Tropical Agriculture Exploitation: Coffee, Tobacco, and Pineapple

While the sugar plantation economy receives the most attention, American colonial policies also transformed Puerto Rico's coffee, tobacco, and pineapple industries — in each case, restructuring agriculture to serve mainland extraction rather than local food security.

Coffee:
- Before 1898, coffee was Puerto Rico's leading export, sold primarily to European markets
- Puerto Rican coffee was considered among the finest in the world — served at the Vatican and European courts
- After the U.S. invasion, Puerto Rico lost its European trade relationships (now subject to U.S. trade policy)
- Hurricane San Ciriaco (1899) devastated coffee plantations
- U.S. trade policy did not protect Puerto Rican coffee in mainland markets (unlike sugar, which had tariff protection)
- The coffee economy collapsed, pushing highland communities into poverty and driving migration to sugar regions and eventually to the mainland

Tobacco:
- American tobacco companies established operations in Puerto Rico in the early 1900s
- Companies like American Tobacco Company bought Puerto Rican leaf tobacco at below-market prices
- Cigar-making, which had been a skilled artisan trade in Puerto Rico, was industrialized
- The 'despalilladoras' (tobacco strippers) — predominantly women — worked in harsh conditions for minimal pay
- Tobacco workers organized some of Puerto Rico's most militant labor movements
- Luisa Capetillo, a famous labor organizer, began her activism among tobacco workers

Pineapple:
- The Dole corporation and other American companies established pineapple plantations
- Land in the northern coastal plain was converted from food production to pineapple export
- Workers were paid minimal wages for heavy agricultural labor
- When cheaper pineapple production became available in Hawaii and the Philippines, the Puerto Rico operations were abandoned
- Communities dependent on pineapple processing were left without economic alternatives

Pattern: In each case, colonial agricultural policy followed the same pattern:
1. Take control of the industry (through corporate acquisition or trade policy)
2. Restructure production to serve mainland markets
3. Extract value while paying minimal wages
4. Abandon the industry when cheaper alternatives emerge
5. Leave behind impoverished communities with no economic diversification