Hurricanes and the Shaping of Circum-Caribbean Societies

Every Puerto Rican knows this plena and can sing its chorus, and on that island where, from July to October, everyone frequently checks the weather reports and looks to the sky, the song seems to describe a generic situation, a way of life, and a common reality. Few people today remember that the song was originally composed to commemorate a particular storm-the great hurricane of San Felipe that diagonally traversed Puerto Rico on September 13, 1928. Hurricanes are no novelty to the islanders, but the fury of that one was memorable. No one who lived through it forgot it. Don Victor Jordan, my father-in-law, who was about eight at the time living with his family in the highlands of Utuado, remembers the force of the wind, the howling noise, and the terror of a sky filled with flying zinc roofs as the houses were stripped and demolished. Winds reached 150 mph, the strongest ever recorded on the island. Property damage was in the millions, and over three hundred people officially (perhaps as many as fifteen hundred in reality) lost their lives as a direct result of the storm; the number, in fact, kept relatively low because of the lessons learned and precautions taken after the San Ciriaco hurricane of 1899 that had killed over three thousand on the island. The island\u27s coffee crop was almost lost in its entirety, and thereafter Puerto Rico never regained its position as a coffee exporter. The island had been devastated. No better icon of the storm exists than the image of a palm tree in Utuado transfixed by a wood plank driven by the force of the wind to form a cross, symbolic of the island\u27s Calvary

«A commonwealth within itself». The early brazilian sugar industry, 1550-1670

This article studies the basic characteristics of the Brazilian sugar economy between 1560 and 1660, when it became the main sugar producer in the Atlantic world. Firstly, it analyzes the conditions that made possible the position held by Brazil in the context of a Euro-American trade system. Secondly, it studies the local conditions in which it developed, and the challenges posed by three factors: land, work and capital, all of which furnished the early Brazilian sugar industry with the characteristics that have made it peculiar. Finally, the article studies the quick expansion it underwent up to 1620, and the reasons of its stagnation even before the appearance after 1650 of new competitors in the Caribbean.Este ensayo examina los contornos básicos de la economía del azúcar en Brasil entre 1550 y 1660, cuando se convirtió en la principal productora de dicho artículo en el mundo atlántico. Comienza analizando el amplio espectro que situó al país en el contexto del sistema comercial euro-americano, para estudiar luego las condiciones locales y los desafíos específicos de la tierra, el trabajo y el capital a los que hizo frente la industria cañera brasileña temprana y que le confirieron un carácter y unos contornos peculiares. Finalmente investiga la rápida expansión del sector hasta 1620 y las razones por las que su crecimiento se estancó, incluso antes del ascenso de nuevos competidores en el Caribe después de 1650

Pecar en las colonias. Mentalidades populares, inquisición y actitudes hacia la fornicación simple en España, Portugal y las colonias americanas.

Sin resume

A Non-Cooperative Power Control Game for Multi-Carrier CDMA Systems

In this work, a non-cooperative power control game for multi-carrier CDMA systems is proposed. In the proposed game, each user needs to decide how much power to transmit over each carrier to maximize its overall utility. The utility function considered here measures the number of reliable bits transmitted per joule of energy consumed. It is shown that the user's utility is maximized when the user transmits only on the carrier with the best "effective channel". The existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibrium for the proposed game are investigated and the properties of equilibrium are studied. Also, an iterative and distributed algorithm for reaching the equilibrium (if it exists) is presented. It is shown that the proposed approach results in a significant improvement in the total utility achieved at equilibrium compared to the case in which each user maximizes its utility over each carrier independently.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, New Orleans, LA, March 13 - 17, 200

Os portugueses e as Antilhas: o Brasil açucareiro e o Grande Caribe durante os séculos XVI e XVII

During the 16th and 17th centuries, the climate, agricultural potential, and history made Brazil a model, an alternative, and a competitor for some Caribbean societies. The relationship between Brazil and the Caribbean changed over time, but there were also continuities, circulation of information and interactions that linked their histories. In this essay, my I will focus on Brazil as an extension of the Greater Caribbean, on the role of the Portuguese in the Caribbean, and on their shared and interconnected history of sugar and slavery.Durante os séculos XVI e XVII, o clima, as possibilidades agrícolas e a história faziam do Brasil um modelo, uma alternativa e um concorrente para algumas sociedades caribenhas. A relação entre o Brasil e o Caribe se transformou com o tempo, mas houve também continuidades, circulação de informações e interações que vincularam suas histórias. Neste ensaio, minhas observações vão se concentrar no Brasil como extensão do Grande Caribe, no papel dos portugueses no Caribe e em sua história compartilhada e entrelaçada de açúcar e escravidão

