ABSTRACT
Puerto Rican scholarship has generally ignored the Executive Council and its role in institution building and capitalist expansion. This chapter examines three Executive Council agencies that had the visible roles in advancing the colonizing mission of the metropolitan state: the Departments of Education and the Interior and the office of the attorney general, including the judiciary. General Guy V. Henry initiated the transformation of Puerto Rico's education system. The School Law of 1901, prepared by Brumbaugh, centralized the school system, and gave the commissioner the authority to deny the municipios any role in educational policymaking. The education commissioners had a number of objectives whose significance tended to vary over time and depended on the changing requirements of the political economy. Education officials understood the ideological function of the school system as an agent for Americanization. Colonial officials were forced to conclude that after decades of steady investment in the educational system high rates of illiteracy continued to plague the population.
