September 20, 2023 • 41 mins
Gonzales v. Williams is one of the Insular Cases, and because it was about the citizenship status of Isabel González of Puerto Rico, it stands out from the many other Insular Cases that focus on goods and tariffs.
Research:
- Burnett, Christina Duffy. "’They say I am not an American...’: The Noncitizen National and the Law of American Empire.” Virginia Journal of International Law. Vol. 48, No. 4. 2008.
- Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States at October Term, 1903. “Gonzalez v. Williams.” No. 225.. Argued December 4, 7, 1903.-Decided January 4, 1904. https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep192/usrep192001/usrep192001.pdf
- Connecticut General Assembly Office of Legislative Research. “OLR Research Report.” 3/3/1997. https://www.cga.ct.gov/PS97/rpt/olr/htm/97-R-0359.htm
- Erman, Sam. “Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire (Studies in Legal History).” Cambridge University Press. 2018.
- Erman, Sam. “Meanings of Citizenship in the U.S. Empire: Puerto Rico, Isabel Gonzalez, and the Supreme Court, 1898 to 1905.” Journal of American Ethnic History. Summer 2008. Volume 27. Number 4. Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27501851
- Fifty-first Congress. “An act in amendment to the various acts relative to immigration and the importation of aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor.” chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/26/STATUTE-26-Pg1084a.pdf
- Halperin, Anna Danziger. “Isabel González and Puerto Rican Citizenship: A Q&A with Historian Sam Erman.” New York Historical Society Museum and Library. https://www.nyhistory.org/blogs/isabel-gonzalez-and-puerto-rican-citizenship-a-qa-with-historian-sam-erman
- On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court Of Appeals For The Tenth Circuit. “Brief of the Descendants of Dred Scott and Isabel Gonzalez as Amici Curae in support of the Petitioners.” No. 21-1394 in the Supreme Court of the United States.
- Silsby, Gilen. “The Legal Story Behind Puerto Rico’s Colonial Conundrum.” USC TrojanFamily. Spring 2019. https://news.usc.edu/trojan-family/sam-erman-usc-puerto-rican-citizenship/
- Silsby, Gilen. “Who in the world was Isabel Gonzalez?” With Sam Erman. USC Gould School of Law. 10/17/2018. https://gould.usc.edu/about/news/?id=4489
- Women and the American Story. “Puerto Rican Citizenship.” https://wams.nyhistory.org/industry-and-empire/expansion-and-empire/puerto-rican-citizenship/
- New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]), 25 Nov. 1906. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1906-11-25/ed-1/seq-13/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Not long ago, we talked about the Insular Cases, and
I mentioned that there was one particular case that I
wanted to spend more time on. I'd kind of done
the thing where I was like, I wish this whole
episode were about this one case that was Gonzalas versus Williams,
which the US Supreme Court decided in nineteen oh four.
(00:37):
So some scholars consider this to be one of the
Insular cases.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Others don't.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
There are just lots of different ways of grouping and
looking at all those decisions. There were a couple of
reasons why it really caught my attention while I was
researching that earlier episode. One is that most of the
Insular cases were about goods and tariffs, the first ones
to be decided, or some times called the Insular tariff cases.
(01:02):
That's how much the focus was on tariffs. This one, though,
was not about goods. It was about a person and
her family. And this was also the first time that
the Supreme Court really looked at the question of Puerto
Rican's citizenship status. Although as we were going to talk
about they looked at the question, they didn't decide on
an answer to it.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
So we're not going to go back over the entirety
of the insular cases since our episode on those came
out just a few weeks ago, but just for a
brief refresher, this was a collection of US Supreme Court
cases decided after the Spanish American War related to territory
that the US had acquired in the Caribbean and the
Pacific at the time. That included Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii,
(01:48):
and part of the Samoan Archipelago.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Prior to this, whenever the United States acquired new territory,
it was just taken for granted that that territory would
ultimately become one or more states. But these court decisions
established the idea that, unlike all the other territory that
the US had acquired before these islands were unincorporated, their
(02:12):
status as a territory was not a temporary stop on
the way to becoming a state. They could remain territories indefinitely.
They belonged to the United States, but were not fully
part of it, The Court described these territories as home
to quote, alien races, and their citizens were not considered
US citizens or entitled to all the same constitutional rights
(02:35):
that US citizens were.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
The first batch of insular cases was decided in nineteen
oh one, and the cases that followed continued to revise
and clarify how the Court interpreted the status of these
territories and the people who lived there. Gonzales versus Williams
was decided in nineteen oh four and it involved the
case of Isabelle Gonzalez, who had been born in Puerto
(02:58):
Rico in eighteen eighty two. When Isabel was born, Puerto
Rico was under Spanish control, and Spain made a distinction
between peninsulares or people born on the Iberian Peninsula, and creolos,
or people of Spanish descent born in its colonies. People
born in Puerto Rico were considered Spanish subjects unless their
(03:20):
father was a Spanish citizen, either born on the peninsula
or nationalized.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
The Spanish American War took place when Isabel Gonzalez was
about sixteen, and after the war ended, Spain seeded Puerto
Rico to the United States. The US also gained control
of Guam and the Philippines, and Cuba became an independent nation,
although it was initially occupied by the United States. The
Treaty of Peace between Spain and the US that formally
(03:49):
ended this war was very careful in how it talked
about the people who were living in what had been
Spanish territory. Spanish subjects who were native to the peninsula
and were living in the seeded territory were allowed to
stay and retain all their property in business, and to
retain their Spanish citizenship if they declared their intent to
(04:09):
do so in court within a year, but quote the
civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of
the territories hereby ceded to the United States shall be
determined by the Congress. Congress didn't determine the civil rights
and political status of the native inhabitants of those territories
(04:30):
right away, though. In terms of Puerto Rico, President William
McKinley signed the Forker Act or the Organic Act of
nineteen hundred into law on April second of nineteen hundred.
The Foriker Act came up in our episode on the
Insular Cases because one of its provisions was a tariff
on goods moving between Puerto Rico and the United States,
(04:52):
so in that case, the Supreme Court was looking at
the whether that tariff was constitutional. The Forker Act also
set up a civilian government for Puerto Rico, and in
section seven the Act read quote, all inhabitants continuing to
reside therein who were Spanish subjects on the eleventh day
of April eighteen hundred and ninety nine, and then resided
(05:14):
in Puerto Rico, and their children born subsequent there too,
shall be deemed and held to be citizens of Puerto Rico,
and as such entitled to the protection of the United States.
Accept such as shall have elected to preserve their allegiance
to the Crown of Spain on or before the eleventh
day of April nineteen hundred, in accordance with the provisions
(05:36):
of the Treaty of Peace between the United States and
Spain entered into on the eleventh day of April eighteen
hundred and ninety nine, And they, together with such citizens
of the United States as may reside in Puerto Rico,
shall constitute a body politic under the name of the
People of Puerto Rico, with governmental powers as hereafter conferred,
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and with power to sue and be sued as such.
In other words, when the Four Car Act went into effect,
Isabelle Gonzalez was legally a citizen of Puerto Rico, but
the law didn't actually say that citizens of Puerto Rico
were also citizens of the United States, just that they
(06:18):
were entitled to the protection of the United States. Like
it didn't specifically say they weren't citizens either, there was
a vagueness to this. In nineteen hundred, shortly before she
turned eighteen, Isabelle Gonzalez married Jose Caballero. They had a
daughter together, who they named Dolores. But then in nineteen
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oh two, Jose died of tuberculosis, and when he died,
Isabel was pregnant with their second child. The sequence of
events that followed is a little tricky to piece together
because there's court testimony and personal documents and family lore
that all contradict one another at some points, but it
is clear that Isabel Gonzalez didn't think she was going
(07:04):
to be able to support herself and her children by herself.
Her mother was facing financial hardship as well. Isabel's brother
Luis had already gone to New York to try to
find better paying work so he could send money back
to her. Either Isabel decided to join her brother in
Staten Island with the hope of finding a better paying
(07:24):
job there, or she was planning to marry a man
named Adolfo Vignals, who had moved to New York ahead
of her to find a job and a place to
live before she arrived. Either way, Isabel left her daughter
with her mother and sailed to New York in nineteen
oh two, at the age of twenty. When she set sail,
(07:46):
Puerto Ricans were generally being allowed to travel freely between
Puerto Rico and the United States, but while she was
on the way to New York, the US Treasury Department
issued new guidelines for arriving Puerto Ricans, specifically that they
were quote subject to the same examinations as are enforced
against people from countries over which the United States claims
(08:09):
no right of sovereignty, so the examinations being referenced there
fell under the Immigration Act of eighteen ninety one. This
law had established the office of Superintendent of Immigration, who
was an officer of the Treasury Department. If you were thinking,
why was the Treasury Department having anything to do with this.
