Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Colonial Geographies Of Gendered Violence And Mental Health In The United States And Puerto Rico, Lorraine Lizbeth L. Torres Colon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As of January 2021, after years of community organizing and protests, the Puerto Rican island government announced a state of emergency due to the high rates of gendered violence on the island. At the same time, within the field of psychiatric epidemiology, consistent findings have indicated higher frequencies of mood disorders and substance abuse disorders among Puerto Ricans both on and off the island, relative to all other US Latinx ethnic groups. This dissertation frames Puerto Ricans experiences with psychological distress and gendered violence as public health issues nested within differing geographies of colonial divestment. I explore the relationships between …

Reimagining Recovery: Debt, Mutual Aid, And Disaster Governance In Puerto Rico, Sarah Molinari

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the politics and lived experiences of debt and climate disaster recovery in Puerto Rico. It examines mutual aid and debt resistance in relation to governance techniques and overlapping crises marked by the U.S. territory’s bankruptcy, the aftermath of Hurricane Maria (2017), and culminating with popular mobilizations in the summer of 2019 that propelled the governor’s resignation. Tracing the ways that the post-hurricane social disaster and debt crisis are mutually constitutive, I investigate a case of women-led grassroots mutual aid organizing in the east-central municipality of Caguas, Puerto Rico and a political movement calling for a citizen audit …

Nonsovereign Racecraft: How Colonialism, Debt, And Disaster Are Transforming Puerto Rican Racial Subjectivities, Isar Godreau, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

Using the concept of “racecraft” to describe the state production of racial subjectivities, we argue that this process has been increasingly compromised in Puerto Rico by a lack of sovereignty and by the current socioeconomic crisis. We argue that the state-sponsored idea that Puerto Rican white and mixed-race identities operate separately from the US racial framework is receding. Based on the unconventional use of an open-ended question for racial identification in a survey administered to over one thousand Puerto Ricans, we found: a reluctance to identify racially, an awareness of a normative “whiteness” that excludes Puerto Ricans, and a tendency …

Postdisaster Futures: Hopeful Pessimism, Imperial Ruination, And La Futura Cuir, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

This essay discusses how Puerto Ricans are imagining and building new futures out of a political context of material and affective ruin that is not guided by the promise of a modernist future or the palliative anticipation of a sovereignty to come. It examines how the politics of ruination might lead to a “hopeful pessimism” that could break with the nostalgic immobility of the arrested present. It concludes by exploring the possibilities of an emerging cuir (queer) futurity that breaks with raced and gendered scripts of postcolonial sovereignty to envision a new postdisaster future.

The Public Reckoning: Anti-Debt Futures After #Rickyrenuncia, Sarah Molinari

Publications and Research

This essay argues that the summer 2019 mobilizations in Puerto Rico and the renewed demand for a debt audit help to imagine anti-debt futures that disrupt the terms and temporalities of public debt and indebted lives. The essay discusses one form of debt resistance-a comprehensive citizen debt audit-as central to deepen the process of public reckoning marked by #RickyRenuncia and to build upon the landscapes of protest and solidarity emerging in its wake.

The Coloniality Of Disaster: Race, Empire, And The Temporal Logics Of Emergency In Puerto Rico, Usa, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

This essay uses the case of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico to discuss “the coloniality of disaster”: how catastrophic events like hurricanes, earthquakes, but also other forms political and economic crisis deepen the fault lines of long-existing racial and colonial histories. It argues that disaster capitalism needs to be understood as a form of racio-colonial capitalism and that this in turn requires us to question our understandings of both “resilience” and “recovery.” The article focuses on the “wait of disaster” as a temporal logic of state subjugation and on how Puerto Ricans responded to state abandonment through modes of autogesti� …

The Heritage Of The Spanish Antilles, Daniel Nieves

Open Educational Resources

This course seeks to explore the heritage of the Spanish Caribbean—primarily Cuba, Dominican Republic/Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. We will place particular emphasis on the historical, cultural and ethnic forces that have shaped the character of the people of these islands. As well we will explore the variety of societies and cultures of the Spanish Caribbean in their historical and contemporary setting up to and including the (im)migration experience of Spanish Caribbean people to urban North America.

Promesa, Puerto Rico’S Recipe For Disaster, Cristina M. Corujo Oruña

Capstones

PROMESA was signed with the purpose of helping the island’s economy recover from its crippling indebtedness. But three years later, the law has caused financial and social instability. Although, PROMESA grants Puerto Rico the right to file for bankruptcy, the effects of the law are worsening the island’s situation. Austerity measures, high costs, migration and a deeper economic recession are drowning the island.

