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labored for an average of only 14 cents per hour. (19)<br />
The war effort only intensified the misery. The<br />
relative prosperity that delighted Euro-Amerikans with the<br />
war was reversed in Puerto Rico. Starvation grew much<br />
worse. The New Deal W.P.A. jobs program closed down<br />
in 1942. Unemployment more than doubled. With food<br />
shipments deliberately restricted, prices soared 53% in less<br />
than one year. A Presbyterian woman missionary wrote<br />
Eleanor Roosevelt, the U.S. President's wife, in despair<br />
from Mayagiiez: "The children in this region are slowly<br />
starving. " (20)<br />
U.S. Governor Winship made it clear that the New<br />
Deal's policy was not only to help subsidize the war effort<br />
out of the misery of the Puerto Rican people, but to use<br />
starvation to beat them into political submission. In his<br />
1939 report, Winship proudly announced that the colonial<br />
administration was already extracting millions of dollars<br />
from starving Puerto Rico for the coming war.<br />
Ten million dollars worth of valuable land had<br />
been given by the puppet colonial legislature free to the<br />
U.S. Navy for a naval base. Puerto Ricans had paid for<br />
dredging out San Juan Harbor so that it was deep enough<br />
for U.S. battleships. New U.S. Navy repair docks in San<br />
Juan were also paid for involuntarily by the Puerto Rican<br />
people. Further, local taxes had also paid for the construction<br />
of new U.S. military airstrips on Culebra, Isla<br />
Grande, Mona Island and elsewhere.<br />
In desperately poor Puerto Rico the local taxes<br />
collected by the imperialist occupation forces were used for<br />
their own military needs rather than clinics or food. This<br />
policy was actually quite common for WWII: for example,<br />
both the Nazi and Japanese armies also forced the local inhabitants<br />
in conquered areas to support military construction<br />
for them. (21) The U.S. imperialists were in good<br />
company.<br />
While it may have seemed like bad propaganda to<br />
so obviously increase misery among the Puerto Rican people,<br />
the New Deal believed otherwise. It was economic terrorism.<br />
U.S. military officials said that the Nationalist<br />
resistance to the draft had been broken. They admitted<br />
that the reason hungry Puerto Ricans were submitting to<br />
the draft was that even army rations were 'pay and food<br />
exceeding prevailing Island wages. " It appeared to tR<br />
military, however, that only one-third of the eligible men<br />
could be used due to the widespread physical debilitation<br />
from disease and malnutrition. (22) Still, Amerika's "War<br />
to Save Democracy" was off to a good start.<br />
The war further accelerated the trend towards set-