(08:29):
That's why this law required the commanding officers of arriving
vessels to report the name, nationality, last residence, and destination
of any quote aliens on board. The law empowered inspection
officers to remove people from the ships for examination and
to detain them, and it also made the Marine Hospital
(08:51):
Service responsible for any medical examinations. This law stated that
quote the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from
admission into the United States in accordance with the existing
acts regulating immigration, other than those concerning Chinese laborers.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
These terms are outdated. Heads up all idiots, insane persons,
paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, persons
suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease, persons
who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous
crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, and polygamists. The law
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also barred anyone whose passage had been paid for by
someone else, with certain exceptions. The law specified that people
attempting to enter the US unlawfully would ideally be sent
back on the same ship that they had arrived on.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
As the Bell Gonzalez was refused entry into the United
States because officials thought she was likely to become a
public charge, and she was detained at Ellis Island. We
will have more on that after a sponsor break. In
(10:10):
addition to the new policies treating Puerto Ricans as aliens
at port, when Isabel Gonzalez arrived in New York in
August of nineteen oh two, the Port of New York
had a newly appointed Commissioner of Immigration that was William Williams.
Williams was aggressive about turning people away, and in his
(10:30):
first year in office, he doubled the number of people
who were excluded at Ellis Island. In particular, he was
really focused on people he deemed likely to become a
public charge. He ordered that anyone who was found to
be traveling with less than ten dollars should face additional scrutiny.
Women who were pregnant and unmarried faced additional scrutiny as well,
(10:54):
and single women were allowed entry only if a family
member came to the port to get them. A lot
of accounts say that Isabel Gonzalez tried to avoid problems
at port by making sure that she had eleven dollars
with her and making arrangements ahead of time for her
family to pick her up when she arrived. It is
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certainly possible that she did both of those things, but
since Puerto Ricans weren't being treated as aliens at port
when she left, it's not as clear that she made
these arrangements because she was anticipating potential problems. Regardless, even
if she did this, these steps were not enough to
offset the fact that she was Puerto Rican, unmarried, and
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visibly pregnant, and she was detained when she arrived at
Ellis Island on August fourth, nineteen oh two. Her case
was sent to the Board of Special Inquiry, which held
hearings for people whose immigration status was ambiguous or complicated
in some way. The board usually held these hearings really quickly,
but they were not public and most people didn't have
(11:59):
any kind of opportunity for legal representation. Gonzalez's first hearing
was the next day, and her uncle, Domingo Coyazzo and
her brother Luis Gonzalez were both there. Coaso had married
the Gonzalez aunt, Armina, and he had a long history
as an activist prior to the Spanish American War. Puerto
Ricans and Cubans had come together to advocate for greater
(12:22):
autonomy from Spain, and Coyoso had been one of those activists,
including working in Cuba as a publisher and organizer and
joining the Cuban Revolutionary Party. After the Spanish American War,
Cuba had become independent, and many Puerto Rican activists, like
Cyazo had turned their focus toward advocating for Puerto Rican statehood,
(12:44):
believing that was the best way to secure more political autonomy.
Coyaso's work as an activist had also connected him to
Afro Puerto Rican activist and collector Arturo Alfonso Schomberg. We
covered him on the show in twenty twenty one. Gonzalez's
hearing on August fifth was the first of several, and
there were some patterns among all of them. US investigators
(13:08):
based a lot of their questions and their conclusions on
stereotypes and racist assumptions about Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans.
Like a lot of Americans saw Puerto Ricans as lazy
and promiscuous, so there was a big focus on Gonzalez's
marital status and whether or not she was capable of
being a good mother. Also, a lot of focus on
(13:29):
whether her male relatives could or would support her. Meanwhile,
Gonzales and her family saw her attention at Ellis Island
as an insult to her honor. Some of their statements
that these hearings come across as trying to say whatever
they thought would work to get her released and back
with her family, even if they were stretching the truth
(13:50):
a bit to do it. Another thing to note here
is that Isabel gave birth less than two weeks after
she was released, so it's also likely that her family
so her pregnancy as a motivation to just get her
out of detention as quickly as possible. In that first hearing,
Gonzalez's uncle and brother focused on the reason she had
(14:11):
been given for being detained, that she was likely to
become a public charge. They explained that the father of
her first child had died, and they described Adolpho Vignal's
not as her fiance, but as her husband. They said
he wasn't at this hearing because he had to work,
so there's a reason for us not to be there,
and also that he had a job. Koyazo said that
(14:34):
he would take care of Gonzalez if for some reason
Vinals could not Koyazo was a printer and made twenty
five dollars a week, But the board didn't really seem
to believe any of these arguments, and they really insisted
that if Gonzalez was married, her husband should be the
person to come for her. Two days later, Isabel's aunt
(14:54):
Ermina testified before the board, once again saying that her husband, Domingoko,
was making twenty five dollars a week and that they
would make sure that Isabel was taken care of. This time,
the board criticized Ermina for coming by herself. Ermina also
had a job, but.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
The investigators didn't seem to care about her financial contributions
to the household or how it could help make sure
Isabel did not become a public charge. Then Isabel's brother
Luis made another appearance before the board, and this time
he tried to make an argument that was based on
an established idea in Spanish law, but which American investigators
(15:35):
did not find convincing at all. That's the idea of rapto,
which could encompass both seduction and abandonment under the Spanish
laws that had previously applied in Puerto Rico. If a
man seduced a woman under the promise of marriage but
then did not marry her, her family could press charges,
and that if he was convicted, he could be ordered
(15:57):
to either marry her or to pay a fine and
serve prison sentence. Luis said that as soon as his
sister was released, their family was going to take her
to the church to be married, but the board was
really opposed to this idea, that there was a man
who was going to be forced to get married without
his consent. Finally, on August eighteenth, nineteen oh two, Domingo
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Cuyazzo swore out a petition of habeas corpus, which attorney
Charles E. Labarbier filed with the US Circuit Court for
the Southern District of New York. Isabel Gonzalez was paroled
pending the Circuit Court's decision, and on September one, nineteen
oh two, she gave birth to a daughter named Ava.
On the birth certificate, Isabel's name is listed as Isabel
(16:43):
Vignal's and Ava's father is listed as Adolpho Vignal's, a mechanic.
On October seventh, nineteen oh two, a judge issued the
Circuit Court's decision regarding Isabel Gonzalez's status that she was
quote by birth, an alien, and since she had not
been naturalized, she was still an alien. This meant that
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the Treasury Department could continue to treat Puerto Ricans as
aliens at port. That's something that the Department also applied
to Filipinos shortly after this decision came out. But since
she was now married to Adolpho Vignal's immigration officials really
no longer had any cause to refuse her entry into
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the United States. A lot of the writing about these
hearings and the Supreme Court case that followed make Isabel
Gonzalez sound sort of like a passive participant, with various
officials trying to keep her out of the US and
lawyers and family members making arguments on her behalf. But
at this point she could have dropped this whole issue
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since she was now in the US. Instead, she tried
to use her experience to prove that all Puerto Ricans
should be considered US citizens, and that meant taking this
to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, we don't have like a lot of personal reflections
from her that I know of, but there is a
lot of evidence that she was like the active instigator
of this effort to bring citizenship to everyone in Puerto Rico,
and we will have more on that after a sponsor break.
(18:25):
Isabelle Gonzalez's detention and the Circuit court decision about her
citizenship status caught the attention of Federico Degata, a Gonzalez
who was born in Puerto Rico and then studied law
in Madrid. Like Isabelle's uncle Domingo Cliazzo, Degato had been
an advocate for Puerto Rican self government and autonomy prior
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to the Spanish American War that included traveling back to
Spain in pursuit of that goal. The Fouricker Act had
granted Puerto Rico one non voting representative in Congress that
was a Commissioner to the House. Federico Degato was the
first person elected to that role, and he was serving
as commissioner as all of this was happening. One part
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of Degato's campaign platform had been the idea that Puerto
Ricans were already US citizens and needed to be acknowledged
as such. Once he was in Washington, d C. He
had started aggressively looking for ways to push this issue.