Link to Capstone: https://medium.com/@cristina.oruna/promesa-puerto-ricos-recipe-for-disaster-1eadde7b6719

Puerto Rico: Necrópolis, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Dios En Carne: Rastafari And The Embodiment Of Spiritual Blackness In Puerto Rico, Omar Ramadan-Santiago

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my dissertation, I examine how the Rastafari community in Puerto Rico constructs, reshapes, imagines and embodies blackness as a personal, political, and ideological identity. I argue that my interlocutors refuse non-black privilege and choose blackness, an act that is understood as identification not with subjugation but with power. I consider their identification with blackness and enactment of this identity as a performance. My analysis, based on 22 months of ethnographic research, and utilizing ethnography, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews, explores how my interlocutors claim blackness as a spiritual identity. In doing so, they demonstrate the metaphysical nature of race …

The Leaked Texts At The Heart Of Puerto Rico’S Massive Protests, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

With Governor Rosselló refusing to step down, Puerto Ricans are gathering today in what could be the island’s largest-ever protest.

Authenticating Loss And Contesting Recovery: Fema And The Politics Of Colonial Disaster Management, Sarah Molinari

Publications and Research

The chapter discusses how institutional regulators of disaster recovery "authenticate" loss and contribute to the process of disciplining disaster subjects. Drawing on ethnographic research after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the chapter suggests that alternative grassroots approaches to disaster recovery point to a reimagining of "recovery" organized around a framework of support and affective relations.

Bad Bunny, Good Scapegoat: How 'El Conejo Malo' Is Stirring A 'Moral Panic' In Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

Article examines the Moral Panic around the music of trap artist Bad Bunny in Puerto Rico

Book Review-The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes On The Disaster Capitalists, Sarah Molinari

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Evangelizing Neoliberalism Through Megachurches In Latin America And The United States, William O. Collazo

Dissertations and Theses

The most prominent and influential feature of worldwide Evangelicalism, is the megachurch. In Latin America megachurches have proliferated and grown in political influence when they first came into contact with neoliberalism during Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile. As Latin America's poor first migrated out of rural areas into Latin American cities, then north, to the United States, they have brought with them their religion. Increasingly, this religion is Protestant, evangelical, and for many, it is Pentecostalism. Misunderstood by the early literature on Pentecostalism, is the strain of neoliberalism that has become infused in the religion's most powerful institution - the megachurch. …

Confronting The Present: Migration In Sidney Mintz’S Journal For The People Of Puerto Rico, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

Sidney Mintz’s field journal for The People of Puerto Rico, published in 1956, is a valuable source for historical anthropological work. Until now, however, it has remained a hidden treasure for the anthropology of migration. By the late 1940s and 1950s, migration was central to the lives of Puerto Rican sugarcane workers and their families, and Mintz recorded important details of it. His journal shows how people maneuvered within fields of power that were full of opportunities and constraints for people seeking to make a living by migrating. Thanks to Mintz, anthropologists can learn about working-class Puerto Ricans’ experiences, lives, …

Broken Promesa: Puerto Rico Sinks, But The Life Rafts Can’T Save Everyone, Nico A. Grant

Capstones

Puerto Rico is in the midst of an economic calamity. The U.S. Territory faces a $73 billion debt, an economy on a downward spiral and hemorrhaging population numbers. In response, the U.S. Congress passed the PROMESA Act, which includes an oversight board to control Puerto Rico’s finances. But this purported pathway to prosperity won’t revitalize the Caribbean island.

As the board’s austerity measures fail to turn the economy around, ordinary Puerto Ricans are peddling to resurrect the island’s private sector. These stories from Puerto Rico illustrate the pain of economic decay and the hope that new technology can make a …

Writing Cuisines In The Spanish Caribbean: A Comparative Analysis Of Iconic Puerto Rican And Cuban Cookbooks, Melissa Fuster

Publications and Research

Puerto Rico and Cuba, linked by a common colonial history, culture, and tropical environments, have similar cuisines. The islands’ shared historical trajectories have been increasingly divergent in the last century, especially since the 1959 Cuban Revolution. This paper analyzes the concurrent social changes since the 1950s in these two contexts, through the work of two iconic cookbook writers, Carmen Valldejuli (Puerto Rico) and Nitza Villapol (Cuba). Writing and publishing during the second half of the twentieth century, these women’s books became an important part of the culinary imagination in their respective islands and diaspora communities. This article analyzes how their …

Heartbreak And Defiance: Stories Of Crisis In Puerto Rico, Andrea C. González-Ramírez

Capstones

No abstract provided.

