Her Name Was Doña Margot

Margarita “Doña Margot” Rivera García (1909–2000) was a black working-class Puerto Rican woman whose labor as a composer, healer, midwife, and spiritual medium made her an esteemed community leader among her neighbors from Santurce, a predominantly black enclave in San Juan. Through her bomba and plena compositions, she helped forge modern black Puerto Rican music amid the rapid industrialization of Puerto Rico after the 1950s. However, her story has been overshadowed by the aura of her son, the legendary Afro–Puerto Rican singer Ismael “Maelo” Rivera (1931–87). Although Doña Margot is praised as a maternal figure who gave Maelo the gift of rhythm, her story as a woman and artist has remained widely unheard. This essay examines her parallel presence and erasure in salsa historiography, taking her testimonios about her musical gift as offering a counternarrative that defies masculinist music histories and serves as a site of memory that endures erasure.

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A community-based test of a linguistic hypothesis

Language in Society ◽

10.1017/s0047404500020431 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 61-111 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Richard Cameron

Keyword(s):

Puerto Rico ◽

Puerto Rican ◽

San Juan ◽

Community Based ◽

Functional Compensation ◽

Puerto Rican Spanish ◽

Null Subject ◽

Stratified Sample ◽

Compensation Hypothesis

ABSTRACTThe Functional Compensation Hypothesis (Hochberg 1986a, b) interprets frequent expression of pronominal subjects as compensation for frequent deletion of agreement marking on finite verbs in Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS). Specifically, this applies to 2sg.túwhere variably deleted word-final -smarks agreement. If the hypothesis is correct, finite verbs with agreement deleted in speech should co-occur more frequently with pronominal subjects than finite verbs with agreement intact. Likewise, social dialects which frequently delete agreement should show higher rates of pronominal expression than social dialects which less frequently delete agreement. These auxiliary hypotheses are tested across a socially stratified sample of 62 speakers from San Juan. Functional compensation does show stylistic and social patterning in the category of Specifictú, not in that of Non-specifictú. However, Non-specifictúis the key to frequency differences between -s-deleting PRS and -s-conserving Madrid; hence the Functional Compensation Hypothesis should be discarded. (Functionalism, compensation, null subject, analogy, Spanish, Puerto Rico)

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Resilience of Communities in Puerto Rico Following Hurricane Maria: Community-Based Preparedness and Communication Strategies

Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness ◽

10.1017/dmp.2021.306 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-6

Author(s):

Elizabeth L. Andrade ◽

Nicole D. Barrett ◽

Mark C. Edberg ◽

Matthew W. Seeger ◽

Carlos Santos-Burgoa

Keyword(s):

Puerto Rico ◽

Puerto Rican ◽

Interpersonal Communication ◽

Qualitative Interviews ◽

First Responders ◽

Risk Groups ◽

Community Leader ◽

Disaster Resilience ◽

Community Based ◽

Community Assets

Abstract Objective: This study aimed to examine factors that may have contributed to community disaster resilience following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Methods: In April 2018, qualitative interviews (n = 22) were conducted with stakeholders in 7 Puerto Rican municipalities (9% of total). Transcripts were deductively and inductively coded and analyzed to identify salient topics and themes, then examined according to strategic themes from the Federal Emergency Management Association’s (FEMA) Whole Community Approach. Results: Municipal preparedness efforts were coordinated, community-based, leveraged community assets, and prioritized vulnerable populations. Strategies included (1) multi-sectoral coordination and strategic personnel allocation; (2) neighborhood leader designation as support contacts; (3) leveraging of community leader expertise and social networks to protect vulnerable residents; (4) Censuses of at-risk groups, health professionals, and first responders; and (5) outreach for risk communication and locally tailored protective measures. In the context of collapsed telecommunications, communities implemented post-disaster strategies to facilitate communication with the Puerto Rican Government, between local first responders, and to keep residents informed, including the use of: (1) police radios; (2) vehicles with loudspeakers; (3) direct interpersonal communication; and (4) solar-powered Internet radio stations. Conclusions: Adaptive capacities and actions of Puerto Rican communities exemplify the importance of local solutions in disasters. Expanded research is recommended to better understand contributors to disaster resilience.

