This project explores the military and political mobilization of rural and urban working sectors of Puerto Rican society as the Island transitioned from Spanish to U.S. imperial rule. In particular, my research is interested in examining how this shift occurs via patterns of inclusion-exclusion within the military and the various forms of citizenship that are subsequently transformed into socio-economic and political enfranchisement. Analyzing the armed forces as a culture-homogenizing agent helps to explain the formation and evolution of Puerto Rican national identities from 1868 to 1952, and how these evolving identities affected the political choices of the Island. This phenomenon, I argue, led to the creation of the Estado Libre Asociado in 1952. The role played by the tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans in the metropolitan military in the final creation of a populist project taking place under colonial rule in the Island was threefold. Firstly, these soldiers served as political leverage during WWII to speed up the decolonization process. Secondly, they incarnated the commonwealth ideology by fighting and dying in the Korean War. Finally, the Puerto Rican soldiers filled the ranks of the army of technicians and technocrats attempting to fulfill the promises of a modern industrial Puerto Rico after the returned from the wars. In contrast to Puerto Rican popular national mythology and mainstream academic discourse that has marginalized the agency of subaltern groups; I argue that the Puerto Rican soldier was neither cannon fodder for the metropolis nor the pawn of the Creole political elites. Regaining their masculinity, upward mobility, and political enfranchisement were among some of the incentives enticing the Puerto Rican peasant into military service. The enfranchisement of subaltern sectors via military service ultimately created a very liberal, popular, and broad definition of Puerto Rico’s national identity. When the Puerto Rican peasant/soldier became the embodiment of the Commonwealth formula, the political leaders involved in its design were in fact responding to these soldiers’ complex identities, which among other things compelled them to defend the “American Nation” to show their Puertorriqueñidad.

This dissertation examines how the work of four Puerto Rican poets – Julia de Burgos, Clemente Soto Vélez, Martín Espada, and Naomi Ayala – demonstrates a poetics of resistance. While resistance takes a variety of forms in their poetic discourse, this project asserts that these poets have and continue to play an integral role in the cultural decolonization of Puerto Rico, which has been generally unacknowledged in both the critical scholarship on their work and the narrative of Puerto Rico’s anti-colonial struggle. Chapter One discuses the theoretical concepts used in defining a poetics of resistance, including Barbara Harlow’s definition of resistance literature, Edward Said’s concepts of cultural decolonization, and Jahan Ramazani’s theory of transnational poetics. Chapter Two provides an overview of Puerto Rico’s unique political status and highlights several pivotal events in the nation’s history, such as El Grito de Lares, the Ponce Massacre, and the Vieques Protest to demonstrate the continuity of the Puerto Rican people’s resistance to oppression and attempted subversion of their colonial status. Chapter Three examines Julia de Burgos’ understudied poems of resistance and argues that she employs a rhetoric of resistance through the use of repetition, personification, and war imagery in order to raise the consciousness of her fellow Puerto Ricans and to provoke her audience into action. By analyzing Clemente Soto Vélez’s use of personification, anaphora, and most importantly, juxtaposition, Chapter Four demonstrates that his poetry functions as a dialectical process and contends that the innovative form he develops throughout his poetic career reinforces his radical perspective for an egalitarian society. Chapter Five illustrates how Martín Espada utilizes rich metaphor, sensory details, and musical imagery to foreground issues of social class, racism, and economic exploitation across geographic, national, and cultural borders. Chapter six traces Naomi Ayala’s feminist discourse of resistance that denounces social injustice while simultaneously expressing a female identity that seeks liberation through her understanding of history, her reverence for memory, and her relationship with the earth. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that Burgos, Soto Vélez, Espada, and Ayala not only advocate for but also enact resistance and social justice through their art.

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Puerto Rico has been under influence and colonial rule by the United States since the Spanish-American War of 1898. This has led the island to have partial and limited control over the affairs inside it. The passing of Hurricane Maria on September 20th of 2017 exposed problems even further. Puerto Rico remains under the control of a Financial Oversight and Management Board since the passing of the PROMESA act (The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act) signed by President Barack Obama in 2016. This had forced Puerto Rico to make drastic cuts to its public services. One of the main services was has been its public university, The University of Puerto Rico. This study provides a critical analysis of the reality of college students staying in Puerto Rico and continuing their studies in the UPR. Ten interviews have been completed. These semi-structured qualitative interviews provided themes that can be studied to create and inspire further research and eventually influence policies that can better the quality of life of these students. The data points to mental health issues, limited opportunities in research and internships, post-hurricane experience, structural problems to the university (physical and bureaucratic), amongst others. There are also signs of resilience and community support. Analysis of the themes through the transcription and data coding have provided insight to steps that can be taken at UCF’s Puerto Rico Research Hub that can extend to Central Florida and the island itself.

The intent of this thesis is to explore the role religion has played in the Puerto Rican society. Growing up in this culture entails a deep and implicit connection with the religious world. Religious values, beliefs, and attitudes are firmly entrenched and amplified through the family, culture, and schools. Because it is so deeply entrenched, it is difficult to find a place to leverage a critique of its impact. Thus, in order to understand the societal matters and challenges the island faces, an in-depth study that explores the beliefs, attitudes, and behavior of Puerto Ricans is necessary.

Puerto Rico has been a United States territory since 1898. Since then, the island has remained in an ill-defined relationship with the United States, lacking autonomy and sovereignty. The Supreme Court and Congress have been the primary agents dealing with Puerto Rico's territorial trajectory. While the island has faced many setbacks throughout the years, this thesis asserts that the zenith in autonomy and sovereignty was reached in the 1950s, after two key legislative developments. This set forth an experiment in territorial administration. But the experiment was abandoned and closed in 2016, after two Supreme Court decisions and an Act of Congress sent Puerto Rico—the experiment—in retrograde motion. This thesis explores Puerto Rico's politico-legal developments, with a focus on the 1950s and 2016.

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This dissertation focuses on the human experience during enslavement in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico, one of the last three localities to outlaw the institution of slavery in the Americas. It reviews the history of slavery and the plantation economy in the Caribbean and how the different European regimes regulated slavery in the region. It also provides a literature review on archaeological research carried out in plantation contexts throughout the Caribbean and their findings. The case study for this investigation was Hacienda La Esperanza, a nineteenth-century sugar plantation in the municipality of Manatí, on the north coast of the island. The history of the Manatí Region is also presented. La Esperanza housed one of the largest enslaved populations in Puerto Rico as documented by the slave census of 1870 which registered 152 slaves. The examination of the plantation was accomplished through the implementation of an interdisciplinary approach that combined archival research, field archaeology, anthropological interpretations of ‘material culture’, and geochemical analyses (phosphates, magnetic susceptibility, and organic matter content as determined by loss on ignition). Historical documents were referenced to obtain information on the inhabitants of the site as well as to learn how they handled the path to abolition. Archaeological fieldwork focused on controlled excavations on four different loci on the site. The assemblages recovered during three field seasons of archaeological excavations served to examine the material culture of the enslaved and to document some of their unwritten experiences. The study of the material culture of Hacienda La Esperanza was conducted through the application of John C. Barrett’s understanding of Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration, Douglas Armstrong’s cultural transformation model, and Paul R. Mullins’ notions of consumerism and identity. Research results showed that the enslaved individuals of Hacienda La Esperanza were active yet highly restricted participants and consumers of the local market economy. Their limited market participation is evidence of their successful efforts to exert their agency and bypass the administration’s control. As such, this dissertation demonstrates that material life, even under enslavement, provides a record of agency and resistance. The discussion also addressed the topics of social stratification and identity. / Anthropology