Lorrin R Thomas - Rethinking the Struggle for Puerto Rican Rights

RETHINKING THE STRUGGLE FOR PUERTO RICAN RIGHTS

Rethinking the Struggle for Puerto Rican Rights offers a reexamination of the history of Puerto Ricans political and social activism in the United States in the second half of the 20th century. Authors Lorrin Thomas and Aldo Lauria Santiago survey the ways in which Puerto Ricans worked within the United States to create communities for themselves and their compatriots and defend their rights in times and places where dark-skinned or foreign Americans often encountered exclusion and discrimination. Building on a survey of existing scholarship combined with extensive archival research, the authors argue that the energetic Puerto Rican rights movement which rose to prominence in the late 1960s was built on a foundation of civil rights activism beginning much earlier in the century. The text contextualizes Puerto Rican activism within the broader context of 20th-century civil rights movements, while emphasizing the characteristics and goals unique to the Puerto Rican experience. Lucid and insightful, Rethinking the Struggle for Puerto Rican Rights provides a much-needed introduction to a lesser-known but critically important social and political movement.

Lorrin Thomas is associate professor of History at Rutgers University Camden.

Aldo A. Lauria Santiago is professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies and History at Rutgers University New Brunswick.

American Social and Political Movements of the Twentieth Century

Series Editor: Heather Ann Thompson, University of Michigan

For a full list of titles in this series see: https://www.routledge.com/American-Social-and-Political-Movements-of-the-20th-Century/book-series/ASPM20C

Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement
By Marc Stein

Rethinking American Womens Activism
By Annelise Orleck

Rethinking the Chicano Movement
By Marc Simon Rodriguez

Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement
By Yohuru Williams

Rethinking the American Labor Movement
By Elizabeth Faue

Rethinking the American Prison Movement
By Daniel Berger & Toussaint Losier

Rethinking the American Antinuclear Movement
By Paul Rubinson

Rethinking the Struggle for Puerto Rican Rights
Lorrin Thomas & Aldo A. Lauria Santiago

RETHINKING THE
STRUGGLE FOR
PUERTO RICAN RIGHTS

Lorrin Thomas & Aldo A. Lauria Santiago

First published 2019
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The right of Lorrin Thomas & Aldo A. Lauria Santiago to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-05529-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-05530-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-16598-1 (ebk)

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Welcome to the American Social and Political Movements of the 20th Century series at Routledge. This collection of works by top historians from around the nation and world introduces students to the myriad movements that came together in the United States during the 20th century to expand democracy, to reshape the political economy, and to increase social justice.

Each book in this series explores a particular movements origins, its central goals, its leading as well as grassroots figures, its actions as well as ideas, and its most important accomplishments as well as serious missteps.

With this series of concise yet synthetic overviews and reassessments, students not only will gain a richer understanding of the many human rights and civil liberties that they take for granted today, but they will also newly appreciate how recent, how deeply contested, and thus how inherently fragile, are these same elements of American citizenship.

Heather Ann Thompson
University of Michigan

Lorrin Thomas and Aldo A. Lauria Santiago

The authors would like to thank series editor Heather Ann Thompson for the invitation to write this book. Our collaboration on this project inspired us to think in new ways about our individual and shared research projects over the past decade, and gave us the opportunity to engage deeply with recent interpretations by the growing numbers scholars writing about the history of Puerto Ricans in the U.S. In particular, we thank the participants of the Rutgers Workshop on the History of Puerto Ricans and Latinos in the U.S. for their contributions to our biennial conferences and to our many collective and individual discussions during these gatherings, which helped shape this book in crucial ways. Much of the recent work we cite here was published by these colleagues in the working group. We are grateful too for the creative, brave, and uncompromising work of an older generation of scholars who have helped shape and expand the fields of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies since the 1970s. Their pioneering scholarship has guided us on our own path in the field.

Dozens of librarians, archivists, and research assistants have helped over many years with the work on which this book is based, and we would like to thank them collectively for their assistance. Archivist Pedro Juan Hernndez and the staff of the library and archive at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies have given invaluable support to nearly every historian writing about Puerto Ricans in the U.S. over the last several decades. Individually and as co-authors, we have benefitted tremendously from Pedro Juans knowledge and his commitment to sustaining and expanding archival collections on Puerto Ricans in the U.S. We are also grateful to our colleague Ruth Glasser for her careful review of the manuscript and her thoughtful suggestions for revision. Finally, we thank the editors and staff at Routledge/Taylor and Francis for their assistance during every stage of the process, and Tasso Hartzog, who provided expert assistance as a copyeditor and proofreader.