Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire

Puerto Rico became a U.S. colonial territory in 1898 and Puerto Ricans were granted citizenship in 1917, but more than one hundred years later, as President Donald J. Trump so amply demonstrated in the wake of Hurricane Maria (2017), they are yet to be truly accepted as full-fledged citizens. Their status as citizens has been complicated by their colonial relationship, language, and mixed racial characteristics. In Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire, Ismael García-Colón examines this complexity in the context of Puerto Rican farm labor in the United States. This labor history and ethnography is exhaustive, spanning some one hundred years with in-depth research. Moreover, García-Colón places Puerto Rican migrant labor in the context of U.S. migrant farm labor as a whole. For a book whose major themes involve discrimination and racism, it is remarkably dispassionate and evenhanded. The work is sure to be the go-to resource on the topic for years to come

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