Colonial Subjects: Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective

Colonial Subjects Colonial Subjects Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective Ramón Grosfoguel UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA...

Author: Ramo?n Grosfoguel

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Colonial Subjects

Colonial Subjects Puerto Ricans in a Global Perspective

Ramón Grosfoguel

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley

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Los Angeles

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London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2003 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Grosfoguel, Ramón. Colonial subjects : Puerto Ricans in a global perspective / Ramón Grosfoguel. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-520-23020-5 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-520-23021-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Puerto Ricans—United States—History—20th century. 2. Puerto Ricans—Migrations—History—20th century. 3. Puerto Ricans—Europe, Western—History—20th century. 4. Puerto Rico—Emigration and immigration—History—20th century. 5. United States—Emigration and immigration— History—20th century. 6. Europe, Western—Emigration and immigration—History—20th century. 7. Puerto Rico— Colonial inﬂuence. 8. Puerto Rico—Social conditions—1952– 9. Caribbean Area—Colonial inﬂuence. I. Title. E184.P85G68 2003 304.8'7307295'09043—dc21

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Para todas las mujeres que me han acompañado durante este viaje que llamamos “vida” y sin las cuales este libro no sería posible, en especial para mi madre, Carmen Lydia Bidot, quien ha sido una fuente de apoyo extraordinaria; para mis ex-compañeras Tere, Silvia y Chloé, por todo el apoyo, solidaridad y amor que me dieron; para Claire, por su amor y cariño inmenso; y, sobretodo, para mi segunda madre Susa, para mi hija Nadia, y para mis amigas Vivian, Carmen, Vicky, María, Inés, Margot, Irsa, Cary, Laura y Lisa por estar ahí en los momentos más difíciles. A todas ellas por la sabiduría que me transmitieron. . . .

The life of a person is quite changed after being melted in the ﬁre of love. . . . But how forgiving is he who has been through all suffering! . . . Always forgive, always tolerate. Hazrat Inayat Khan

We seek a world in which there is room for many worlds. Subcommander Marcos Zapatista Liberation Army

With the transnationalization of capitalism, when elected officials are no longer leaders of singular nation-states but nexuses for multinational interests, it also becomes possible for citizen-subjects to become activists for a new decolonizing global terrain, a psychic terrain that can unite them with similarly positioned citizen-subjects within and across national borders into new, post-Western-empire alliances. . . . Technologies for decolonizing the social imagination . . . differential social movement and . . . differential consciousness, operate as a single apparatus that I call the physics of love. Love as social movement is enacted by revolutionary, mobile, and global conditions of citizen-activists who are allied through the apparatus of emancipation. Chela Sandoval

The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. Che Guevara

One aspect of compassion is to respect others’ rights and to respect others’ views. That is the basis of reconciliation. . . . So human affection or compassion is not only a religious matter, but in our day-to-day life it is quite indispensable. Now with this as a background, if one looks at the practice of tolerance, it is really worthwhile. . . . [I]f one reacts to a situation in a negative way instead of in a tolerant way, not only is there no immediate beneﬁt, but also a negative attitude and feeling is created, which is the seed of one’s future downfall. . . . These are the immediate consequences of hatred. It brings about a very ugly, unpleasant physical transformation of the individual. In addition, when such intense anger and hatred arise, it makes the best part of our brain, which is the ability to judge between right and wrong and assess long-term and short-term consequences, become totally inoperable. . . . It is as if the person had become crazy. . . . When we think about these negative and destructive effects of anger and hatred, we realize that it is necessary to distance ourselves from such emotional explosions. The Dalai Lama

I have no companion but Love, no beginning, no end, no dawn. . . . The moment I ﬁrst heard of love I gave up my soul, my heart, and my eyes. I wondered, could it be that the lover and the beloved are two? No, they have always been one. It is I who have been seeing double. Rumi

Contents

List of Tables Acknowledgments Introduction: Geopolitics of Knowledge and Coloniality of Power: Thinking Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans from the Colonial Difference

xi xiii

1

part one . The Political Economy of Puerto Rico 1. The Political Economy of Puerto Rico in the Twentieth Century and Puerto Rican Postnational Strategies

43

2. World Cities in the Caribbean: Miami and San Juan

78

part two . Puerto Rican Migration and the Caribbean Diaspora in the United States 3. Migration and Geopolitics in the Greater Antilles: From the Cold War to the Post–Cold War

103

4. Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Comparative Approach

128

5. “Coloniality of Power” and Racial Dynamics: Notes on a Reinterpretation of Latino Caribbeans in New York City

144

(with Chloe S. Georas)

part three . Caribbean Colonial Migrants In Western Europe and the United States 6. Colonial Caribbean Migrations to France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States

177

7. “Cultural Racism” and Colonial Caribbean Migrants in Core Zones of the Capitalist World-Economy

192

Appendix

213

References

221

Index

243

Tables

Table 1. Number of Employees by Major Industry, Dade County, Fla. Table 2. Employment in Producer Service Industries, Dade County, Fla. Table 3. Number of Employees by Major Industry, San Juan Table 4. Employment in Producer Service Industries, San Juan Table 5. Employment Share of Producer Services in all Industries, Miami and San Juan Table 6. Occupational Distribution of Caribbean Immigrants at the Time of Arrival Table 7. Occupational Origins of Puerto Rican Migrants Table 8. Caribbean Migrants in the Metropoles Table 9. Sociodemographic Characteristics of Colonial Caribbean Migrants in the Metropoles

213 214 215 216 216 217 218 219 220

xi

Acknowledgments

To ignore the support of others and their inﬂuence on our lives is to engage in the Western practice of solipsism and to embrace the American myth that individuals pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Individuals are, in fact, social beings immersed in social relations: one cannot deny the lifelong effect “others” have on one’s life. Despite this, often and for unfortunate reasons, we lose or maintain only infrequent contact with those who have inﬂuenced us. We are what we are thanks to the people we have had close to us throughout our lives. To acknowledge them is ethical. A number of colleagues, relatives, and friends have been a source of support and inspiration for me as I wrote this book. José David Saldívar was the ﬁrst to encourage me along the path; he is not only an excellent scholar but also a good friend and colleague, one who never hesitated to give sound advice. Sherri Grasmuck’s friendship has been a blessing for many years. She met me the ﬁrst week I arrived in the United States, when I could barely speak a word of English. Sherri has been a great mentor and immense source of psychological and emotional support. I ﬁnd it difficult to summon the appropriate words to express my gratitude to her. Without her, I would not be where I am now. At difficult moments throughout my academic career, Stephen Phfol’s understanding has been crucial for my survival. Immanuel Wallerstein has been a superior mentor, who has given me much hope in my work. Immanuel’s intellectual integrity and enormous respect for the work of graduate students and xiii

xiv

Acknowledgments

junior faculty diminished the cynicism I had developed toward senior scholars. He is an exemplar of one who can maintain humility and solidarity with all scholars as he emerges as an academic star. Walter Mignolo, another mentor and important source of support, gave me the courage to think beyond colonialist and nationalist discourses. Kyriakos Kontopoulos taught me to be a creative intellect. He has exhibited intellectual integrity and taught me how to be provocative without succumbing to academic fads. Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver warned me of the dangers of mainstream academia and opened the doors to the world-system school. Without their support, I would never have had the enriching opportunity to spend four years as a faculty member of the Sociology Department and the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton University, New York. My mother, Carmen Lydia Bidot, and my father, León Grosfoguel, have been an extraordinary source of support “en las buenas y en las malas” throughout my life. “Muchas gracias” to them. I am grateful for the support, solidarity, and inspiration of the following people: Maurice Aymard; Jaime Benson; Vivian Carro; James Cohen; Hector Cordero-Guzmán; Justin Daniel; Irsa Dávila; Donna DeVoist; Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones; Juan Duchesne; Enrique Dussel; Humberto García-Muñiz; Michel Giraud; Agustín Lao; Wilfredo Lozano; Phil McMichael; Eduardo Mendieta; Eric Mielants; Phil Nanton; Carmen Oquendo; Caridad Palerm; Laura Perez; Luis Perez; Carlos Prieto del Campo; Aníbal Quijano; Angel Quintero-Rivera; Thomas Reifer; Margarita Rodriguez; Livio Sansone; Saskia Sassen; Rubén Silié; Doris Sommer; Aurea María Sotomayor; Lisa Taylor; Inés Toharia Terán; Dale Tomich; Arturo Torrecilla; and the late Terence K. Hopkins. Thanks to all of you! Some of the chapters in this volume appeared in other journals. I wish to thank the editors of Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Identities for granting permission to reprint the articles I published in their journals. Special thanks go to Naomi Schneider, my editor at the University of California Press. As the best editor in the ﬁeld, Naomi has signiﬁcantly improved my manuscript; it has been a pleasure to work with her. I am grateful for the love, support, and solidarity given to me by Chloe S. Georas. We met when I was at the lowest point of my life: I was intellectually and socially marginalized and living on the proceeds of selling books and sandwiches on the streets of Puerto Rico. She believed in me when not even I believed in myself. We have since traveled a long way to where I am now. With her, I have worked through many of the ideas ex-

Acknowledgments

xv

pressed in this book; for that alone, her contribution to this book is immense. Despite the fact that we are no longer together, I will always be grateful to her for everything. Finally, I am grateful to Claire Lienart for her love, support, and for giving me hope in life once again. Needless to say, these colleagues and companions are responsible for the good work that follows, but I alone am responsible for any of this book’s shortcomings. September 2002 Berkeley, California

i n t ro du c t i o n

Geopolitics of Knowledge and Coloniality of Power Thinking Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans from the Colonial Difference

[S]ubaltern reason is what arises as a response to the need of rethinking and reconceptualizing the stories that have been told and the conceptualization that has been put into place to divide the world between Christians and pagans, civilized and barbarians, modern and premodern, and developed and underdeveloped regions and people, all global designs mapping the colonial difference. Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs

This book provides an alternative reading of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans within the “modern world-system” (Wallerstein 1974), or, as Walter Mignolo has recently proposed, the “modern/colonial world-system” (Mignolo 2000). I employ a modiﬁed version of the world-system approach to Puerto Rico’s history, political economy, and urbanization, as well as Puerto Ricans’ political strategies, migration processes, and modes of incorporation as colonial/racial subjects within the U.S. empire. I analyze not a “society” but instead a “historical system” (Wallerstein 1979); that is, I conceptualize Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans as parts of broader temporal and spatial processes in the modern/colonial/capitalist worldsystem. Yet, in the process of situating the knowledge produced in this book from a “Puerto Rican subaltern location,” I reinterpret important aspects of the world-system approach. I place the term “Puerto Rican subaltern perspective” in quotation marks because I do not want either to essentialize or to pretend to represent the voices of Puerto Ricans. In1

2

Introduction

stead, I take as a point of departure some voices and expressions of Puerto Rican subaltern thinking. A “world-system approach” provides an important conceptual framework to rethink Puerto Rico/Puerto Ricans, and at the same time the employment of a “Puerto Rican subaltern perspective” serves to counter certain limitations of that approach. It might seem anachronistic to talk about colonies and colonialism today. However, a world-system approach from a “Puerto Rican subaltern perspective” offers a unique opportunity to reinterpret the modern/colonial/capitalist world and to question the assumption that the world has been “decolonized.” This is not due to the obvious fact that Puerto Rico is still a colony of the United States, nor is it an attempt to make of Puerto Rico a “model” for understanding the rest of the periphery in the capitalist world-economy. Instead, I intend to rethink the modern world-system from multiple Puerto Rican locations and experiences, which reveal the limitations of the so-called decolonization of the modern world, both in terms of the global political economy and the dominant geoculture and its imaginary. Puerto Rico, as a Caribbean “modern colony” in that it has access to metropolitan citizenship and welfare transfers, calls for a rethinking of the purported decolonization of the so-called independent Caribbean, republics that experience the crude exploitation of the capitalist world-system without the metropolitan transfers that Puerto Rico receives as a “modern colony.” Puerto Rican subaltern groups articulate their opposition to the formation of a Puerto Rican nation-state as a rejection of neocolonialism’s crude realities in neighboring Caribbean countries. Moreover, Puerto Rican migrants in the United States experience the effects of racism as a hegemonic imaginary of the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. The Puerto Rican experience illustrates how racial/colonial ideologies have not been eradicated from metropolitan centers, which remain in grave need of a sociocultural decolonization. In sum, a “Puerto Rican subaltern perspective/location” can highlight global processes that the worldsystem approach does not emphasize; these include “global symbolic strategies” (Grosfoguel 1994) and “global coloniality” (Quijano 2000). Puerto Rico’s postwar political economy and mass migration to the metropolis is incomprehensible if one does not account for the global geopolitical symbolic/ideological strategies employed by the United States during the cold war and U.S. colonial/racist social imaginary. Puerto Rico was transformed into a cold war “symbolic showcase” of U.S. developmentalist policies toward the periphery of the worldeconomy as opposed to the Soviet model. The world-system’s use of the

Introduction

3

notion of “geoculture” to address “global ideologies” is insufficient to understand “showcase” strategies and “colonial/racist” imaginary in the world-system. Bourdieu’s concept of “symbolic capital” and Quijano’s notion of “coloniality of power” can redress these limitations (Bourdieu 1977; Quijano 2000). Bourdieu developed the concept of “symbolic capital” for microsocial analysis, but the term is also a powerful tool when used to conceptualize symbolic strategies at a global scale related to the “manufacturing of showcases.” The United States developed global symbolic/ideological strategies during the cold war to showcase a peripheral region or an ethnic group as opposed to a challenging peripheral country or ethnic group in order to gain symbolic capital toward its developmentalist model. These strategies are not superstructural or epiphenomenal; rather, they are material and constitutive of global political-economic processes. Despite the fact that strategies of “symbolic capital” are expensive because they require the investment of capital in nonproﬁtable forms such as credits and assistance programs, they are understood to translate into economic profits in the long run. The so-called Southeast Asian miracle, for example, could not be explained without an understanding of such global ideological/cultural strategies. Since the 1950s, the United States has showcased several peripheral countries where communist regimes represented a challenge: Greece vis-à-vis Eastern Europe; Taiwan vis-à-vis China; South Korea vis-à-vis North Korea; in the 1960s, Puerto Rico vis-à-vis Cuba; and in the 1980s, Jamaica vis-à-vis Grenada and Costa Rica visà-vis Nicaragua. Other showcases include Brazil in the 1960s (the socalled Brazilian miracle) and, more recently, Mexico and Chile in the 1990s as post–cold war neoliberal showcases. Compared to other countries, all of these showcases received disproportionately large sums of U.S. foreign aid, favorable conditions for economic growth such as ﬂexible terms to repay their debts, special tariff agreements that made commodities produced in these areas accessible to the metropolitan markets, and/or technological transfers. Most experienced success that lasted for several years, and then they failed. However, they served a crucial role in the production of an ideological hegemony over Third World peoples in favor of developmentalist programs. Developmentalist ideology is a crucial constitutive element in the hegemony of the “West”; the capitalist world-system gains credibility by developing a few successful peripheral cases. These are civilizational and cultural strategies to gain consent and to demonstrate the “superiority” of the “West.” Why did U.S. officials in Taiwan and South Korea implement, ﬁnance,

