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Pathologizing the Jíbaro: Mental and Social Health in Puerto Rico's Oso Blanco (1930s to 1950s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2020

Alberto Ortiz Díaz
Alberto Ortiz Díaz*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowaalberto-ortizdiaz@uiowa.edu
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Abstract

The jíbaro—the emblematic figure of Puerto Rico—has long been at the center of the archipelago's political and professional discussions. Building on the work of scholars who have traced the jíbaro's history, this article complicates the tension between the politically nationalistic definition of humble jíbaros working in the countryside and scientific observations of jíbaros within the confines of the criminal-legal system. By the mid twentieth century, mainstream understandings of jíbaros were increasingly fashioned by psychiatry, social science, and social work, all of which connected jíbaros to other rural identities. These projections of the jíbaro powerfully materialized in Puerto Rico's premier biosocial laboratory, the Insular Penitentiary at Río Piedras (popularly known as Oso Blanco). An analysis of the work of penitentiary psychiatrists and social health professionals with prison inmates reveals a more complex, troubling image of redeemable Puerto Rican men with rural roots and sensibilities than the idyllic representations of jíbaros circulating at the time suggest. Oso Blanco health practitioners pathologized the jíbaro to identify and mend his perceived psychosocial shortcomings, and to diminish any defiance he harbored. In so doing, they reinforced the notion that jíbaros were racialized living artifacts central to colonial-populist designs and constituency-building.

Keywords

Classification and TreatmentHealthJíbaroPenitentiaryPsychiatry
Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 77 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 409 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History

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Footnotes

For their patience and valuable advice, I wish to thank Sean Bloch, Mariola Espinosa, Pablo Gómez, Francisco Scarano, Steve Stern, Ann Zulawski, the Editorial Board of The Americas, and the anonymous readers for this journal. I feel privileged to have been able to work on different iterations of this article with this group.

References

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2. Expediente del confinado José Sánchez Rodríguez, September 1951, Archivo General de Puerto Rico, Fondo Departamento de Justicia, Serie Junta de Libertad Bajo Palabra [hereafter AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP], caja 202. When Sánchez Rodríguez got out of prison the first time, López Mercado resorted to what Peter J. Wilson has called “crab antics,” intimate, reputation-staining blows like a crime against nature accusation. The accusation resonated as infamous in society at large and tainted Sánchez Rodríguez's respectable lifestyle, virility, and good name. See Wilson, Crab Antics: A Caribbean Case Study of the Conflict Between Reputation and Respectability (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1995 [1973]).

3. These circumstances—convicts never attending school or having to leave school early to pursue wages, and their resulting illiteracy—repeatedly emerge in Puerto Rico's criminal-legal archive. See Expediente del confinado José Sánchez Rodríguez. On rural schools in the early twentieth century, see Solsiree del Moral, Negotiating Empire: The Cultural Politics of Schools in Puerto Rico, 1898–1952 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013).

4. Expediente del confinado José Sánchez Rodríguez.

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19. This was not unique to Puerto Rico, but prevalent across Latin America and other parts of the world. See, for example, Yolanda Eraso, “‘A Burden to the State’: The Reception of German ‘Active Therapy’ in an Argentine ‘Colony-Asylum’ in the 1920s and 1930s,” in Transnational Psychiatries: Social and Cultural Histories of Psychiatry in Comparative Perspective, c. 1800–2000, Waltraud Ernst and Thomas Mueller, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 51–79.

20. The Classification and Treatment Board was founded c. 1946 in response to deteriorating conditions inside Oso Blanco and other main island prisons. The Parole Board, for its part, had been around since at least 1907 and underwent several changes in the 1940s. In 1940, parole assessment was transferred from the attorney general to an advisory board. In turn, the advisory board made recommendations to the governor. By 1946, the advisory board became self-governing, receiving autonomous and quasi-judicial powers to grant parole as it saw fit. Picó, El día menos pensado, 83, 176–177; and Ortiz, “Redeeming Bodies and Souls,” 7–8.

