You should review these topics and sources as you prepare for the exam. The in-person exam will consist of five critical and comparative questions about the class sources. You will choose five from nine questions based on your interest as a learner.
Challenging the “Discovery,” Unveiling the Horrors of Colonization
.Meléndez-Badillo, Jorell. “Borikén’s First Peoples: From Migration to Insurrection.” In Puerto Rico: A National History. Princeton University Press, 2024.
Slave Trade and African Women Rebellion
.Arroyo Pizarro, Yolanda. “Arrowhead.” In Negras, Stories of Puerto Rican Slave Women. Boreales, 2012.
.Dadzie, Stella. “Enslaved Women and Subversion.” In A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance. Verso, 2020.
What comes to mind when you think of migration across the sea?
How do you think the sea can represent both freedom and danger?
In what ways does water carry both memory and possibility?
Bios
Carina del Valle Schorske is a writer and translator living in Brooklyn. Her first book, “The Other Island,” is forthcoming from Riverhead. Her NYT essay “An Arsenal of Mysteries” portrays Mona Passage and Mona Island as microcosms of the Caribbean’s more extensive history of migration, imperialism, and resistance, highlighting the enduring struggles and resilience of the region’s peoples.
Helen Ceballos is a Dominican performer, visual artist, writer, and cultural promoter that addresses issues of migration to Puerto Rico and the US, Black Atlantic, and Queer Afro-Latinidad. In her piece, Ceballos describes the experience of arriving as an undocumented migrant by sea and the weight of being seen or perceived in transit.
The Mona Passage: Now and Then
The Mona Passage — fast-flowing, shark-infested, one of the roughest stretches of water in the world — remains a troubled crucible of imperial traffic. Every year, migrants from Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic crowd small boats and try to make the dangerous crossing to Puerto Rico, the local gateway to the American dream. Many drown, uncountable bodies at the bottom of the sea. Hundreds wind up stranded on Mona, abandoned by smugglers looking to cut corners on the journey, then deported by authorities within days. -Carina del Valle Schorske.
What does the Mona Passage symbolize in the context of imperialism and migration?
How does the passage reflect the precariousness of migrants’ lives?
Historical Mariner Expertise and Trade Networks Early settlers of the Caribbean, coming from Central America and the Amazon, were skilled navigators who used the sea to establish multiethnic communities and extensive trade networks. These movements shaped the region’s early societies and demonstrated the purposeful use of maritime routes for cultural and material exchange.
Colonial Exploitation and the Atlantic Slave Trade During the Spanish colonial period, Mona became a critical site for empire-building, serving as a supply station and hub for the slave trade. Enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples were exploited to produce essential goods like yuca bread and cotton ropes, which fueled colonial campaigns and trade.
Piracy, Haitian Resistance, and Fluid Identities Mona’s isolated location attracted pirates, such as Blackbeard, who trafficked enslaved people through the island. During the Haitian Revolution, rebels used Mona as a refuge, symbolizing its role as a space for oppression and resistance. The island’s contested history reflects its status as a site where imperial forces and displaced individuals negotiated new identities.
Close Reading Exercise
Group 1:
The migrants who left Central America and the Amazon basin to populate our archipelago were great mariners, like the Polynesians, navigating by stars and currents and wind patterns. Over generations of migration, they formed multiethnic polities and maintained vast trade networks: jade from Guatemala, gold and copper alloys from Colombia, jaguar’s teeth from continental jungles. None of these materials arrived by accident.
.How do the achievements of early mariners challenge modern assumptions about migration and navigation?
.What do these networks tell us about the interconnectedness of pre-colonial societies?
Group 2
I could imagine the Spanish ships prowling the Caribbean, snatching people from the Lesser Antilles and the coast of South America to “replenish” their depleted work force. I could imagine the first coffle of stolen Africans that would arrive in Santo Domingo. This passage still teems with human traffic. No one who worked these waters — our captain, the Coast Guard, local fishermen — wanted to talk to me about what they’d seen. Édouard Glissant was right: Even the brightest voyages bring to mind the depths of the sea, “with their punctuation of scarcely corroded balls and chains.”
.How does this excerpt highlight the continuity of exploitation in the Caribbean?
.Why do you think the narrator draws on Édouard Glissant’s idea of the depths of the sea as a repository of history?
Group 3
Soon, Mona became the breadbasket for the whole colonial campaign: gold mines in Puerto Rico, armadas cruising for slaves, salt and pearls from Aruba to Venezuela… Mona was never abandoned for long. Exiled islanders returned to fish, forage and visit sacred sites as their ancestors did for thousands of years. Sailors sick with scurvy came to gather oranges gone to seed. All through the 17th and 18th centuries, pirates frequented the island, making the surrounding waters some of the most perilous in the Atlantic world… Blackbeard, the notorious English buccaneer, used Mona to barrack twice-stolen Africans, reselling them on the black market once they became “acclimated” to hard labor. At the height of the Haitian Revolution, rebels moored ships along Mona’s coast. The island had become both a prison and a sanctuary, a contested terrain where the empire’s exiles hashed out new identities.