4

Introduction

support, and organize a radical agrarian reform in the early 1950s, while in Guatemala a much milder agrarian reform put forward by the Arbenz administration during the same years met with a CIA-backed coup d’etat? Why did the United States pursue a strategy of economic imperialism in Latin American countries but not in Taiwan or South Korea? Why did the U.S. government support an agrarian reform in Puerto Rico that forced U.S. corporations to sell all land in excess of 500 acres? Why was the U.S. government willing to sacriﬁce its corporate economic interests in Taiwan, South Korea, and Puerto Rico, but not its economic interests in Chile or Guatemala? Why did import-substitution industrialization lead to deﬁcits in balance of payments in Latin America but not in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea? To answer these questions, one must develop an understanding of global symbolic/ideological strategies: An economic reductionist approach to the political economy simply cannot answer these questions. By not taking more seriously U.S. global symbolic/ideological strategies, world-system analysis sometimes impoverishes the political-economy approach. In seeking answers to these questions, one must also employ the concept of “coloniality,” developed by Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano. This notion accounts for the entangled, heterogeneous, and mutually constitutive relations between the international division of labor, global racial/ethnic hierarchy, and hegemonic Eurocentric epistemologies in the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. Although “colonial administrations” have been almost entirely eradicated and the majority of the periphery is politically organized into nation-states, non-European people still live under crude metropolitan European–Euro-American exploitation/domination. Indeed, coloniality on a world scale, with the United States as the undisputed hegemon over non-European people, characterizes the globalization of the capitalist world-economy today: the old colonial hierarchies of West/non-West remain in place and are entangled with the so-called new international division of labor. Herein lies the relevance of the distinction between colonialism and coloniality. “Coloniality” refers to the continuity of colonial forms of domination after the end of colonial administrations produced by colonial cultures and structures in the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. “Coloniality of power” refers to a crucial structuring process in the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system that articulates peripheral locations in the international division of labor, subaltern group political strategies, and Third World migrants’ inscription in the racial/ethnic hierarchy of metropolitan global cities. Although Puerto Rico still has a colonial administration, its location

Introduction

5

as a “modern colony” in the Caribbean poses a particular kind of “coloniality” that contrasts with the “coloniality” of so-called independent republics in the region. Caribbean nation-states live under the regime of “global coloniality” imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), which is a different form of coloniality from Puerto Rico’s location as a modern colony of the United States. Puerto Rico beneﬁts from massive annual metropolitan transfers that never reach the shores of Caribbean nation-states. Moreover, the IMF and the WB, as disciplinary agencies of peripheral countries in the capitalist world-economy, never intervene in Puerto Rico’s affairs because of its status as a modern colony of the United States. The prosperity of the Puerto Rican modern colony relative to Caribbean nation-states that struggled for independence constitutes a tragic historical irony. This phenomenon cannot be understood from a nationalist or colonialist perspective that assumes automatic decolonization after the formation of a nation-state, or from an approach that takes the nation-state as the unit of analysis.

beyond colonialist and nationalist discourses Arguments over Puerto Rico’s status are frequently divided between nationalist and colonialist interpretations of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans. Colonialist positions do not question the unequal power relationships between Puerto Rico and the United States despite the fact that Puerto Rico is still under the territorial clause of the United States. Although the United States selectively confronts the lack of democratic and human rights around the world, it maintains a colonial administration in its “backyard” and refuses to organize a democratic referendum on Puerto Rico’s status. In the 1990s two federally recognized referendums for Puerto Rico were suspended by the U.S. Congress: one in 1991 under a Democratdominated Congress; another in 1998 under a Republican-dominated Congress. The implicit fear underpinning both suspensions was the Euro-American elites’ concern over the real possibility that Puerto Ricans would vote for statehood. Ironically, after one hundred years of U.S. opposition to “independence” or “autonomy” for the island, now statehood has become its greatest fear. An explanation for why “statehood” has become the main target of U.S. elites’ attacks must be sought in the global geopolitical changes of the last decade of the twentieth century. The end of the cold war altered U.S. priorities toward Puerto Rico.

6

Introduction

The island had long been a “symbolic showcase” of the U.S. developmentalist model for the Third World as well as an important U.S. military stronghold. During the cold war era, billions of dollars were transferred to the island to serve these global U.S. interests. Today, in contrast, the United States is more concerned about its domestic priorities and has no superpower foreign enemy. Through neocolonial (referred to as “independent” or “autonomous”) arrangements, the United States maintains military use of Puerto Rico and exploits the island’s labor force while justifying signiﬁcant cuts to U.S. federal transfers to the island. Neocolonialism is “the colony without the beneﬁts of the modern colony.” Moreover, the dominant neoliberal ideology, along with the disciplinary institutions of global capitalism—IMF, WB, World Trade Organization, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)—and the increased autonomization of transnational corporations from nationstates have made colonial administrations obsolete. Although Quijano uses the concept of “global coloniality” to refer to the condition of “independence without decolonization” in Latin America since the nineteenth century, one can use this term to designate the regime of power dominant today in the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. Global coloniality, as opposed to global colonialism, is now the dominant form of core-periphery relationships in the capitalist world-economy. Core powers and transnational corporations exploit and dominate the periphery without the expense of colonial administrations. Thus, “independence” is no longer a subversive solution from the point of view of the imperial elites because there is no real “independence” or “sovereignty” in the periphery of the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. The concept of “coloniality of power” is useful here to transcend the assumption of both colonialist and nationalist discourses, which state that with the end of colonial administrations and the formation of nation-states in the periphery we are living in a postcolonial, decolonized world. The entanglement of a global division of labor of core-periphery relationships and a global racial/ethnic hierarchy of Western and nonWestern people, which formed during several centuries of European colonial expansion, was not signiﬁcantly transformed with the end of colonialism and the formation of nation-states in the periphery. The transition from global colonialism to global coloniality transformed the global forms of domination, but not the structure of core-periphery relationships on a world scale. New disciplinary institutions such as the IMF and the WB as well as military organizations such as NATO, intelligence agencies, and the Pentagon, all formed after the Second World

Introduction

7

War and the alleged end of colonialism, keep the periphery in a subordinate position. The end of the cold war era intensiﬁed the processes of global coloniality. Thus, one implication of thinking in terms of a modern/colonial world-system, as opposed to simply a modern worldsystem, is that it questions in a more overt form the myth of decolonization and the assumption that modernity is somehow a more advanced stage of “progress” and “development” after, before, or simply disconnected from colonialism and coloniality. From a modern/colonial/capitalist world-system approach, modern peripheral nation-states, mostly populated by non-Western peoples, are still colonial in relation to the hegemonic European/Euro-American core states. Moreover, the impact of the European colonial expansion still informs the racial/ethnic hierarchies and the “imagined community” at the nation-state level. Thus, continuities from colonial times are as important as discontinuities. Although this global context may explain why U.S. elites are no longer fearful of “independence” or “autonomy” in Puerto Rico, it does not provide a key to understanding why “statehood” has become the new “subversive” option in their eyes. The admission of Puerto Rico as the ﬁfty-ﬁrst state of the Union would initiate an increase of approximately $3 billion in net federal transfers to the island. Even more important, however, it would signal the full incorporation—with equal rights—of an Afro-Latino Caribbean state. This cultural dimension has important political implications for the twenty-ﬁrst century. Although Euro-American Anglo elites have been the colonizing force in the United States, their colonial control over the economic, political, and cultural structures of the U.S. empire will be increasingly threatened with the growth of a nonwhite, Spanish-speaking population within the United States. The concept of “coloniality of power” is once again useful here to understand the national formation of the United States. The colonial/racial hierarchy that constituted the coloniality of power in the United States from its national foundation in 1776 privileged Anglos and northern Europeans over southern Europeans and non-Europeans. Latinos are a subordinated group in the hegemonic, and still colonial, imaginary of the United States. The recent congressional debates over the status question of Puerto Rico are deeply affected by the cultural and demographic LatinAmericanization of the United States in the twenty-ﬁrst century. Unlike territory subsumed by the U.S. colonial expansion to the west of the North American continent, Puerto Rico is not a settler or population colony. It has been an “exploitation colony,” which has important implications for the island’s cultural politics. In sharp contrast to settler

8

Introduction

colonialism of places such as Texas and California, Puerto Rico’s civil society is dominated by the Spanish language; no signiﬁcant Anglo population on the island has questioned the dominant culture and language. The elected representatives of a Puerto Rican state in Congress would all be Spanish-speaking “Latinos” who would promote an “estadidad jíbara” (that is, a statehood platform that affirms local Puerto Rican identity and use of the Spanish language). The incorporation of the island as the ﬁfty-ﬁrst state would thus have dramatic implications for the future of the “English Only” struggles, opening doors for the future consolidation of bilingual cultural and political struggles in California, New Mexico, Florida, New York, and other states with large Latino populations. A Puerto Rican state could create an important precedent that Anglo elites would be unable to suppress easily given the future demographic transformations of the empire in the ﬁrst century of the new millennium. In a country that has never declared an official language and never made “English” a precondition of statehood for any of the ﬁfty existing states, why else would so many U.S. elites attempt to impose “English” as a precondition for the statehood option in a referendum on Puerto Rico’s status? Despite this requirement, U.S. elites never required ﬂuency in English when Puerto Ricans were drafted to ﬁght in all of the twentieth-century U.S. wars, when citizenship was imposed in 1917, or when the island was incorporated as a colonial territory in 1898. The threat of the “Latinization” of the United States in the twenty-ﬁrst century to the racial/ethnic hierarchy of the empire and to white supremacy was deployed politically by many Euro-American Anglo congressional representatives who were opposed to offering “statehood” as an option during the House of Representatives’ March 4, 1998, debate over the Young Bill, which was designed to promote a referendum on the future status of the island. Puerto Ricans are aware of the political and economic implications of becoming a neocolonial “independent” or “autonomous” territory, and fewer than 10 percent of the voters support either of these options. The neocolonial domination and exploitation of the so-called independent Caribbean islands by the United States symbolizes for many Puerto Ricans what the future may hold if the island becomes a pseudoindependent republic. After one hundred years of colonialism, neocolonialism represents for Puerto Ricans an expropriation of social and civil rights achieved only through painful struggle under U.S. citizenship. “Independence” and “sovereignty” in the Caribbean periphery are a ﬁctional narrative of the hegemonic developmentalist geoculture of the modern/colonial/capitalist

Introduction

9

world-system. This explains the low percentages of proindependence votes in local status referendums (not recognized by the federal government) and elections during the last forty years in Puerto Rico. Although Puerto Ricans have a strong sense of identity and cultural nationalism, their subalternity is not expressed through political nationalism. Subalternity in Puerto Rico has historically deployed “jaibería”— “subversive complicity” or “ambiguous” identiﬁcation strategies (see Grosfoguel, Negrón-Muntaner, and Georas 1997)—to struggle against the “coloniality of power” of both American elites and local “blanquito” elites (that is, “white” creole elites). “Puerto Rican-ness” is mobilized as a distinct “national identity” against inconvenient U.S. policies or as an “ethnic identity” in the United States to claim rights and resources. When unwanted decisions are ruled by local courts in Puerto Rico, subaltern groups go to the federal court to overrule the decision; vice versa, federal decisions are challenged in local courts. I have used the term “ethno-nation” to refer to this double identiﬁcation strategy (Grosfoguel, Negrón-Muntaner, and Georas 1997). This Du Boisean “double consciousness” of a simultaneous interior/exterior cultural and political location has also been mobilized against local “blanquito” elites. When local elites complain about federal increases in minimum wages that compromise their proﬁts, subaltern groups mobilize their U.S. citizenship to stake their claim to certain rights. Puerto Rican subaltern struggles mobilize discourses and strategies of “national” and/or “ethnic” identity (depending on the particular context) while simultaneously demanding an improvement of civil and social rights within the U.S. empire. Nationalist discourses in Puerto Rico fall into the trap of a colonialist underestimation of Puerto Rican agency and subalternity. Puerto Rican nationalist discourses portray the “Puerto Rican masses” as “colonized,” “docile,” and “ignorant” because of their consistent rejection of “independence” for the island and the “ambiguity” of their political and identiﬁcation strategies. Similarly to colonialist/Eurocentric positions, nationalist ideologues do not recognize the cultural and political strategies deployed by Puerto Rican subaltern subjects as valid forms of knowledge and politics. Similarly to the U.S. “new right,” Puerto Rican nationalists favor “workfare” as opposed to “welfare” and portray Puerto Rican popular demands for parity in federal funding as claims to foster “laziness” in the island. The concept of “colonial difference” (Mignolo 2000) is crucial here to overcome the paternalistic and elitist limits of both nationalist and colonialist discourses. If the modern world is constituted by a colonial

10

Introduction

difference, if there is no modernity without coloniality and, therefore, we live in a modern/colonial world, then knowledge is not produced from a universal location and we need to epistemologically account for the geopolitics of our knowledge production. The notion of “colonial difference” is crucial to geopolitically locate the forms of thinking and cosmologies produced by subaltern subjects as opposed to hegemonic global designs. From which location in the colonial divide is knowledge produced? Nationalist and colonialist discourses are thinking from a power position in the colonial divide of the modern/colonial world, while subaltern subjects are thinking from the subordinate side of the colonial difference. Colonialist discourses reproduce the North-South global colonial divide, while nationalist discourses reproduce an “internal” colonial divide within national formations. The knowledge, critical insights, and political strategies produced from the subordinate side of the colonial difference serve as a point of departure to go beyond colonialist and nationalist discourses. Rather than underestimating the subalterns, we should take seriously their cosmologies, thinking, and political strategies as a point of departure to our knowledge production. After one hundred years of ﬁghting U.S. wars and serving as cheap labor for U.S. corporations, Puerto Ricans deserve equal civil and social rights within the United States. The designation of “laziness” is a typical racist stereotype used by “white” imperial elites in the United States and “white” creole elites in Puerto Rico to dismiss subalterns struggles for equal rights. Paradoxically, nationalist discourses in Puerto Rico make similar arguments regarding the “laziness” of subaltern groups. Nationalist discourses contend that “people do not know better”; they are ideologically “colonized” and as such are in need of a nationalist vanguard to enlighten the “masses.” The subaltern rejection of nationalist solutions to the colonial question in Puerto Rico is represented in nationalist discourses as a “colonial mentality.” Rather than reproduce the local elite’s condescending colonialist perception of the Puerto Rican subaltern groups’ strategies in their everyday life and political interventions, I opted to understand them as valid forms of knowledge and political intervention given the “coloniality of power” under which they live. Rather than dismiss the knowledges produced by these subaltern subjects as “colonial,” I take them as points of departure to rethink not only Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans but also the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system itself. The political implication here is not to propose that the periphery of the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system should imitate Puerto Rico,

