Ramos, E. R. (2001). The U. S. expansionist drive. In E. Rivera Ramos, Law and pubic policy. The legal construction of identity: The judicial and social legacy of American colonialism in Puerto Rico (pp. 27-43). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10400-001
The acquisition of the islands constituting the territory of Puerto Rico by the US in 1898 was part of a process of expansion that had been initiated long before in American history. The factors that gave impulse to American expansionism and the cultural understandings that suffused it with meaning helped to construct the phase of Puerto Rico's colonial experience inaugurated with the Spanish American War. This chapter describes this process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)