He kept an eye out for court cases or other
legal action involving Puerto Ricans, and his office fielded calls
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from Puerto Ricans in the Caribbean and in North America
about issues related to their civil rights. For his own part,
he tried to apply for a US passport, which in theory,
would have identified him as a US citizen once it
was issued. Ultimately, the US passed legislation allowing residents of
the insular territories to be issued US passports, but ones
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that did not identify them as US citizens.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
During his efforts to get a passport, Degato had been
connected to the law firm of Frederick R. Kudair Junior,
who specialized in international law. Kudair's father was also a
prominent lawyer, and both of them were really well connected
in Washington, d c. And New York. Kudair had been
one of the attorneys on two of the first insular cases,
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Delima versus Bidwell and Downs versus Bidwell. He had been
representing people who were suing George R. Bidwell, collector of
the Port of New York, for charging import duties on
goods that had been imported from Puerto Rico. So it
makes total sense that both Kudair and Degato would be
interested in Gonzalez's case and in the possibility of taking
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it to the Supreme Court. Degato had even been protesting
against the treatment of Puerto Ricans's aliens at US ports
of entry while Gonzalez was being detained. Kudair and Degato
joined Paul Fuller and Charles E. Labarbier, who had been
involved in the Corpus petition.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Briefs in the case of Isabel Gonzales versus William Williams,
United States Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York,
were submitted to the Supreme Court in late nineteen oh three.
By that point, Isabel's brother Luis had brought their mother
and their younger sisters to New York from Puerto Rico,
and they had also brought Isabel's youngest daughter, Dolores.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Gonzalez's legal team did not try to argue that Puerto
Ricans were fundamentally entitled to the same constitutional rights as
white male citizens of the continental United States. Instead, they
cited a whole array of previous decisions related to citizenship
and who was entitled to it, and cases that upheld
limits on the rights of citizenship, including dread Scott versus Sandford,
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which had decided that enslaved Africans and their descendants were
not and could not be citizens. That decision was overturned
by the fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and they also
argued that their could not be an American alien. We
should note that this legal team was not arguing broadly
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on behalf of all the residents of all the insular territories.
They were focused only on the citizenship status of Puerto Ricans.
This was in part because the idea of citizenship for
Filipinos was incredibly contentious. As we talked about in our
episode on the insular cases, if Filipinos became US citizens,
roughly ten percent of the US population would then be Filipino,
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where a lot of people found that idea incredibly threatening,
largely because of racism and prejudice. Gonzalez's lawyers also did
not try to argue that all citizens were entitled to
the same rights and status through citizenship. For example, women
could be US citizens but did not have a constitutional
right to vote. Children were citizens but had very few
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political rights. They were basically building an argument that there
was already room for Puerto Ricans to be city within
the definitions of citizen that the United States was already using,
but then making Puerto Rican citizens would not necessarily confer
any rights beyond what they were already considered to have.
They made comparisons to other imperial powers that similarly had
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different classes of citizenship for different groups of people. I
found a lot of this really hard to read. Of course,
just as one example, Kud's treatment of indigenous people in
these arguments could be really dismissive and inaccurate. He sort
of portrayed them as scattered bands whose disappearance in the
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face of westward expansion was inevitable, and then compared that
to Puerto Rico's established population of almost a million people.
So the argument was, of course Puerto.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Ricans should become citizens, there were hundreds of thousands of
them in Puerto Rico, but indigenous people in the continental
US didn't need to be citizens in this argument because
they were part of other sovereign nations and kind of
disappearing anyway. It was just there's just a thread through
a lot of it that's like, yeah, it's fine for
citizens to not actually be equal. Here's all the ways
(24:12):
that were already not treating all citizens equally at this point,
most indigenous people were not considered citizens.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
And that's fine. Yeah, it hurt me a little. Yeah.
In an amicus brief, Federico Digato approached the idea of
citizenship for Puerto Ricans from a broader and more personal level.
He walked through the transfer of Puerto Rico from Spain
to the United States and argued that by the passage
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of the Foricker Act, Puerto Ricans had acquired citizenship and
been incorporated into the same body politic as those who
were already American citizens. He referenced his own role representing
Puerto Rico in the House, noting that he could not
represent the US citizens living in Puerto Rico if he
were in alien. He also referenced his own admission to
(25:03):
the Supreme Court Bar, something that was at least theoretically
only open to US citizens. Yeah, he's sort of like,
you admitted me to the Supreme Court bar. You only
do that for citizens, So I must be a citizen.
Solicitor General Henry M. Hoyt argued on behalf of the
United States, and his argument as summed up as quote,
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a pellant is not a citizen and is to be
regarded as an alien within the meaning of the immigration laws.
It is conceded that the people of Puerto Rico are
connected with this government by a certain tie distinguishing them
from other ordinary foreigners, that they may be nationals. But
this does not operate to confer citizenship. Must Congress have
(25:47):
intended that all who were not aliens in the strict
and unrelieved sense should escape the immigration laws, or all
that who were not citizens should be subject to them.
The solution of the controversy is dependent solely upon the
proper construction of the law. The Supreme Court heard oral
arguments in December of nineteen oh three and issued its
(26:09):
unanimous decision on January fourth, nineteen oh four. The opinion,
authored by Chief Justice Melville Fuller, read, in part quote,
Gonzalez was a native inhabitant of Puerto Rico and a
Spanish subject, though not of the peninsula when the Session
transferred her allegiance to the United States, and she was
a citizen of Puerto Rico under the Act. And there
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was nothing expressed in the Act, nor reasonably to be
implied therefrom to indicate the intention of Congress that citizens
of Puerto Rico should be considered as aliens and the
right of free access denied to them, But the Court
didn't offer an answer to the question of whether Puerto
Ricans were US citizens, going on to say, quote, we
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are not required to discuss the power of Congress in
the premises or the contention of Gonzalez's council that the
Session of Puerto Rico accomplished the naturalization of its people,
or that of Commissioner Degeto in his excellent argument as
amicus curia that a citizen of Puerto Rico under the
Act of nineteen hundred is necessarily a citizen of the
(27:15):
United States. The question is the narrow one whether Gonzales
was an alien within the meaning of that term as
used in the Act of eighteen ninety one. At the
same time, the Court noted that the Immigration Act of
eighteen ninety one did not apply to the people of
Puerto Rico. Quote, we think it clear that the Act
relates to foreigners as respects this country, to persons owing
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allegiance to a foreign government and citizens or subjects thereof,
and that citizens of Puerto Rico whose permanent allegiance is
due to the United States, who live in the peace
of the dominion of the United States, the organic law
of whose domicile was enacted by the United States and
is in force through officials sworn to support the Constitution
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of the United States, are not aliens, and upon their
arrival by water at the ports of our mainland, are
not alien immigrants. Within the intent and meaning of the
Act of eighteen ninety one, this meant that the Immigration
Commissioner had no jurisdiction to detain Isabel Gonzales at port,
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and it meant that she had not been obligated to
pursue her objections through the Superintendent of the Treasury, as
immigration issues were required to do. The court also noted
that quote, in order to dispose of the case in hand,
we do not find it necessary to review the Chinese
Exclusion Acts and the decisions of this Court thereunder. That
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Act was originally passed in eighteen eighty two and implemented
a ten year ban of all immigration from China with
a few exceptions, was renewed in eighteen ninety two and
made permanent in nineteen oh two. So this ruling did
not extend citizenship to Puerto Rican like Gonzales and her
attorneys had hoped that it would, but Gonzales did continue
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to advocate for Puerto Ricans in both Puerto Rico and
the United States after this point. Among other things, both
she and her uncle Domingo Coyazzo wrote a number of
letters to the editor that were published in the New
York Daily Tribute and in the New York Times. In
a nineteen oh five letter to the editor at the Times,
Gonzalez asked why the US used tariffs to protect its
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rice exports from Louisiana but not coffee exports from Puerto Rico.