Introduction

11

Curaçao, or Martinique and become “modern colonies” of empires. This would be impossible anyway because of the core powers’ opposition to incorporate the periphery with metropolitan citizenship rights and because it is not desirable by non-Western peoples. The situation in Martinique and Puerto Rico dramatizes the need for a global redistribution of wealth from core to periphery. How else can one explain that a banana worker in Martinique, as opposed to one in Dominica or St. Lucia, or a maquiladora worker in Puerto Rico, as opposed to one in the Dominican Republic or Haiti, has access to First World goods including telephones, refrigerators, VCRs, decent housing, cars, and so forth that provide high living standards? Workers in Puerto Rico and Martinique experience exploitation similar to that of the workers in the neighboring Caribbean nation-states. However, the main difference between Caribbean modern colonies and Caribbean nation-states is the existence in the former of core-periphery redistributive wealth mechanisms such as access to metropolitan welfare programs and resources that offset the inequalities produced by core-periphery exploitation. This mechanism does not exist in the Caribbean nation-states where there is only core exploitation without core redistribution of wealth. This is what subaltern groups in locations like Puerto Rico and Martinique articulate in their critique and rejection of neocolonial independence. Thus, if we take this subaltern critique seriously, it dramatizes for us the need to create global mechanisms to redistribute wealth from the North to the South. Global problems of exploitation and domination cannot have a colonial or a nation-state-level solution. A global problem requires postcolonial global solutions beyond nationalism and colonialism.

postcoloniality and world systems: a call for a dialogue A “Puerto Rican subaltern perspective” can modify some assumptions of world-system analysis. Most world-system analyses focus on how the international division of labor and the geopolitical military struggles are constitutive of capitalist accumulation processes on a world scale. I use this approach as a point of departure; however, the peculiar incorporation of Puerto Rico and of Puerto Ricans to the United States forces me to take more seriously ideological/symbolic strategies as well as the colonial/racist culture of the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. World-system analysis has recently developed the concept of geoculture to refer to global ideologies. However, the geoculture concept uses an infrastructure-

12

Introduction

superstructure paradigm. For reasons that will be developed below, I take ideological/symbolic strategies and colonial/racist culture as constitutive, together with capitalist accumulation processes and the interstate system, of the core-periphery relationships on a world scale. These different structures and processes form a heterarchy (Kontopoulos 1993) of heterogeneous, complex, and entangled hierarchies that cannot be accounted for in the infrastructure/superstructure paradigm. Postcoloniality shares with the world-system approach a critique of developmentalism, to Eurocentric forms of knowledge, to gender inequalities, to racial hierarchies, and to the cultural/ideological processes that foster the subordination of the periphery in the capitalist world-system. Both approaches also share a critique of what I call “feudalmania.” Several centuries ago, European elites established a discursive opposition between their status as “advanced, civilized and modern” and the periphery’s “backwardness, obscurantism and feudalism.” Leopoldo Zea called this process, paraphrasing Rodó, the new “northernmania” (nordomanía); that is, the attempt by Western and Latin American dominant elites to construct new “models” in the North to stimulate development while developing new forms of colonialism (Zea 1986: 16–17). The subsequent nineteenth-century characterization of the periphery as “feudal” or in a backward “stage” by Western elites and Latin American creole elites of European descent served to justify the periphery’s subordination to the masters from the North and is part of what I call “feudalmania,” which continued throughout the twentieth century and remains relevant. “Feudalmania” is a device of what Johannes Fabian calls “temporal distancing” (1983) to produce a knowledge that denied coevalness between the periphery and the so-called advanced European countries. The “denial of coevalness” creates a double ideological mechanism. First, it conceals European/Euro-American responsibility in the exploitation of the periphery. By not sharing the same historical time and living in different geographical spaces, each region’s destiny is conceived as unrelated to the other’s. Second, by living different temporalities, wherein Europe is purportedly at a more advanced stage of development than the rest of the world, a notion of European superiority emerges. Thus, Europe was the “model” to imitate and the developmentalist goal was to “catch up.” This is expressed in the dichotomies civilization/savagery, developed/underdeveloped, West/the Rest, and so forth. The world-system approach provides a radical critique of these Eurocentric developmentalist ideologies, while postcolonial criticism provides a radical critique of the “Ori-

Introduction

13

entalist” and “Occidentalist” construction of non-European people as inferior others, implied in developmentalist and culturalist discourses. However, the critical insights of both approaches emphasize different determinants. Although postcolonial critiques emphasize colonial culture, the world-system approach emphasizes the endless accumulation of capital on a world scale. Postcolonial critiques emphasize agency; the world-system approach emphasizes structures. Some scholars of postcolonial theory such as Gayatri Spivak (1988) acknowledge the importance of the international division of labor as constitutive of the capitalist system, while some scholars of the world-system approach such as Immanuel Wallerstein (1991a, 1991b) acknowledge the importance of cultural processes such as racism and sexism as inherent to historical capitalism. However, the two camps in general are still divided over the culture versus economy and the agency versus structure binary oppositions. This is partly inherited from the “two cultures” that divide the sciences from the humanities, premised on the Cartesian dualism of mind over matter. With very few exceptions, most postcolonial theorists come from ﬁelds of the humanities such as literature, rhetoric, and cultural studies. Only a small number of scholars in the ﬁeld of postcoloniality come from the social sciences, in particular from anthropology. On the other hand, world-system scholars are mainly from disciplines in the social sciences such as sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics. Very few of them come from the humanities, with the exception of historians, who tend to have more affinity with the world-system approach. Very few come from literature. I have emphasized the disciplines that predominate in both approaches because I think that these disciplinary boundaries are constitutive of some of the theoretical differences between the approaches. Postcolonial criticism characterizes the capitalist system as a cultural system. They believe that culture is the constitutive element that determines economic and political relations in the capitalist system (Said 1979). By contrast, most world-system scholars emphasize the economic relations on a world scale as constitutive of the capitalist worldsystem (Wallerstein 1983). Cultural and political relations are instrumental to or an epiphenomenon of the capitalist accumulation processes. The fact is that world-system theorists have difficulties theorizing culture, whereas postcolonial theorists have difficulties conceptualizing political-economic processes. Many world-system scholars acknowledge

14

Introduction

the importance of culture, but they do not know what to do with it or how to articulate it in a nonreductive way. Meanwhile, many postcolonial scholars acknowledge the importance of political economy, but they do not know how to integrate it with cultural analysis without reproducing a “culturalist” type of reductionism. Thus, both literatures ﬂuctuate between the dangers of economic reductionism and of culturalism. I propose that the culture versus economy dichotomy is a “chicken-egg” dilemma—that is, a false dilemma—that comes from what Immanuel Wallerstein has called the “legacy of nineteenth-century liberalism” (1991a: 4). This legacy implies the division of the economic, political, cultural, and social as autonomous arenas. According to Wallerstein, the construction of these “autonomous” arenas and their materialization in separate knowledge domains such as political science, sociology, anthropology, and economics in the social sciences as well as disciplines in the humanities are a pernicious result of liberalism as a geoculture of the modern world-system. In a critical appraisal of world-system analysis, Wallerstein (1991a) states: World-system analysis intends to be a critique of nineteenth century social science. But it is an incomplete, unﬁnished critique. It still has not been able to ﬁnd a way to surmount the most enduring (and misleading) legacy of nineteenth century social science—the division of social analysis into three arenas, three logics, three levels—the economic, the political and the sociocultural. This trinity stands in the middle of the road, in granite, blocking our intellectual advance. Many ﬁnd it unsatisfying, but in my view no one has yet found the way to dispense with the language and its implications, some of which are correct but most of which are probably not. (4) [A]ll of us fall back on using the language of the three arenas in almost everything we write. It is time we seriously tackled the question. . . . We are pursuing false models and undermining our argumentation by continuing to use such language. It is urgent that we begin to elaborate alternative models. (271)

We have yet to develop a new language that accounts for the complex processes of the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system without relying on the outmoded liberal language of the three arenas. For example, the fact that we characterize the modern world-system as a world economy misleads many into thinking that world-system analysis is about analyzing the so-called economic logic of the system. This is precisely the kind of interpretation Wallerstein attempts to avoid in his critique of the three autonomous domains. However, as Wallerstein himself acknowledges, the language we use in world-system analysis is still caught in the language of nineteenth-century social science. To dispense with this lan-

Introduction

15

guage is a huge challenge. What if capitalism is a world economy, not in the limited sense of an economic system, but in that of a historical system deﬁned as “an integrated network of economic, political and cultural processes the sum of which hold the system together” (Wallerstein 1991a: 230)? We need to ﬁnd new concepts and a new language to account for the complex entanglement of gender, racial, sexual, and class hierarchies within global geopolitical, geocultural, and geo-economic processes of the modern world-system where the ceaseless accumulation of capital is affected by, integrated into, constitutive of, and constituted by those hierarchies. In order to ﬁnd a new language for this complexity, we need to go “outside” our paradigms, approaches, disciplines, and ﬁelds. I propose that we examine the metatheoretical notion of “heterarchies” developed by Greek social theorist, sociologist, and philosopher Kyriakos Kontopoulos (1993) as well as the notion of “coloniality of power” developed by the Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (1991, 1993, 1998). Heterarchical thinking (Kontopoulos 1993) is an attempt to conceptualize social structures with a new language that breaks with the liberal paradigm of nineteenth-century social science. The old language of social structures is a language of closed systems, that is, of a single, overarching logic determining a single hierarchy. To deﬁne a historical system as a “nested hierarchy,” as the Gulbenkian commission proposed, undermines our argument by continuing to use a metatheoretical model that corresponds to closed systems, precisely the opposite of what the worldsystem approach attempts to do. In contrast, heterarchies move us beyond closed hierarchies into a language of complexity, open systems, entanglement of multiple and heterogeneous hierarchies, structural levels, and structuring logics. The notion of “logics” here is redeﬁned to refer to the heterogeneous entanglement of multiple agents’ strategies. The idea is that there are neither autonomous logics nor a single logic, but rather multiple, heterogeneous, entangled complex processes within a single historical reality. The notion of entanglement is crucial here and is close to Wallerstein’s notion of historical systems understood as “integrated networks of economic, political and cultural processes” (1991a: 230). The moment multiple hierarchical relationships are considered to be entangled, according to Kontopoulos, or integrated, according to Wallerstein, autonomous logics or domains do not remain. The notion of a single logic runs the risk of reductionism, which is contrary to complex systems. The notion of multiple logics runs the risk of dualism. The solution to these ontological questions (the reductionist/autonomist dilemma) in heterar-

16

Introduction

chical thinking is to transcend the monism/dualism binary opposition and to talk about an emergentist materialism that implies multiple processes at different structural levels within a single historical material reality. Heterarchies keep the use of the notion of “logics” only for analytical purposes in order to make certain distinctions or to abstract certain processes that once integrated or entangled in a concrete historical process acquire a different structural effect and meaning. Heterarchical thinking provides a language for what Immanuel Wallerstein calls a new way of thinking that can break with the liberal nineteenth-century social sciences and focus on complex, historical systems. The notion of “coloniality of power” is also helpful in terms of the culture versus economy dilemma. Quijano’s work provides a new way of thinking about this dilemma that both postcolonial and world-system analyses attempt to address. In Latin America, most dependentistas (referring to the Dependency school of political economy in Latin America) privileged the economic and political relations in social processes at the expense of cultural and ideological determinations. Culture was perceived by the dependentista school as instrumental to capitalist accumulation processes. In many respects dependentistas reproduced some of the economic reductionism of orthodox Marxist approaches. This led to two problems: ﬁrst, an underestimation of the colonial/racial hierarchies; and, second, an analytical impoverishment that could not account for the complexities of heterarchical political-economic processes. Dependency ideas must be understood as part of the longue durée of modernity ideas in Latin America. Autonomous national development has been a central ideological theme of the modern world-system since the late eighteenth century. Dependentistas reproduced the illusion that rational organization and development can be achieved from the control of the nation-state. This contradicted their position that development and underdevelopment are the result of structural relations within the capitalist world-system. Although dependentistas deﬁned capitalism as a global system beyond the nation-state, they still believed it was possible to delink or break with the world system at the nation-state level (Frank 1970: 11, 104, 150; Frank 1969: chap. 25). This implied that a socialist revolutionary process at the national level could insulate the country from the global system. However, as we know today, it is impossible to transform a system that operates on a world scale by privileging the control/administration of the nation-state (Wallerstein 1992b). No “rational” control of the nation-state would alter the location of a country in the international division of labor. “Rational” planning and

Introduction

17

control of the nation-state contributes to the developmentalist illusion of eliminating the inequalities of the capitalist world-system from a nationstate level. In the capitalist world-system, a peripheral nation-state may experience transformations in its form of incorporation to the capitalist worldeconomy, a minority of which might even move to a semiperipheral position. However, to break with, or transform, the whole system from a nation-state level is completely beyond their range of possibilities (Wallerstein 1992a, 1992b). Therefore, a global problem cannot have a national solution. This is not to deny the importance of political interventions at the nation-state level. The point here is not to reify the nation-state; it is to understand the limits of political interventions at this level for the long-term transformation of a system that operates on a world scale. The nation-state, although still an important institution of historical capitalism, is a limited space for radical political and social transformations. Collective agencies in the periphery need a global scope in order to make an effective political intervention in the capitalist worldsystem. Social struggles below and above the nation-state are strategic spaces of political intervention frequently ignored when the focus of the movements privileges the nation-state. Social movements’ local and global connections are crucial for effective political interventions. In part, the dependentistas overlooked this because of their tendency to privilege the nation-state as the unit of analysis and because of the economistic emphasis of their approaches. The result led to terrible political consequences for the Latin American left and for the credibility of the dependentista political project. For most dependentistas, the “economy” was the privileged sphere of social analysis. Categories such as “gender” and “race” were frequently ignored; when used, they were reduced to either class or economic interests. Quijano (1993) presents one of the few exceptions to this approach. “Coloniality of power” is a concept that attempts to integrate as part of a heterogeneous structural process the multiple relations in which cultural, political, and economic processes are entangled in capitalism as a historical system. At the center of “coloniality of power” is social power and the entanglement of capitalist accumulation processes with a racial/ethnic hierarchy and its derivative classiﬁcations of superior/inferior, developed/underdeveloped, and civilized/barbarian people. Similarly to world-systems analysis, the notion of “coloniality” conceptualizes the process of colonization of the Americas and the constitution of a capitalist world-economy as part of the same entangled process. The construc-

