Nelson Denis creates a readable narrative! I sped through this work when I picked it up. I think Denis background in journalism helps keep readers reading. there’s so much in this book though. I mean US paternalism and naive native narrative that gives the US license to take over tropical countries. The same thing happened in the Panama Canal area. The illustrations on page 22 with all the islands being shown in a grotesque figure way. The fact that all the figures are dark-skinned. The work shows that Puerto Rico has faced, and is still facing, so much under US occupation.

I wondered about the racial composition of the nationalists. Denis does not mention their skin colour or racial type for the most part. If most of them were darker-skinned, mulatto, or black that’d add an extra layer to the narrative that’s missing right now. I would have liked for Denis to expand on the gender aspect of the nationalist movement and US oppression. The book seemed to center more around men in the nationalist movement. I would have liked for his footnotes to be a bit more extensive, I thought in some chapters they were lacking. I would have liked to see him pull from more source bases. He roots most of his research in FBI files. I enjoyed the sectioning of the book but sometimes the overlap threw me off. I think the overlapping of memoir, biography, and historiographical narrative was a bit too much at times.