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US Imperialism and Puerto Rican Needleworkers: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Women's Labor in a Deep History of Neoliberal Trade

International Labor and Working-Class History ◽

10.1017/s0147547920000137 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 98 ◽

pp. 142-172

Author(s):

Aimee Loiselle

Keyword(s):

Puerto Rico ◽

World War Ii ◽

Puerto Rican ◽

Economic Policies ◽

Skilled Workers ◽

Puerto Rican Women ◽

Us Imperialism ◽

History Of ◽

Operation Bootstrap ◽

A Site

AbstractIn 1898, US occupation of Puerto Rico opened possibilities for experimentation with manufacturing, investment, tariffs, and citizenship because the Treaty of Paris did not address territorial incorporation. Imperial experimentation started immediately and continued through the liberal policies of the New Deal and World War II, consistently reproducing drastic exceptions. These exceptions were neither permanent nor complete, but the rearrangements of sovereignty and citizenship established Puerto Rico as a site of potential and persistent exemption. Puerto Rican needleworkers were central to the resulting colonial industrialization-not as dormant labor awaiting outside developmental forces but as skilled workers experienced in production. Following US occupation, continental trade agents and manufacturers noted the intricate needlework of Puerto Rican women and their employment in homes and small shops for contractors across the island. Their cooptation and adaptation of this contracting system led to the colonial industrialization, generating bureaucratic, financial, and legal infrastructure later used in Operation Bootstrap, a long-term economic plan devised in the 1940s and 1950s. Labor unions and aggrieved workers contested and resisted this colonial industrialization. They advocated their own proposals and pushed against US economic policies and insular business management. Throughout these fights, the asymmetrical power of the federal government and industrial capital allowed the colonial regime to assert US sovereignty while continually realigning exemptions and redefining citizenship for liberal economic objectives. Rather than representing a weakening of the nation-state, this strong interventionist approach provided scaffolding for Operation Bootstrap, which became a model for the neoliberal projects called export processing zones (EPZs).

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Lipstick Revolutionaries

Ricanness ◽

10.18574/nyu/9781479888740.003.0002 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 35-72

Author(s):

Sandra Ruiz

Keyword(s):

Puerto Rico ◽

Puerto Rican ◽

Femme Fatale ◽

Presentation Of Self ◽

Us Congress ◽

The Us ◽

The Subject ◽

A Site ◽

Queen Mother

Chapter 1 begins with Dolores “Lolita” Lebrón Sotomayor and fellow members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party staging an armed assault against the US Congress in 1954. The author analyzes Lebrón’s actions to expose how she offers death as a way to access subjectivity. She highlights the resilience of the subject who refuses the call to suicide, and instead offers us a recitation for Being. In paying attention to Lebrón’s bodily endurance as evidence of her desire to offer death for the independence of Puerto Rico, the author asserts that as a colonial subject the only thing that she owns upon entry into the world is her death. An understanding of her death drive is linked to Lebrón’s presentation of self, challenging the androgynous view of a female revolutionary. The important aesthetic details of her performance are not antithetical to other markers that claim and seek to trivialize her: beauty queen, mother of the nation, femme fatale, beautiful convoy, and hysterical, suicidal depressive. Lebrón is more than a sacrificing mother, a pathological terrorist, or an accomplice to male leaders; she stages a site through which to dismantle Rican patriarchy and restage death, both imposed and re-created by colonialism.

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Everything but the Car: The Carport as Social Space in Puerto Rican Domestic Architecture

Material Culture Review ◽

10.7202/1076797ar ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 90-91 ◽

pp. 43-58

Author(s):

Gloria M. Colom Braña

Keyword(s):

Puerto Rico ◽

Puerto Rican ◽

Social Space ◽

Functional Space ◽

Free Fall ◽

The United States ◽

Domestic Sphere ◽

The North ◽

History Of ◽

A Site

The carport, a nondescript functional space within a majority of Puerto Rican houses, often accommodates different social practices throughout the year. Daily household activities such as laundry and childcare often take place in the carport, but it is also a site for landmark events such as birthdays, social gatherings, and Christmas parties. Designed exclusively for car storage, the carport is often used for everything but the car. In order to understand how this space came to be repurposed, this article focuses on the history of the introduction of the car and carport in Puerto Rico. The transformation of a single-use space into an all-purpose space with distinct cultural signifiers happened soon after the spread of the carport. The history of the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico is tied to the story of changes to the North American house form, particularly the most utilitarian spaces within the domestic sphere. The carport reflects the dreams and illusions of upward mobility and how that came crashing down in a seemingly economic free fall that began roughly in 2007 and has continued spiraling out of control.