18

Introduction

tion of a global racial/ethnic hierarchy was simultaneous, coeval in time and space, with the constitution of an international division of labor with core-periphery relationships on a world scale. For Quijano there is no “pre” or “post” racial/ethnic hierarchy on a world scale in relation to the capitalist accumulation process. Following the initial formation of the capitalist world-system, the ceaseless accumulation of capital was entangled with a racist, homophobic, and sexist culture. The international division of labor was heterarchically entangled with racial/ethnic, gender, and sexual hierarchies. The European colonial expansion was led by European heterosexual males. Everywhere they went, they exported their cultural prejudices and formed heterarchical structures of sexual, gender, class, and racial hierarchies. Thus, in “historical capitalism” the process of peripheral incorporation to the ceaseless accumulation of capital was entangled with homophobic, sexist, and racist practices and cultures. However, as opposed to world-system analysis, what Quijano emphasizes with his notion of “coloniality” is that there is no overarching capitalist accumulation logic that can instrumentalize ethnic/racial divisions and that precedes the formation of a global colonial, Eurocentric culture. The “instrumentalist” approach is reductive and is caught in the old language of nineteenth-century social science. Since its initial formation, capitalist accumulation was always entangled in a nonreductive way to a Eurocentric culture. The relationship between Western and non-Western peoples through colonial culture was always entangled with social power, the international division of labor, and the capitalist accumulation processes. Moreover, Quijano uses the notion of “coloniality” as opposed to “colonialism” in order to call our attention to the historical continuities between colonial and so-called postcolonial times. The fact that colonialism as a political-juridical administration has almost disappeared from the interstate system does not mean colonial relations have also disappeared. One implication of the notion of “coloniality of power” is that the world has not fully decolonized. The ﬁrst decolonization was incomplete. It was limited to juridical-political “independence” from the European imperial states. The “second decolonization” will have to address heterarchies of entangled racial, ethnic, sexual, gender, and economic relations that the “ﬁrst decolonization” left untouched. As a result, the world needs a “second decolonization,” different and more radical than the ﬁrst one. As opposed to the “ﬁrst decolonization,” the “second decolonization” is a long-term process that cannot be reduced to an event.

Introduction

19

The pernicious inﬂuence of coloniality in all of its expressions at different levels (global, national, local) as well as its Eurocentric knowledge structures have been reﬂected in the antisystemic movements around the world. For example, many leftist projects in Latin America, following the dependentista underestimation of racial/ethnic hierarchies, have reproduced white creole domination over non-European people within their organizations and when controlling state power. The Latin American “left” never radically problematized the racial/ethnic hierarchies built during the European colonial expansion and still present in Latin America’s “coloniality of power.” The conﬂicts between the Sandinistas and the Mizquitos in Nicaragua emerged as part of the reproduction of the old racial/colonial hierarchies (Vila 1992). This was not a conﬂict created by the CIA, as Sandinistas would have us believe. The Sandinistas reproduced the historical “coloniality of power” between the Paciﬁc coast and the Atlantic coast in Nicaragua. The white creole elites on the Paciﬁc coast hegemonized the political, cultural, and economic relations that subordinated blacks and Indians on the Atlantic coast. The differences between the Somocista dictatorship and the Sandinista regime were not that great when it came to social relations with colonial/racial Others. Similarly, Cuban white elites hegemonized the power positions in the postrevolutionary period (Moore 1988). The number of blacks and mulattos in power positions is small, which does not correspond to the demographic fact that they are the numerical majority. The historical continuities of the “coloniality of power” in Cuba are greater than the discontinuities. Thus, “coloniality” refers to the long-term continuities of the racial hierarchies from the time of European colonialism to the formation of nation-states in the Americas. Today there is a “coloniality of power” despite the disappearance of direct colonial administrations. No radical project in Latin America can be successful without dismantling these colonial/racial hierarchies. This affects not only the scope of “revolutionary processes” but also the democratization of the social hierarchies. The underestimation of the problem of coloniality has greatly contributed to the popular disillusionment with “leftist” projects in Latin America. The second problem with the dependentista underestimation of cultural and ideological dynamics is that it impoverished their own political-economy approach. Ideological/symbolic strategies as well as Eurocentric forms of knowledge are constitutive of the political economy of the capitalist world-system. Global symbolic/ideological strategies are an important structuring logic of the core-periphery relationships in the

20

Introduction

capitalist world-system. For instance, core states develop ideological/symbolic strategies by fostering “Occidentalist” (Mignolo 1995) forms of knowledge that privileged the “West over the Rest.” This is clearly seen in developmentalist discourses that emerged as a “scientiﬁc” form of knowledge during the last ﬁfty years. This knowledge privileged the “West” as the model of development. Developmentalist discourse offers a colonial recipe on how to become like the “West.” Although the dependentistas struggled against these universalist/Occidentalist forms of knowledge, they perceived this knowledge as a “superstructure” or an epiphenomenon of some “economic infrastructure.” Dependentistas never perceived this knowledge as constitutive of Latin America’s political economy. Understanding peripheral zones such as Africa and Latin America as regions with a “problem” related to “stages of development” concealed Western responsibility for the exploitation of these continents. The construction of “pathological” regions in the periphery as opposed to the normal development patterns of the “West” justiﬁed an even more intense political and economic intervention from imperial powers. By treating the “Other” as “underdeveloped” and “backward,” metropolitan exploitation and domination were justiﬁed in the name of the “civilizing mission.” A component of Quijano’s “coloniality of power” is the critique of Eurocentric forms of knowledge. According to Quijano, the privileging of Eurocentric forms of knowledge is simultaneous with the entangled process of core-periphery relations and racial/ethnic hierarchies. The ascribed superiority of European knowledge in many areas of life was an important aspect of the coloniality of power in the world-system. Subaltern knowledges were excluded, omitted, silenced, and ignored. This is not a call for a fundamentalist or an essentialist rescue mission for authenticity. The point here is to put the colonial difference (Mignolo 2000) at the center of the process of knowledge production. Subaltern knowledges are those knowledges at the intersection of the traditional and the modern. They are hybrid, transcultural forms of knowledge, not in the traditional sense of syncretism or “mestizaje,” but in Aimé Césaire’s sense of the “miraculous arms” or what I have called “subversive complicity” with the system. These are forms of resistance that resignify dominant forms of knowledge from the point of view of the nonEurocentric rationality of subaltern subjectivities thinking from border epistemologies. They constitute what Walter Mignolo (2000) calls a critique of modernity from the geopolitical experiences and memories of coloniality. According to Mignolo (2000), this is a new space that de-

Introduction

21

serves further exploration both as a new critical dimension to modernity/coloniality and, at the same time, as a space where new utopias can be devised. This has important implications for knowledge production. Are we going to produce a new knowledge that repeats or reproduces the universalistic, Eurocentric, god’s-eye view? To say that the unit of analysis is the world-system, not the nation-state, is not equivalent to an objective god’s-eye view of the world. I believe that the world-system takes the side of the periphery, workers, women, racialized/colonial subjects, and antisystemic movements in the process of knowledge production. This means that although world-systems take the world as a unit of analysis, they are taking a nonuniversal, particular perspective of the world. Still, world-system analysis has not found a way to incorporate subaltern knowledges in our process of knowledge production. Without this there can be no decolonization of knowledge and no utopistics beyond Eurocentrism. The complicity of the social sciences with the coloniality of power in knowledge production and imperial global designs calls for new institutional and noninstitutional locations from which the subaltern can speak and be heard.

geopolitics of knowledge and the imaginary of the modern/colonial world Scholars must recognize that they always speak from a speciﬁc location in the gender, class, racial, and sexual hierarchies of a particular region in the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. Our knowledges, as the feminist thinker Donna Haraway (1991) contends, are always already “situated,” but I will add, following Quijano (1993) and Mignolo (2000), that they are “situated” within the axis of the colonial difference produced by the “coloniality of power” in the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. The Western/masculinist idea that we can produce knowledges that are unpositioned, unlocated, neutral, and universalistic is one of the most pervasive mythologies in the modern/colonial/capitalist world. Universal/global designs are always already situated in local histories (Mignolo 2000). Those in power positions in the European/EuroAmerican versus non-European hierarchy of the modern/colonial world often think in terms of global designs or universalistic knowledges to control and dominate colonized/racialized/subordinated peoples in the capitalist world-system. The colonial difference formed by centuries of European colonial expansion in the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system is always constitutive of processes of knowledge production. To speak from

22

Introduction

the subaltern side of the colonial difference forces us to look at the world from angles and points of view critical of the hegemonic perspectives. This requires an effort on our part. “Border thinking” and “border epistemology” are precisely the terms used by Walter Mignolo (2000), inspired by the work of Chicana and Chicano scholars such as Gloria Anzaldúa (1987), Norma Alarcón (1983), and José David Saldívar (1997), to refer to this in-between location of subaltern knowledges, critical of both imperial designs (global coloniality) and anticolonial nationalist strategies (internal coloniality). We still live in a world where coloniality is the dominant imaginary. The global hegemonic colonial culture involves an intricate and uneven set of narratives with long histories that are reenacted in the present through complex mediations. Postcolonial literatures have contributed greatly to the discussion of these narratives as they are produced and reproduced in the constitution of one group’s superiority over an Other. The process of “Othering” people has operated through a set of narrative oppositions between the West and the Rest, civilized and savage, intelligent and stupid, hard-working and lazy, superior and inferior, masculine and feminine (sexual and racist narratives have been entangled), pure and impure, clean and dirty, and so on. There are world-systemic historical/structural processes that constituted these narratives that I can only simplify and schematically designate here: the relationship among European modernity (for example, citizenship, nation building, democracy, and civil/social rights), European colonial expansion, colonial modernities, and white/masculinist supremacy. The capitalist world-system was formed by the Spanish/Portuguese expansion to the Americas (Wallerstein 1974; Quijano and Wallerstein 1992; Mignolo 1995, 2000). This ﬁrst modernity (1492–1650) built the foundations of the racist/colonial culture in which we live today. Simultaneous with its expansion to the Americas in 1492, the Spanish empire expelled Arabs and Jews from their land in the name of the “pure blood” (“pureza de la sangre”). This “internal border” against Arabs and Jews was built simultaneously with the “external border” against people from other geographical zones (Mignolo 2000). The Spanish and Portuguese expansion to the Americas constructed the racial categories that would be later generalized to the rest of the world (Quijano and Wallerstein 1992). Nobody deﬁned themselves as blacks in Africa, whites in Europe, or Indians in the Americas before the European expansion to the Americas. These categories were invented as part of the European colonization of the Americas (Quijano and Wallerstein 1992). The formation of the

Introduction

23

international division of labor or a capitalist world-system occurred in tandem with the formation of a global racial/ethnic hierarchy. There was no “pre” nor “post” to their joint constitution. Westerners’ superiority over non-Westerners in terms of a racial narrative of superior/inferior peoples was constructed in this period. This is why Mignolo (2000) states that “Occidentalism” (dominant discourse of the ﬁrst modernity) is the sociohistorical condition of possibility for the emergence of Orientalism (dominant discourse of the second modernity). Christianity was central to the constitution of the colonial imaginary of the system. During the second modernity (1650–1945) the core of the worldsystem shifted from Spain and Portugal to Germany, the Netherlands, England, and France. The emergence of northwestern Europe as the core of the capitalist world-system continued, expanded, and deepened the “internal imaginary border” (against Jews, Arabs, Gypsies, and so forth) and the “external imaginary border” built during the ﬁrst modernity (against the Americas and later expanded to include other geographical zones). The second modernity added a new border between northwestern Europeans and Iberian peoples to the old racial/colonial hierarchies. Hispanic /Latin southern European cultures were constructed as inferior to the northwestern Europeans. This hierarchical division within Europe would spread to North America and be reenacted in the context of the U.S. imperial expansions of 1848 (the Mexican-American War) and 1898 (the Spanish-American War). The U.S. colonization of northern Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico formed part of the white-Anglo hegemony in the nineteenth-century colonial expansions of the second modernity. Hispanic cultures were subalternized and the notion of “whiteness” acquired new meanings. In the context of the U.S. colonial expansion, white Spaniards were expelled from the notion of “whiteness.” “Hispanics” were constructed as part of the inferior others excluded from the superior “white” “European” races. To make matters even more complicated, in the United States the notion of whiteness expanded to include groups that were internal colonial subjects of Europe under northwestern European hegemony (for example, Irish, Eastern Europeans, Italians, and Jews). At the time, European Orientalist discourses were also being articulated in relation to the colonized populations of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The history of the second modernity is crucial to understanding the present racialization of Puerto Ricans or Mexicans of all colors in the United States and Anglo-whiteAmerican hegemony. The hegemonic white/black divide does not exhaust the multiple racisms deployed and developed in U.S. colonial ex-

24

Introduction

pansion. Given the social construction of race, “whiteness” is not merely about skin color. Other markers racialize people located on the “wrong side” of the colonial difference (for example, accent, language, demeanor, culture, and habits). The capitalist world-system expanded to cover the whole planet during the second modernity (Wallerstein 1979). European (understood not merely in geographic terms, but in the broader sense of white European supremacy) and Euro-American processes of nation building, struggles for citizenship rights, and development of parliamentary regimes were inscribed in a global colonial/racist imaginary that established “internal” and “external” borders (Quijano 1993; Mignolo 2000). The invisibility of global coloniality in the process of building modern nation-states in nineteenth-century Europe and the Americas shows how powerful and ingrained its colonial/racist culture was. While categories of modernity such as citizenship, democracy, and nation building were acknowledged for the dominant northwestern Europeans, the colonial “others” were subjected to coerced forms of labor and authoritarian political regimes in the periphery and semiperiphery. The Latin American periphery is no exception. White elites continued to dominate the power relations of the newly independent republics of South and Central America in the nineteenth century. Latin American independence, achieved in struggle against Spain and Portugal, was hegemonized by Euro-American elites. It was not a process of social, political, cultural, or economic decolonization. Blacks, mulattos, Native-Americans, and other people of color remained in subordinated and disenfranchised positions in the “coloniality of power” constitutive of the emerging nation-states. Colonialism gave way to coloniality, that is, “independence without decolonization.” The post-1945 processes of nation building in the great majority of the periphery of the world economy are still informed by these colonial legacies and by the colonial/racial culture built during centuries of European colonial expansion. The Eurocentric colonial culture is an ideology that is not geographically limited to Europe; rather, it is the geoculture and imaginary of the modern world-system. Thus, modernity is always already constituted by coloniality. As Walter Mignolo (2000) states, we are living in a “modern/colonial capitalist world-system.” The myth that we live in a decolonized world needs to be challenged. This mandate has crucial political implications for how we conceive social change, struggles against inequality, production of knowledge, scientiﬁc disciplines, utopian thinking, democracy, and decolonization. Racism is a pervasive phenomenon, constitutive not only of social re-

