The long political struggle to define Puerto Rico’s relationship to the US has not been an equal one and remains so to this day. Autonomism have both managed to carve out historical narratives that suit their purposes, an in doing so, gain a near monopoly on the Próceres. In this manufactured political memory, Jose Celso Barbosa, the statehood advocate who rejected modern interpretations of race, class and trajectory in Puerto Rico, is silenced. More than him, the entire movement of “transition” has been silenced as just that, a transition from one state, Spanish Colonialism, to another, US colonialism and the Estado Libre Asociado, ignoring the political reality of the time. Therefore my study of Barbosa and his inconformity with modern expectations serves as a study of how and why this moment was historicized and politicized. In doing so I explore the use of memory politics and the processes by which “Puerto Rico” was created amid traditional Latin narratives of post-independence with no clear independence.
Rodriguez, Miguel J.,
"The Shadow of Barbosa: Reexamining Historical Memory of Early Twentieth-Century Puerto Rico"
(2019).
History Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/8gp5-jg12
