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The Puerto Rican Colonial Matrix: The Etiology Of Citizenship, Pedro Caban

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Faculty Scholarship

The extension of U.S. citizenship to Puerto Rico has been the object of voluminous scholarly and legal research. The present essay serves as both an introduction to and analysis of the four articles that comprise this special issue of CENTRO Journal. Each of the articles employs a different analytical lens to focus on the intersecting dimensions of citizenship, colonialism, and empire. The essay identifies common themes among the articles with the aim of presenting a unified narrative of the individual contributions. It historicizes the study of Puerto Rican citizenship status by reviewing the modalities of political exclusion the U.S. practiced …