Laird Bergad, Distinguished Professor of History (The Graduate Center, CUNY and Lehman College) & César Ayala, Professor of Sociology (UCLA)

A discussion of the forthcoming book: AGRARIAN PUERTO RICO, 1899 – 1940: A Radical Reinterpretation of Economy and Society under U.S. Colonial Rule.

The authors challenge a wide range of well-established myths about the social and economic history of Puerto Rico in the first four decades of the U.S. colonial control over the island. Using a database of tax records for ten municipalities in the sugar, tobacco and coffee producing zones of Puerto Rico, gathered by the authors in the Archivo General de Puerto Rico, together with a new systematic analysis of U.S. Census data that has never been undertaken, we show that the idea that a pre-established yeoman peasantry was displaced by U.S, corporate capital, a central tenet of Puerto Rican historiography, is completely erroneous.

October 25, 6-8 pm, room 5114

Co-sponsoring: Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies, PhD Program in History