| Description: |
Chapter 5 examines the capital- and labor-intensive rural electrification project to bring hydroelectricity, indoor plumbing, and clean drinking water to small landowners and landless workers who lived in the Cordillera Central , interior mountains, of the island. This chapter also considers the political fight for rural hydro-power and the extended struggle to break up utility power monopolies on the island. As with the cement plant, all property, constructions, and lands of the rural electrification program were transferred in perpetuity to the local government, which established a public authority to administer the water and electric resources of the island. While this local control of natural resources represented a break from previous colonial policy, it should not be viewed as a lessening of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico, which was in many ways strengthened during this era. |