It Could Happen Here Weekly 246

The United States has fourteen "insular areas" — territories that belong to the country but are not part of it. Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa together hold about four million people, none of whom can vote in federal elections or send voting representatives to Congress. As Carlos, a journalist from Puerto Rico, explains in the first segment of this compilation episode, the way Americans imagine their country — the "logo map" of the lower 48 states — hides the reality that the U.S. is a literal empire with overseas possessions it continues to colonize today.

The Empire Hidden in Plain Sight

The U.S. colonial project began not with grand wars of conquest but with bird shit. In the 1850s, American farmers desperately needed guano — accumulated bird and bat droppings — as fertilizer for industrial agriculture. The Guano Islands Act of 1856 allowed any U.S. citizen to claim uninhabited islands with guano deposits in the name of the United States. By 1902, Americans had added ninety-four islands to U.S. dominion. These were uninhabited, so they weren't colonies until U.S. industry moved in, establishing mining outfits that used Black laborers induced to work under false pretenses in horrible conditions.