The Absent State and Five Books on Puerto Rican History

Bibliographic Data

ID4054237
AuthorsFernando Picó (0000-0002-3329-5365)
Year2017
Volume2017
Issue128
Pages27-35
Publication date2017-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueRadical History Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-6545 • E-ISSN: 1534-1453
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/01636545-3857710
OpenAlexW2618355874
LanguageEN
References cited7

Instead of approaching the history of Puerto Rico from the habitual narrative of the failed attempts to create an independent state, this essay reviews five very different books which help give an alternative view of the island's history: Arturo Morales Carrión's Puerto Rico and the Non-Hispanic Caribbean , the reviewer's own Puerto Rico 1898: The War After the War , Luis Ferrao's Pedro Albizu Campos y el Nacionalismo Puertorriqueño , Carlos Pabón's La nación postmortem , and Gervasio Luis García's Historia Bajo Sospecha . A resilient society and an absent state mark the five centuries that have elapsed since Spanish colonization. The failure of the state to encompass all its territory induced the development of strong solidarities which compensated the state's inability to defend and serve the islanders. As a result a strong watchful state is not desired, and this mentality may help explain why neither independence nor statehood have managed to gain sufficient adepts

Ethnology · Political science · Puerto rican · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Computer Science · Cuban History and Society · History · Latin American and Latino Studies

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