Centro

In theory, citizenship denotes intrinsic status, signifying both full membership in the political community and a set of rights that adhere inherently and equally to all citizens. In practice, however, the rights of citizenship are variable and differentiated, and governments often approach citizenship not as a fundamental birthright or basic legal status but rather as a policy tool that is subject to constant adaptation, alteration, and modification.Wilem MaasU.S. policy on territorial incorporation was well developed before the War of 1898, and influenced the emerging empire's colonial policy in Puerto Rico. Congress and the courts understood that Constitution mandated that territories acquired by the United States would inevitably be incorporated into the union as states. Moreover, with very rare exceptions the inhabitants of these territories would be collectively naturalized. However, in those cases in which the majority of the inhabitants of territories held by the United ...

ABSTRACTThe extension of U.S. citizenship to Puerto Rico has been the object of voluminous scholarly and legal research. The present essay serves as both an introduction to and analysis of the four articles that comprise this special issue of CENTRO Journal. Each of the articles employs a different analytical lens to focus on the intersecting dimensions of citizenship, colonialism, and empire. The essay identifies common themes among the articles with the aim of presenting a unified narrative of the individual contributions. It historicizes the study of Puerto Rican citizenship status by reviewing the modalities of political exclusion the U.S. practiced against racialized populations as it built an "Empire of Freedom" founded on a belief in Anglo-Saxon superiority. Also, the essay begins to elaborate a common theoretical framework to hypothesize how demographic changes, national strategic and security concerns, and shifts in the domestic and international political economy...

The one-year anniversary of Hurricane Maria calls into question the temporality of disaster, both in terms of lived experience and analysis. It was difficult for Puerto Ricans to mark the first anniversary while so many still live Maria’s daily effects physically, emotionally, and financially. Failing institutions and disaster recovery initiatives have too often deepened vulnerability in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, thus augmenting the confused sense of pre- and post-disaster. During a September Rutgers University symposium on the “Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico a Year after Maria,” anthropologist Yarimar Bonilla suggested that perhaps Hurricane Maria was the “aftershock” itself, the culmination of over a century of colonial-capitalist exploitation and layered traumas. If Hurricane Maria was the aftershock, how can we think about disaster and disaster capitalism? Naomi Klein’s The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists (2018) is a helpful ...

IntroductionThe Puerto Rican experience in farm labor challenges our understanding of U.S. citizenship and its relation to immigration policies regarding guestwork. A recent case illustrates the complexity of Puerto Ricans' role in farm labor in the mainland U.S. On January 5, 2015, Charlene Rachor, regional director of the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, announced charges against Cassaday Farms in southern New Jersey for unlawfully rejecting 13 qualified Puerto Rican workers who had applied for seasonal employment. Cassaday Farms had shown preferential treatment to guestworkers in violation of the regulations of the H-2A visa program.1 Farms hiring workers through the H2A program are required to recruit U.S. workers first and offer the same wages and working conditions to U.S. workers as to H-2A workers. The farm had allegedly provided wages and working conditions less favorable to the Puerto Rican workers than guestworkers without maintaining all requir...

INTRODUCTION The apple production in Chile (40.0000 ha) is concentrated from Rancagua (34o 5 Southern Lat.; 70o40 Western Lat.) to Linares, in 200 km, being almost 50% in the VII Region (34o50 Southern Lat., 71o30 Western Lat.). Chile produces 1,000,000 tons of apples (13 in the world), and it is placed in 4 position as an exporter country, with 550,000 tons of fresh apples (Table 1). The main varieties grown in Chile are: Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Gala, Fuji and Braeburn, (Figure 1).