Puerto Rico is a special case in American history, neither fish nor fowl, and so off the radar of the average citizen as to almost not exist. Taken as a prize in the 1898 Spanish-American War, the island was swiftly made into a colony of sorts, the land pressed into service for sugar companies, while a large segment of the population - who to this day don't have the right to vote for president - was put into uniform or brought to the U.S. mainland in a little-known or -understood farm worker relocation program in the postwar period. In 1952, the island was made into a commonwealth, a status it still holds today, which makes it something less than a state and yet more than a colony; though plenty of Puerto Ricans would argue that it much more strongly resembles the latter.The first major Latin American group to emigrate to the American mainland, Puerto Ricans in the States number about three million today, though ignorance of where they're from and what they're about is endemic. To illustrate this ignorance in her documentary Yo Soy Boricua, Pa'que tu lo Sepas!, Rosie Perez tells a story about being asked while she was in college where Puerto Rico was. Thus the reason for her film - which she co-directed with Oscar-winner Liz Garbus - which mixes Perez family history with that of the island and its people in general. It's sort of an elaborate home movie mixed with social studies, but an impressive effort, nonetheless.
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