In another letter that year, she described the United States
as violently forcing Puerto Rico to abandon customs and traditions
that had come about from being a Spanish colony for
hundreds of years, including cock fighting, bullfighting, and relaxing during
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the Sunday Sabbath. She suggested that the US should instead
follow Britain's model of settling matters related to Hindus and
Muslims in India through their own respective religious laws. This
is a pretty optimistic view of Britain's direct rule over India,
but her point was that the United States was forcibly
imposing its own laws and customs onto Puerto Rico rather
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than respecting the laws and customs that were already in
place there. In August of nineteen oh five, Gonzales wrote
a letter to The Times in which she described loving
astronomy and how when she lived in Puerto Rico, she
thought that in the US, the equipment and machinery needed
to study astronomy would be available to everyone. After coming
to the US, she was disappointed to find that this
(30:33):
was not the case, but hoped that a philanthropist in
the vein of Andrew Carnegie might fund such an endeavor.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
One day in November of nineteen oh six, Gonzales wrote
a letter to the New York Tribune correcting its earlier
reporting on Puerto Rican citizenship. This letter read quote, Sir,
permit me to congratulate you upon your article under the
caption citizenship for Puerto Ricans. It is indeed encouraging and
refreshing to see an influential paper like the New York
(31:02):
Daily Tribune advocating the reforms which will lift Puerto Rico
from its present anonymous political status to that of a
robust child with a proud name and standing under the
American flag. It is not true, however, as you state
in your leader, that the Puerto Ricans quote are subjected
to our immigration laws as aliens. I happen to be
(31:23):
the cause of the removal of that law as it
was applied to Puerto Rico and Filipinos. The Supreme Court
of the United States declared it unconstitutional in my case
Gonzales versus Williams in nineteen oh four, two years after
I was detained at Ellis Island as an alien libel
to become a public charge. Four years have elapsed since then,
(31:44):
and the forecast of my jailers has not as yet
been fulfilled. On the contrary, I am a useful member
of the Puerto Rican colony of New York, and I
have lived long enough to see your patriotic tribune pleading
for the hard working and loyal Puerto Rican New York.
November twenty third, nineteen oh six. Is the Belle Gonzales.
(32:04):
Most of Gonzalez's letters to newspaper editors seem to have
been printed in nineteen oh five. In nineteen oh six,
it's possible that changes to her personal and financial situation
played a part in that she and Adolpho Vignals had
a son together, Adolpho Junior, as well as a daughter,
who died in infancy, but eventually Vignal's returned to Puerto Rico,
(32:26):
apparently abandoning Gonzalez and his son and stepchildren. Isabella's daughter
Ava started living with the Coyazzos and seems to have
eventually been informally adopted into that family. Dolores was placed
in an orphanage.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Her financial situation does seem to have turned around, though,
and when Isabelle married Juan Torres in nineteen fifteen, their
marriage documents described each of them as widowed. They eventually
moved to New Jersey, where she lived until her death
on June eleventh, nineteen seventy one. There's probably a lot
more to be discovered about her life outside of this case.
(33:04):
A lot of what's out there today is thanks to
the work of historians Sam Erman and Gonzalez's great granddaughter
Belinda Torres Mary. In twenty eighteen, Ermin.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Published a book called Almost Citizens Puerto Rico, the US
Constitution and Empire and that looks at this case in
the broader context of Puerto Rican and US history.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
In nineteen seventeen, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones Schaffroth Act.
It outlined a bill of Rights for Puerto Rico and
established a bicameral legislature with a governor appointed by the President.
This act gave both the Puerto Rican governor and the
US executive branch veto power over the Puerto Rican legislature's decisions.
(33:45):
This law also extended statutory citizenship to Puerto Ricans, meaning
that citizenship came from a law and not from the Constitution.
So while this law made most people born in Puerto
Rico citizens of the United States, they still did not
have all the same constitutional rights and protections as citizens
born in one of the states. Puerto Rico was also
(34:08):
still a territory without all the constitutional protections or autonomy
that applied to the States.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Two months later, the US passed the Selective Service Act,
was as World War One was happening. This established a
military draft, and that draft also applied to Puerto Ricans,
and the fact that these two things happened one right
after the other led to an almost conspiracy theory, which
was that the United States had extended citizenship to Puerto
Rico in order to get access to more soldiers as
(34:38):
it prepared to enter the First World War. There are
several problems with that idea, though a big one is
this Act required all men, not just citizens, to register
for the draft, and it ultimately applied to the US
territories of Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, so Puerto Rican
men would have been required to register for the draft,
(35:00):
regardless of whether Puerto Ricans had first been made citizens.
If you are wondering why that draft did not apply
to the Philippines, the status of the Philippines was a
little bit different from other territories. Thanks to the Philippine
Autonomy Act of nineteen sixteen, the Philippines established a National
Guard with the intent of its becoming part of the
(35:20):
American Expeditionary Force, and more than fourteen thousand people volunteered,
but the US was reluctant to accept this proposal, and
the war ended before the Philippine National Guard could be federalized.
And this whole topic of Filipino and Puerto Rican soldiers
during World War One is like a whole other topic.
(35:41):
I feel like there was clearly, like some of the
reluctance of the US to accept these soldiers into the
US Armed Forces was clearly motivated by racism.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
But that's like sort of a whole other thing. There
were definitely wartime factors involved with extending citizenship to Puerto Ricans,
including the fact that after the opening of the Panama Canal,
Puerto Rico lay along major shipping routes. But advocates, including
Domingo Cuiazo, had been trying to get a citizenship law
(36:12):
passed for years. There was political wrangling over this through
multiple presidential administrations and sessions of Congress, so it was
just it was not something that just sort of happened
out of the blue. Immediately before the passage of the
Selective Service Act, other laws continued to refine who was
eligible for citizenship in Puerto Rico until the Nationality Act
(36:35):
of nineteen fifty two, which declared that all people born
in Puerto Rico on or after January thirteenth, nineteen forty
one were US citizens at birth. Today, Puerto Rico is
still considered an unincorporated US territory with one non voting
commissioner in the House of Representatives, and Puerto Rico does
(36:56):
not have delegates in the Electoral College during presidential life elections.
As we talked about in that Insular Cases episode, this
applies to just like so many things involving just daily
life in Puerto Rico. And as a final note, in
that episode on the Insular Cases, we talked about Fittisimanu
versus United States, which was a case on the question
(37:16):
of birthright citizenship for American Samoans which the US Supreme
Court declined to hear in twenty twenty two. Descendants of
Dred Scott and Isabelle Gonzalez filed an amicus brief in
this case. Specifically that was Lynn M. Jackson, great great
granddaughter of Dredd and Harriet Scott, and Belinda trres Mary,
great granddaughter of isabel Gonzalez, who we mentioned earlier. Their
(37:40):
petition was in support of the American Samoan petitioners who
were calling for birthright citizenship and the overturning of the
Insular cases. Oh so much legal doings. Uh huh. Do
you have listener mail to take us out? I do. First,
I have a super quick correction. A couple of people
have pointed out that at the end of our episode
(38:01):
on Lcoricia of Winchester, when we were talking about the
unveiling of her statue. Mm hmmm, we were talking about
how the current King of the UK, King Charles the Third,
was supposed to be there for that unveiling, but was
not there because he had COVID. I called him Charles
the second It's right in the outline, and I didn't
(38:24):
catch it, and neither of us caught it.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
I had a particularly hard time saying the correct words
during the recording of that episode, and later realized that
I also had COVID. I feel like like my mind
and body were just sort of like slowly coming offline
as we were recording that. So thank you to the
(38:47):
people who pointed that out. I just like said the
totally wrong thing. And also we have email from Marci.
Marcy says, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I'm a teacher spending
my summer break getting caught up on past episodes I
missed during school year. Today, while fixing dinner, I was
listening to the Scott Joplin episode.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
I found the inclusion of the maple leaf rags so charming. However,
when I listened to the pod, I listened at one
point five x speed. The effect on the pace of
the music caused me to giggle and brought a Charlie
Chaplin esque scene to mind. I had to stop cooking,
turn the speed back to one X and then listen
again to really take it in. Thank you for all
of your hard work and research. As I teach, I
(39:25):
find myself telling my middle school students. I listened to
a podcast about that once. It sort of turned into
a great way to get the whole class to roll
their eyes simultaneously. When I geek out over history or
science during class discussions, the kids asked if I learned
factoids I share in a podcast. Anyway, here's my offering
of our furry family member, Stella. She is a mini
satin rabbit and spends summer's home with me in the
(39:48):
school year in my classroom, hopping around between desks and
over the feet of teenagers. The summer, she has tested
her athletic prowess by jumping on top of various furniture pieces.
Today she contemplated jumping to the top of my children's bookshelf.
She thought better of it. Anyhow, keep up the excellent work.