In what ways does the island’s history embody the intersection of colonial exploitation and the forging of new, resistant identities?
What does the imagery of exiled islanders returning to sacred sites suggest about the persistence of cultural memory and resilience in the face of imperial disruption?
Enduring Legacy and Connection to the Past
Despite colonial exploitation, Mona’s sacred and practical uses have persisted. Island residents and visitors continued to utilize it for fishing, foraging, and cultural practices, linking the island’s past and present. This continuity underscores the resilience of Indigenous and diasporic traditions in the face of colonial disruption.
What connections can we draw between the past and present narratives of the Mona Passage?
Cerezas por papeles
As a photo-text, Cerezas por papeles/ Cherries for documents is part of a larger piece that Ceballos staged and performed in a San Juan, Puerto Rico gallery. The piece comprises fragments inspired by Ceballos’ life experiences, migrating to Puerto Rico and traveling and living in other countries, including Brazil, Argentina, and the US.
Ceballos proposes that the topic of migration requires that we engage in multiple registers, narratives, and perspectives. In particular, she is interested in how migration affects Dominican and Caribbean women and how the vulnerability of being a migrant is intersected by gender-based oppression, anti-blackness, and constant misreading.
How does Ceballos’ exploration of empowered womanhood intersect with her reflections on the perils and strategies of migration and traveling?
Group Two
Can you explain how Ceballos’ need to perform citizenship and belonging affects her interactions with other members of her community in her piece?
What does the birth certificate for rent suggest about the challenges faced by undocumented immigrants and the lengths they may go to overcome them?
Group Three
Ceballos describes the labor and sacrifices of the women in her family. How do their experiences inform her of the challenges migrant women face in the labor force today?
Group Four
How does the story of the author’s aunt Cathy highlight the difficulty and complexity of legalizing documents as an undocumented immigrant? What are the consequences of being unable to do so?
What topics and sources would you like to see included in the semester-wide exam?
Draft a preliminary question based on one source from the class that impacted you.
Context
The Puerto Rican crisis of the twentieth-first century includes an economic recession, an illegal (non-audited) debt, climate disasters, an extended energy blackout, aid mismanagement and neglect, a massive shutdown of schools, the defunding of public education, the privatization and deterioration of public services, a wave of femicides and queer-phobic crimes, forced migration to the US, internal displacement due to a tourist-US investor led economies, land-grabbing and 126 years of US colonialism that denies Puerto Rico to this day the right of choice to either statehood and full citizenship or independence.
In the last chapter of his book Puerto Rico: A National History, historian Dr. Jorell Meléndez Badillo examines why Puerto Rico arrived at its current juncture and how Puerto Ricans imagine possible futures in the face of austerity, failing infrastructures, and the rubble left behind by colonial neglect.
Beatriz Llenín Figueroa is an independent writer, editor, and translator. She is also an Associate Editor at Editora Educación Emergente (EEE). In her piece “The Maroons are Deathless, We are Deathless,” she argues that driven by an ideology of privatization, government deregulation, and endlessly increasing debt for “development,” neoliberalism is “at once the motor and proposed savior of the current humanitarian and fiscal crisis in Puerto Rico.” However, she says the #RickyRenuncia protests demonstrate that amid this “dire situation, Puerto Ricans ‘on the ground’ and in the commons are illuminating the way toward another, and better, country.”
The institution of slavery was threatened when large groups of Africans escaped to geographically secluded regions to form self-emancipated communities, often referred to as maroon communities. Such communities were established throughout the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean and Brazil. They developed their culture, government, trade, and military defense against their European and American oppressors. In short, they attempted to live as free people beyond the planters’ or colonial officials’ sight and control.
What does the figure of the “maroons” and the descriptive word “deathless” signify in Llenín Figueroa’s piece?
“We honor the submarine corals made from the bodies of our enslaved, our migrants, our poor, our women, our queers, our dispossessed, our freedom-seekers. In and through them, we, Antilleans, islanders, and Caribbean peoples, stand united. The maroons are deathless. We are deathless.”
Compare and explain these arguments by Llenín Figueroa and Meléndez Badillo. Expand your discussion and include examples presented in each reading.
