As a Puerto Rican, when I first began to engage with mainland citizens, I wasn’t old enough to understand that although my birth certificate held the same legal weight as theirs, there was still an invisible border between us. Though I was a US citizen, I quickly realized there were two separate worlds to exist within: one where your voice echoed through the media, politics, and public consciousness, and one where your voice barely registered beyond the island’s shores. Puerto Rico floated somewhere in between, sometimes heard and often misunderstood. However, other territories like Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands seemed to vanish altogether. The further you were from the mainland, the quieter your voice and stories seemed to become.
A few years into residing on the mainland, I began to notice how the US news rarely reflected the experiences of all its citizens. The persistent exclusion of US territories from national media coverage is not just oversight. It is a form of structural erasure, one that upholds colonial relationships and reinforces political inequality. From the impacts of military buildup on the Guam housing crisis to the 2019 measles outbreak in American Samoa in response to the US government’s shutdown of vaccine programs, these emergencies were largely ignored by national outlets, as if the suffering of territorial residents fell outside the boundaries of journalistic responsibility. Instead of receiving the coverage and public urgency that such events deserve, they were treated as peripheral, if acknowledged at all.
Too often, one must actively search beyond mainstream media just to learn what is happening in certain parts of the country. This lack of coverage stems, in part, from the fact that many Americans cannot even locate these territories on a map if they do not pose some geographical relevance to the mainland. Even when Puerto Rico endured the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria in 2017, national media attention felt conditional, amplified only when the storm’s impact touched the mainland or disrupted broader US interests. According to the Washington Post, Puerto Rico received only about a third as much attention from media outlets as Harvey and Irma. Though the island suffered thousands of deaths, prolonged power outages, and a humanitarian crisis, coverage quickly faded from headlines until President Donald Trump came into the picture, when the implicit marginalization that media invisibility has fostered became explicit. Back in 2017, when President Trump visited Puerto Rico to address the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, he very clearly displayed his thoughts through his infamous throwing of paper towels into crowds of people and his remarks downplaying the crisis compared to Hurricane Katrina. Today, Puerto Rico is still recovering, facing crumbling infrastructure, economic strain, and population loss. Regardless, these realities are rarely reflected in national news cycles. The message is clear: unless a territory’s suffering intersects with the mainland’s priorities, it remains invisible.
This sense of invisibility is only heightened by the lack of public awareness. In a Morning Consult poll, nearly half of all Americans displayed a lack of awareness that Puerto Ricans were US citizens, despite Puerto Ricans having this status since 1917 and being under US Control since 1898. This widespread ignorance isn’t just an abstract issue; it has real-life implications. In the poll, it was revealed that during crises, those who knew about Puerto Rican citizenship were more willing to send emergency aid than those who did not. The media’s failure to consistently inform the public keeps many Americans disconnected from the realities of life in Puerto Rico and other territories. So, how are US voices in territories supposed to have their voices heard and their needs addressed if the media won’t cover their stories?
Beyond politics, media invisibility feeds a cultural erasure that affects how territorial residents see themselves and how others perceive them. When the stories of US territory citizens are ignored, it sends the painful message that their lives, struggles, and contributions do not matter as much as those who reside on the mainland. This kind of overlooking alienates US citizens from one another, pushing the territories toward the margins of a national identity they never chose to adopt. The contradiction lies at the core of territorial relationships with the US: territories are denied full citizenship protections, yet still expected to assimilate into an American identity that routinely ignores their needs.
Usually, erasure comes in obvious ways. The passing of laws that exclude us, the denial of voting rights in federal elections, or the lack of representation in Congress. It wasn’t until I first started living on the mainland that I realized it also shows up in smaller, quieter ways. The absence of our stories in classrooms, the surprise when people learn I’m a US citizen, or the silence that follows when Puerto Rico is mentioned in a room full of Americans. Whether through legislation or silence, the message remains the same. We exist on the periphery of a nation that claims us, but rarely sees us.
0 Comments