BOOK PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION: "From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia: Puerto Rican Workers and Postwar Economies" [Temple University Press, 2001] Guest Speaker: Dr. Suzanne Oboler

THE PUERTO RICAN EXPERIENCE AS TEST CASE FOR ALL U.S. LATINOS

This issue of belonging and community becomes fundamental to Professorıs argument in various ways. For one thing, she shows that the debate on whether to bring Puerto Ricans to the United States, how to bring them, hinged on the acknowlegement that Puerto Ricans did have citizenship, did have U.S. citizenship. And so then, they could claim the right to belonging once in the United States. In other words, they couldnıt be so easily disposed of as, say, the Mexicans who were brought through the Bracero Program or any other temporary worker for that matter. Professor Whalen also shows that in spite of this stated acknowlegement of Puerto Rican citizenship, nevertheless, Puerto Ricans were and, I would argue, still are treated as foreign others and itıs precisely this dual perception of the Puerto Rican population that leads me to the next point I want to make which is related to the contribution that this book makes to my own specific field of study which is Latino Studies. Because Carmen Whalenıs book clearly points out that precisely because they are U.S. citiizens, it becomes more difficult to justify why and how Puerto Rican people could be recruited as laborers, incorporated into the cityıs economy as low wage workers and at the same time be excluded as community members. This, as many of you probably know, is very much a major issue now as more and more Latinos who are both born and/or raised in the United State come of age and as they struggle for full inclusion, for belonging and its politcal expression in citizenship and rights. They too are confronted with this thing of having U.S. citizenship and yet being perceived as foreign others. And so from this broader perspective I found the book very interesting because, on the one hand, she shows the Puerto Rican experience is truly sui generis and, on the other hand, the Puerto Rican experience can also be seen as a test case in a sense of how Latinos are and will be treated in this country.

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