(1) “The hashtag [#MeCagoEnLaIsla meaning “I take a shit on the island” or “fuck the island.”] is intimately connected to the forms of hatred insofar as it reenacts a longstanding ideology of loathing toward our insular geography. Originally deployed by the very empires that, ironically, were built on the blood and resources of the Caribbean archipelagos they revile, [this] ideology has been consistently reproduced by the local elites of complicit, neocolonial criminals. -Llenín Figueroa
“The future without Puerto Ricans [is] a political project that sought to make Puerto Rico a disappearing archipelago. As many Puerto Ricans struggle to survive or make ends meet, a new class of wealthy US foreigners has arrived in the archipelago to take advantage of the government’s tax incentives… For many in Puerto Rico… this is just another form of colonialism (205)”- Meléndez Badillo
(2): “In light of these recent developments in the country, and now trembling with expectation, I can confirm that there is an even more intense, and equally longstanding, love for the island, as opposed to its loathing.” -Llenín Figueroa
“The younger generations are enacting politics and other forms of participatory democracy beyond the ballot box… For many of the people who participate in these projects, decolonization is an urgent matter. Since they cannot continue to wait for elected officials to help them, they rely on themselves to do so. The phrase “sólo el pueblo slava a pueblo” (only the people will save the people) acquires power in this context (211-212).”
Bad Bunny and the politics of everyday life
.Benito Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, came to fame during an (ongoing) intense socio-political-ecological collapse in the archipelago of Puerto Rico- a colonial territory since the US invaded in 1898.
.Keeping a balance between his reggaeton/trap/pop persona (a carefree sexual adventurer- now burdened by fame), he has also used and shared his platform to discuss issues regarding political corruption, gender politics in music, queer and trans rights, and visibility, the visitor economy, ecological deterioration, and the displacement of local communities.
. You can find the original lyrics and English translation here.
The repeated phrase “Puerto Rico ‘ta bien cabrón”(Puerto Rico is fucking awesome) discusses the importance of a Black music lineage (bomba, salsa, reggaeton), sports dominance, local knowledge/saberes, Caribbean solidarity (shout out to the Dominican Republic!), activism, political resistance to colonialism (through its images of political leaders and protests), neoliberalism, and corruption. “Cabrón” also means fucked-up, demanding, and challenging.
.The video is interrupted by a “breaking news” story by independent journalist Bianca Graulau about the power system’s vulnerability after the government privatized the company. The report gives context to understand the economic increase in utilities and how the many blackouts are taking lives and affecting the locals daily. The song then “performs” a blackout, a “maldito apagón.”
.Bad Bunny identifies an appropriation problem due to reggaeton’s popularity on a global scale. He says everyone mimics the genre and the Puerto Rican/Latino slang. For him, this cultural issue mirrors the dynamics of colonialism. He warns people, “welcome to el calentón,” you are going to burn, “cuidao con mi corillo,” beware of Puerto Ricans because we don’t stand for shit/fakeness/ political abuse.
.The party scene could be read as a sequence that plays or reproduces tourist’s expectations about the island. At the same time, it is also portraying Puerto Rican queer joy and pleasure as resistance.
.The song ends with a femme voice declaring that she doesn’t want to migrate or be displaced. They (the tourists/the US investors/ the privatizers/the fake appropriators) are the ones who must go because they are taking what belongs to us.
Abraham Rodríguez Jr. is a contemporary Puerto Rican writer. He has been active since the 1990s. Raised in the Bronx, he writes stories that depict the experiences of “Nuyoricans.” Rodriguez portrays the struggle of Puerto Ricans, whether on the island of Puerto Rico or in the US.
In the book and short story The Boy Without a Flag (1992), Abraham Rodriguez Jr. captures the hardship of growing up poor in the South Bronx and what it is like to sacrifice one’s childhood to survive and come to terms with the socio-political realities of (Boricua) life at a young age.
“The Boy Without a Flag”
“The Boy Without a Flag” is narrated by an eleven-year-old Puerto Rican boy who is a voracious reader and writes novels and underground comics in his school. Influenced by his father’s political ideas, a poet critical of US imperialism, he refuses to salute the US flag at his school as an act of political awakening and defiance.
Using the short story as a microcosm, Rodriguez shows Puerto Ricans’ political spectrum in NYC and their different stands regarding US colonial rule. Complacency, ignorance, or avoidance are the most common reactions to the debate about Puerto Rico’s political status. The subject is taboo at school, and nobody wants to address the real-life implications of the discussion.
After his father is called to the principal’s office and refuses to support his son’s political views, the narrator must unpack what happened to him and learn from the complexity of his protest and the reactions of the people around him.
Commenting on the story
Instructions:
Comment on these statements reflecting on the story:
.People in power don’t know how to address the concerns of Puerto Ricans. They are only protecting their interests.
.Puerto Ricans are a part of (the city/the school/the US) without a part to play.
.There is a “proper” and “improper” way and time to protest and produce change.
.Thinking of the historical and political context presented in the reportage, what are the implications of the political silencing at the narrator’s school?
.How does the story reflect life for Puerto Ricans in the US beyond the specifics of its plot?
.How do you interpret the ending? What political and life lessons does the narrator learn?