Introduction

25

lations in the United States but also of the imaginary of the capitalist world-system as a whole since the 1500s. Racism dominates the “common sense” of the modern/colonial world-system despite the changing meanings of “racist discourses” in the last ﬁve hundred years. “Biological racist discourses” have now been replaced by what is called the “new racism” or “cultural racist” discourses. Historically, “scientiﬁc knowledges” and “racism” have been complicit discourses and practices. Sociobiology or eugenics was a type of knowledge produced in the name of science to justify or articulate “biological racist discourses.” The most recent manifestation of the complicity between racism and science is the relationship between “culture of poverty approaches” and the new “cultural racisms.” The “new racism” contends that the failure of “colonial/racialized” groups is not because of “inferior genes” or “inferior IQ” (although this is still a pervasive perception and one that has seen academic attempts to legitimize it), but rather because of “improper” cultural habits and/or an “inferior” culture. This emphasis on culture over genes characterized the new “cultural racisms” dividing the world between groups with a superior culture and groups with an inferior or inadequate culture. This “new racism” has been legitimized by academic approaches that portray the high poverty rates among people of color both in the core and the periphery in terms of their traditional, inadequate, underdeveloped, and inferior cultural values and practices.

neoculture of poverty approach and new racisms The “new economic sociology,” which includes a variety of approaches, has emerged as a ﬁeld of research on migrant incorporation. As elaborated by some scholars (Portes and Zhou 1992; Portes and Sesenbrenner 1993), the new economic sociology represents a return to “culture of poverty” assumptions, but with a more sophisticated terminology.1 This provides a good example of the complicity between knowledges produced in the social sciences and new racial formations in metropolitan centers. According to this approach, the social capital of an ethnic community is central in understanding why certain ethnic groups are successful and others fail in the labor market (Portes and 1. Important exceptions to this approach within the “new economic sociology” literature are excellent works by Roger Waldinger (1986, 1996) and by Mark Granovetter (1985). Both Waldinger and Granovetter employ a more complex and structural conceptualization, as opposed to a culturalist understanding of the economic sociology notions of “embeddedness” and “networks.”

26

Introduction

Zhou 1992). In contrast to the structural and individualist approaches, the new economic sociology calls for micronetwork explanations of poverty and inequality in America (Portes and Zhou 1992). Social capital, the central concept in this approach, is deﬁned as “those expectations for action within a collectivity that affect the economic goals and goal-seeking behavior of its members, even if these expectations are not oriented toward the economic sphere” (Portes and Sesenbrenner 1993: 1323). These expectations are the result of the community’s micronetworks. This approach attempts to center the analysis on the “internal” dynamics of an ethnic community or the inner workings of micronetworks in order to understand how social capital affects economic behavior in an ethnic community. One of these mechanisms is “enforceable trust,” which is said to be an integral part of the economic transactions that emerge from the internal sanctioning capacity of an ethnic community. Cubans in Miami are put forward as an example of the positive aspects of this form of social capital and as a group that has purportedly “made it” in the American mainstream without massive government assistance (Portes and Sesenbrenner 1993; Portes and Zhou 1992). Following this theory, the emergence of the Cuban enclave in Miami results from “character” loans given with no collateral by Cuban bank officials for business start-ups to fellow exiles based on their business reputation established earlier in Cuba (Portes and Zhou 1992; Portes and Sesenbrenner 1993; Portes and Stepick 1993). This narrative about the emergence of the Cuban ethnic economy in Miami omits the role of global political-economic forces in the capital formation of Cuban entrepreneurs and the coloniality of power related to it. Because of the centrality of the Cuban example in this approach, I will focus below on the broader structural processes that account for capital formation within this community and that exemplify the role of global processes in the formation, structuring, and reproduction of microcommunity networks. Cuban businesses were formed mainly by institutional policies the U.S. government deployed as part of the cold war. Cuban exiles became a symbolic showcase of the superiority of capitalism over socialism. The success of Cubans in the United States was crucial for the United States to gain symbolic capital vis-à-vis the Soviet model. In order to advance its geopolitical goals and global designs during the cold war, the United States channeled massive state resources to Cuban refugees. Through the Cuban Refugee Program under the Health, Education and Welfare De-

Introduction

27

partment (HEW) of the United States, Cubans received welfare payments, job training, bilingual language programs, educational support, subsidized college loans, health care services, help in job search efforts, and money for resettling outside of Miami. Moreover, the initial capital for many Cuban entrepreneurs was raised through privileged support offered by the Small Business Administration (SBA). Cubans unwittingly became an example of how successful an ethnic group could be if it received the proper welfare program support (for example, education, health, job training, English as a second language courses [DeFreitas 1991: 85–88]). This reality provides a sharp contrast to the portrait of Cubans as an ethnic group that has “made it” through their own micronetworks at a community level and without massive government assistance (Portes and Sesenbrenner 1993; Portes and Zhou 1992). My argument is not that social networks at a community level are unimportant, but rather that micronetworks are embedded in broader power relations and social structures that constrain or enable the access to capital, information, and resources by community level micronetworks. It is a reductionist approach to simply focus on the relation between micronetworks and capital formation or marginalization in the labor market without studying how mediating structures and social relations at macro- and mesolevels shape the labor market incorporation of ethnic communities. Research done in the vein of this “neoculture of poverty” approach contrasts the “success” of Cubans in Miami with the “failure” of colonial/racial subjects within the U.S. empire such as Puerto Ricans in the South Bronx or African-Americans in the inner city (Portes and Sesenbrenner 1993). According to this approach, African-American youth and second-“generation” Puerto Ricans are a negative example of a particular type of social capital called “bounded solidarity” that is born out of common adversity. The neoculture of poverty approach states that to call someone a “wannabe” exercises group pressure that discourages him or her from seeking or pursuing “outside” opportunities. Moreover, this approach portrays Haitian-American teenagers in Miami as being “torn between parental expectations for success through education and an inner city youth culture [African-Americans] that denies such a thing is possible” (Portes and Sesenbrenner 1993: 1342). I am not denying that such group pressures exist. The argument is that such pressures are the result of a particular location in broader social/colonial structures. As Pierre Bourdieu (1977) reminds us, the “habitus” of an individual is al-

28

Introduction

ways related to the “internal” dispositions of a relational position in a broader ﬁeld of power relations. Thus, the African-American and Puerto Rican youths’ skepticism toward education is not necessarily a false perception because of a negative social capital but probably a more realistic understanding of their possibilities within an educational system that penalizes individuals born in low-income, segregated, and racialized communities. The United States is the only Western metropole with no national public educational system. The resources and quality of public schools depend on the income and property taxes of local communities. People born in impoverished, segregated communities are penalized for the rest of their life for not having access to a proper education. By centering the explanation of poverty or marginality in the negative cultural practices of an ethnic community, the neoculture of poverty approach erases: (1) the structural conditions of discrimination faced by young Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Haitian-Americans, or African-Americans, such as lack of access to a high-quality education and labor market opportunities; (2) the “coloniality of power” and the colonial history of subordination structuring the racial oppression, residential segregation, and exploitation that Puerto Ricans, African-Americans, Chicanos, and other colonial/racialized minorities have experienced in the United States; and (3) the class differences among the groups involved in the ethnic micronetworks, which conditions their access to resources and capital. The underlying implication of the neoculture of poverty approach is that Cubans are an example of a positive version of social capital because of their “superior” cultural practices, while Puerto Ricans and AfricanAmericans are an example of negative social capital because of their “inferior” cultural practices. This is strikingly similar to what the culture of poverty approach argued thirty years ago. The main difference is that the neoculture of poverty approach replaced the term “cultural values” of the old culture of poverty approach with the more contemporary term “social capital,” treated as equivalent to “cultural practices” and analytically central to explaining an ethnic community’s failure or success in the labor market. This serves as an example of the complicitous relationship between scholarly knowledge production and “cultural racist/colonial” discourses. The “neoculture of poverty approach” provides the so-called scientiﬁc knowledge that legitimates the claims made by new “cultural racist” discourses about the “social failure” of certain racial/ethnic groups in terms of their “cultural inadequacy” or “cultural inferiority.”

Introduction

29

transmigrants in a modern/colonial world To understand the differential selectivity, social structural location, and sociopolitical incorporation of migrant groups and to avoid the pitfalls of conceptually “homogenizing” the diverse migrant experiences, the transnational migration literature must transcend the nation-state as the unit of analysis and take more seriously the colonial divide of the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system to deﬁne geographical boundaries (Quijano and Wallerstein 1992; Mignolo 2000). From which side of the colonial difference do transmigrants come? The status of many transmigrants is related to the status of their countries in the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. One can identify diverse transmigrant experiences of crossing sociocultural boundaries (with or without a nation-state) and regions in the capitalist world-economy. 1.

From peripheral zones (with or without a nation-state) to core zones: These are internal colonial peripheral transmigrants such as Native-American migrants from a South Dakota reservation to Minneapolis or African-American migrants from Mississippi to Philadelphia; colonial peripheral transmigrants such as Guamanians to Los Angeles, or Dutch Caribbeans to Amsterdam; neocolonial peripheral transmigrants such as Dominicans, Guyanese, or Panamanians to New York City.

2.

From peripheral zones to semiperipheral zones: These are internal colonial peripheral transmigrants such as Mayan migrants from a rural village in Yucatán to Mexico City; colonial peripheral transmigrants such as people from Angola and Mozambique to Portugal; neocolonial peripheral transmigrants such as Paraguayans to Brazil; peripheral transmigrants such as Filipinos to Taiwan.

3.

From peripheral zones to peripheral zones: These are internal colonial peripheral transmigrants such as all the colonized ethnic minorities in peripheral Africa that migrate from their home rural villages to the urban capital of the nation-state, which is controlled by the hegemonic ethnic group, or indigenous people from Tucuman to Buenos Aires; colonial peripheral transmigrants like those from East Timor to Indonesia; neocolonial peripheral transmigrants such as Haitians to the Dominican Republic.

30

Introduction

4.

From semiperipheral zones to core zones: These are internal colonial semiperipheral transmigrants such as Sicilians to Milan; colonial semiperipheral transmigrants such as Canary Islanders from Tenerife to Madrid; neocolonial semiperipheral transmigrants such as Koreans to Los Angeles, Portuguese to France, or Taiwanese to New York City.

5.

From semiperipheral zones to semiperipheral zones: These are semiperipheral transmigrants such as Chinese migrants from Hong Kong to Canada; Brazilians to Portugal; or Greeks to Italy.

6.

From semiperipheral zones to peripheral zones: These are imperial semiperipheral transmigrants such as Spanish investors in Cuba, Israelis in Palestine, or Belgians in the former Zaire; and semiperipheral transmigrants such as Taiwanese in the Philippines or Spaniards in Venezuela.

7.

From a core zone to another core zone: These are core transmigrants such as Japanese middle- and upper-class professional migrants in the United States or American migrants in France.

8.

From a core zone to a semiperipheral zone: These are generally corporate core transmigrants such as American transnational corporate executives, administrators, or technicians in Mexico or Brazil.

9.

From a core zone to a peripheral zone: These are imperial core transmigrants such as French settlers in Algeria, British settlers in New Zealand or Australia, or U.S. government officials in Haiti or El Salvador.

The crossing of any of these world-systemic boundaries has important implications for the transmigrant’s labor market incorporation, symbolic capital, and global circulation of resources. There are important differences in status and in the quality/quantity of resources involved in the transnational ﬂows depending on which zones of the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system the migrants are coming from and going to. A Japanese executive living in New York City has a different status and more resources to mobilize transnationally than a Dominican unskilled labor migrant in the same city. Italian semiperipheral transmigrants with less than a high school education have more income, lower unemployment rates, and higher participation rates in New York City than a

Introduction

31

Puerto Rican colonial transmigrant with less than a high school education (Cordero-Guzmán and Grosfoguel 2000). However, regional differences in the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system are necessary but not sufficient to understand the inequalities that transmigrants experience. The modern world-system is divided along several axes. Two of them are: (1) the European/nonEuropean axis; and (2) the capital/labor axis (Quijano 1993). I would add a third and fourth axis: (3) male/female axis; and (4) heterosexual/ homosexual-lesbian axis. Although the great majority of the periphery has been formally decolonized, the world-system’s power structures are still controlled and dominated predominantly by “white” Western heterosexual male elites (including Euro-Americans). The global racial/gender/sexual hierarchy that emerged with the European colonial expansion continues to be reproduced in the contemporary world. The modern/colonial/capitalist world-system has not yet been decolonized in racial, gender, and sexual terms. The continuity of the racial hierarchies from colonial to “post”-colonial times, which is what Quijano calls the “coloniality of power,” can also be applied to gender oppression as well. People of color (red, yellow, brown, black, and all their diverse mixtures) and women still have in general a lower status and class position than “white” European/Euro-American males in the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. Power structures are still colonial in that “white” European/Euro-American males continue to control the most important positions in the world economy. Recently, the entrance of several East Asian countries to core and semiperipheral status has incorporated as “honorary whites” some Asian ethnic groups in the United States such as Koreans and Japanese. The status of transmigrants as well as their cultural/symbolic and social capital are conditioned by their relational location along the axes of the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system. The class origin of the migration (capital/labor axis) is an important analytical consideration. Although both come from peripheral regions, the class differences between peripheral transmigrants from a professional class origin such as Nigerian professionals in Washington, D.C., and peripheral transmigrants from an unskilled labor class origin such as Colombian unskilled workers in New York will affect their opportunities in the metropolitan labor market. Similarly, it is a completely different labor market experience to be semiperipheral transmigrants from a middle-class origin such as Koreans in Los Angeles than it is to be semiperipheral transmigrants from an unskilled labor class origin such as the

32

Introduction

recently arrived Russians in New York City. The quantity and quality of the information, commodities, labor, and capital they circulate across boundaries as well as the structure of opportunities in the labor market are absolutely different. Moreover, there are important racial differences among semiperipheral transmigrants from a middle-class origin such as Italians and Taiwanese in New York City. In this case, the class origin might be similar but the different racial/ethnic origin has an impact on the structure of opportunities. The same can be said regarding gender hierarchies. Female migration implies a different experience from male migration. This is reﬂected not only in terms of the unequal access to resources but also in terms of the possibilities for social mobility, diverse logics of household strategies, and divisions of labor within the household. I advocate looking at the totality of the migration process of each migrant group in its historical-structural complexity: to analyze the geopolitical location in the global coloniality of power, the time and space dimensions, as well as the racial, class, and gender hierarchies in order to understand why some groups are more successfully incorporated to the labor market than others. After accounting for all these factors, we can start making sense of the diverse labor market incorporations among different transmigrants and the diverse social networks built by their communities. The colonial difference in the modern/colonial world is an important organizing structure that contributes to one’s understanding of the diverse reception of transmigrants in host societies and their community resources. The variations in transmigration processes are related to past and present locations in the different zones of the modern/colonial world. If the broad historical-structural contexts experienced by each migrant group in the process of integration to the host society are not addressed, then the dangers of stereotyping, scapegoating, and racializing become even greater. When one ignores the broad global colonial, historical, and political-economic contexts of the migrants’ labor market incorporation, or places the emphasis exclusively on the migrants’ performance in the labor market, it is easy to simplistically conclude that the failure or success of an ethnic group depends on how hard group members work, how disciplined and motivated they are, or whether the community’s social capital is positive or negative. This kind of reductionism leads to praising the privileged and blaming the victims.