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Ambiguous agreement, functional compensation, and nonspecific tú in the Spanish of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and Madrid, Spain

Language Variation and Change ◽

10.1017/s0954394500001526 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 305-334 ◽

Cited By ~ 71

Author(s):

Richard Cameron

Keyword(s):

Puerto Rico ◽

Puerto Rican ◽

San Juan ◽

Second Person ◽

Functional Compensation ◽

Puerto Rican Spanish ◽

Null Subject ◽

Verb Agreement ◽

Constant Rate ◽

Madrid Spanish

ABSTRACTRichness of subject-verb agreement is implicit in the functional compensation interpretation of variable second person /-s/ in Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS). Because /-s/ is not variable in Madrid Spanish (MS), richer agreement is assumed, and a lower rate of pronominal expression is expected. Central to this interpretation are effects associated with ambiguous marking of person on finite singular verbs. Although an increase of pronominal expression correlates to ambiguous marking for PRS speakers, a similar result has not been reported for MS speakers. Nonetheless, a varbrul analysis yields similar weights for this constraint in both dialects. Moreover, ambiguity effects are best understood as constraints on null subject variation that interact with switch reference. Identity of varbrul weights for constraints on pronominal and null subject variation in PRS and MS also supports the Constant Rate Hypothesis. However, the two dialects do show a diametrically opposed effect associated with nonspecific tú.

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Una revisión histórico-política de la producción literaria puertorriqueña. Entrevista con Fernando Feliú Matilla / A historical and political review of Puertorriquean Literatura. Interview to Fernando Feliú Matilla

Kamchatka Revista de análisis cultural ◽

10.7203/kam.9.10150 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 207

Author(s):

Endika Basáñez Barrio

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Puerto Rico ◽

Puerto Rican ◽

The United States ◽

Point Of View ◽

San Juan ◽

Puerto Rican Literature ◽

Puerto Rican Studies ◽

Hispanic Literature ◽

Cultural Movements

Resumen: A lo largo de la siguiente entrevista, el profesor, historiador, crítico e investigador la de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, el catedrático en literatura puertorriqueña don Fernando Feliú Matilla, nos permite establecer una visión histórica de la génesis artística llevada a cabo en la Isla a través de los diferentes contextos socio-políticos que han tenido lugar en la misma desde la aparición de una literatura puertorriqueña propia y distintiva hasta la anexión de Puerto Rico a los Estados Unidos de América como Estado Libre Asociado en 1952 y su impronta en la génesis isleña. Si bien la entrevista tiene como objeto principal la literatura boricua, también se debaten en la misma el falocentrismo cultural presente en la cultura puertorriqueña, las relaciones políticas entre San Juan y Washington D.C., la influencia de los textos diaspóricos en la producción isleña o la situación del panorama artístico actual en Puerto Rico.Palabras clave: Literatura hispanoamericana; Literatura puertorriqueña; Estados Unidos; emigración; política. Abstract: Throughtout the following interview, professor Fernando Feliú Matilla, who holds a chair in Puerto Rican Studies and Literature, offers his personal point of view after years of research about Puerto Rican literature written in the 20th century. The interview is developed from a historical perspective, which means that it starts right from the moment Puerto Rico was still a Spanish colony in the Americas, until the present day, being Puerto Rico a Free Associated State of the United States of America (also known as American Commonwealth of Puerto Rico). Besides the literature, professor Feliú Matilla also gives his opinion about the absence of female writers in Puerto Rican literature, the relationships between San Juan and Washington D.C., the cultural movements that Puerto Rican literature written nowadays is influenced by, and many other different topics such as Caribbean literature written in the United States and its connection with Puerto Rican art.Keywords: Hispanic Literature; Puerto Rican Literature; USA; immigration; politics.

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