Comparative Analysis Of Dietary Guidelines In The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean, Melissa Fuster

Publications and Research

Objective: Dietary guidelines are important education and policy tools to address local nutrition concerns. The current paper presents a comparative analysis of nutrition messages from three Spanish-speaking Caribbean countries (Cuba, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic) to explore how these dietary guidelines address common public health nutrition concerns, contextualized in different changing food environments and food culture similarities.

Design: Qualitative, comparative analysis of current dietary guideline documents and key recommendations.

Results: Key recommendations were categorized into sixteen themes (two dietbased, ten food-based and four ‘other’). Only the Cuban dietary guidelines included diet-based key recommendations. Of the ten food-based …

Conjuring The Close From Afar A Border-Crossing Tale Of Vieques’ Activism And Obama-Empire, Víctor M. Torres-Vélez, Sarah Molinari, Katharine Lawrence

Publications and Research

After more than 60 years of military occupation, 30 of these under violent military practices, a social movement forced the U.S. Navy from the island of Vieques. This victory would not have been possible without the highly effective organization of civil disobedience carried out on the island. But the sum total of the actions that eventually forced out the U.S. Navy, neither happened exclusively within the boundaries of Vieques, nor was carried out by Viequense residents alone. In this article we want to suggest that this amazing victory—a testament of people’s will in the face of globalization—is also a border- …

Puerto Ricans In The United States, 1900—2008: Demographic, Economic, And Social Aspects, Laird Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines demographic and socioeconomic factors concerning Puerto Ricans in the United States between 1990 and 2008.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: By 2008 there were as many Puerto Ricans living in the United States — about 4 million — as living in Puerto Rico. About two-thirds of all Puerto Ricans in the United States were born on the …

Environmental Politics In Paradise: Resistance To The Selling Of Vieques, Sherrie Baver

Publications and Research

The most notable instance of a massive and successful social protest in Puerto Rico in recent years has been on the island of Vieques between 1999 and 2003. This was a rare case in which Puerto Ricans were able to overcome their partisan divisions to end the U.S. Navy's 60 years of training on this small, 51- square-mile island off the main island's east coast. Part of the reason for the Vieques victory, including gaining support from some influential U.S. politicians, was that leaders framed the protest in terms of human rights, public health and environmental degradation rather than Yanqui …

Claiming Equality: Puerto Rican Farmworkers In Western New York, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

n July of 1966, a group of Puerto Rican migrant workers protested against police brutality and discrimination in North Collins, a small farm community of western NewYork. Puerto Rican farmworkers made up a substantial part of the population, and had transformed the ethnic, racial, and gender landscape of the town. Local officials and residents produced and reproduced images of Puerto Ricans as inferior subjects within US racial and ethnic hierarchies. Those negative images of Puerto Ricans shaped the way in which local authorities elaborated policies of social control against these farmworkers in North Collins. At the same time, Puerto Rican …

Playing And Eating Democracy: The Case Of Puerto Rico's Land Distribution Program, 1940s-1960s, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

In the early 1940s, the colonial government of Puerto Rico with the consent of the U.S. federal government began to elaborate a land reform. Under Title V of the Land Law of 1941, the government established resettlement communities for landless families. One of their goals was to transform landless agricultural workers into an industrial and urban labor force by teaching them “democratic, industrial, and modern” habits. Government officials distributed land to landless families through lotteries, portraying the ceremonies as acts of democracy. Community education programs produced literature, films, and posters aimed at fostering development and political participation. The colonial state …

Buscando Ambiente: Hegemony And Subaltern Tactics Of Survival In Puerto Rico’S Land Distribution Program, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

A land distribution program in the community of Parcelas Gándaras in Cidra, Puerto Rico, transformed the lives of formerly landless workers. Examination of the working conditions and social relations of workers before the program (1890s–1945) and their economic strategies, migration, and networks after becoming small landholders (1945–1960s) shows how they used their land to accommodate their practices of everyday life and their tactics of survival. Local ruling groups became hegemonic through the establishment of land distribution communities. The habitus of the new landholders expressed the ways in which they engaged in economic, social, and political activities shaped by the new …

Puerto Rico: Colonialism Revisited, Sherrie Baver

Publications and Research

Because Puerto Rico is not systematically consulted on issues central to its development and because this situation has become so obvious to all island officials during the last decade, elites across the entire Puerto Rican political spectrum felt pressured to ""come out of the colonial closet," tentatively in August 1977 and forthrightly in 1978.3 Every summer since, spokespersons from all political parties have gone before the UN Decolonization Committee to protest the status quo in Puerto Rico. Before 1977, only Puerto Rican Independentistas (who win only a small percentage in island elections), Cuba, and the Soviet Union had labeled Puerto …