Imperios intolerantes. Las raíces de la unidad religiosa y la tolerancia en los imperios ibéricos

While various empires sought by religious tolerance to integrate dispe-rate peoples under a single ruler, the Spanish and Portuguese empires were based on a policy of religious unity and thus intolerance. This article examines the policy of religious intolerance in those empires in the context of theology and the missionary impulse, but also in relation to the commercial and political needs of the State. It argues that orthodoxy reinforced commercial exclusivity and was thought to assure loyalty, but that from the origins of these empires voices of dissent were raised arguing for freedom of conscience. This was especially true in the Caribbean where local interests in contraband undercut policies of religious exclusivity. By the late Eighteenth Century, in the atmosphere of political change, religion was increasingly seen as a security matter by the forces of traditional society. ”Inquisition” and “toleration” came to represent two competing concepts of society in a political and cultural struggle that continued through the Nineteenth Century. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11721/1512Mientras varios imperios recurrieron a la tolerancia religiosa como un medio de integración de poblaciones heterogéneas que estaban sometidas a un gobernante absoluto, el imperio español y el portugués utilizaron la política de unidad e intolerancia religiosa. Este artículo examina la política de la intolerancia religiosa en el contexto de la teología y el impulso misionero, pero también en lo referente a las necesidades comerciales y políticas del Estado. Propone que la ortodoxia intensificó la exclusividad comercial como mecanismo de afianzar la lealtad de sus colonias, pero al mismo tiempo que esto ocurría, surgieron voces disidentes que reclamaban la libertad de conciencia, particularmente en el Caribe donde los intereses locales vinculados al contrabando socavaban la exclusividad religiosa. Hacia fines del siglo XVIII, cuando ocurrieron importantes cambios políticos, la religión fue vista cada vez más como un elemento de seguridad por parte de los sectores tradicionales. “Inquisición” y “tolerancia” representaron dos conceptos contradictorios en una sociedad involucrada en luchas políticas y culturales que continuaron a lo largo del siglo XIX. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/11721/151

Los huracanes y la formación de las sociedades circumcaribeñas

Using the San Felipe hurricane of 1928 which devastated Puerto Rico and areas of Florida, this article attempts to provide an overview of the importance of hurricanes in the overall development of the greater Caribbean region. It reviews the literatures of history, social sciences, relief agencies, meteorology related to hurricanes, and then turns to the way in which hurricanes historically shaped the social, political, and economic history of various European regimes in the region. It returns to the 1928 storm to examine the growing dependence on state intervention in meeting social and economic needs after disasters, and it emphasizes how differing social and political systems produce different results.El artículo toma como punto de partida al huracán San Felipe -que en 1928 devastó Puerto Rico y algunas áreas de la Florida- para ofrecer un panorama sobre la importancia de los huracanes en el desarrollo general de la región del Gran Caribe. Con este propósito, el autor primeramente revisa la literatura de las disciplinas de la historia, las ciencias sociales, la meteorología y los informes de agencias de socorro relacionadas con los huracanes para luego demostrar la manera en que históricamente este fenómeno natural ha modelado el desarrollo socio-económico y político de varios asentamientos europeos en la región. Después de este análisis retoma al ciclón San Felipe para examinar otro aspecto, el de la creciente dependencia en la intervención del Estado para afrontar las necesidades económicas y sociales una vez ocurren los desastres, poniendo el énfasis en cómo diferentes sistemas sociales y políticos producen también diversos resultados

Biculturalism Dynamics: A Daily Diary Study of Bicultural Identity and Psychosocial Functioning

We examined two conceptualizations of bicultural identity – the Bicultural Identity Integration (BII) framework (cultural identity blendedness-distance and harmony-conflict) and cultural hybridizing and alternating (mixing one’s two cultural identities and/or switching between them). Utilizing data from a 12-day diary study with 873 Hispanic college students, we examined three research questions: (1) cross-sectional and longitudinal intercorrelations among these biculturalism components, (2) links among daily variability in these biculturalism components, and (3) how this daily variability predicts well-being and mental health outcomes over time. Bicultural hybridizing was positively related to, and longitudinally predicted by, both BII blendedness and harmony. Daily fluctuation scores for BII blendedness, BII harmony, and bicultural hybridizing were strongly interrelated. Well-being was negatively predicted by fluctuations in hybridizing, whereas internalizing symptoms were positively predicted by fluctuations in blendedness. These results are discussed in terms of what biculturalism is and how best to promote it