I can't wait to see what topics come up with
my class discussions this year that allow me to pull
(40:10):
out my catchphrase and get the eyes rolling. Marcie number one,
what a beautiful bunny rabbit.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Buddies are so sweet. I want a pet stella so
much she looks so so soft. Also, this act or
intentionally listened at one point five speed really cracked me
up for two reasons. One is that we talked uh
in that episode about Scott Joplin's strong feelings that his
music not be played too fast, and so the idea
(40:37):
of listening to it at one and a half speed
made me laugh. And then also I was listening to
an old episode recently to make sure it was going
to be okay to use as a Saturday classic, and
somehow my phone, which was in my pocket with the
screen off, suddenly shifted into one point twenty five speed,
which was just enough that I thought I was like
(40:58):
I did, did we drink too much coffee?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Like what's happening? It took me a second to realize
what had happened.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
So anyway, there's no such thing as too much coffee, Trasa.
So thank you so much, Marci, thank you for these pictures.
I love the story. Thanks again to the folks who
corrected us about saying Charles the second instead of Charles
the third. If you'd like to send us a note,
we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
And we're all over social media.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Miss in History You can subscribe to our show also
on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you like to get podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(41:46):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Not long ago, we talked about the Insular Cases, and
I mentioned that there was one particular case that I
wanted to spend more time on. I'd kind of done
the thing where I was like, I wish this whole
episode were about this one case that was Gonzalas versus Williams,
which the US Supreme Court decided in nineteen oh four.
(00:37):
So some scholars consider this to be one of the
Insular cases.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Others don't.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
There are just lots of different ways of grouping and
looking at all those decisions. There were a couple of
reasons why it really caught my attention while I was
researching that earlier episode. One is that most of the
Insular cases were about goods and tariffs, the first ones
to be decided, or some times called the Insular tariff cases.
(01:02):
That's how much the focus was on tariffs. This one, though,
was not about goods. It was about a person and
her family. And this was also the first time that
the Supreme Court really looked at the question of Puerto
Rican's citizenship status. Although as we were going to talk
about they looked at the question, they didn't decide on
an answer to it.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
So we're not going to go back over the entirety
of the insular cases since our episode on those came
out just a few weeks ago, but just for a
brief refresher, this was a collection of US Supreme Court
cases decided after the Spanish American War related to territory
that the US had acquired in the Caribbean and the
Pacific at the time. That included Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii,
(01:48):
and part of the Samoan Archipelago.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Prior to this, whenever the United States acquired new territory,
it was just taken for granted that that territory would
ultimately become one or more states. But these court decisions
established the idea that, unlike all the other territory that
the US had acquired before these islands were unincorporated, their
(02:12):
status as a territory was not a temporary stop on
the way to becoming a state. They could remain territories indefinitely.
They belonged to the United States, but were not fully
part of it, The Court described these territories as home
to quote, alien races, and their citizens were not considered
US citizens or entitled to all the same constitutional rights
(02:35):
that US citizens were.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
The first batch of insular cases was decided in nineteen
oh one, and the cases that followed continued to revise
and clarify how the Court interpreted the status of these
territories and the people who lived there. Gonzales versus Williams
was decided in nineteen oh four and it involved the
case of Isabelle Gonzalez, who had been born in Puerto
(02:58):
Rico in eighteen eighty two. When Isabel was born, Puerto
Rico was under Spanish control, and Spain made a distinction
between peninsulares or people born on the Iberian Peninsula, and creolos,
or people of Spanish descent born in its colonies. People
born in Puerto Rico were considered Spanish subjects unless their
(03:20):
father was a Spanish citizen, either born on the peninsula
or nationalized.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
The Spanish American War took place when Isabel Gonzalez was
about sixteen, and after the war ended, Spain seeded Puerto
Rico to the United States. The US also gained control
of Guam and the Philippines, and Cuba became an independent nation,
although it was initially occupied by the United States. The
Treaty of Peace between Spain and the US that formally
(03:49):
ended this war was very careful in how it talked
about the people who were living in what had been
Spanish territory. Spanish subjects who were native to the peninsula
and were living in the seeded territory were allowed to
stay and retain all their property in business, and to
retain their Spanish citizenship if they declared their intent to
(04:09):
do so in court within a year, but quote the
civil rights and political status of the native inhabitants of
the territories hereby ceded to the United States shall be
determined by the Congress. Congress didn't determine the civil rights
and political status of the native inhabitants of those territories
(04:30):
right away, though. In terms of Puerto Rico, President William
McKinley signed the Forker Act or the Organic Act of
nineteen hundred into law on April second of nineteen hundred.
The Foriker Act came up in our episode on the
Insular Cases because one of its provisions was a tariff
on goods moving between Puerto Rico and the United States,
(04:52):
so in that case, the Supreme Court was looking at
the whether that tariff was constitutional. The Forker Act also
set up a civilian government for Puerto Rico, and in
section seven the Act read quote, all inhabitants continuing to
reside therein who were Spanish subjects on the eleventh day
of April eighteen hundred and ninety nine, and then resided
(05:14):
in Puerto Rico, and their children born subsequent there too,
shall be deemed and held to be citizens of Puerto Rico,
and as such entitled to the protection of the United States.
Accept such as shall have elected to preserve their allegiance
to the Crown of Spain on or before the eleventh
day of April nineteen hundred, in accordance with the provisions
(05:36):
of the Treaty of Peace between the United States and
Spain entered into on the eleventh day of April eighteen
hundred and ninety nine, And they, together with such citizens
of the United States as may reside in Puerto Rico,
shall constitute a body politic under the name of the
People of Puerto Rico, with governmental powers as hereafter conferred,
(05:58):
and with power to sue and be sued as such.
In other words, when the Four Car Act went into effect,
Isabelle Gonzalez was legally a citizen of Puerto Rico, but
the law didn't actually say that citizens of Puerto Rico
were also citizens of the United States, just that they
(06:18):
were entitled to the protection of the United States. Like
it didn't specifically say they weren't citizens either, there was
a vagueness to this. In nineteen hundred, shortly before she
turned eighteen, Isabelle Gonzalez married Jose Caballero. They had a
daughter together, who they named Dolores. But then in nineteen
(06:40):
oh two, Jose died of tuberculosis, and when he died,
Isabel was pregnant with their second child. The sequence of
events that followed is a little tricky to piece together
because there's court testimony and personal documents and family lore
that all contradict one another at some points, but it
is clear that Isabel Gonzalez didn't think she was going
(07:04):
to be able to support herself and her children by herself.
Her mother was facing financial hardship as well. Isabel's brother
Luis had already gone to New York to try to
find better paying work so he could send money back
to her. Either Isabel decided to join her brother in
Staten Island with the hope of finding a better paying
(07:24):
job there, or she was planning to marry a man
named Adolfo Vignals, who had moved to New York ahead
of her to find a job and a place to
live before she arrived. Either way, Isabel left her daughter
with her mother and sailed to New York in nineteen
oh two, at the age of twenty. When she set sail,
(07:46):
Puerto Ricans were generally being allowed to travel freely between
Puerto Rico and the United States, but while she was
on the way to New York, the US Treasury Department
issued new guidelines for arriving Puerto Ricans, specifically that they
were quote subject to the same examinations as are enforced
against people from countries over which the United States claims
(08:09):
no right of sovereignty, so the examinations being referenced there
fell under the Immigration Act of eighteen ninety one. This
law had established the office of Superintendent of Immigration, who
was an officer of the Treasury Department. If you were thinking,
why was the Treasury Department having anything to do with this.
(08:29):
That's why this law required the commanding officers of arriving
vessels to report the name, nationality, last residence, and destination
of any quote aliens on board. The law empowered inspection
officers to remove people from the ships for examination and
to detain them, and it also made the Marine Hospital
(08:51):
Service responsible for any medical examinations. This law stated that
quote the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from
admission into the United States in accordance with the existing
acts regulating immigration, other than those concerning Chinese laborers.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
These terms are outdated. Heads up all idiots, insane persons,
paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, persons
suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease, persons
who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous
crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, and polygamists. The law
(09:32):
also barred anyone whose passage had been paid for by
someone else, with certain exceptions. The law specified that people
attempting to enter the US unlawfully would ideally be sent
back on the same ship that they had arrived on.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
As the Bell Gonzalez was refused entry into the United
States because officials thought she was likely to become a
public charge, and she was detained at Ellis Island. We
will have more on that after a sponsor break. In
(10:10):
addition to the new policies treating Puerto Ricans as aliens
at port, when Isabel Gonzalez arrived in New York in
August of nineteen oh two, the Port of New York
had a newly appointed Commissioner of Immigration that was William Williams.