21. It was not that nationalists were trying to woo jíbaros; rather, the state would consider jíbaros a problematic population only if nationalists made inroads in it, which was a possibility in the consciousness-raising space of the prison. More broadly, the prison has functioned as a consciousness-raising space not only in modern Puerto Rico, but across the Caribbean, Latin America, and elsewhere. See Heriberto Marín Torres, Eran ellos (San Juan: Editorial Patria, 2018); McCormick, Gladys, “The Last Door: Political Prisoners and the Use of Torture in Mexico's Dirty War,” The Americas 74:1 (January 2017): 57–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blanc, Jacob, “The Last Political Prisoner: Juvêncio Mazzarollo and the Twilight of Brazil's Dictatorship,” Luso-Brazilian Review 53:1 (June 2016): 153–178CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aguirre, Carlos, The Criminals of Lima and Their Worlds: The Prison Experience, 1850–1935 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Zimmerman, Matilde, Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapt. 6; and Mencía, Mario, Fertile Prison: Fidel Castro in Batista's Jails (Melbourne, Australia: Ocean, 1993)Google Scholar.

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29. Santiago-Valles, “Subject People” and Colonial Discourses.

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31. Trujillo-Pagán, Nicole, Modern Colonization by Medical Intervention: U.S. Medicine in Puerto Rico (Chicago: Haymarket, 2014), 11–15Google Scholar, 53–54; Scarano, “The Jíbaro Masquerade,” 1404; and Ashford, Bailey K., A Soldier in Science: The Autobiography of Bailey K. Ashford (San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1998 [1934]), 3–5Google Scholar. On the wider socioeconomic context of the period, consult Scarano, Francisco A., Puerto Rico: cinco siglos de historia, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2015), chapts. 21–23Google Scholar; and Fernando Picó, Los gallos peleados (Río Piedras: Ediciones Huracán, 2003 [1983]), ch. 1.

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37. The Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, in particular, was set up in 1935. It initiated and administered projects for providing emergency relief and increasing employment across the archipelago. The PRRA reflected the desire on the part of colonial officials and their creole collaborators to implement a program of reform, reconstruction, and rehabilitation through public health and public works projects. For two decades, these initiatives shaped local social and economic life and had a transformative effect on Puerto Rican politics and the meaning of US citizenship for Puerto Ricans. Del Moral, “Rescuing the Jíbaro,” 114–116; Scarano, Puerto Rico: cinco siglos, chapt. 24; Rexford G. Tugwell, The Stricken Land: The Story of Puerto Rico (New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1947), 4; Miles H. Fairbank, The Chardón Plan and the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, 1934–1954 (San Juan: Fairbank Corp., 1978); and Geoff G. Burrows, “The New Deal in Puerto Rico: Public Works, Public Health, and the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, 1935–1955” (PhD diss.: Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2014).

38. Andres Matias-Ortiz, “Evolutionary Populism in the Place Where Nothing Happens: Coamo, Puerto Rico, 1930–1969” (PhD diss.: University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2009), 2–6.

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46. Ortiz, “Redeeming Bodies and Souls,” 193–196; and Santiago-Valles, “Subject People” and Colonial Discourses, chapts. 7 and 8.

47. Picó, El día menos pensado, 96–97.

48. See for example Stahl, Agustín, “Menos cárceles y presidios y más manicomios y casas de corrección,” Boletín de la Asociación Médica de Puerto Rico 6:69 (August 1908): 139–146Google Scholar; and de Goenaga, Francisco R., Antropología médica y jurídica (San Juan: Imprenta Venezuela, 1934)Google Scholar.

49. The Stanford-Binet test is a cognitive ability assessment used to measure one's intelligence quotient (IQ). The Binet-Simon Scale was developed by French psychologist Alfred Binet and his student Theodore Simon in the early twentieth century to determine which students did not learn effectively in regular classrooms so that they could be given remedial work. Stanford faculty member and American psychologist Lewis Terman later revised and standardized the test, which became known as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales. See Terman, Lewis M., The Measurement of Intelligence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Butte, George C., Report of the Attorney General of Porto Rico, for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1927 (San Juan: Bureau of Supplies, Printing, and Transportation, 1927), 17Google Scholar.

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51. Articles 47 through 51 of Oso Blanco's inaugural regulations focused on psychiatry. These articles specified, among other things, that psychiatrists should use psychological and neuropsychiatric exams to study inmates. The exams were to be completed in a team-based environment. Psychiatrists also had free access to Oso Blanco's archives and therefore data about prisoners. In exchange, they had to submit periodic reports on convict mental health. Winter, Reglamento, 6, 13–14.

52. Expediente del confinado Augusto Rodríguez Jiménez, January 1940, AGPR, FDJ, Serie Expedientes de Confinados [hereafter SEC], caja 223; and División de Terrenos Públicos y Archivos, “Informe Anual del Comisionado del Interior, al Gobernador de Puerto Rico,” Revista de Obras Públicas de Puerto Rico 8:1 (January 1931): 15.