Introduction

33

speaking from the colonial difference I will now share some of the personal experiences that inform the perspective I develop in this book. As a white middle-class man in Puerto Rico who migrated to the United States, I have had the contradictory experience of living the privileges of whiteness on the island and the discrimination of a colonial/racial subject in the metropolis. An AfroPuerto Rican does not have the same privileges, resources, and beneﬁts (economic, symbolic, and political) that I enjoy as a white middle-class male in Puerto Rico. However, my experience of migration shifted my location in the racial/ethnic hierarchy, placing me at the bottom of the U.S. spectrum of ethnic and racial prejudices. Once someone is identiﬁed as Puerto Rican, doors shut and an army of stereotypes mobilizes. In the Euro-American imaginary, Puerto Ricans are dangerous, lazy, and criminal or simply opportunistic people that take advantage of welfare programs. Puerto Ricans face discrimination in the spaces of everyday life in banks, stores, housing, and so on that white Americans take for granted. This is what Philomena Essed (1991), an Afro-Surinamese scholar in the Netherlands, calls “everyday racism.” It affects peoples’ abilities to get a loan or a mortgage, open a business, get a job, buy a house, get a promotion, get an increase in salary, get a license, get a degree, get a discount, and so on. White Americans take for granted their privileges in everyday life as I did in Puerto Rico where I am a “white middle-class” man. I spent a year in Paris thanks to a postdoctoral fellowship I received from the Fernand Braudel Center and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. My new location as a Puerto Rican in Paris exposed me to new experiences that would broaden my understanding of racial constructions. The Parisians treated me as an exotic “Other” given the popularity of Latin jazz and salsa music in Paris during the 1990s. Puerto Rican musicians (the majority of them from New York City) have conquered the world even though in the United States, where most of this music is produced, they have been ignored by the mainstream for decades. I became the exotic other, treated with sympathy and admiration because of my alleged ability to dance and play that “exotic” music called “salsa.” The French imaginary of Puerto Ricans contained nothing negative. During my ﬁrst two weeks in Paris I thought that French people were not that racist after all; that is, until I went to a street market to buy food in the Quartier Latin at the heart of Paris. People were

34

Introduction

looking at me strangely, but I paid them no heed. I stopped at one of the fruit stands where a man proceeded to scream at me: “We are not going to sell you anything here. If you want food, go to Barbès.” Two other merchants also refused to serve me. Given my “demeanor” and “accent” in French, they thought I was North African and as such sent me to Barbès, the Parisian quartier where Arabs, Antilleans, and West African people live. Rather than deny their accusations, I let them assume I was Arab and I struggled against their prejudices. I discovered that I did not “pass” in the United States or in France. I went to the same places, institutions, stores, and public spaces where white European or Euro-American friends went, and I received discriminatory treatment. My only experience of “white” privilege is in Puerto Rico and in Latin America where I am seen as “white” despite my mixed “racial” background (Jewish, Afro-Caribbean, Arab, and Spaniard). In the United States, one drop of “African blood” makes you “impure” and, therefore, “nonwhite.” In Puerto Rico, like in many Latin American countries, the opposite is true: one drop of “white blood” makes you “white.” It can be a nightmare to be black or Indian in the so-called Latin American racial democracies such as Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, or Guatemala, where the “coloniality of power” is pervasive. To acknowledge the pervasiveness of racism does not mean that I support an essentialist version of identity politics, or that I think there is no space for common struggles based on class, gender, race, or other identiﬁers. Instead, I argue racialized subjects can struggle together with other groups on some common ground, but they cannot dissolve their speciﬁc demands under the banner of class unity. To avoid an essentialist or fundamentalist position about oppressed people and knowledge production, the following are three points of clariﬁcation: First, from the point of view of the geopolitics of knowledge, anecdotal, personal, lived experiences and our location in the racial/ethnic hierarchy determines our emphasis, nuances, subjective representations, and preferences. The recognition of personal experiences and our structural location helps us to be more self-reﬂexive about our own biases. Second, in a situation where there is a relation of domination/oppression/exploitation, the people at the top of the hierarchy (race, class, gender, or whatever) are frequently blind to what the people at the bottom live and experience. The hegemonic discourses would tend to conceal the processes of domination/oppression/exploitation involved in a particular relation. This does not mean that the perception of the people

Introduction

35

at the bottom is always the correct one or the perception of the people at the top is always the distorted one. It only means that when studying relations of exploitation, oppression, and inequality, we should not take the dominant, hegemonic knowledges as the “correct” ones while dismissing subaltern voices as “folklore” or “cultural” expressions without acknowledging their knowledge production and its questioning of our epistemologies. To be insightful, we should take seriously the critical thinking produced from the location and “point of view” of the actors at the bottom of the social hierarchy. By “point of view,” I mean a consideration of both the discourses of subordinated actors as well as how things appear from their structural location. We need to grasp the point of view or geopolitics of knowledge of those at the bottom in order to understand the structuring logic of dominant/subordinate relationships. The structural location and hegemonic knowledges of those at the top can blind us from insights and conceal the relations of power and domination given their staked privileged interests. As a male, I am blind to many insights of the experience of female oppression. However, this does not mean that I am unable to understand the insights of that relation of oppression. Only through attempting to understand this oppression from the point of view or structural location of women can I begin to have a different perception of gender relations. This is also true of racial and class relations. Marx, coming from a bourgeois class origin, was able to lift himself above his class prejudices and background by assuming the “point of view” and structural location of the proletariat in the capitalist accumulation process. Marx analyzed how capitalism looks from the point of view of those who are at the bottom of the ladder. He took seriously the knowledge produced by the social agents at this structural location. Third, there is a difference between “speaking for” and “speaking from.” In the ﬁrst, you are “representing” the point of view of the subordinate actors and speaking in the name of the other. This is something I ﬁnd highly problematic. In the latter (speaking from) you take the structural location of, and knowledge produced by, the subordinate actors in order to analyze the logic of the social relationship involved. Since I am “white” in the racial/ethnic hierarchy of Puerto Rico, I must make a special effort to understand how things look from the structural location or geopolitics of knowledge of those at the bottom. It is not coincidental that in my work on Puerto Rico I hardly address racial discrimination, while in my work on the United States I place race at the center of my discussions. From the point of view of the sociology of knowledge, my

36

Introduction

double location as “white” in Puerto Rico and as a “racialized subject” in the United States can account for this difference. I do not celebrate this or claim an epistemological privilege; instead, I want to use it as a selfreﬂexive way to understand the constraints and enabling possibilities of my own “situated” knowledges and epistemologies in both locations. Thus, I need to make a special effort to take the issue of racial and gender discrimination in Puerto Rico more seriously. In the United States I must incorporate more gender analysis in my work, which currently focuses on class and race. For example, the global geopolitical strategies of the U.S. imperial state analyzed in this book are entangled with a patriarchal, masculinist imaginary. In this imaginary, violence and militarism are the only imagined solutions to social conﬂicts. This is undertheorized in my work. This is both a point of clariﬁcation and an invitation to make the proper connections between our own location in the racial/ethnic, gender, and class hierarchies and their related epistemological possibilities and limits (not essentially ﬁxed) to our interpretations and knowledge production. A self-reﬂexive exploration of our structural locations, anecdotes, and personal histories can help unravel and redeﬁne our assumptions, biases, blind spots, and epistemologies. Social scientiﬁc knowledge production is always already determined by a particular standpoint. Although disciplinary knowledges assume universality, they can never speak from a universal standpoint because such a thing does not exist. A universal standpoint is a Western myth. Moreover, there are no neutral or “objective” points of view in any given social conﬂict. The formation of the social sciences in the nineteenth century was entangled with Eurocentric epistemological premises. The universalism of the social sciences originates in Europe’s project to achieve universal knowledge as part of global colonial expansion and designs (Mignolo 2000; Wallerstein 1991a). Disciplines were linked to state policies and to technologies of power. Liberalism was the dominant ideology that articulated the formation of disciplines based on the assumption that there are independent arenas in social life (for example, economic, political, social, and cultural) and that each arena has universal laws or principles that require independent disciplines/knowledges (Wallerstein 1991a). The problem with universalistic pretensions of knowledge production is that they are always false; epistemologically speaking, there is no universalistic or god’s-eye standpoint or location in social life. We always speak from speciﬁc locations. Eurocentric—not in a geographic sense,

Introduction

37

but in a cultural sense—knowledges always attempt to produce knowledges beyond time and space. The problem is that there is no beyond time and space in knowledge production. This is a false premise frequently used by colonizers to legitimate knowledges that are located and produced from particular power positions in the world-systemic hierarchies of gender, class, and race. As Walter Mignolo (2000) states, Eurocentric knowledges are always produced from a particular local history (in this case, Europe, the United States, or white creole elites in Latin America) that claims to represent itself as universal in order to gain legitimacy or to take its discursive constructs as the “real,” “objective” ones. Knowledges produced outside the disciplines or from local histories of subordinated people are constructed as “subjective” and thus delegitimized/discarded as “particularistic” as opposed to “disciplinary, scientiﬁc, universal knowledge.” The outlined epistemological critique applies to political conﬂicts too. “Universal” solutions to conﬂicts do not exist. No one views conﬂict from a “god’s-eye” position to dictate the “common grounds” and “universal” principles that will “solve” a particular “conﬂict.” We always take positions from some particular location in the conﬂict and within a particular time/space location (relations of forces, geopolitical context, and so on). The construction of “common grounds” is always conﬂictive, deﬁned in terms of the relation of forces in a given situation, and depends on who is speaking and from which location in the conﬂict he or she speaks. This does not mean that politics is about irreconcilable differences, or that there is no common ground on which to solve a conﬂict. Politics is the art of negotiation within a particular relation of forces. It is a Western myth to think that we can take a “universalist” position within a conﬂict or that we can produce a “universal,” “commonly grounded” neutral knowledge about conﬂicts. The questions demanding our attention are: “Common grounds” for whom? From whose point of view/location in the social conﬂict? Within which particular relations of forces? This does not mean that we are prisoners of a point of view. We could analyze the point of view of all parts involved in a conﬂict, but whatever we propose as “conﬂict resolution” is never “universal” and “common.” Any proposed solution emerges from a particular relation of forces and within a particular historical/time/space nonuniversally determined point of view. People accept things as “common” in a conﬂictive scenario only after they realize that they are not going to achieve everything they desire, either because they partially lose or win the battle. They may also realize their claims are unfair, which is an exceptional

38

Introduction

solution to a conﬂict because historically people “realize” they did something wrong only when they lose the battle. Rather than universalistic, “solution” is always deﬁned by a particularistic local history, relation of forces, and location within them. A similar critique could be addressed to political science’s “rational” attempts to ﬁnd “universalistic” and “objective” answers for the debate over how a society can “best be governed” as a whole. The notion of how “best to govern” has the same limitations addressed above: for whom, from whose point of view, and within what particular relation of forces? The recent debate over the fate of the Puerto Rican political prisoners in the United States is a good example. Clinton’s proposal for a conditional release was limited and discriminated against the “presos politicos.” The Puerto Rican political prisoners received life sentences for crimes that frequently receive sentences of less than ten years in prison. The majority of them had already spent more than seventeen years in jail by the time the president proposed his plan for a conditional release. Although presidents of the United States usually deploy a “universalistic” voice by universalizing their particular location, Clinton’s proposal for their “conditional release” was not a “common ground” or a “universalistic” position. Similarly, the proposal for the “unconditional release” of the political prisoners was nonuniversalistic since it was taken from a particular position within the conﬂict. In light of the discrimination suffered by the political prisoners in the U.S. justice system, I believe that the “unconditional release” would have been a more fair resolution. Despite my disagreement with the political prisoners’ ideals and tactics, I argue they were given discriminatory sentences, illustrated by their extreme jail sentences relative to punishment doled out to others for similar “criminal offenses.” These extreme sentences resulted from both the institutionalized discrimination against Puerto Ricans and the weak legal strategy of the political prisoners. However, my position is not “universal,” nor does it provide “common ground.” Intellectuals, like myself, do not have a privileged “god’seye” view of conﬂicts that allows them to ﬁnd so-called universal solutions. Indeed, nobody has a universal common-ground position in this conﬂict because universalistic positions are a Western myth based on premises we must question. However, just because I disagree with Clinton does not mean that I, along with those who share my position, cannot negotiate with and accept his conditional offer to release the political prisoners. Given the unfavorable relation of forces (a negative and racist reaction to Clinton’s proposal across the United States and the Republican-dominated Congress), the options were (1) accept the offer

Introduction

39

and negotiate your legal conditions on the street or (2) stay in jail forever. The political prisoners accepted the offer despite their disagreement with Clinton’s proposal. Politics cannot be an “everything or nothing” dilemma. We must negotiate to ﬁnd provisional and particularistic “common grounds” as long as the latter is never taken as “universal” and is understood to be determined by complex relations of forces and multiple positionalities. People of color live, dance, eat, and entertain, and some manage to become upwardly mobile despite everything. Life for people of color is not deﬁned simply by the racist discrimination they experience, yet racist discrimination is constitutive of their life chances and possibilities, including for the few who achieve social mobility. We must dwell on struggle, not victimization.