Williams was aggressive about turning people away, and in his
(10:30):
first year in office, he doubled the number of people
who were excluded at Ellis Island. In particular, he was
really focused on people he deemed likely to become a
public charge. He ordered that anyone who was found to
be traveling with less than ten dollars should face additional scrutiny.
Women who were pregnant and unmarried faced additional scrutiny as well,
(10:54):
and single women were allowed entry only if a family
member came to the port to get them. A lot
of accounts say that Isabel Gonzalez tried to avoid problems
at port by making sure that she had eleven dollars
with her and making arrangements ahead of time for her
family to pick her up when she arrived. It is
(11:15):
certainly possible that she did both of those things, but
since Puerto Ricans weren't being treated as aliens at port
when she left, it's not as clear that she made
these arrangements because she was anticipating potential problems. Regardless, even
if she did this, these steps were not enough to
offset the fact that she was Puerto Rican, unmarried, and
(11:37):
visibly pregnant, and she was detained when she arrived at
Ellis Island on August fourth, nineteen oh two. Her case
was sent to the Board of Special Inquiry, which held
hearings for people whose immigration status was ambiguous or complicated
in some way. The board usually held these hearings really quickly,
but they were not public and most people didn't have
(11:59):
any kind of opportunity for legal representation. Gonzalez's first hearing
was the next day, and her uncle, Domingo Coyazzo and
her brother Luis Gonzalez were both there. Coaso had married
the Gonzalez aunt, Armina, and he had a long history
as an activist prior to the Spanish American War. Puerto
Ricans and Cubans had come together to advocate for greater
(12:22):
autonomy from Spain, and Coyoso had been one of those activists,
including working in Cuba as a publisher and organizer and
joining the Cuban Revolutionary Party. After the Spanish American War,
Cuba had become independent, and many Puerto Rican activists, like
Cyazo had turned their focus toward advocating for Puerto Rican statehood,
(12:44):
believing that was the best way to secure more political autonomy.
Coyaso's work as an activist had also connected him to
Afro Puerto Rican activist and collector Arturo Alfonso Schomberg. We
covered him on the show in twenty twenty one. Gonzalez's
hearing on August fifth was the first of several, and
there were some patterns among all of them. US investigators
(13:08):
based a lot of their questions and their conclusions on
stereotypes and racist assumptions about Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans.
Like a lot of Americans saw Puerto Ricans as lazy
and promiscuous, so there was a big focus on Gonzalez's
marital status and whether or not she was capable of
being a good mother. Also, a lot of focus on
(13:29):
whether her male relatives could or would support her. Meanwhile,
Gonzales and her family saw her attention at Ellis Island
as an insult to her honor. Some of their statements
that these hearings come across as trying to say whatever
they thought would work to get her released and back
with her family, even if they were stretching the truth
(13:50):
a bit to do it. Another thing to note here
is that Isabel gave birth less than two weeks after
she was released, so it's also likely that her family
so her pregnancy as a motivation to just get her
out of detention as quickly as possible. In that first hearing,
Gonzalez's uncle and brother focused on the reason she had
(14:11):
been given for being detained, that she was likely to
become a public charge. They explained that the father of
her first child had died, and they described Adolpho Vignal's
not as her fiance, but as her husband. They said
he wasn't at this hearing because he had to work,
so there's a reason for us not to be there,
and also that he had a job. Koyazo said that
(14:34):
he would take care of Gonzalez if for some reason
Vinals could not Koyazo was a printer and made twenty
five dollars a week, But the board didn't really seem
to believe any of these arguments, and they really insisted
that if Gonzalez was married, her husband should be the
person to come for her. Two days later, Isabel's aunt
(14:54):
Ermina testified before the board, once again saying that her husband, Domingoko,
was making twenty five dollars a week and that they
would make sure that Isabel was taken care of. This time,
the board criticized Ermina for coming by herself. Ermina also
had a job, but.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
The investigators didn't seem to care about her financial contributions
to the household or how it could help make sure
Isabel did not become a public charge. Then Isabel's brother
Luis made another appearance before the board, and this time
he tried to make an argument that was based on
an established idea in Spanish law, but which American investigators
(15:35):
did not find convincing at all. That's the idea of rapto,
which could encompass both seduction and abandonment under the Spanish
laws that had previously applied in Puerto Rico. If a
man seduced a woman under the promise of marriage but
then did not marry her, her family could press charges,
and that if he was convicted, he could be ordered
(15:57):
to either marry her or to pay a fine and
serve prison sentence. Luis said that as soon as his
sister was released, their family was going to take her
to the church to be married, but the board was
really opposed to this idea, that there was a man
who was going to be forced to get married without
his consent. Finally, on August eighteenth, nineteen oh two, Domingo
(16:20):
Cuyazzo swore out a petition of habeas corpus, which attorney
Charles E. Labarbier filed with the US Circuit Court for
the Southern District of New York. Isabel Gonzalez was paroled
pending the Circuit Court's decision, and on September one, nineteen
oh two, she gave birth to a daughter named Ava.
On the birth certificate, Isabel's name is listed as Isabel
(16:43):
Vignal's and Ava's father is listed as Adolpho Vignal's, a mechanic.
On October seventh, nineteen oh two, a judge issued the
Circuit Court's decision regarding Isabel Gonzalez's status that she was
quote by birth, an alien, and since she had not
been naturalized, she was still an alien. This meant that
(17:06):
the Treasury Department could continue to treat Puerto Ricans as
aliens at port. That's something that the Department also applied
to Filipinos shortly after this decision came out. But since
she was now married to Adolpho Vignal's immigration officials really
no longer had any cause to refuse her entry into
(17:28):
the United States. A lot of the writing about these
hearings and the Supreme Court case that followed make Isabel
Gonzalez sound sort of like a passive participant, with various
officials trying to keep her out of the US and
lawyers and family members making arguments on her behalf. But
at this point she could have dropped this whole issue
(17:48):
since she was now in the US. Instead, she tried
to use her experience to prove that all Puerto Ricans
should be considered US citizens, and that meant taking this
to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, we don't have like a lot of personal reflections
from her that I know of, but there is a
lot of evidence that she was like the active instigator
of this effort to bring citizenship to everyone in Puerto Rico,
and we will have more on that after a sponsor break.
(18:25):
Isabelle Gonzalez's detention and the Circuit court decision about her
citizenship status caught the attention of Federico Degata, a Gonzalez
who was born in Puerto Rico and then studied law
in Madrid. Like Isabelle's uncle Domingo Cliazzo, Degato had been
an advocate for Puerto Rican self government and autonomy prior
(18:46):
to the Spanish American War that included traveling back to
Spain in pursuit of that goal. The Fouricker Act had
granted Puerto Rico one non voting representative in Congress that
was a Commissioner to the House. Federico Degato was the
first person elected to that role, and he was serving
as commissioner as all of this was happening. One part
(19:10):
of Degato's campaign platform had been the idea that Puerto
Ricans were already US citizens and needed to be acknowledged
as such. Once he was in Washington, d C. He
had started aggressively looking for ways to push this issue.
He kept an eye out for court cases or other
legal action involving Puerto Ricans, and his office fielded calls
(19:31):
from Puerto Ricans in the Caribbean and in North America
about issues related to their civil rights. For his own part,
he tried to apply for a US passport, which in theory,
would have identified him as a US citizen once it
was issued. Ultimately, the US passed legislation allowing residents of
the insular territories to be issued US passports, but ones
(19:54):
that did not identify them as US citizens.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
During his efforts to get a passport, Degato had been
connected to the law firm of Frederick R. Kudair Junior,
who specialized in international law. Kudair's father was also a
prominent lawyer, and both of them were really well connected
in Washington, d c. And New York. Kudair had been
one of the attorneys on two of the first insular cases,
(20:20):
Delima versus Bidwell and Downs versus Bidwell. He had been
representing people who were suing George R. Bidwell, collector of
the Port of New York, for charging import duties on
goods that had been imported from Puerto Rico. So it
makes total sense that both Kudair and Degato would be
interested in Gonzalez's case and in the possibility of taking
(20:43):
it to the Supreme Court. Degato had even been protesting
against the treatment of Puerto Ricans's aliens at US ports
of entry while Gonzalez was being detained. Kudair and Degato
joined Paul Fuller and Charles E. Labarbier, who had been
involved in the Corpus petition.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Briefs in the case of Isabel Gonzales versus William Williams,
United States Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York,
were submitted to the Supreme Court in late nineteen oh three.
