History of Puerto Rico: A Panorama of Its People

Abstract

Since 1986 students of Puerto Rican history have benefited from several editions of Fernando Picó’s Historia general de Puerto Rico, which now appears in a welcome English version, updated and translated by the author. Simultaneously, Ediciones Huracán in San Juan has released a new Spanish edition under the original title. Picó is a leading historian of the island, having worked with primary sources and published on various topics and time periods; his knowledge of Puerto Rican historiography is broad and deep. The book is especially recommended for the general public and for use as a core text in undergraduate surveys of Puerto Rican history.As the subtitle in English implies, the Puerto Rican people, in all their diversity, are placed at the center of Picó’s analysis, and he argues that the processes they initiated “are more important than the decisions made by the ruling figures of the North Atlantic” (p. xi), at least in the long term. While Picó gives consistent attention to the initiatives and impacts of nonelites, it is clear that at times these were swamped — though never annihilated — by those of foreign capital and governments. A second goal is to “address the claims made by” four currents of Puerto Rican historiography — great men/moralistic, institutional, and social/economic studies, and studies of “historians’ own ambivalent practices” (p. viii) — which Picó accomplishes implicitly for the most part, even in the footnotes. Picó is unfailingly polite and jargon-free even when openly disputative. He chides the Taino roots movement gently for contributing to the marginalization of African heritage in Puerto Rico, courteously demolishes the notion that either the Bourbons or municipal authorities had much control on the ground in the eighteenth century, and casts doubt on the argument that a separate Creole bourgeoisie took clear form by the end of the 1800s. The most impassioned section of the book is the final few pages, which constitute a moving call to celebrate Puerto Rican diversity, achievements, and commitment to education and social justice.The narrative achieves a very readable synthesis of much of the progress in Puerto Rican historiography as a whole, incorporating political, diplomatic, and military history with social, economic, and to some extent cultural history, and beginning with a brief chapter sketching the geological zones and ecosystems of the island. The select bibliography lists several dozen secondary sources published since the first Spanish edition of 1986, and a brief hunt through the notes, particularly for the last two chapters on recent history, reveals more. Picó often begins chapters by placing Puerto Rico in relevant broader contexts such as the early modern Atlantic World or the expanding United States hemispheric hegemony in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Organized chronologically, the book offers a quite even coverage of the four main periods (1510 – 1760s, 1760s – 1820s, 1820s – 1890s, since 1898), although the last of those is perhaps the least developed. The two chapters on 1898 – 1940 and 1940 – 80 deal with multiple themes, which leads to a rather choppy feel, unlike the three thematic chapters that all cover the critical 1760s – 1820s period.It is never entirely fair to ask that a work of tremendous synthesis such as this one include yet more, but greater coverage of cultural history, particularly for the twentieth century, would strengthen the book. Picó invokes the important intellectual Generation of 1930 in his concluding pages but does not discuss it in the 1898 – 1940 chapter. The histories of popular cultures in the island and their complex relationships with the Nuyorican community also merit further analysis.Women are certainly not absent from the book, nor are demographic and labor issues that are relevant to the historical study of Puerto Rican women. Still, Picó does not offer a developed gender analysis or fully engage the historiography on women and gender in Puerto Rico that began in the 1970s and has blossomed since. The discussion of women and politics could be much stronger. For the 1910 – 1930s period, there is barely a mention of the women’s suffrage struggle and its two-step victory, and no mention at all of anarchist-feminist Luisa Capetillo, one of the best-known women in Puerto Rican history. Neither is there any discussion of the surging rates of female sterilization in the 1940s – 1970s period, or what they might reveal about the gendered policies at the foundation of Puerto Rico’s new industrial order.Course instructors have a plethora of sources with which to supplement Fernando Picó’s valuable book, whether to provide more polemic or more depth on any number of the fascinating issues that he introduces. A second edition will hopefully include an index, both for students and for specialists seeking Picó’s take on their particular topics of interest.