Libros / Books

The Lettered Barriada: Workers, Archival Power, and the Politics of Knowledge in Puerto Rico

by JORELL A. MELÉNDEZ-BADILLO

In The Lettered Barriada, Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo tells the story of how a cluster of self-educated workers burst into Puerto Rico’s world of letters and navigated the colonial polity that emerged out of the 1898 US occupation. They did so by asserting themselves as citizens, producers of their own historical narratives, and learned minds. Disregarded by most of Puerto Rico’s intellectual elite, these workers engaged in dialogue with international peers and imagined themselves as part of a global community. They also entered the world of politics through the creation of the Socialist Party, which became an electoral force in the first half of the twentieth century. Meléndez-Badillo shows how these workers produced, negotiated, and deployed powerful discourses that eventually shaped Puerto Rico’s national mythology. By following these ragtag intellectuals as they became politicians and statesmen, Meléndez-Badillo also demonstrates how they engaged in racial and gender silencing, epistemic violence, and historical erasures in the fringes of society. Ultimately, The Lettered Barriada is about the politics of knowledge production and the tensions between working-class intellectuals and the state. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient.

Editorial Reviews

“No one has treated the foundational texts of the Puerto Rican labor movement as comprehensively and organically as Jorell A. MeléndezBadillo. Uniquely compelling, The Lettered Barriada makes a significant addition to labor studies, Latin American history, and Puerto Rican and Caribbean studies.” -- Francisco A. Scarano, author of Puerto Rico: Cinco Siglos De Historia “Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo’s focus on the ‘politics of knowledge production’ explodes our understanding of the internecine struggles within the early Puerto Rican Left and the politics of race and gender in the construction of radical social movements in Puerto Rico. Meléndez-Badillo exposes to historians of Puerto Rico how the historical narratives to which we all have contributed have been shaped irrevocably by the aspirations and interests of the flawed male radical visionaries of the turn of the century. His book is simultaneously empirically fresh, epistemologically challenging, and inspirational in its revisiting of Puerto Rican history and those who made it.” -- Eileen J. Findlay, author of We Are Left without a Father Here: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico

About the Author

Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo is Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth College, author of Voces libertarias: Los orígenes del anarquismo en Puerto Rico, and coeditor of Without Borders or Limits: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Anarchist Studies. Also he is editor of Páginas libres: Breve antología del pensamiento anarquista en Puerto Rico (Editora Educación Emergente, 2021). He holds a Ph.D. in Latin American History from the University of Connecticut.

UPR’s role in economic development in Puerto Rico: Research and Development continued from page 9

When interviewed by CNE colleague, Jennifer Wolff, Dr. Elvia MeléndezAckerman, Professor of Environmental Sciences at UPR Río Piedras, highlighted how past budget cuts have made research an increasingly precarized affair. The UPR already provides less than competitive salaries and benefits, causing research programs to lose key staff and hindering the recruitment of potential researchers. Budget cuts have also pushed university departments to increase the undergraduate teaching load to their faculty, while decreasing both research and graduate-level teaching loads. In addition, administrative consolidations have reduced the availability of experienced and dedicated administrative staff in managing researchrelated endeavors. Furthermore, hiring freezes for both faculty and administrative staff are likely already overly burdensome to ensure competitiveness in ensuring external funding and sustaining an administrative structure that can comply with regulatory requirements. Our analysis of R&D activity in Puerto Rico shows that private institutions have been unable to increase their R&D output to a degree that can compensate for reduced R&D activity by UPR campuses, and that UPR institutional funds are an essential component of total R&D activity in the archipelago. Thus, the proposed budget cuts by the FOMB will very likely reduce total R&D output in Puerto Rico, render the archipelago increasingly less competitive in R&D, and doom the possibility of success of any serious industrial and economic development policy focused on fostering high added-value activities. RAÚL SANTIAGO-BARTOLOMEI is a Research Associate at CNE. He has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Development from the University of Southern California (USC). His research interests lie in the intersection between institutional change, social networks, and economic development, and how these relate to urban change. He is applying this approach to his current research on economic reforms and changes in the housing rental market in Havana, Cuba. CENTER FOR A NEW ECONOMY (CNE) is one of the most credible, influential and sought-after voices on Puerto Rico’s economy. Founded in 1998 as Puerto Rico’s first think tank, CNE has evolved into a powerful nonpartisan advocate on behalf of the island in policy circles as well as an important participant of diaspora and Latino groups in the US mainland.