Industrialization: Progress or Regression? by Priscilla Torres

According to what I see humanity is immersed in a thought that “only with power and greatness is how things we desire can be achieved”. Many people think that joining any world power is a synonym of progress. Around the 1950s, Puerto Rico became an Associated Free State of the United States. Before that, Puerto Rico was one of the biggest producers of sugar and tobacco along with Cuba. Agriculture was the principal job in the country. When my great-great-grandfather moved from Spain to Puerto Rico, he bought land, and he was dedicated to the cultivation of sugar and tobacco. That was the principal business of my family. When Puerto Rico became a part of the United States, the industrialization empowered the whole country, and many Puerto Ricans thought that the progress had come to Puerto Rico. However, the acclaimed progress, that should have brought help and happiness, affected the family’s finances, agricultural knowledge, and relationships.

As a result of the so-called “progress”, agriculture in Puerto Rico started to decline rapidly. At that time, my great-grandfather was the one who was handling the family business. Workers started to move to the city, and many others immigrated to the United States to acquire a better education and job. As a consequence, my great-grandfather’s business was ruined, and he decided to work with cattle, but in a lower scale. Agriculture in Puerto Rico fell as does a rock falls by a huge precipice that within seconds disappears. In other words, it was completely gone, and it was substituted by commerce and the support of the United States. My grandfather and his brother learned just a little bit about agriculture and cattle, and they only used to work at it on the weekends. However, it was mostly as a hobby, not a lucrative venture.

Another effect of this “progress” was the loss of agricultural knowledge. My grandfather and his siblings were raised in the city in a completely different way from the country side. They studied and worked there. The two boys only learned a little bit about farming the land. Then, my grandfather got married with my grandmother, and my two uncles knew even less about farming than my grandparents. They took as a hobby the cultivation of lettuce and sold it, but also just on weekends. While my uncles grew up, that hobby started to disappear, and the land was starting to be used just for family meetings. While my family was growing in size, the good knowledge of the land was being thrown into a garbage disposal, like something that has no value anymore.

The last and worst effect that the progress brought to my family was precisely the damage of it. Several years ago, many family members used to go to the land to spend time and have a good time all together. Then, those days started to disappear too. Everything began when some of my mom’s cousins said that they wanted to sell the land. This caused various controversies. Some of them wanted to keep it for family meetings. Others simply prefer to ignore anything related to the land. Because before selling it, they have to pay taxes, and in this moment they don’t have that money. Nowadays, my mother and her siblings don’t have a good relationship with all their cousins because of this. Furthermore, the reality is that the relationship with the family is getting damaged, for the blame of a piece of land that is not being used for its principal purpose. A family is an institution that develops the real progress. However, because of the “progress”, most of our institution is about to break.

In conclusion, something that should have meant progress really brought economic problems to my family. It also affected us in our daily lives, and what is worse, in our family relationships. It is incredible to see how that “progress” can really destruct valuable things. Now the question is, does becoming part of a world power really mean that Puerto Ricans will get better things than what we had before? For some, it has meant progress, but for many it has meant the lost of many valuable things.