53. The Puerto Rican medical community had been emphasizing hookworm and anemia's links to nutrition and poverty since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While physicians made tremendous progress treating the civilian population, this health problem persisted in prisons until the 1940s. Francisco A. Scarano, “Doctors and Peasants at the Intersection of Empires: The Early Hookworm Campaigns in Puerto Rico,” unpublished manuscript; and Picó, El día menos pensado, 89.

54. Trujillo-Pagán, Modern Colonization by Medical Intervention; Elisa M. González, “Food for Every Mouth: Nutrition, Agriculture, and Public Health in Puerto Rico, 1920s–1960s” (PhD diss.: Columbia University, 2016); Antonio Fernós Isern, “La salud del campesino puertorriqueño,” Indice 1:10 (January 1930): 152–154; and Otero, Pablo Morales, “La anemia del jíbaro,” Boletín de la Asociación Médica de Puerto Rico 24:198 (March 1932): 123Google Scholar.

55. Expediente del confinado Marcelino López Ramos, June 1937, AGPR, FDJ, SEC, caja 322.

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58. Miguel González Manrique, “Breve historia del Departamento de Psiquiatría,” Buhiti 13:1 (December 2008): 5.

59. Ortiz, “Redeeming Bodies and Souls,” chapt. 3.

60. See Bernal, “La psicología clínica en Puerto Rico,” 358.

61. In 1937, Maymí Nevares returned to Puerto Rico from the University of Paris, where he earned his medical credentials. Almost immediately, he co-founded the Psychiatry and Neurology section of the Puerto Rico Medical Association. It appears that by 1941 he was working as a psychiatrist in Oso Blanco, where he served for almost a decade, until the eve of his unexpected death. Troyano replaced him around early 1951, holding the medical directorship at Oso Blanco until the mid 1950s when he resigned. Justino del Valle Correa, Los muchachos de París (Puerto Rico: el autor, 2003), 153–162, 171–173; Administrativa, Sección, “Notas necrológicas,” Boletín de la Asociación Médica de Puerto Rico 43:4 (1951): 247Google Scholar; Morales, Luis M., “In Memoriam,” Boletín de la Asociación Médica de Puerto Rico 43:7 (1951): 396–397Google Scholar; and F. Cancel Hernández, “Doctor Troyano dimite cargo en el Presidio,” El Mundo, July 31, 1957, 32.

62. Maymí Nevares, José R., “La higiene de la formación de habitos durante la primera infancia,” in Memoria del Primer Congreso del Niño de Puerto Rico: reunido en la ciudad de San Juan, Puerto Rico, del 4 al 7 de diciembre de 1941 (San Juan: Negociado de Materiales, Imprenta y Transporte, 1943), 319–322Google Scholar; and Luis M. Morales, “La higiene mental del niño y del adolescente,” in Memoria del Primer Congreso del Niño de Puerto Rico, 331.

63. The link between juvenile delinquency and child psychology had been pondered in Puerto Rico as early as the 1910s, however. For instance, law clerk and scholar Luis Samalea Iglesias published several short essays about these issues in which he underscored the factors that produced criminals. Samalea Iglesias, El hamponismo en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Tip. Real Hermanos, 1919), 3–5, 8–11; La delincuencia infantil en Puerto Rico: notas para una conferencia (San Juan: Tip. Real Hermanos, 1916); and Trajinantes de sombra (San Juan: Tip. Progreso, 1936).

64. Maymí Nevares, “La higiene de la formación de habitos,” 322.

65. Expediente del confinado Gervasio Troche Torres, January 1943, AGPR, Fondo Oficina del Gobernador, caja 86.

66. Expediente del confinado Gervasio Troche Torres.

67. José R. Maymí Nevares, “Contribución del médico neuropsiquiatra al tratamiento individual del delincuente en un presidio,” Revista de Servicio Social 7:2 (April 1946): 43–44.

68. Maymí Nevares, “Contribución del médico neuropsiquiatra,” 44.

69. Maymí Nevares, “Contribución del médico neuropsiquiatra,” 44–45.

70. Maymí Nevares, “Contribución del médico neuropsiquiatra,” 45.

71. Maymí Nevares, José R., “El delincuente anormal ante la justicia,” Revista de Servicio Social 10:3 (July 1949): 19–20Google Scholar.

