Citizens’ power in Latin America: theory and practice

Abstract

the police for their incendiary rhetoric. When Black working men such as Juan Vilar co-created labor discourse, they presented a de-Africanized image of the country from which the category of race vanished even as other colleagues shared or debated overtly racist ideas (p. 71). Building on cultural studies (Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones, Julio Ramos, Bianca Medina Báez), The lettered barriada unearths this alternative activism through Capetillo’s anarchist essays and the figure of Juana Colón, in which race, gender and occupation intersect. The community of Comerío remembers her as an illiterate laundress, an ironer and an experienced santiguadora, or barrio healer. Before marriage, Juana Colón labored on a coffee plantation. Her trade did not prevent her from giving speeches during the cigarmakers’ strikes in 1917 and 1919, which led to her arrest. Urban-based cigarmakers were among the most educated workers. In contrast, agricultural and domestic laborers were routinely forgotten by unions unless a major strike loomed on the horizon. The lettered barriada addresses the complex materialities involved in the creation of historical knowledge by disenfranchised subjects. The author shows that obreros ilustrados and obreras ilustradas can be seen as competitors to the archive of puertorriqueñedad imagined by elites and replete with cultural representations of the Puerto Rican nation. The book fits into the current debate on precarity as a shared condition under regimes of coloniality. I recommend this book for students, researchers and non-specialists with prior knowledge of Puerto Rican history, labor history, race, gender and citizenship, cultural studies or Caribbean and Latin American studies.