Puerto Rico, the smallest island of the Great Antilles , has an area of 3,400 square miles. Its major language is Spanish and it is a Commonwealth of the United States of America. The population is approximately 3.6 millions and historically had an agricultural-based economy. However, today, because of its geographic location and tropical environment , the major economic industry is tourism. Thousands of people visit the island annually to enjoy the natural scenery and experience the rich cultural heritage that it offers.Studies have shown that the majority of tourists stay in the northern part of the island where the main attractions are Old San Juan, El Yunque National Rain Forest, and the Luquillo Beach. There has been limited tourism in the southern region, where a different climatic environment prevails. As a result, a different variety of natural scenery and ecological systems exists. The most popular tourist attractions in the south are: Ponce, the second largest city; San German, the second oldest town; and, the Phosphorescent Bay in Guanica. These towns are located in close proximity to each other and, thus, a need exists to spread tourism to the rest of the southern coast.One strategy to attract tourists to this area is to rehabilitate sugar plantations that are within the region. It is on the southern coast where most of the sugar industry was established, including the two largest ones. Although this industry is presently suffering a recession, at one time it was the country's leading export. This rehabilitation will allow tourists, as well as islanders, the opportunity to experience how the sugar industry used to be. As a paradox, I am proposing a new economic boom via tourism that focuses -on a "once major income producer."Central Aguirre, in the town of Salinas, will be used as a case study for this rehabilitation plan. It is located five miles southwest of the town of Guayama, a district under consideration for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. This center of sugar production used to be the second largest in the country. The complex itself is a miniature town,built in approximately ninety-five acres. It serves as one of the best examples of the physical and social hierarchy established between the owners and the laborers. The factory closed abruptly operations in January 1991. The proposed rehabilitation intend to offers the visitor an interpretation of the way this community used to be. It will provide lodging facilities by the rehabilitation of existing cottages and laborers housing, and hotels. The historic railroad system, which the government is committed to restore, will serve as the major transportation system to the interior of Central Aguirre.The author believes that a country's heritage must be used to promote tourism. But there must be a comprehensive plan that establishes tourist trade as a vehicle for enhancing restoration and protection of historic sites and monuments. This project proposes such a plan. / Department of Architecture

This thesis is about the power of political elites to establish the framework of political discourse, and to thereby control political power, in Puerto Rico. The Puerto Rican 'status question' - the debate about the island's ultimate juridical and political relationship with the United States and the rest of the world – is considered a manifestation of such power. Formal domestic politics in Puerto Rico is structured around three party political desires for an uncertain and unknowable postcolonial future, and not around any set of distinctive ideological positions for engaging with political issues in the present. An unresolved question of nationalism and state building therefore becomes the structural filter through which all politics must necessarily pass. Inspired by the concept of hegemony, the thesis is firstly interested in how political elites exercise power to establish status as the framework for domestic political discourse. Secondly, and more importantly, it is interested in how this framework is reinforced, modified, resisted and even overcome through elite exercises of power in concrete political settings. The thesis takes a particular focus on the relationship between status positions and everyday political practices in three Puerto Rican municipalities: Guaynabo, Caguas and Lares. The author arrived at this focus through an ethnographic engagement with the field that was made possible by his research positionality as a white British outsider to Puerto Rico. The thesis tells the story of the nuanced ways in which local political elites engage with the status question through practices of politics on the ground. Elite performances of local state power do not straightforwardly reproduce the hegemony of status, but rather, create a more complicated empirical terrain of contradictory, unexpected and subversive effects. In certain places, everyday practices of municipal politics appear to reflect the intractable entanglement of local priorities and centrally prescribed status positions. In others, politics gets done in ways that leave the status question behind, creating effects that include city-state sovereignty, elevated standards of living, non-nationalist forms of politics, and non-state-centric possibilities for decolonisation. Ironically, therefore, a political system that is so profoundly shaped by discourses of nationalism and state building is disrupted in practice by some of the very actors who help to give the system this shape. These findings contribute to critical geographies of the Caribbean and to recent debates on politics, power and decolonisation in Puerto Rico.