72. Franqui, Víctor Gutiérrez, Report of the Attorney General to the Governor of Puerto Rico, for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1951 (San Juan: Department of Justice, 1951), 123Google Scholar.

73. Departamento de Agricultura y Comercio, Almanaque agrícola de Puerto Rico (San Juan: Negociado de Materiales, Imprenta y Transporte, 1947), 175.

74. Meléndez Muñoz, Obras completas, vol. 1, 40–41.

75. Meléndez Muñoz, “El jíbaro en el siglo XIX,” 479, 483–486, 563–608.

76. Meléndez Muñoz, “El jíbaro en el siglo XIX,” 461. Italics in original.

77. Picó, Los gallos peleados, 178. References to the anawim abound in Scripture (in Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Zechariah, Matthew, Luke, and James, for example).

78. Rosario, José Colombán, The Development of the Puerto Rican Jíbaro and his Present Attitude Towards Society (New York: Arno Press, 1975), 8–9Google Scholar.

79. Pedreira, Antonio S., La actualidad del jíbaro (Río Piedras: Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1935), 16–17Google Scholar.

80. Rosario, José Colombán and Carrión, Justina, “Sociología rural,” Revista de Servicio Social 1:3 (June-July 1939): 6–10Google Scholar.

81. Expediente del confinado Ramón Hernández Pérez, December 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SEC, caja 481.

82. Expediente del confinado Ángel Miranda Ayala, August 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 300. US officials talked about Haitians in this way as well, saying that they were inclined to lose control despite their efforts to attain “civilization.” See Renda, Mary, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

83. The Parole Board's convict histories were not always as extensive as the Classification and Treatment Board's, but they were just as layered. Importantly, both entities used similar assumptions and language to assess jíbaro prisoners. For example, see the case file of “jíbaro” convict Jorge Sánchez Román, July 1946, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 1.

84. Fernández, Luis Negrón, Report of the Attorney General to the Governor of Puerto Rico, for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1947 (San Juan: Real Hermanos, 1950), 32Google Scholar.

85. Expediente del confinado Rafael Muñoz Álvarado, December 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SEC, caja 481.

86. Expediente del confinado Santiago Nieves Orama, August 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SEC, caja 476.

87. Before the violence, Muñoz Marín challenged federal officials to let Puerto Ricans govern themselves, at least domestically, but he also left the door open for prompt federal intervention “if the people of Puerto Rico should go crazy.” The violence of 1950 was also preceded by the infamous “Gag Law,” which made it a crime to own or display a Puerto Rican flag, sing a patriotic tune, speak or write of independence, or hold an assembly in favor of independence. The law remained in force until 1957. Ivonne Acosta, La mordaza: Puerto Rico, 1948–1957 (Río Piedras: Editorial Edil, 1987); Ramón Bosque Pérez and José Javier Colón Morera, Puerto Rico under Colonial Rule: Political Persecution and the Quest for Human Rights (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006); Miñi Seijo Bruno, La insurrección nacionalista en Puerto Rico, 1950 (Río Piedras: Editorial Edil, 1997); and Gil, Del tratamiento jurídico de la locura, 107.

88. Echoing and building on Morales's insights, in 1953 psychologist María M. Maíz de Meléndez deployed explosive language (terms like “bomb” and “dynamite”) to demonstrate the necessity of psychosocial hygiene in Puerto Rico. The mentally infirm, whether filled with interpersonal or political rage, represented a threat to public security. This meant that only the medico-legal apparatus of the state, eminently health care behind bars, could adequately deal with such issues when they emerged. Gil, Del tratamiento jurídico de la locura, 46–47, 52–53.

89. Troyano had been developing his model of labor therapy for quite some time. Before he arrived in Puerto Rico, he helped pioneer the treatment at the Nigua mental hospital (formerly the national penitentiary) in the Dominican Republic. Ortiz, “Redeeming Bodies and Souls,” chapt. 3.

