Fittingly, during the first decades of US rule, various plans were hatched to address the “overpopulation problem.” In 1899, the year that also saw the devastation of Hurricane San Ciriaco, over 5,000 Puerto Ricans were recruited as contract laborers and “shipped” to Hawai’i and other destinations to work in plantations and farms (Camacho Souza 2018). By 1933, the island’s new governor, Robert Gore, suggested mass migration to Florida as a way to relieve the “population problem” and stimulate local development (quoted in Duany and Silver 2010). As Puerto Rican dissatisfaction with colonial governance and exploitation grew, the political fear of “too many” poor did as well. This contributed to the passing of eugenics-inspired laws, which were supported by colonial governor Blanton Winship despite the objections of the Catholic Church and some local public figures. Among these were several 1937 pieces of legislation, including Law 116, which created a Eugenics Commission; Law 133, which decriminalized the promotion of birth control; and Law 136, which sanctioned sterilization as a way to “stem Puerto Rico’s endemic poverty” (MisGuided Thoughts 2011).