Law Commons^™

Reparations Theory And Postcolonial Puerto Rico: Some Preliminary Thoughts, Pedro A. Malavet

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article primarily focuses on the plight of the Puerto Ricans on the island because, in addition to their flawed social construction by the United States and lack of national political power, they are also legally constructed as second-class citizens. In defining the legal rights of Puerto Ricans, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that territorial citizens are entitled to fewer constitutional protections than U.S. citizens residing in any of the fifty states. The racist and essentialist social construction of the Puerto Ricans as inassimilable, the denial of legal rights by the courts, along with the democratic deficit which deprives …