Puerto Rico, 2006:

Puerto Rico, 2006:
Author: Mary Hilaire Tavenner
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2010-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1456810049

“This book is a detailed, well-researched history of how a community of Puerto Ricans came to be in the heart if America. Puerto Rico owes a debt of gratitude to the author and should declare Dr. Tavenner an “honorary Boricua” for the extraordinary effort she has put into documenting the factual history and the fascinating life story of her Puerto Rican neighbor in Lorain, Ohio” ---Secretary of State and Lt. Governor of Puerto Rico, Kenneth McClintock “These Memoirs are reflective of an educational journey in search of ways to better understand and serve individuals, communities, and institutions as a servant leader, unconditionally.”] ---Dr. Generosa Lopez-Molina, Educational Leadership

The Economy of Puerto Rico

The Economy of Puerto Rico
Author: Susan M. Collins
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 632
Release: 2007-08-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780815715603

A Brookings Institution Press and the Center for the New Economy publication A non-incorporated territory of the United States, Puerto Rico operates under U.S. legal, monetary, security and tariff systems. Despite sharing in these and other key U.S. institutions, Puerto Rico has experienced economic stagnation and large scale unemployment since the 1970s. The island's living standards are low by U.S. standards, with a per capita income only half that of Mississippi, the poorest state. While many studies have analyzed the fiscal implications of Puerto Rico's political relationship with the United States, little research has focused broadly on the island's economic experience or assessed its growth prospects. In this innovative new book, economists from U.S. and Puerto Rican institutions address a range of major policy issues affecting the island's economic development. To frame the current situation, the contributors begin by assessing Puerto Rico's past experience with various growth policies. They then analyze several reforms and new initiatives in labor, education, entrepreneurship, fiscal policy, migration, trade, and financing development, which they incorporate into a proposed strategy for jumpstarting Puerto Rican economic growth. Contributors include Gary Burtless (Brookings Institution); Orlando Sotomayor, Luis Rivera-Batiz, Ramón Cao, Maria Enchautegui, José Joaquín Villamil, Eileen Segarra, Marinés Aponte, and Juan Lara (University of Puerto Rico); Richard Freeman and Robert Lawrence (Harvard University); Helen Ladd (Duke University); Francisco Rivera-Batiz (Columbia University); Steven Davis and Bruce Meyer (University of Chicago); James Alm (Georgia State University); Ingo Walter, Rita Maldonado-Bear, and William Baumol (New York University); Belinda Reyes (University of California, Merced); Alan Krueger (Princeton University); Carlos Santiago (University of Wisconsin); David Audretsch (Indiana University); Ronald Fisher (Michigan State University); Fuat Andic (UN Advisor); Arturo Estrella (NY Federal Reserve); James Hanson and Daniel Lederman (World Bank); James Dietz (University of California, Fullerton); and Katherine Terrell (University of Michigan).

When I Was Puerto Rican

When I Was Puerto Rican
Author: Esmeralda Santiago
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2006-02-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0786736860

One of "The Best Memoirs of a Generation" (Oprah's Book Club): a young woman's journey from the mango groves and barrios of Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, and eventually on to Harvard In a childhood full of tropical beauty and domestic strife, poverty and tenderness, Esmeralda Santiago learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs, the taste of morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But when her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually a new identity. In the first of her three acclaimed memoirs, Esmeralda brilliantly recreates her tremendous journey from the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years, to translating for her mother at the welfare office, and to high honors at Harvard.

Almost a Woman

Almost a Woman
Author: Esmeralda Santiago
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2012-06-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0306821117

Following the enchanting story recounted in When I Was Puerto Rican of the author’s emergence from the barrios of Brooklyn to the prestigious Performing Arts High School in Manhattan, Esmeralda Santiago delivers the tale of her young adulthood, where she continually strives to find a balance between becoming American and staying Puerto Rican. While translating for her mother Mami at the welfare office in the morning, starring as Cleopatra at New York’s prestigious Performing Arts High School in the afternoons, and dancing salsa all night, she begins to defy her mother’s protective rules, only to find that independence brings new dangers and dilemmas.

Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico

Sugar, Slavery, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico
Author: Luis A. Figueroa
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2006-05-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807876836

The contributions of the black population to the history and economic development of Puerto Rico have long been distorted and underplayed, Luis A. Figueroa contends. Focusing on the southeastern coastal region of Guayama, one of Puerto Rico's three leading centers of sugarcane agriculture, Figueroa examines the transition from slavery and slave labor to freedom and free labor after the 1873 abolition of slavery in colonial Puerto Rico. He corrects misconceptions about how ex-slaves went about building their lives and livelihoods after emancipation and debunks standing myths about race relations in Puerto Rico. Historians have assumed that after emancipation in Puerto Rico, as in other parts of the Caribbean and the U.S. South, former slaves acquired some land of their own and became subsistence farmers. Figueroa finds that in Puerto Rico, however, this was not an option because both capital and land available for sale to the Afro-Puerto Rican population were scarce. Paying particular attention to class, gender, and race, his account of how these libertos joined the labor market profoundly revises our understanding of the emancipation process and the evolution of the working class in Puerto Rico.