the organization of the book This book is divided in three parts. The ﬁrst is entitled “The Political Economy of Puerto Rico” and provides a global/historical context to understand the Puerto Rican migration processes discussed in the later parts of the book. Chapter 1 discusses the shifting modes of incorporation of Puerto Rico to the United States during the twentieth century as well as Puerto Rican subaltern strategies to cope with U.S. colonialism and neocolonialism in the Caribbean region. In this chapter global processes such as capital accumulation, military geopolitics, and symbolic/ideological strategies are used to understand the complex and shifting relations of Puerto Rico as a peripheral zone of the United States during the twentieth century. Chapter 2 compares Miami and San Juan in the context of the global transformations in the Caribbean citysystem for the last forty years. This chapter discusses and reconceptualizes the social transformations of these cities within the context of the world-city literature. A critique of the economic reductionism of this literature is offered. The second part of the book is entitled “Puerto Rican Migration and the Caribbean Diaspora in the United States.” It discusses Puerto Rican migration in comparative perspective with other Caribbean migrations to the United States. Chapter 3 focuses on U.S. geopolitical strategies and their effects on the migration processes from the ﬁve countries that compose the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico) during and after the cold war. This chapter provides a new interpretation of the global process that conditioned Caribbean mi-

40

Introduction

gration to the United States. Global symbolic/ideological strategies are crucial to understanding the Cuban and Puerto Rican experience while military/geopolitical strategies were central in the Haitian and Dominican experience. Chapter 4 discusses the racialization and labor market incorporation of Latino Caribbean migrants in New York City. This chapter provides a reconceptualization of the Latino Caribbean experience in New York City from the perspective of the “coloniality of power.” Chapter 5 looks at the sociopolitical context of reception and labor market incorporation of Caribbean migrants in the United States. The last part of the book, entitled “Caribbean Colonial Migrants in Western Europe and the United States,” compares Puerto Rican migration to the United States with the Caribbean colonial diasporas in Western Europe. Speciﬁcally, it compares the “contexts of reception” and “labor market incorporation” affecting migrants from nonindependent Caribbean territories in the metropoles: Puerto Ricans in the United States; Martinicans and Guadeloupeans in France; Dutch Antilleans and Surinamese in the Netherlands; and West Indians in Great Britain. Chapter 6 discusses the labor market incorporation and welfare state policies. Here, the welfare state and migration policies are compared in order to understand the different modes of incorporation of colonial Caribbean migrants in the metropoles. Chapter 7 focuses on the processes of racialization of colonial Caribbean diasporas in the metropoles. This chapter locates the present forms of racialization of Caribbean colonial populations in each metropolis within the long historical context of the different colonial legacies and the racial/colonial narratives about the “nation.”

pa rt o n e

The Political Economy of Puerto Rico

chapter 1

The Political Economy of Puerto Rico in the Twentieth Century and Puerto Rican Postnational Strategies The Caribbean is now an American sea. Puerto Rico is its show piece. Puerto Rican society has the near-celestial privilege of free entry into the United States for their unemployed and their ambitious. The United States returns to the Puerto Rican Government all duty collected on such staple imports as rum and cigars. American money for investment and American loans and gifts should create the Caribbean paradise. But if the United States had the Puerto Rican density of population, it would contain all the people in the world. Puerto Rico is just another West Indian island. C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins

A referendum concerning the political status of Puerto Rico was held on November 14, 1993, without official recognition from the U.S. federal government. This referendum provides a critical opportunity to analyze the historically consistent rejection of independence by Puerto Ricans. Normally, the electoral process, which occurs every four years, is a struggle between the two dominant parties that administer the colony (the prostatehood Partido Nuevo Progresista and the pro-Commonwealth Partido Popular Democrático). It is difficult to determine to what degree electoral results are a reﬂection of popular discontent with the party administrating the colony or of their position in relation to the political status debate. As a result, the referendum constitutes the most recent and 43

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best barometer to gauge the feelings of Puerto Ricans regarding the status issue.1 More than 70 percent of the electorate participated in the referendum. The results by status alternatives were: 48 percent voted in favor of maintaining the Commonwealth (the current colonial status); 46 percent for statehood; and only 4 percent for independence. An extraordinary feature of the outcome was the growth of the prostatehood vote, which grew by 7 percent (as compared to the 1967 plebiscite in which statehood received 39 percent of the vote). The great majority of the Puerto Rican people expressed an interest in consolidating some form of “permanent union” with the United States. Historically, nationalist discourses have put forward several explanations to account for the failure of their political project. Certain discourses claim that traditional colonialist leaders have developed a campaign to misinform and instill a fear of independence; some blame the “ignorance” of the Puerto Rican people, and still others accuse the cultural/ideological colonization by, or assimilation to, the United States. Even if we accept the premises of these elitist and colonialist arguments as partially true, the failure of the proindependence movement cannot be reduced to a problem of “alienation.” Irrespective of the degree of efficiency of ideological co-optation mechanisms employed by the United States in Puerto Rico, popular sectors are not passive entities manipulated at will by “imperialist propaganda.” Recent theorizations of cultural hegemony conceptualize the dominant/subordinate relations in a more dynamic, complex way. Given a certain textual and structural context of subordination, popular groups act and intervene pragmatically within their horizon of structural possibilities. Subordinate groups creatively appropriate the ideological codes imposed by the dominant sectors through ideological institutions and the media (Bourdieu 1977; Barbero 1987). Thus, elitist claims that people are “assimilated/alienated” obscure relevant questions such as: Why does independence have minimal support among the Puerto Rican people despite the fact that the independence option in the 1993 referendum was offered with dual citi1. The December 1998 local referendum is not a good barometer given the fact that a boycott was organized to protest the authoritarian and neoliberal policies of prostatehood Governor Pedro Rosselló. Approximately 50.2 percent of the people voted for the option entitled “none of the above”; statehood 46.5 percent; independence 2.5 percent; free association (autonomous republic) 0.3 percent; and commonwealth 0.1 percent. Most of the votes for the “none of the above” option were from the procommonwealth followers, but it also included proindependence and prostatehood votes. A total of 70 percent of the adult population participated in the referendum.

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zenship? Why does the overwhelming majority prefer a political status that consolidates our union with the United States? Why has the prostatehood alternative received massive support among our people, despite the U.S.’s “English Only” requisite?2 To understand the unpopularity of independence movements in Puerto Rico throughout the twentieth century, one must grasp the shifting relationship of Puerto Rico to the United States since 1898. The structural constraints of colonialism have framed the horizon of possibilities for local actors. I propose that the United States has made political and economic concessions to popular sectors in Puerto Rico (which have rarely been made to any other colonial or postcolonial peoples) because of the island’s military and symbolic value. Consequently, I suggest other ways of articulating the status issue within a radical democratic perspective.

puerto rico’s modes of incorporation (1898–1991) Economic, military, and symbolic interests have dominated the U.S. colonization of Puerto Rico. Despite the simultaneity of these three interests throughout the twentieth century, in differing historical contexts one acquires priority over the others. Furthermore, these interests can either reinforce or contradict each other. Contrary to the economism of some dependency/mode of production approaches, economic interests did not always dominate the core-periphery relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States. Instead, state geopolitical considerations such as symbolic and/or military interests have dominated these relations during extensive periods of the twentieth century (Grosfoguel 1992). The importance of these geopolitical interests was such that in some instances they actually contradicted corporate economic interests of the United States in Puerto Rico. The actors representing the economic, military, and symbolic interests articulating Puerto Rico’s colonial relationships with the United States during this century are:

2. In the congressional hearings a few years before the 1993 plebiscite, many U.S. representatives in Congress expressed support for “English only” as the condition to accept Puerto Rico as the ﬁfty-ﬁrst state of the United States. In the recent congressional debates (1997 and 1998) addressing the proposed celebration of a plebiscite to determine the status of Puerto Rico, many Congress members stated clearly that statehood would entail the imposition of English as the official language of Puerto Rico. This contradicted certain statehood proposals for a bilingual state. However, the Salomon “English only” bill was defeated in the House of Representatives on March 4, 1998.

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Political Economy of Puerto Rico

1. Economic interests are embodied by U.S. corporations. The dominant industries have shifted according to different historical periods. From 1898 through 1940 U.S. sugar corporations were the dominant economic actors. During the 1947–70 period, laborintensive light industries (apparel, textiles, shoes, and so forth) became dominant. As of 1973, U.S. capital-intensive high-tech transnational industries (that is, pharmaceuticals and electronics) have controlled the production sphere. 2. Military interests are represented by the Pentagon. Puerto Rico has served as a launching point for U.S. invasions and military operations in the Caribbean region. The island of Vieques off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico has been a naval training ground for joint exercises of NATO and Latin American naval ships. The island’s tropical weather made for good training ground for counterinsurgency operations deployed in countries such as Vietnam. U.S. military interests in Puerto Rico ruled from 1898 through 1945. 3. Symbolic interests were inscribed in the actions taken by the State Department and the Department of the Interior. Puerto Rico became a symbolic showcase of the capitalist model of development the United States presented to the “Third World” vis-à-vis the competing Soviet model (Grosfoguel 1992). Thus, Puerto Rico became an international training ground for President Truman’s Point Four Program. Through this program, thousands of elites from other peripheral countries visited Puerto Rico to receive technical training and to learn ﬁrsthand the lessons of the ﬁrst experiment in capital-import-export-oriented industrialization (Grosfoguel 1992). This model of development was based on attracting foreign capital through cheap labor, development of industrial infrastructure, and tax-free incentives for corporations. Billions of dollars in federal aid were transferred from the core state to the colonial administration in order to make of Puerto Rico a “success story” (Grosfoguel 1992). The dialectical dynamics among the interests outlined above are crucial to the speciﬁc relationship the United States has with Puerto Rico. For example, political concessions to the Puerto Rican population as a result of military or symbolic considerations became contradictory with U.S. corporations’ economic interests during certain historical periods.

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47

This relationship cannot be accurately understood from a traditional dependency perspective. Dependency theorists in Latin America distinguish a “colonial situation” from a “dependency situation” (Cardoso and Faletto 1979; Marini 1973). This distinction is premised on the formation of a nation-state in which the degrees of metropolitan control are partially reduced vis-à-vis a colony. The dependentistas’ theoretical work and empirical research are based on situations of dependency in nationstates, not on colonial situations. As Cardoso and Faletto said in the preface to the English edition of Dependency and Development in Latin America: We have not intended to discuss colonial types of contemporary situations of dependency in Latin America, such as, in the purest example, Puerto Rico. Considerable intellectual work has to be done to specify and render understandable, in the context of a more general view about dependency, the particularities of colonial or almost colonial situations. This book has not the pretension to exhaust or even to deal with all the forms of dependency that occur even in Latin America. (1979: xxiv–xxv)

In today’s global economy, nation-states have less and less power to regulate their local economy. Even core states have lost control over transnational capital ﬂows. Thus, the dependency theory’s distinction between peripheral nation-states and colonies has weakened over time. Moreover, dependency approaches are too economistic overall to properly conceptualize core-periphery relations. The dependentista distinction between an enclave economy and a nationally controlled export economy does not account for the complexity of the different peripheral modes of incorporation (Cardoso and Faletto 1979). Following this, I prefer to conceptualize Puerto Rico’s modes of incorporation as the hierarchical articulation (harmonious and/or contradictory) between the economic, military, and symbolic interests of the United States spanning different historical contexts. The consequent periodization of Puerto Rican history during the twentieth century would be, then, as follows: a period of agrarian capitalism in which the U.S. military interests predominated (1898–1940); a labor-intensive export-oriented industrialization period in which the U.S. State Department’s symbolic interests were dominant (1950–70); a capital-intensive export-oriented industrialization period in which both the transnational corporations and military interests shared the dominant position (1973–90); and an era of overtly economic interests dominating all geopolitical interests, thus sig-

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niﬁcantly reducing the strategic importance of the island (1991–?).3 Despite the predominance of one or two actors’ interests (Pentagon, U.S. corporations, State Department) at a speciﬁc historical period, the three have been simultaneously present throughout these periods. The peculiar manifestations of each interest and the articulation among them has, however, changed over time.

the debates of puerto rican history in the early twentieth century The literature on Puerto Rican history during the early twentieth century is split between those who emphasize the economic importance of the island for U.S. capital (Dietz 1986; Muñiz-Varela 1981; Santiago 1984; Mattos Cintrón 1980; Quintero Rivera 1976) and those who emphasize Puerto Rico’s military importance for U.S. strategic interests (Estades Font 1988; Rodríguez Beruff 1988). Although the “economic research school” did excellent work concerning Puerto Rico’s economic transition from Spanish to U.S. rule, it underestimated the importance of the strategic military interests of the U.S. invasion. In turn, the “military research school,” in spite of correctly emphasizing the U.S. military interests in Puerto Rico, has underestimated how these military interests relate to economic interests. The limitations of the “economic research school” underscore the deﬁciencies of the development theories structuring their studies. When attempting to analyze Caribbean countries, the economism of the traditional political economic approaches (for example, dependency school, articulationist mode of production school, internationalization of capital approach, regulationist school) has precluded the conceptual incorporation of two other fundamental features. First, the region is largely composed of islands with relatively small populations. Thus, the markets are relatively limited and, therefore, of secondary importance. Second, they underestimate the strategic military location of the Caribbean. The geopolitical importance of the region lies not only in the commercial routes ships use to reach markets in South America but also in its strategic position in relation to the Panama Canal. Also, the region is a crucial focus of defense strategies by the mainland United States against possi3. The 936 law, discussed below, enabled transnational corporations in Puerto Rico to repatriate their proﬁts to the mainland without paying U.S. federal taxes.

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49

ble foreign aggressions. These features conﬁrm that the dominant interests of imperialist countries in the Caribbean have not been merely economic but also geopolitical vis-à-vis other competing core states. The relation of forces, alliances, and struggles in the world interstate system provides a context to better understand the constant imperialist interventions suffered by the Caribbean. It can also explain why the Caribbean has been a battleﬁeld for different core states of the worldsystem throughout the past ﬁve centuries. In terms of the “military research school,” studies have correctly emphasized geopolitical factors; however, researchers using this approach did not articulate the geopolitical interests with the economic interests of the core. My alternative to the economic and geopolitical reductionism of the economic and military approaches respectively has been to analyze Puerto Rico within the following framework: I conceptualize the worldsystem as a single multidimensional system with multiple and entangled structuring logics such as capitalist accumulation, state military security, symbolic strategies of prestige and honor, struggles of antisystemic social movements, and racial, gender, and sexual hierarchies.4 Depending on the historical period, one logic may predominate over the others in an entangled relationship of contradiction and/or reinforcement. The relationships between these logics are semiautonomous; that is, these logics are neither fully autonomous (as the liberal “state autonomy” position would have it), nor are they fully reducible to any given logic (as proposed by the Marxist instrumentalist position). Thus, rather than equate the plurality of structuring logics in a system to an ontological plurality, the economic, political, and ideological-symbolic relations interface each other in a single capitalist world-system. However, the modern/colonial world-system is a capitalist world economy because in the long run, the capitalist accumulation logic has dominated, transformed, and signiﬁcantly inﬂuenced other logics. It has also been the primary articulator of the connections and relationships within the system. The predominance of the capitalist accumulation logic is not the result of a teleological or a priori movement of history, but of the historical/political success of those social forces that have beneﬁted from the capitalist accumulation

4. By “logics,” I refer to structuring strategies used by different actors to structure or restructure the world-system according to their interests. These logics are different contingent on the actors and historical conditions. They might reproduce or transform existing structures in ways not necessarily foreseen by the actors.

