Union Carbide and the Community Surrounding it: The Case of a Community in Puerto Rico

1985 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ida Susser
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Medical Anthropology ◽  
Rural Community ◽  
Industrial Development ◽  
Plant Management ◽  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Union Carbide ◽  
Community Residents ◽  
Puerto Rican Culture

Based on fieldwork in Puerto Rico, this article examines the views on health hazards of residents in a semi-rural community in relation to the influx of industrial development since the early 1970s. It is suggested that “folk” terminology and particular aspects of Puerto Rican culture are less significant in this instance than many studies in medical anthropology suggest. The focus is on the emergence of a protest movement concerned with health problems which community residents and workers attribute to a nearby Union Carbide factory. Residents of El Ingenio, Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, have brought a law suit against Union Carbide and, the management of the plant has attempted to dispel the conflict. The article argues that health concerns of residents, industrial workers, and plant management cannot be interpreted without taking into account problems of unemployment, political affiliations, and company policies and their impact over time.

“El Grito de Caguana”

2019 ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Rosalina Diaz
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Hunger Strike ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Puerto Rican Culture ◽  
Site Managers

On July 25, 2005, a small group of “Taino” reclaimed the Caguana Ceremonial Center in Utuado, Puerto Rico, in the name of their ancestors. The protestors demanded, “End the destruction and desecration of our sanctuaries, sacred places, archeological sites, coaibays (cemeteries) and ceremonial centers now!” The Taino had utilized the site for years to celebrate traditional rituals, but due to changes in the center’s policies, were suddenly restricted from using the site during certain hours. For the Taino, this was the final straw in an ongoing and escalating conflict with the site managers, The Institute for Puerto Rican Culture, charged by the Puerto Rican Legislature in 1955 with the task of “conserving, promoting, enriching and disseminating the cultural values of Puerto Rico.” The result was a 17-day occupation and hunger strike that brought to the fore issues regarding Puerto Rican identity that had long lay dormant and unchallenged.

Flowing through My Veins

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isar P. Godreau
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Puerto Ricans ◽  
National Pride ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
Puerto Rican Culture ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter discusses how the scripts of blackness developed in tandem with discourses of race mixture that supported populist forms of governance and cultural policies in the 1940s and 1950s. The biological definition of Puerto Ricans as a mixture of three races—the Taíno, the Spanish, and the African—had been circulating since the nineteenth century in both criollo and U.S. writings about Puerto Rico, but before the 1950s, this was not institutionally constructed as an object of national pride. It was after the 1950s that the ideology of race mixture was taken up as a populist State discourse and implemented through the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. Indeed, race mixture became a central part of the state's cultural program of development and modernization for Puerto Rico.

What Grandmothers Can Teach us About Puerto Rican Culture and Community

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 34-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irma Olmedo
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Valuable Source ◽  
Puerto Rican Women ◽  
Chicago Area ◽  
Puerto Rican Culture

The memorias of Puerto Rican abuelas (grandmothers) can be a valuable source for understanding how these women see themselves as members of a community and how they characterize what constitutes the Puerto Rican community in the diaspora. Project Memorias sought to elicit the memoires of a group of elderly Puerto Rican women in order to understand aspects of Puerto Rican history and culture and their roles in the migration to the mainland. In the project these abuelas puertorriqueñas discussed their lives, their families in Puerto Rico, their transition to the Chicago area, and the changes they see as they observe the community around them.

