LAPRS Noticias

Newsletter of the Department of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program at Lehman College, City University of New York

Fall 1999

TWO NEW BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

DEPARTMENT FACULTY

César J. Ayala’s American Sugar Kingdom: the Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean, 1898-1934 was published in October by the University of North Carolina Press. The book focuses on the discontinuities in the development of plantation economies in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic during the early 20^th century.  It analyzes and compares the growth of sugar production in the three nations following the War of 1898 —  when the United States acquired Cuba and Puerto Rico — and shows how closely the development of the Spanish Caribbean’s modern economic and social class systems is linked to the history of the U.S. sugar industry during its greatest period of expansion and consolidation.  Based on extensive archival research in all three countries and in U.S. documentary collections, the book examines patterns of investment and principal groups of investors, interactions between U.S. capitalists and native planters, contrasts between new and old regions of sugar monoculture, the historical formation of the working class on sugar plantations, and patterns of labor migration.  In contrast to most studies of the Spanish Caribbean, which focus on only one country, this book places the history of U.S. colonialism in the region, and the history of plantation agriculture in the region, in comparative perspective. Congratulations César!

Laird W. Bergad’s The Demographic and Economic History of Slavery in Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1720- 1888 was also published in October by Cambridge University Press.  Minas Gerais was the single largest slaveholding region in Brazil, from its settlement in the late 18^th century because of gold and diamond discoveries, until the abolition of Brazilian slavery in 1888.  It is based on the largest database ever assembled on a slave population in the Americas derived from extensive primary source documentation found in numerous Brazilian historical archives. Slavery had a very unique history in Minas Gerais.  The slave system was transformed from mining-based monocultural export economic structures which prevailed during the 18^th century, to a diversified economy oriented largely toward domestic markets during the 19^th century.  This is the only documented case  in Latin America of a large scale slave system thriving in a non-export economic environment.  Not only did the slave system prevail despite these economic changes, but the slave population of Minas Gerais was remarkable because it increased through natural reproduction, rather than through importation via the transatlantic slave trade.  This is the only known example of a slave system in Latin America where this was the case, and comparisons are invited with the patterns of slave reproduction found in the United States ante-bellum South, heretofore considered unique. Congratulations Laird!

Faculty News

Aarón Gamaliel Ramos is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies, for the academic year 1999-2000, through  the exchange program between the University of Puerto Rico and the City University of New York.

He is Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico and a former Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies in that institution. He has lectured extensively throughout the Caribbean and has taught at the Université d'Etat d'Haïti, in Port-Au-Prince, and in several universities in the United States. He also is a member of Caribbean Studies Association and Co-Chair of its Task Force on Haiti.

His research has focused on culture and politics in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. He has recently contributed the chapter “Patrie et Citoyenneté: La construction  politique de l'identit‚ portoricaine,” to the book Politique et Developement dans les Caraïbes , edited by Fred Constant and Justin Daniel, eds., (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999). His book, Islands at the Crossroads: Politics in the Non-Independent Caribbean (with Angel Israel Rivera), is in press.

Oscar Montero has published “Casal and Maceo: Art, War and Race in Colonial Havana” in Ciberletras www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras Spring 1999. This is an online journal of Hispanic literary criticism published by the Department of Languages and Literatures, in collaboration with Yale Univesity.  It may be accessed at the above Web site.

He has also published “The Queer Theories of Severo Sarduy” in Between the Self and the Void:

Essays in Honor of Severo Sarduy edited by A. Rivero-Potter (Boulder, Co.: Society of Spanish and Spanish-American Studies, 1998); “The Signifying Queen: Critical Notes from a Latino Queer” in Hispanisms and Homosexualities edited by Sylvia Molloy and Robert M. Irwin (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1998).

He co-chaired the conference Crossing Borders '99: Latino/a and Latin American Lesbian and Gay Testimony, Autobiography and Self-Figuration hosted by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, CUNY, March 11-13, 1999.

A forthcoming publication is “Do Latins  Make Lousy Lovers? A Reputation Revisited” Hopscotch Spring 2000.

