Beyond blanqueamiento: black affirmation in contemporary Puerto Rico

If, according to turn-of-the-twentieth-century observers, black Puerto Ricans were destined to become racially white in a few generations, how did 12.4 per cent of the population manage to remain black in 2010? And how did they survive in the face of both national and everyday forms of racism? How is the persistence and even increase in black identity in Puerto Rico supported? This article argues that there is a covert and largely unexplored social current at work in regard to how black Puerto Ricans live and reproduce their blackness. This is the desire to maintain and celebrate blackness. Using ethnographic data gathered during nearly two decades, the article illustrate that many Puerto Ricans have chosen not to engage in blanqueamiento, instead affirming their blackness, marrying within their communities, and valuing their own cultural practices and beliefs

Puerto Rican Girls Speak! : The Meanings Of Success For Puerto Rican Girls Ages 14–18 In Hartford, Connecticut

This article reports on findings from “Puerto Rican Girls Speak!,” an ethnographic research project carried out during the Spring of 2010 in Hartford, Connecticut, with 18 third-generation Puerto Rican girls ranging in age from 14 to 18 years old. Using mixed ethnographic methods, we examined the ways in which low-income, urban Puerto Rican girls defined success in their lives. For the girls who participated in this study, success is a multidimensional phenomena that includes happiness, wellbeing, life satisfaction, economic independence and stability, and fulfilling social relationships. We explored the role of family, reciprocity, and formal education networks in shaping the girls’ beliefs about success, as well as their effect on the girls’ ability to achieve success in life. Urban minority girls often struggle to balance the multiple domains of life that comprise success

Water is life, but the colony is a necropolis: Environmental terrains of struggle in Puerto Rico

The catastrophic conditions after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, homeland to the second largest US Latinx group, also result from a long history of colonial exploitation exacerbated by economic downturn, debt crisis, and federally imposed austerity. US policies affecting agriculture and attracting contaminating industries set the groundwork for extreme environmental degradation, which in turn has long motivated local community activism, coalition-building, and de-colonial praxis. The authors illustrate that in Puerto Rico, environmental resistance has been a vanguard terrain of struggle against the deepening insertion of multinationals and continued degradation. Culminating with a glimpse of how the very basics needed for survival—such as water—have been sacrificed to the logics of capital extraction, this essay points to the urgency of making an environmental justice perspective of central concern to US Latinx Studies

Racismo en Puerto Rico: Surveying perceptions of racism

This study engaged the relatively new method of on-line survey methodology to address a few key questions about perceptions of racism in Puerto Rico. The questions addressed whether Puerto Ricans perceive anti-black racism to exist; whether they have experienced it personally, or observed racist behaviors and practices; and in what realms of social life they perceive racism to exist. The article correlates these findings with the way respondents described themselves racially. Thus, this article reports on three distinct areas: (1) the use of on-line survey methodology to address questions of race and racism; (2) quantitative response patterns about racism in PR and among Puerto Ricans and their relationship to how people selfdescribed racially; and (3) to how, when, and where racism is manifested according to respondents

Autogestión and water sharing networks in Puerto Rico after Hurricane María

Puerto Rico’s residents were left without water services for up to nine months in the wake of hurricanes Irma and María (2017). Further, it was clear that there were no viable plans for addressing water provision gaps in anticipation of future hazards. In response, Puerto Ricans initiated autogestión, a strategy to secure survival through self-provisioning. Utilizing mixed methods, we reveal two different emergent forms of autogestión water self-provision in three differently serviced Puerto Rican communities. These provide an informed reflection on the trade-offs and pitfalls of reliance on autogestión for water security in the wake of disaster

Beyond blanqueamiento

If, according to turn-of-the-twentieth-century observers, black Puerto Ricans were destined to become racially white in a few generations, how did 12.4 per cent of the population manage to remain black in 2010? And how did they survive in the face of both national and everyday forms of racism? How is the persistence and even increase in black identity in Puerto Rico supported? This article argues that there is a covert and largely unexplored social current at work in regard to how black Puerto Ricans live and reproduce their blackness. This is the desire to maintain and celebrate blackness. Using ethnographic data gathered during nearly two decades, the article illustrate that many Puerto Ricans have chosen not to engage in blanqueamiento, instead affirming their blackness, marrying within their communities, and valuing their own cultural practices and beliefs