By that point, Isabel's brother Luis had brought their mother
and their younger sisters to New York from Puerto Rico,
and they had also brought Isabel's youngest daughter, Dolores.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Gonzalez's legal team did not try to argue that Puerto
Ricans were fundamentally entitled to the same constitutional rights as
white male citizens of the continental United States. Instead, they
cited a whole array of previous decisions related to citizenship
and who was entitled to it, and cases that upheld
limits on the rights of citizenship, including dread Scott versus Sandford,
(21:47):
which had decided that enslaved Africans and their descendants were
not and could not be citizens. That decision was overturned
by the fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and they also
argued that their could not be an American alien. We
should note that this legal team was not arguing broadly
(22:08):
on behalf of all the residents of all the insular territories.
They were focused only on the citizenship status of Puerto Ricans.
This was in part because the idea of citizenship for
Filipinos was incredibly contentious. As we talked about in our
episode on the insular cases, if Filipinos became US citizens,
roughly ten percent of the US population would then be Filipino,
(22:31):
where a lot of people found that idea incredibly threatening,
largely because of racism and prejudice. Gonzalez's lawyers also did
not try to argue that all citizens were entitled to
the same rights and status through citizenship. For example, women
could be US citizens but did not have a constitutional
right to vote. Children were citizens but had very few
(22:53):
political rights. They were basically building an argument that there
was already room for Puerto Ricans to be city within
the definitions of citizen that the United States was already using,
but then making Puerto Rican citizens would not necessarily confer
any rights beyond what they were already considered to have.
They made comparisons to other imperial powers that similarly had
(23:15):
different classes of citizenship for different groups of people. I
found a lot of this really hard to read. Of course,
just as one example, Kud's treatment of indigenous people in
these arguments could be really dismissive and inaccurate. He sort
of portrayed them as scattered bands whose disappearance in the
(23:37):
face of westward expansion was inevitable, and then compared that
to Puerto Rico's established population of almost a million people.
So the argument was, of course Puerto.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
Ricans should become citizens, there were hundreds of thousands of
them in Puerto Rico, but indigenous people in the continental
US didn't need to be citizens in this argument because
they were part of other sovereign nations and kind of
disappearing anyway. It was just there's just a thread through
a lot of it that's like, yeah, it's fine for
citizens to not actually be equal. Here's all the ways
(24:12):
that were already not treating all citizens equally at this point,
most indigenous people were not considered citizens.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
And that's fine. Yeah, it hurt me a little. Yeah.
In an amicus brief, Federico Digato approached the idea of
citizenship for Puerto Ricans from a broader and more personal level.
He walked through the transfer of Puerto Rico from Spain
to the United States and argued that by the passage
(24:40):
of the Foricker Act, Puerto Ricans had acquired citizenship and
been incorporated into the same body politic as those who
were already American citizens. He referenced his own role representing
Puerto Rico in the House, noting that he could not
represent the US citizens living in Puerto Rico if he
were in alien. He also referenced his own admission to
(25:03):
the Supreme Court Bar, something that was at least theoretically
only open to US citizens. Yeah, he's sort of like,
you admitted me to the Supreme Court bar. You only
do that for citizens, So I must be a citizen.
Solicitor General Henry M. Hoyt argued on behalf of the
United States, and his argument as summed up as quote,
(25:25):
a pellant is not a citizen and is to be
regarded as an alien within the meaning of the immigration laws.
It is conceded that the people of Puerto Rico are
connected with this government by a certain tie distinguishing them
from other ordinary foreigners, that they may be nationals. But
this does not operate to confer citizenship. Must Congress have
(25:47):
intended that all who were not aliens in the strict
and unrelieved sense should escape the immigration laws, or all
that who were not citizens should be subject to them.
The solution of the controversy is dependent solely upon the
proper construction of the law. The Supreme Court heard oral
arguments in December of nineteen oh three and issued its
(26:09):
unanimous decision on January fourth, nineteen oh four. The opinion,
authored by Chief Justice Melville Fuller, read, in part quote,
Gonzalez was a native inhabitant of Puerto Rico and a
Spanish subject, though not of the peninsula when the Session
transferred her allegiance to the United States, and she was
a citizen of Puerto Rico under the Act. And there
(26:32):
was nothing expressed in the Act, nor reasonably to be
implied therefrom to indicate the intention of Congress that citizens
of Puerto Rico should be considered as aliens and the
right of free access denied to them, But the Court
didn't offer an answer to the question of whether Puerto
Ricans were US citizens, going on to say, quote, we
(26:54):
are not required to discuss the power of Congress in
the premises or the contention of Gonzalez's council that the
Session of Puerto Rico accomplished the naturalization of its people,
or that of Commissioner Degeto in his excellent argument as
amicus curia that a citizen of Puerto Rico under the
Act of nineteen hundred is necessarily a citizen of the
(27:15):
United States. The question is the narrow one whether Gonzales
was an alien within the meaning of that term as
used in the Act of eighteen ninety one. At the
same time, the Court noted that the Immigration Act of
eighteen ninety one did not apply to the people of
Puerto Rico. Quote, we think it clear that the Act
relates to foreigners as respects this country, to persons owing
(27:38):
allegiance to a foreign government and citizens or subjects thereof,
and that citizens of Puerto Rico whose permanent allegiance is
due to the United States, who live in the peace
of the dominion of the United States, the organic law
of whose domicile was enacted by the United States and
is in force through officials sworn to support the Constitution
(27:59):
of the United States, are not aliens, and upon their
arrival by water at the ports of our mainland, are
not alien immigrants. Within the intent and meaning of the
Act of eighteen ninety one, this meant that the Immigration
Commissioner had no jurisdiction to detain Isabel Gonzales at port,
(28:20):
and it meant that she had not been obligated to
pursue her objections through the Superintendent of the Treasury, as
immigration issues were required to do. The court also noted
that quote, in order to dispose of the case in hand,
we do not find it necessary to review the Chinese
Exclusion Acts and the decisions of this Court thereunder. That
(28:42):
Act was originally passed in eighteen eighty two and implemented
a ten year ban of all immigration from China with
a few exceptions, was renewed in eighteen ninety two and
made permanent in nineteen oh two. So this ruling did
not extend citizenship to Puerto Rican like Gonzales and her
attorneys had hoped that it would, but Gonzales did continue
(29:05):
to advocate for Puerto Ricans in both Puerto Rico and
the United States after this point. Among other things, both
she and her uncle Domingo Coyazzo wrote a number of
letters to the editor that were published in the New
York Daily Tribute and in the New York Times. In
a nineteen oh five letter to the editor at the Times,
Gonzalez asked why the US used tariffs to protect its
(29:27):
rice exports from Louisiana but not coffee exports from Puerto Rico.
In another letter that year, she described the United States
as violently forcing Puerto Rico to abandon customs and traditions
that had come about from being a Spanish colony for
hundreds of years, including cock fighting, bullfighting, and relaxing during
(29:48):
the Sunday Sabbath. She suggested that the US should instead
follow Britain's model of settling matters related to Hindus and
Muslims in India through their own respective religious laws. This
is a pretty optimistic view of Britain's direct rule over India,
but her point was that the United States was forcibly
imposing its own laws and customs onto Puerto Rico rather
(30:12):
than respecting the laws and customs that were already in
place there. In August of nineteen oh five, Gonzales wrote
a letter to The Times in which she described loving
astronomy and how when she lived in Puerto Rico, she
thought that in the US, the equipment and machinery needed
to study astronomy would be available to everyone. After coming
to the US, she was disappointed to find that this
(30:33):
was not the case, but hoped that a philanthropist in
the vein of Andrew Carnegie might fund such an endeavor.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
One day in November of nineteen oh six, Gonzales wrote
a letter to the New York Tribune correcting its earlier
reporting on Puerto Rican citizenship. This letter read quote, Sir,
permit me to congratulate you upon your article under the
caption citizenship for Puerto Ricans. It is indeed encouraging and
refreshing to see an influential paper like the New York
(31:02):
Daily Tribune advocating the reforms which will lift Puerto Rico
from its present anonymous political status to that of a
robust child with a proud name and standing under the
American flag. It is not true, however, as you state
in your leader, that the Puerto Ricans quote are subjected
to our immigration laws as aliens. I happen to be
(31:23):
the cause of the removal of that law as it
was applied to Puerto Rico and Filipinos. The Supreme Court
of the United States declared it unconstitutional in my case
Gonzales versus Williams in nineteen oh four, two years after
I was detained at Ellis Island as an alien libel
to become a public charge. Four years have elapsed since then,
(31:44):
and the forecast of my jailers has not as yet
been fulfilled. On the contrary, I am a useful member
of the Puerto Rican colony of New York, and I
have lived long enough to see your patriotic tribune pleading
for the hard working and loyal Puerto Rican New York.
