Jorge Duany

Racializing Ethnicity in the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean

After reviewing recent writing on the process of racialization, this essay examines the causes and consequences of the long-standing anti-Haitian prejudice in the Dominican Republic and the more recent anti-Dominican attitudes in Puerto Rico. Identifying the basic similarities and differences between the two cases of inter-group conflict, this article analyzes the social structures and cultural practices that marginalize ethnic minorities in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. The authors thesis is that the precarious status of Haitians in the Dominican Republic and Dominicans in Puerto Rico is primarily due to their racialization. The public perception of both groups as black, hampers their full socioeconomic incorporation and externalizes racial prejudice and discrimination against foreign Others that are largely excluded from dominant discourses of national identity.After reviewing recent writing on the process of racialization, this essay examines the causes and consequences of the long-standing anti-Haitian prejudice in the Dominican Republic and the more recent anti-Dominican attitudes in Puerto Rico. Identifying the basic similarities and differences between the two cases of inter-group conflict, this article analyzes the social structures and cultural practices that marginalize ethnic minorities in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. The authors thesis is that the precarious status of Haitians in the Dominican Republic and Dominicans in Puerto Rico is primarily due to their racialization. The public perception of both groups as black, hampers their full socioeconomic incorporation and externalizes racial prejudice and discrimination against foreign Others that are largely excluded from dominant discourses of national identity.

To Send or Not to Send: Migrant Remittances in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico

Despite their high out-migration rate, Puerto Ricans in the United States send less money than Dominicans and Mexicans to their relatives back home. One explanation for the low level of private transfers of Puerto Ricans is that public disbursements, especially for nutritional assistance, housing subsidies, and educational grants, may well be the safety net in Puerto Rico that remittances serve in other countries. In addition, most Puerto Ricans are covered by unemployment and disability insurance, and many have earned benefits such as Social Security, Medicare, and veterans pensions. Finally, Puerto Rico’s higher standard of living, compared to other Latin American countries, may mean that many migrants do not feel as obliged to send money to their country of origin as Mexicans or Dominicans do. The broader implications of remittances for understanding the transnational ties between Puerto Ricans on and off the island are examined and compared with the other two groups.

Caribbean migration to Puerto Rico: a comparison of Cubans and Dominicans.

Cuban and Dominican migration to Puerto Rico is a recent example of the intra-Caribbean movements initiated over 200 years ago. This article argues that migration within the Caribbean is as important as migration outside the region. To begin, the historical literature shows that intra-Caribbean migration preceded the movement to North America and Europe. Furthermore, migration within the region has always been heterogeneous in its socioeconomic composition and motivations. The present essay examines the similarities and differences between Cubans and Dominicans in Puerto Rico. Its objectives are to determine the magnitude of the flows, describe the migrants’ residential patterns, analyze their mode of incorporation into the labor market, assess their socioeconomic origins, and evaluate their reasons for migrating. The article concludes that intra-Caribbean migration continues to provide a significant avenue for social mobility within the region.

Anthropology in a Postcolonial Colony: Helen I. Safa's Contribution to Puerto Rican Ethnography

This article assesses Helen I. Safas legacy to anthropological thought in Puerto Rico. The first part of the article locates Safas research on the Island within a long tradition of fieldwork by U.S. scholars since the early twentieth century. More recent research, conducted mostly by Puerto Rican women anthropologists and other social scientists, has expanded upon Safas insights on gender and work. The second part of the essay analyzes Safas major empirical work, The Urban Poor of Puerto Rico: A Study in Development and Inequality. Above all, this book helped overcome the theoretical impasse over the culture of poverty that characterized much of urban anthropology during the 1960s and 1970s. The article concludes with an appraisal of the relevance of Safas work for the ethnography of contemporary Puerto Rico.

Diasporic Dreams: Documenting Caribbean Migrations

During the past five decades, the Caribbean region joined Mexico as on of the primary sources of migrants to the United States. In particular, the three countries of the insular Hispanic Caribbean ?Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic?have experienced the largest and most sustained population flows in their entire history. In the year 2006, more than half of all Puerto Ricans and nearly one out of nine Cubans and Dominicans resided outside their nations of origin, especially in the United States. Other countries of the region with large shares of their populations living abroad include Jamaica, Haiti, Suri name, the Netherlands Antilles, Barbados, Martinique, and Guadeloupe. Most of these immigrant communities maintain strong social, economic, cultural, and political ties with their sending societies. As numerous scholars, writers, and artists have documented, Caribbean people have become increasingly diasporic. Sonia Fritz is an independent Mexican filmmaker who has lived in Puerto Rico for two decades. She has edited, produced, directed, and written more than 20 documentaries, as well as feature-length films such as The Kiss You Gave Me (2000) and An Everyday Story (2004). Fritzs work has been showcased by public television stations, educational institutions, and film festivals in Puerto Rico, the United States, Latin America, and Europe. Her films have focused on social issues such as

Becoming Cuba-Rican

Writing this essay has proven more difficult than other essays. As someone trained primarily in the social sciences, I was taught to use the third person and erase most personal references from the text in order to sound more “objective” in my analyses. Moreover, the first person is problematic for me when referring to Cubans and Puerto Ricans, because I often feel caught between the two groups, as I’ll elaborate below. Composing an autobiographic narrative on my subjective positioning as a “diasporic Cuban” therefore forced me to find a different voice from most of my previous publications on the intertwined topics of identity, migration, and transnationalism. I’ve been asked to reflect upon how my own experiences as a Cuban-born immigrant in Puerto Rico have affected my scholarly work, and to assume a personal rather than a “sociological” tone, a daunting task for someone not used to writing from this perspective.

Colonial Migrants: Recent Work on Puerto Ricans on and off the Island

[First paragraph]Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective. Ramon Grosfoguel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. xi + 268 pp. (Paper US

Cubans in Puerto Rico: Ethnic Economy and Cultural Identity

21.95)Boricuas in Gotham: Puerto Ricans in the Making of Modern New York City. Gabriel Haslip-Viera, Angelo Falcon & Felix Matos Rodriguez (eds.). Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2004. viii + 240 pp. (PaperUS

Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity

24.95)Recent studies of Puerto Ricans have revisited their colonial status, national identity, and transnational migration from various standpoints, including postcolonial, transnational, postmodern, queer, and cultural studies.1 Most scholars in the social sciences and the humanities no longer question whether Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. What is often discussed, sometimes angrily, is the exact nature of U.S. colonialism, the extent to which the Island has acquired certain “postcolonial” traits such as linguistic and cultural autonomy, and the possibility of waging an effective decolonization process. The issue of national identity in Puerto Rico is still contested as intensely as ever. What is new about current scholarly discussions is that many intellectuals, especially those who align themselves with postmodernism, are highly critical of nationalist discourses. Other debates focus on the appropriate approach to population movements between the Island and the U.S. mainland. For example, some outside observers insist that, technically speaking, the Puerto Rican exodus should be considered an internal, not international, migration, while others, including myself, refer to such a massive dispersal of people as transnational or diasporic. Much of this1. D uany 2002; Pabon 2002; Martinez-San Miguel 2003; Ramos-Zayas 2003; Rivera 2003; Negron-Muntaner 2004; Perez 2004. controversy centers on whether the geopolitical “border” between the Island and the mainland is equivalent to a national “frontier” in the experiences of Puerto Rican migrants.

The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States

A study of the migration of Cubans to Puerto Rico beginning with the early 1960s. It examines how they have assumed the minority role of the classical middleman and integrated into the community, the authors arguing that they will eventually disappear as an ethnic group as a result of this.