Our Landless Patria Marginal Citizenship and Race in Caguas, Puerto Rico, 1880-1910 / Rosa E. Carrasquillo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Carrasquillo, Rosa E.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Citizenship--Puerto Rico--Caguas.

Citizenship.

Peasants--Puerto Rico--Caguas--Social conditions.

Peasants.

Privatization--Puerto Rico--Caguas.

Privatization.

Land tenure--Government policy--Puerto Rico--Caguas.

Land tenure.

Social stratification--Puerto Rico--Caguas.

Social stratification.

Caguas (P.R.)--Race relations.

Caguas (P.R.).

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiv, 202 p. ) ill., maps ;

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2012

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Our Landless Patria examines issues of race and citizenship in Puerto Rico, tracing how the process of land privatization accelerated a series of struggles for natural resources between the poorest sectors of society and the landed elite. The laws of privatization favored the landed elite and barred former slaves and their descendants from obtaining a formal title to a piece of land. In response, people of color developed an alternative citizenship that validated their livelihood, putting in motion a series of civil claims that protected people's mobility rights and their access to land. However, the rural poor's claims for a more egalitarian society, or what Rosa E. Carrasquillo calls "marginal citizenship, " could not successfully transform the political exclusion of the racially mixed population because of its heavy borrowing from the Spanish legal system. In particular, marginal citizenship adopted patriarchy as a model to regulate social relations at home, failing to address gender inequalities and perpetuating class differences. Our Landless Patria deciphers the late nineteenth-century structure of power in the Spanish colonial state at the local level and illuminates the way ordinary people experienced day-to-day relations of power. Carrasquillo's analysis makes a strong case that the poorest sector of rural society provided the fertile ground in which a civic consciousness developed.

Contents:

Mapping Caguas, mapping the country: the political and economic bases of citizenship

From crown to citizen: local politics and centralization

In the face of inequality: land privatization and racial hierarchies

Stepping toward liberation: defense of mobility rights and race

Marginal but not equal: gender and citizenship.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [181]-196) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9786610466153

9781280466151

1280466154

9780803251786

0803251785

OCLC:

63785519