Population, Migration, and Socioeconomic Outcomes among Island and Mainland Puerto Ricans

Population, Migration, and Socioeconomic Outcomes among Island and Mainland Puerto Ricans
Author: Marie T. Mora
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2017-11-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1498516874

At the landmark centennial anniversary of the 1917 Jones-Shafroth Act, which granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, the island confronts an unfolding humanitarian crisis initially triggered by an acute economic crisis surging since 2006. Analyzing large datasets such as the American Community Survey and the Puerto Rican Community Survey, this book represents the first comprehensive analysis of the socioeconomic and demographic consequences of “La Crisis Boricua” for Puerto Ricans on the island and mainland, including massive net outmigration from the island on a scale not seen for sixty years; a shrinking and rapidly aging population; a shut-down of high-tech industries; a significant loss in public and private sector jobs; a deteriorating infrastructure; higher sales taxes than any of the states; $74 billion in public debt plus another $49 billion in unfunded pension obligations; and defaults on payments to bondholders. This book also discusses how the socioeconomic and demographic outcomes differ among stateside Puerto Ricans, including recent migrants, in traditional settlement areas such as New York versus those in newer settlement areas such as Florida and Texas. Florida is now home to 1.1 million Puerto Ricans (essentially the same number as those living in New York) and received a full third of the migrants from the island to mainland during this time. Scholars interested in the transition of migrants into their receiving communities (regardless of the Puerto Rican case) will also find this book to be of interest, particularly with respect to the comparative analyses on earnings, the likelihood of being impoverished, and self-employment.

Restoring Growth in Puerto Rico

Restoring Growth in Puerto Rico
Author: Susan M. Collins
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2007-08-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780815715597

A Brookings Institution Press and the Center for the New Economy publication As a territory of the United States, Puerto Rico enjoys the benefits of key U.S. legal, monetary, security, and tariff systems, and its residents are U.S. citizens. In the decades following World War II, Puerto Rico emerged as one of the world's fastest-growing economies. From 1950 to 1970 per capita income nearly doubled as a percentage of the U.S. average, making the island the richest economy in Latin America. Since the mid-1970s, however, labor force attachment has declined, economic growth has slowed, and the island's living standards have fallen further behind those on the mainland. Today more than half of all Puerto Rican children live below the U.S. poverty level. Why did Puerto Rico's economic progress stall? And more important, what can be done to restore growth? A number of overlapping concerns—labor supply and demand, entrepreneurship, the fiscal situation, financial markets, and trade——are at the heart of its economic difficulties. This is a companion volume to Restoring Growth: The Economy of Puerto Rico (Brookings, 2006), in which economists from Puerto Rico and the United States examine the island's economy and propose strategies for sustainable growth. This monograph summarizes the analyses published in that volume and presents a set of policy recommendations to increase employment, improve education, upgrade infrastructure, and fix government finances. Contributors include James Alm (Georgia State University), Barry P. Bosworth and Gary Burtless (Brookings Institution), Susan M. Collins (Brookings Institution and Georgetown University), Steven J. Davis (University of Chicago), María E. Enchautegui, Juan Lara, Luis A. Rivera- Batiz, and Orlando Sotomayor (University of Puerto Rico), Richard B. Freeman and Robert Z. Lawrence (Harvard University), Helen F. Ladd (Duke University), Rita Maldonado-Bear and Ingo Walter (New York University), Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz (Columbia University), and Miguel A. Soto-Class (Center for the New Economy).

The Battle for Paradise

The Battle for Paradise
Author: Naomi Klein
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 53
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1608464318

Fearless necessary reporting . . . Klein exposes the ‘battle of utopias’ that is currently unfolding in storm-ravaged Puerto Rico” (Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) “We are in a fight for our lives. Hurricanes Irma and María unmasked the colonialism we face in Puerto Rico, and the inequality it fosters, creating a fierce humanitarian crisis. Now we must find a path forward to equality and sustainability, a path driven by communities, not investors. And this book explains, with careful and unbiased reporting, only the efforts of our community activists can answer the paramount question: What type of society do we want to become and who is Puerto Rico for?” —Carmen Yulín Cruz, Mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico In the rubble of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans and ultrarich “Puertopians” are locked in a pitched struggle over how to remake the island. In this vital and startling investigation, bestselling author and activist Naomi Klein uncovers how the forces of shock politics and disaster capitalism seek to undermine the nation’s radical, resilient vision for a “just recovery.” All royalties from the sale of this book in English and Spanish go directly to JunteGente, a gathering of Puerto Rican organizations resisting disaster capitalism and advancing a fair and healthy recovery for their island. “Klein chronicles the extraordinary grassroots resistance by the Puerto Rican people against neoliberal privatization and Wall Street greed in the aftermath of the island’s financial meltdown, of hurricane devastation, and of Washington’s imposition of an outside control board over the most important U.S. colony.” —Juan González, cohost of Democracy Now! and author of Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America