Arrivi, Francisco (1915–2007)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Racial Prejudice ◽  
Psychological Perspective ◽  
Puerto Rican Culture ◽  
Poetic Realism

Francisco Arriví was instrumental in developing a modern theater in Puerto Rico during the 1940s–1960s. A playwright, poet, essayist, and tireless promoter of Puerto Rican culture, Arriví authored dramatic scripts for the stage, radio, and television, founded theater groups, and supervised the theater wing of the Puerto Rican Culture Institute. Arriví wrote several major essays on Puerto Rican theater as well as plays ranging from poetic realism to absurdist fantasy and farce. His dramas employ anti-mimetic techniques to treat social themes from a psychological perspective. Vejigantes (Carnival Masks) (1958), his major play, is part of a trilogy that addresses Puerto Rican racial prejudice.

scholarly journals CULTURAL HYBRIDITY AND ITS COMPLEXITY IN ESMERALDA SANTIAGO’S ALMOST A WOMAN

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
IKWAN SETIAWAN
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Host Community ◽  
Cultural Hybridity ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Esmeralda Santiago ◽  
Puerto Rican Culture ◽  
Cultural Power

Abstrak. Tulisan ini mendiskusikan hibriditas dalam novel Almost A Woman karya Esmeralda Santiago. Novel ini menceritakan permasalahan kultural yang dialami Negi, tokoh utama, sebagai imigran Puerto Rico di New York, di mana ia harus mengapropriasi budaya Amerika agar bisa diterima oleh masyarakat induk. Untuk membahas permasalahan tersebut, kami akan menggunakan teori poskolonial Bhabha. Analisis tekstual digunakan untuk menjelaskan data terpilih dengan cara pandang poskolonial tanpa mengabaikan keterkaitan kontekstualnya dengan dinamika imigrasi dan diaspora. Hasil kajian ini menunjukkan bahwa tokoh utama harus menjalankan strategi kultural berupa mimikri dan hibriditas agar bisa diterima di masyarakat induk dan bisa mendukung impian modernnya. Meskipun menikmati budaya Amerika secara apropriatif, ia masih berusaha untuk tidak melupakan budaya Puerto Rico. Dengan strategi ini subjek diasporik bisa menegosiasikan kepentingannya di tengah-tengah masyarakat induk dan kuasa budaya dominan, tanpa harus meninggalkan sepenuhnya budaya Puerto Rico.   Abstract. This paper discusses hybridity in Esmeralda Santiago’s Almost A Woman. This novel tells about cultural problems experienced by Negi, the main character, as a Puerto Rican immigrant in New York, where she must appropriate American cultures in order to be accepted by the host community. To discuss this problem, we will apply Bhabha's postcolonial theory. Textual analysis is used to explain selected data from a postcolonial perspective without ignoring its contextual relationship with the dynamics of immigration and diaspora. The results of this study show that the main character must carry out a cultural strategy in the form of mimicry and hybridity in order to be accepted in the parent community and be able to support his modern dreams. Despite enjoying appropriately American culture, she still tries not to forget Puerto Rican cultures. With this strategy the diasporic subject can negotiate its interests in the midst of the host society and the dominant cultural power, without having to completely abandon Puerto Rican culture.

Hispanophile Zones of Whiteness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isar P. Godreau
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Puerto Rican Culture

This chapter examines narratives developed during the 1930s that exalted the influence of Spain in Puerto Rican culture in order to counteract the political and economic colonial encroachment of the United States. Hispanophile proponents consider Puerto Rico an offshoot of Spain and Puerto Rican culture a product of Spain's colonizing influence. However, more than a discourse in favor of Spain, Hispanophilia was first and foremost a discourse that sought to differentiate Puerto Rico from the United States. Proponents of Hispanophilia argue that the nation is culturally white. In the context of narratives that distinguish Puerto Rico from the United States, such “cultural whiteness” can be qualified as Spanish or “Hispanic whiteness” vis-à-vis “Anglo-Saxon whiteness.”

Rates of Cesarean Delivery Among Puerto Rican Women - Puerto Rico and the U.S. Mainland, 1992-2002

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Varela-Flores ◽  
◽  
H. Vázquez-Rivera ◽  
F. Menacker ◽  
Y. Ahmed ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Cesarean Delivery ◽  
Puerto Rican Women ◽  
The U.S

A New Look at Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican Bonds

1955 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-109
Author(s):  
John P. Broderick
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Puerto Rican ◽  
New Look

A community-based test of a linguistic hypothesis

1996 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-111 ◽  
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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