Thesis. 1979. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 228-242. / by Rafael Corrada Guerrero. / Ph.D.

This dissertation explores how members of sovereignty movements in politically-dependent nations respond to transnational influences in their social, economic, and political lives. My research explores Puerto Rico's independence movements on the island and the U.S. mainland with the intent to uncover how transnational influences in Puerto Ricans' social and economic lives may filter into their political activities. I look specifically at how the prolific use of cultural nationalism within the Puerto Rican political community contributes to the characterization of Puerto Rico as a transnational community, and I investigate how this affects their political activities. I conducted research for this dissertation between 2003 and 2005 in San Juan, Puerto Rico and New York City, New York. I used a variety of ethnographic methods, including semi-structured interviews, participation and observation, and archival research. I conclude that any transnational experiences Puerto Ricans may undergo in their daily experiences do not directly impact their political agendas and activities. Instead, I highlight each independentista community as distinct and illustrate the localized political goals and practices of both. I discuss the significance of spatiality to both pro-independence Puerto Rican communities, specifically as it relates to the traditional nation-state structure and the multiplicity of boundaries affecting national membership and access to citizenship and rights that it entails. Ultimately I argue that neither has the cultural eclipsed the political, nor has the transnational eclipsed the local, in Puerto Rican nationalist movements. Instead, I contend that the nation-state is still a powerful influence on contemporary definitions of national membership and belongingness, and locality and spatiality are significant motivators in today's sovereignty movements.

Thesis (M.S.)- - University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus, 2005. / Tables. Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-78)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pennsylvania State University, 2009. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. Thesis advisor: Almeida Jacqueline Toribio.

Drawing upon Critical Race and racialization theories, this dissertation aims at providing a different approach to “The New Puerto Rican Bomba Movement”. Bomba is a musical genre of African roots developed in Puerto Rico upon the arrival of African populations during the slave trade in the sixteenth century. In the last two decades, a proliferation of Bomba groups and schools performing and teaching this peculiar rhythm has taken place. Through the study of Bomba, I seek to contribute to the understanding of racial dynamics in Puerto Rico, and their intersectionalities with class, gender, and national discourses. Through extended participant observation of Bomba performances, unstructured and structured interviews with Bomba musicians, teachers, and scholars and archival research, my purpose is to question and explore constructions of race in Puerto Rican music, and show how processes of racialization operate both socially and politically in the island. In this sense, Bomba will allow me to analyze how Puerto Rican national identity has been constructed in recent years, which elements have been adopted as a national heritage and which have been forgotten or rejected. At the same time, it will shed light on how national discourse aligns or deviates from current social conditions and racial relationships. Through the case study of “The New Puerto Rican Bomba Movement”, I attempt to unravel two interrelated paradoxes: (1) despite hegemonic discourses on Puerto Rican nationalism, which portray the Puerto Rican subject as mixed race, most Puerto Ricans self-identify racially as white or Black. (2) Based on the assumption of a racially mixed national subject, Puerto Rico reaffirms itself as a racial democracy, “The great Puerto Rican family”. This discourse contrasts with daily speeches and practices that emphasize racial exclusions and inequalities. Paradoxically, despite the fact that Puerto Ricans are considered a racially mixed nation, in the 2000 Census, 80.5 % self identified as white, whereas 8 % chose to identify as Black. A decade later, the results of the 2010 Census showed that 12.4 % of the population identified as Black and 75.8 % as white. / text

The original design of Paseo de Diego, inaugurated in 1981 as the first full pedestrian mall in Puerto Rico, vanished with the consent of the agencies in charge of historic preservation in the island. Lack of maintenance and other management issues, rather than the architecture itself, led to a revitalization project that erased a vibrant and distinctive example of modernist urban design by a notable Puerto Rican architect in the barrio of Río Piedras, which is currently being nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. The story of Paseo de Diego recounts the mall's development and recent replacement with a redesign that raises serious questions about age, preservation of rich urban layering, and the policies and regulations protecting significant historic urban fabric.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1974. / Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Margaret Lindsey. Dissertation Committee: A. Harry Passow. Includes tables. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-156).