90. Regarding treatments beyond labor therapy, Troyano mentioned the anti-syphilitic salvarsan, a synthetic chemotherapeutic and arsenic-based compound. Neosalvarsan became available in 1912 and superseded the more toxic and less water-soluble salvarsan as an effective treatment for syphilis. Because both treatments carried considerable risk of side effects, they were replaced by penicillin in the 1940s. Expediente del confinado Fernando Lassalle Concepción, August 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 171; and Expediente del confinado Santiago Santana Díaz, June 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 205. In general, Troyano's psychiatric evaluations are silent about psychotropic drugs. This is unsurprising given mid-century psychiatry's low success rate and the fact that psychiatric drug development was only beginning to gain momentum. Female convict records from the mid 1950s indicate that antipsychotics such as “thorazine” and “trilafon” were drugs of choice in Puerto Rican prisons. Thorazine (chlorpromazine) is an antipsychotic that treats mental illness, behavioral and blood disorders, tetanus, severe nausea and vomiting, and anxiety. Trilafon (perphenazine) is an antipsychotic that treats schizophrenia, nausea, and vomiting. Lydia Peña de Planas, Informe anual de la Escuela Industrial para Mujeres, 1956–57, 50–52, AGPR, FDJ, Subfondo Escuela Industrial para Mujeres (SFEIM), caja 24; and Informe narrativo del funcionamiento de la Institución en los pasados tres meses de enero, febrero, y marzo de 1958,” 33–35, AGPR, FDJ, SFEIM, caja 24.

91. Expediente del confinado Ramón Cruz Ruíz, June 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 135; and Expediente del confinado Julio Ramírez Cruz, September 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 201.

92. Expediente del confinado Paulino Vega Amaro, February 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 220.

93. Expediente del confinado José Luis Rodríguez Galarza, January 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 50; and Expediente del confinado Bernardo Cornier Rodríguez, January 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 175.

94. Expediente del confinado Eustaquio Pérez González, December 1950, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 161.

95. Expediente del confinado Acasito García González, May 1949, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 103.

96. Expediente del confinado Miguel Silva Fuentes, September 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 270.

97. Lloréns, Hilda, Imaging the Great Puerto Rican Family: Framing Nation, Race, and Gender during the American Century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), chapt. 3Google Scholar.

98. Expediente del confinado Miguel Silva Fuentes.

99. The Rorschach test dates to c. 1921. It interprets perceptions of inkblots, which are recorded and then psychologically analyzed. Psychologists believe that inkblot interpretations reveal a person's personality traits and emotional functioning. The test is named after its creator, Swiss Freudian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Hermann Rorschach. Rorschach, Psychodiagnostics: A Diagnostic Test Based on Perception, Paul Lemkau et al., trans. (Berne: Huber, 1942); and Expediente del confinado Ángel Colón León, June 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 215.

100. Expediente del confinado Lady Rosado Mercado, September 1951, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 210.

101. The most famous of these was social anthropologist Julian Steward's 1956 volume, The people of Puerto Rico, which introduced the world to Sidney Mintz and other students who went on to have enormous influence in the history of anthropology. Steward, The people of Puerto Rico: a study in social anthropology (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1956).

102. Méndez, Las ciencias sociales y el proceso político puertorriqueño, 91–92.

103. Expediente del confinado Marcelino Nieves Reyes, April 1950, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 118.

104. González, José Luis, Puerto Rico: The Four-Storeyed Country and Other Essays (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1993)Google Scholar; Kinsbruner, Jay, Not of Pure Blood: The Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Rodríguez-Silva, Ileana, Silencing Race: Disentangling Blackness, Colonialism, and National Identities in Puerto Rico (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dungy, Kathryn R., The Conceptualization of Race in Colonial Puerto Rico, 1800–1850 (New York: Peter Lang, Inc., 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Godreau, Isar P., Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

105. Scarano, “The Jíbaro Masquerade,” 1404, 1415, 1423.

106. Expediente del confinado Ricardo Sánchez Cruz, April 1947, AGPR, FDJ, SJLBP, caja 63. On the culture of agregados in the mountainous interior, see Luther H. Gulick, “Rural Occupance in Utuado and Jayuya Municipios, Puerto Rico” (PhD diss.: University of Chicago, 1952), 19, 25, 37.

107. Examining the experiences of convicts with shanty backgrounds is beyond the scope of this article. I do so in more depth in Raising the Living Dead: Rehabilitative Corrections in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean (forthcoming). On Operation Bootstrap, see Alex W. Maldonado, Teodoro Moscoso and Puerto Rico's Operation Bootstrap (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997).

108. Alegría, Ricardo E., El Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1955–1973: 18 años contribuyendo a fortalecer nuestra conciencia nacional (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1978–79)Google Scholar; and Dávila, Arlene M., Sponsored Identities: Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.