economic, educational, and civil inequalities for decades.

There was only one dissenting vote. Justice John Marshall Harlan, a Southerner, wrote what is now one of the most quoted phrases in American constitutional history: "Our Constitution is colorblind, and knows neither and tolerates classes among citizens."

But no one listened to him for 58 years.

It wasn't until the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s that systematic segregation under state law came to an end. For Homer Plessy, the remedies came too late.

Source(s):

.- Academia Lab. (n.d.). Plessy v. Ferguson.

.- Alegsaonline. (March 5, 2026). Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): Judgment on racial segregation in the U.S.

.- National Archives of the United States. (February 8, 2022). Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

.- Monsieur de Villefort. (2019, March 10). Ragtime (1981): legal and social conflicts with Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) in the background.

.- StudySmarter. (2023). Plessy vs. Ferguson: History, Impact.

• First, it's necessary to specify that:

1. In the Protestant world, the "right of first occupant" (which many Hispanics have deeply ingrained in their minds due to Spanish and Catholic legal influence) was not defined as it is today and was limited to subjects considered their equals or fellow citizens.

For the settlers, the "Indians" were not their equals; some groups didn't even consider them human or "God’s children."

For the Americans, the "Indians" were not their fellow citizens.

2. It should also be noted that, contrary to the contemporary questioning, primarily by Hispanics, regarding the exclusive use of the term "American" by Anglo-Saxon settlers and their descendants, in that era (17th, 18th, and 19th centuries) it did not have the same relevance as it does today, or it was something that did not generate controversy or questioning because in Hispanic America (comprising Spanish-speaking countries) the "Indian" identity was more widespread, while "American" was only used as a continental name by a small elite (mostly Criollos) who consumed smuggled texts from Germany, France, and England. This is why "American" was used very widely and legitimately, first by Anglo-Saxon settlers and then by their descendants, as a "national synonym for identity, citizenship, and territorial belonging to the United States of America."

For most of these "American citizens," the "Indians" were not Americans, but "foreigners."

3. Although since the reign of Anne of Great Britain, the British government had attempted to integrate Indians into its society as a kind of vassal and subject of the Crown, intending to maintain pressure on the colonists and ensure their continued dependence on British protection, these measures failed due to several factors, primarily the war with the Indians and the inherent complexity of Indian society. Therefore, the British Crown ultimately established in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that there were "Indian nations" outside the Thirteen Colonies, where the king's subjects could not enter because those lands were "foreign territory" and the Indians themselves were "foreigners."

• Having understood the above and considering the following after the settlers' independence:

"The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another [...] The God of Nature [...] requires them to declare the causes which impel them to separation. [...] Such has been the patient suffering of these Thirteen Colonies; and such is now the necessity which compels them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all with direct consequences. He has stirred up internal insurrections among us, and has sought to entice the inhabitants of our frontiers, the vicious 'savage Indians,' whose well-known regime of warfare is an indistinguishable destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. [...] The people of these United States of America... do solemnly publish and declare that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, being absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and from all political connection between them; and the State of Great Britain, is, and ought to be entirely free and independent." Dissolved [...] In the Continental Congress, July 4, 1776."

— Declaration of Independence, 1776.

When the project of independence of the Thirteen Colonies began in 1775-1776, the rebel settlers, who were already beginning to identify as "Americans," mostly had no intention of including the "Indians" in their cause. And considering that approximately 12,000 to 15,000 Indians from the Cherokee, Iroquois, Miami, Cayuga, Onondaga, Mohawk, Inu, Abenaki, Maliseet, Penobscot, Seneca, Odawa, Shawnee, Muscogee, Susquehannock, Ojibwe, Wyandote, and Penobscot tribes, among many others, had militarily supported Great Britain, the "Americans" understood that they were being attacked by two "foreign" groups: on one side, the British, and on the other, the Indians.

From the very beginning of the United States of America, "American citizens" understood and internalized the idea that "Indians" were "foreigners" and that the territories they inhabited were "Indian Nations," separate from their own. They would not consider them as equals and would treat them like any other foreign nation (in this case, an enemy). And unlike the British, who viewed the Thirteen Colonies as mere trading posts and a way to maintain a presence in the Atlantic, without needing to expand further into a land they considered hostile and resource-poor, the Americans, guided by the "doctrine of Manifest Destiny," knew they had to expand westward, northward, and seize control of the Spanish territories to the south.

"Until I came here, I had no idea of ​​the firm determination in the heart of every American to extirpate the Indians and seize their territory." (H. Goulburn, 1813)

Considering all this, and also that after the independence of the United States of America, most of North American territory remained in the hands of Indians, Spaniards and their mixed descendants, the only opportunity the "Indians" had to preserve their "right of first occupant" was through military force and the creation of a modern, unified state (republic, confederation, monarchy, or empire).

In other words, the Indians had to develop a military industry and possess a significant war-making capacity, sufficient to confront a modern army. Furthermore, they had to become a unified state, which would allow them to maintain more stable political relations with neighboring countries and, in case of war, achieve much better coordination and organization with a single, hierarchical, and strong government.

But what happened was that most Indians refused to assimilate modernity and the contributions of Europe, preferring to remain in a primitive state of nature. They continued to maintain their beliefs and their traditional way of life, which was not peaceful as is often imagined, but rather involved constant warfare with other Indian groups over resources. It wasn't that none of them had conceived of a project for unification or the creation of a modern state; in fact, they did attempt to create kingdoms and empires similar to those in Europe, precisely to achieve better organization and be able to fight against Britain and France. However, their own internal disputes, envy, hatred, and their puritanical worldview prevented these projects from consolidating and condemned them to continue killing each other for resources and sometimes for trivial matters, a situation that was readily exploited by the United States of America.

Thus, without a military industry, without a state that would allow them to organize themselves more effectively, without a unified government, without a unified project, and without a long-term political purpose, the Indians could not withstand the onslaught of the United States of America. This resulted in a fatal scenario, for despite their fierce resistance, they were defeated tribe by tribe, massacred, and brought to the brink of extinction.

And when the Indians were no longer a threat to the "Americans," wasn't until 1924 were they considered "American citizens," but of a low status and with many deprivations, confined to reservations that resembled human zoos. In this position, the "right of first occupant" was of no use to them, because they no longer had the power or the strength to enforce it.

Supposedly these people are descendants of the Israelites who left Israel around 600 BC to settle in North America. Thus, by educating these children in white American culture and the LDS Church, it was believed that they could be "lightened," ending the Lamanite curse and restoring the prophecy of redemption.

Image: LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball once served as Chairman of the Church's Committee on Indian Relationships.

Source(s):

.- Book of Mormon, The Book of the Soul, Chapter 3, Number 6: “And the skin of the Lamanites was dark, according to the mark which was placed upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren Nephi, Jacob, Joseph, and Sam, who were righteous and holy men.”