Xavier F. Totti gave a lecture, on October 14, 1999 titled “Latinos, Group or Myth: Sketching a Complex Understanding” as part of the Social Science Lecture Series at Manhattan College.

He will present a paper at the next meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, to be held in Miami in the Spring of 2000, titled “Transnational Ideologies in Puerto Rico: Power and Pain.”

He also prepared the bibliography on Puerto Ricans in the United States for the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University.

Forrest Colburn spent the summer in Central America, where he did research on the private sector of the five countries of the region, focusing on how entrepreneurs are coping with the “opening” of the region to international competition.  He conducted 61 interviews.  Professor Colburn also taught in seminars organized by INCAE, one of Latin America's premier graduate management schools. 

In addition to teaching this semester at Lehman College, he is Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he is teaching a graduate class titled, “Relations between Industrial and Developing Countries.”  In October he gave a paper at the annual meeting of the New England Council of Latin American Studies, which was held at Yale University.

His recent publications include a co-authored monograph (with a colleague in Costa Rica, Fernando Sánchez) titled, Las democracias centroamericanas. 

With another colleague (Pedro Raventós) he published an article in the Mexican journal, Comercio exterior  titled, “Promoción de las exportaciones en Costa Rica y Centroamérica.” He also published an essay, “Inequality in Latin America,” in the summer 1999 issue of Dissent.

César J. Ayala and Laird W. Bergad are writing a co-authored book titled Land Tenure and Social Structure in Puerto Rico, 1898-1934. This is a study of the effects of colonialism, free trade, and foreign investment on Puerto Rico’s agrarian social structure from the close of the Spanish colonial period through the Great Depression. They will examine the evolution of land tenure and the distribution of wealth in areas of declining foreign markets (the coffee-producing  region), and in areas of expanding foreign markets (the sugar- and tobacco-producing districts).  It will also compare the effects of U.S. investments by contrasting regions where U.S. capital invested in land (sugar), with areas where foreign capital was not involved in production at all (coffee), and with areas where foreign capital was involved only in marketing but not in land ownership (tobacco).

The project is based on the examination of colonial taxation records from the Archivo General de Puerto Rico, in 5 year intervals between 1894 (the last Spanish Census) and 1934.  Currently, the study has gathered records of  28,000 farms in 10 municipalities in 1905 and 1915. By the summer of 2000, they expect to have completed the collection and input of data and will have records of 80,000 properties from archival sources.

This project integrates the utilization of databases on historical statistics on land tenure and distribution of wealth with Geographic Information Systems technology for spatial analysis and display of the data.

Thomas Spear translated (along with Barbara Lewis, an adjunct faculty member of Languages and Literatures) Edouard Glissant's Faulkner, Mississippi?  (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999) a fascinating study of Faulkner and the American south from Glissant's particular Caribbean-universal point of view. A data base focusing on the French-speaking Caribbean islands located at www.lehman.cuny.edu/ile.en.ile  just celebrated one year online. In spring 2000, Lehman is offering a couse in Haitian Creole, intended specifically for Creole speakers who do not necessarily read or write Creole. This course will be taught by Yanick Morin from York College (where the CUNY Haitian Studies Center is located) and is  offered as a distance-learning class Tuesday afternoons.

José Luis Rénique continues work on a book-length manuscript titled “An Andean Long March: Political Tradition in Peru, 1890-1992.”  He published an article titled “Apogee and Crisis of a Third Path: Mariateguismo: People's War, and Counterinsurgency in Puno, Peru, 1987-1994” in Shining and Other Paths, War and Society in Peru, 1980-1995, edited by Steve Stern (Duke University Press, 1998).  He is also now writing a weekly column for the prestigious Lima daily newspaper El Comercio on politics and culture in the U.S.

Milagros Ricourt spent the summer 1999 in the Dominican Republic conducting interviews and filming for a documentary on an organization of rural women.  She is also continuing her research and writing on Dominicans in New York.

The faculty and staff of the Department of Latin American and Puerto Rican Studies, and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program wishes all readers a happy holiday season.