November twenty third, nineteen oh six. Is the Belle Gonzales.
(32:04):
Most of Gonzalez's letters to newspaper editors seem to have
been printed in nineteen oh five. In nineteen oh six,
it's possible that changes to her personal and financial situation
played a part in that she and Adolpho Vignals had
a son together, Adolpho Junior, as well as a daughter,
who died in infancy, but eventually Vignal's returned to Puerto Rico,
(32:26):
apparently abandoning Gonzalez and his son and stepchildren. Isabella's daughter
Ava started living with the Coyazzos and seems to have
eventually been informally adopted into that family. Dolores was placed
in an orphanage.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Her financial situation does seem to have turned around, though,
and when Isabelle married Juan Torres in nineteen fifteen, their
marriage documents described each of them as widowed. They eventually
moved to New Jersey, where she lived until her death
on June eleventh, nineteen seventy one. There's probably a lot
more to be discovered about her life outside of this case.
(33:04):
A lot of what's out there today is thanks to
the work of historians Sam Erman and Gonzalez's great granddaughter
Belinda Torres Mary. In twenty eighteen, Ermin.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Published a book called Almost Citizens Puerto Rico, the US
Constitution and Empire and that looks at this case in
the broader context of Puerto Rican and US history.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
In nineteen seventeen, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones Schaffroth Act.
It outlined a bill of Rights for Puerto Rico and
established a bicameral legislature with a governor appointed by the President.
This act gave both the Puerto Rican governor and the
US executive branch veto power over the Puerto Rican legislature's decisions.
(33:45):
This law also extended statutory citizenship to Puerto Ricans, meaning
that citizenship came from a law and not from the Constitution.
So while this law made most people born in Puerto
Rico citizens of the United States, they still did not
have all the same constitutional rights and protections as citizens
born in one of the states. Puerto Rico was also
(34:08):
still a territory without all the constitutional protections or autonomy
that applied to the States.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Two months later, the US passed the Selective Service Act,
was as World War One was happening. This established a
military draft, and that draft also applied to Puerto Ricans,
and the fact that these two things happened one right
after the other led to an almost conspiracy theory, which
was that the United States had extended citizenship to Puerto
Rico in order to get access to more soldiers as
(34:38):
it prepared to enter the First World War. There are
several problems with that idea, though a big one is
this Act required all men, not just citizens, to register
for the draft, and it ultimately applied to the US
territories of Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, so Puerto Rican
men would have been required to register for the draft,
(35:00):
regardless of whether Puerto Ricans had first been made citizens.
If you are wondering why that draft did not apply
to the Philippines, the status of the Philippines was a
little bit different from other territories. Thanks to the Philippine
Autonomy Act of nineteen sixteen, the Philippines established a National
Guard with the intent of its becoming part of the
(35:20):
American Expeditionary Force, and more than fourteen thousand people volunteered,
but the US was reluctant to accept this proposal, and
the war ended before the Philippine National Guard could be federalized.
And this whole topic of Filipino and Puerto Rican soldiers
during World War One is like a whole other topic.
(35:41):
I feel like there was clearly, like some of the
reluctance of the US to accept these soldiers into the
US Armed Forces was clearly motivated by racism.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
But that's like sort of a whole other thing. There
were definitely wartime factors involved with extending citizenship to Puerto Ricans,
including the fact that after the opening of the Panama Canal,
Puerto Rico lay along major shipping routes. But advocates, including
Domingo Cuiazo, had been trying to get a citizenship law
(36:12):
passed for years. There was political wrangling over this through
multiple presidential administrations and sessions of Congress, so it was
just it was not something that just sort of happened
out of the blue. Immediately before the passage of the
Selective Service Act, other laws continued to refine who was
eligible for citizenship in Puerto Rico until the Nationality Act
(36:35):
of nineteen fifty two, which declared that all people born
in Puerto Rico on or after January thirteenth, nineteen forty
one were US citizens at birth. Today, Puerto Rico is
still considered an unincorporated US territory with one non voting
commissioner in the House of Representatives, and Puerto Rico does
(36:56):
not have delegates in the Electoral College during presidential life elections.
As we talked about in that Insular Cases episode, this
applies to just like so many things involving just daily
life in Puerto Rico. And as a final note, in
that episode on the Insular Cases, we talked about Fittisimanu
versus United States, which was a case on the question
(37:16):
of birthright citizenship for American Samoans which the US Supreme
Court declined to hear in twenty twenty two. Descendants of
Dred Scott and Isabelle Gonzalez filed an amicus brief in
this case. Specifically that was Lynn M. Jackson, great great
granddaughter of Dredd and Harriet Scott, and Belinda trres Mary,
great granddaughter of isabel Gonzalez, who we mentioned earlier. Their
(37:40):
petition was in support of the American Samoan petitioners who
were calling for birthright citizenship and the overturning of the
Insular cases. Oh so much legal doings. Uh huh. Do
you have listener mail to take us out? I do. First,
I have a super quick correction. A couple of people
have pointed out that at the end of our episode
(38:01):
on Lcoricia of Winchester, when we were talking about the
unveiling of her statue. Mm hmmm, we were talking about
how the current King of the UK, King Charles the Third,
was supposed to be there for that unveiling, but was
not there because he had COVID. I called him Charles
the second It's right in the outline, and I didn't
(38:24):
catch it, and neither of us caught it.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
I had a particularly hard time saying the correct words
during the recording of that episode, and later realized that
I also had COVID. I feel like like my mind
and body were just sort of like slowly coming offline
as we were recording that. So thank you to the
(38:47):
people who pointed that out. I just like said the
totally wrong thing. And also we have email from Marci.
Marcy says, Hi, Holly and Tracy. I'm a teacher spending
my summer break getting caught up on past episodes I
missed during school year. Today, while fixing dinner, I was
listening to the Scott Joplin episode.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
I found the inclusion of the maple leaf rags so charming. However,
when I listened to the pod, I listened at one
point five x speed. The effect on the pace of
the music caused me to giggle and brought a Charlie
Chaplin esque scene to mind. I had to stop cooking,
turn the speed back to one X and then listen
again to really take it in. Thank you for all
of your hard work and research. As I teach, I
(39:25):
find myself telling my middle school students. I listened to
a podcast about that once. It sort of turned into
a great way to get the whole class to roll
their eyes simultaneously. When I geek out over history or
science during class discussions, the kids asked if I learned
factoids I share in a podcast. Anyway, here's my offering
of our furry family member, Stella. She is a mini
satin rabbit and spends summer's home with me in the
(39:48):
school year in my classroom, hopping around between desks and
over the feet of teenagers. The summer, she has tested
her athletic prowess by jumping on top of various furniture pieces.
Today she contemplated jumping to the top of my children's bookshelf.
She thought better of it. Anyhow, keep up the excellent work.
I can't wait to see what topics come up with
my class discussions this year that allow me to pull
(40:10):
out my catchphrase and get the eyes rolling. Marcie number one,
what a beautiful bunny rabbit.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Buddies are so sweet. I want a pet stella so
much she looks so so soft. Also, this act or
intentionally listened at one point five speed really cracked me
up for two reasons. One is that we talked uh
in that episode about Scott Joplin's strong feelings that his
music not be played too fast, and so the idea
(40:37):
of listening to it at one and a half speed
made me laugh. And then also I was listening to
an old episode recently to make sure it was going
to be okay to use as a Saturday classic, and
somehow my phone, which was in my pocket with the
screen off, suddenly shifted into one point twenty five speed,
which was just enough that I thought I was like
(40:58):
I did, did we drink too much coffee?
Speaker 1 (41:01):
Like what's happening? It took me a second to realize
what had happened.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
So anyway, there's no such thing as too much coffee, Trasa.
So thank you so much, Marci, thank you for these pictures.
I love the story. Thanks again to the folks who
corrected us about saying Charles the second instead of Charles
the third. If you'd like to send us a note,
we're at History Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
And we're all over social media.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Miss in History You can subscribe to our show also
on the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you like to get podcasts.
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(41:46):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Tracy Wilson
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