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Political Economy of Puerto Rico

process. This theoretical framework provides an understanding for the different modes of incorporation of Puerto Rico into the United States in the twentieth century.

interstate system By the end of the nineteenth century, an interimperialist rivalry over the possession of colonial territories characterized the interstate system (Cox 1987). The end of the Pax Britannica marked the beginning of an anarchic period in which no core state held hegemonic power over the system. From 1884 through 1914 more colonial incorporations occurred than during any other prior historical period (Bergesen and Schoenberg 1980). During this period, most core countries had reached a phase of monopoly capitalism. Economically, they were in need of colonial territories, cheap raw materials for their industries, cheap agricultural products to reduce the cost of reproduction of the core’s labor force, capital exports for primary-good production in the periphery, and new markets for their surplus production. Politically, any increase of colonial possessions by an imperialist state represented a threat to competing imperialist states. In this expansionist period, state security and political stability were important determinants. The geopolitical strategies of core countries in the world interstate system have been crucial determinants of the peripheral incorporation of Caribbean societies. U.S. interest in seizing Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain resulted mainly from state security interests. Several years prior to the Spanish-American War of 1898, American naval strategist Alfred T. Mahan stressed the strategic importance of building a canal in Central America in order to solve a major problem of U.S. mainland defense: the forced division of its naval ﬂeet between the Atlantic and Paciﬁc Coasts. A United States-controlled canal in Central America would enable ﬂeet unity. The ﬂeet would move with greater speed and security from one ocean to the other by way of a canal, thus making unnecessary the detour through the Strait of Magellan. Otherwise, 13,000 miles had to be navigated, taking more than sixty days to travel between San Francisco and Florida (Estades Font 1988: 27–28). Mahan added that besides building and controlling a canal it would be necessary to control the canal’s eastern and western strategic maritime routes prior to construction. Mahan foresaw that the construction of a canal would attract the interest of other imperial powers, thus forcing

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the United States to enter international conﬂicts. According to Mahan, foreign control of the canal could be used as a beachhead to attack the United States. This foreign control would destroy the major U.S. asset against a foreign aggression—its geopolitical isolation (Estades Font 1988: 27–28). As a means to achieve geopolitical control, he recommended the acquisition of Hawaii and the naval control of four Caribbean maritime routes before building the canal. The four routes were: (1) Paso de Yucatán (between Mexico and Cuba); (2) Paso de los Vientos (the principal U.S. access route to the canal between Cuba and Haiti); (3) Paso de Anegada (near St. Thomas, an island off Puerto Rico’s eastern coast); and (4) Paso de la Mona (between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic) (Estades Font 1988: 29). Mahan advised that naval bases be established in each of these zones. His strategic project outlined the necessary steps for the United States to become a superpower. Mahan’s inﬂuence was strongly felt among key political elites led by Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge (Estades Font 1988: 31; Rodriguez Beruff 1988: 149). The only islands with access to the four maritime routes mentioned by Mahan were Cuba and Puerto Rico. Moreover, they were more amenable to foreign control when compared to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which had already become nation-states. Cuba and Puerto Rico were still colonies of Spain, now a weak and declining imperial state. Because the United States feared other imperial countries would take advantage of Spain’s weakness by seizing its last two colonies in the Western Hemisphere (Estades Font 1988: 40), these islands became targets of a U.S. intervention. Another strategic consideration concerned timing: the United States was to intervene before Cuban nationalist rebels defeated Spain in their war of independence. A sovereign nationstate could make the negotiation process difficult for the United States (Mattos Cintrón 1980: 58). In sum, U.S. elites considered the seizure of Cuba or Puerto Rico by a foreign state a security threat, because each of these islands could be used as a base from which to attack the United States. At the time, this belief was not farfetched since the Germans had a military plan to attack the United States, and the ﬁrst step was to seize Puerto Rico (Herwig 1976: 61–65, 86–87). Thus, the United States planned a conﬂict with Spain in the mid-1890s (Estades Font 1988: 40–41). In 1898, Puerto Rico and Cuba were seized from Spain during the Spanish-American War. The United States estimated that any European naval attack to the

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canal would enter through the northeastern region of the Caribbean, close to Puerto Rico’s eastern coast, making Puerto Rico a vital point for the canal’s defense. After the Spanish-American War, Mahan stated: This estimate of the military importance of Puerto Rico should never be lost sight of by us as long as we have any responsibility, direct or indirect, for the safety or independence of Cuba. Puerto Rico, considered militarily, is to Cuba, to the future Isthmian canal, and to our Paciﬁc Coast, what Malta is, or may be, to Egypt and the beyond; and there is for us the like necessity to hold and strengthen the one, in its entirety and in its immediate surroundings, that there is for Great Britain to hold the other for the security of her position in Egypt, for her use of the Suez Canal, and for the control of the route to India. It would be extremely difficult for a European state to sustain operations in the eastern Mediterranean with a British ﬂeet at Malta. Similarly, it would be very difficult for a transatlantic state to maintain operations in the western Caribbean with a United States ﬂeet based upon Puerto Rico and the adjacent islands. (Mahan 1899: 28–29)

Accordingly, the U.S. military prescribed that Puerto Rico remain a colonial possession and that a naval base be built off the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico on the island of Culebra (see Estades Font 1988: 36). The geopolitical interests of the United States and the local relation of forces of Puerto Rico and Cuba conditioned the different modes of incorporation of the two islands. The United States encountered important local differences between Cuba and Puerto Rico. Whereas Puerto Rico had a weak nationalist agenda, Cuba had a strong anticolonial movement against Spain that pressed for the departure of the Americans. Negotiations between the United States and Cuba established a protectorate treaty as well as the right of the United States to build a naval base in Guantánamo. The agreement, named the Platt Amendment, prescribed post-occupation Cuban-American relations, pledged the republic to maintain a low public debt, to refrain from signing any treaty impairing its obligation to the United States; to grant to the United States the right of intervention to protect life, liberty, and property; to validate the acts of the military government; and, if requested, to provide long term naval leases. (Langsley 1985: 21)

This treaty became the model of U.S. policy in the region for decades. In terms of the coloniality of power within the U.S. empire, the incorporation of Puerto Rico and Cuba is linked to the process of subalternization experienced by Mexicans ﬁfty years before, after the Mexican-American War in 1848. The racial/ethnic hierarchy between

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Anglos and so-called Hispanics was consolidated with the territorial expansion of the United States to the Caribbean. “Hispanics” were subalternized in the United States as a distinct racialized group.

internal power relations Two salient features of the internal power relations in Puerto Rico affected its mode of incorporation to the United States. First, all political parties supported the annexation of Puerto Rico to the mainland immediately after the 1898 invasion (Mattos Cintrón 1980). Shortly after U.S. troops landed in Puerto Rico, General Miles proclaimed that the war against Spain occurred for humanitarian reasons including securing justice and freedom. According to Estades Font, Miles’s proclamation found fertile ground. The repressive regime of Spain . . . in Puerto Rico throughout most of the nineteenth century stimulated pro-independence and autonomist struggles and provoked the progressive discontent of the Puerto Rican society. It is also true that the U.S. enjoyed great economic and political prestige. The landowners, especially the sugar planters, wanted to recuperate their access to the US market which they had lost as a result of the tariff war with Spain during the last years. The workers were conﬁdent they would obtain the union rights that Spain had denied them. In all, the liberal and autonomist political parties hoped for the implementation of a regime which would guarantee the same civil rights and liberty that US citizens enjoyed. (Estades Font 1988: 89–90)

Second, Puerto Rico did not have a strong proindependence movement at the time of the U.S. invasion. This allowed the United States to make Puerto Rico a colonial possession without difficulties, thus providing the best conditions to safeguard the military strategic use of the island. The United States quickly established an authoritarian military government on the island between 1898 and 1900. Puerto Ricans were drafted into the U.S. army, and a local police force was organized under the command of American officials. Simultaneously, U.S. military authorities favored local sugar-growing landowners by facilitating access to U.S. markets and by enabling the direct investment of U.S. sugar corporations in Puerto Rico. This state of affairs dramatically contrasted with the situation of the coffee hacendados who were not protected against Brazilian coffee imports to the U.S. market and for whom the European market was closed. The military’s interest in promoting U.S. capital penetration was primarily political. Their aims were (1) to ﬁnd allies with

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U.S. capital for its military adventures abroad; (2) to reorient the local economy from Spanish dependency to American dependency to preclude any European justiﬁcation for intervention; (3) to structure an economic project that could subsidize the military-colonial administration; and (4) to weaken the social basis of the coffee hacendado sectors, given their potential for becoming the major social force of an organized nationalist movement in the future.5 During this period, the logic of accumulation was subordinate to the military-annexationist logic. The interrelation of these semiautonomous strategic-military and economic logics deﬁned the incorporation of the island. Both logics coincided, however, in their desire to maintain Puerto Rico as a colonial possession. After the U.S. invasion, the Orthodox Party and Liberal Party exchanged political programs (Mattos-Cintrón 1980). The Orthodox Party, linked to the sugar-growing landowners who were radical autonomists under Spain, became an annexationist force under U.S. domination. This transition was marked by a name change from the Orthodox Party to the Puerto Rican Republican Party. By contrast, the Liberal Party, linked to the coffee hacendados who were moderate autonomists under Spain, initially assumed an annexationist position with autonomistic tendencies, but later became an autonomist party, ultimately ﬂirting with proindependence positions. These transitions were marked by name changes from the Liberal Party to the Federal Party and, subsequently, to the Union Party. The Union Party represented those social forces with the greatest potential for building a proindependence movement (Mattos Cintrón 1980). However, the local hacendados were never supported by the popular classes. The hacendados’ alliance with the Spanish colonial administration’s authoritarian-repressive measures against the rights of peasants and workers led many among these sectors to perceive hacendados as their class enemies. Workers and peasants associated the hacendados’ proindependence and proautonomous positions with a romantic nostalgia for the forms of labor coercion and authoritarianism of the Spanish regime under which the hacendados enjoyed a hegemonic social and economic position. Under U.S. domination, however, many workers saw an opportunity to establish civil and labor rights by pressuring the U.S. government to extend their legislative laws to the island. The labor movement was inﬂuenced by class internationalist, socialist, 5. For references on the outlined four points, see Mattos-Cintrón 1980; Langsley 1985; and Berbusse 1966.

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55

and anarchist ideologies. The organized working classes adopted the Americanization discourse promoted by the new imperial power as a strategy to weaken politically the power of the local hacendados and to gain democratic rights recognized by the metropolitan constitution in alliance with the metropolitan working classes. Despite the negative effects that extending these rights to Puerto Rico would have on U.S. sugar corporations, the United States government extended labor rights to the island. These concessions to Puerto Rican working classes occurred for several reasons. For one thing, the U.S. government wanted to gain popular support for the island’s colonial incorporation. By extending labor rights to Puerto Rican workers, the proannexationist position of the labor movement was strengthened. This encouraged the formation of a proannexationist bloc that, in turn, impeded the possibility of a proindependence alliance. The U.S. government’s extension of individual democratic rights to Puerto Rico proved to be an important deterrent to the development of a collective national demand for self-determination. Once the U.S. incorporated Puerto Rico as a colony, the colonial administration developed a cultural “Americanization” strategy that promoted the inculcation of “American values and customs.” Labor union rights were a key component in the success of this strategy. Two speciﬁc elements of this program were the imposition of English-speaking public schools and the proliferation of the Protestant Church on the island (Negrón de Montilla 1975). The U.S. government’s co-optation strategy toward the Puerto Rican working classes distinguishes Puerto Rico’s incorporation. Contrary to other U.S. military occupations in the Caribbean, including those in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, where the United States relied on authoritarian alliances with the landowners and/or the political/military elites to protect its interests, the U.S. strategy in Puerto Rico relied on a populist-democratic alliance with the working classes and the progressive, liberal faction of the middle classes at the expense of the coffee landowners. The extension of democratic rights to the colony precluded the working classes’ sympathizing with a nationalist solution to the colonial question. The weakening of the hacendados’ power base also debilitated the proautonomy forces and accelerated wage-labor relations in Puerto Rico. By contrast, the U.S. invasion in Haiti relied on a class alliance with the local commercial elites and the coffee landowners, which strengthened noncapitalist forms of labor coercion (Castor 1971). In sum, the evidence suggests that Puerto Rico’s reperipheralization from a Spanish possession to a U.S. colony resulted from the American

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government’s security interests. Puerto Rico’s geopolitical location was strategically important for the U.S. government’s defense against possible European aggression against the Panama Canal and the eastern coast of the United States. Contrary to the peripheral incorporation of other countries, where the economic interests in mining or agriculture were dominant, Puerto Rico’s incorporation to the United States in the early twentieth century was primarily geopolitical. The secondary status of U.S. economic interests was such that certain state policies such as the extension of civil and labor rights to the local population contradicted the immediate interests of U.S. corporations investing on the island at the time.

the 1930s and early 1940s in puerto rico During the Great Depression, the United States developed what it termed its “Good Neighbor” foreign policy toward Latin America. The spread of poverty, unemployment, and hunger throughout Puerto Rico, along with the emerging popularity of proindependence ideas, had become a shameful result of U.S. foreign policy in the region. To counteract the impact of Puerto Rico’s situation on its international reputation, the United States extended to Puerto Rico certain New Deal reforms and supported an industrialization program (that is, the Chardón Plan). This policy marked the transfer of the U.S. colonial administration of Puerto Rico from the U.S. War Department to the U.S. Department of the Interior. However, the local power bloc hegemonized by U.S. sugar plantations and military elites presented many obstacles for the extension of these reforms. This period in U.S.-Puerto Rico relations, when symbolic interests of the United States dominated Puerto Rico’s incorporation, was shortlived due to the imminent possibility of war, which made military interests dominant once again. During the early 1940s, the U.S. government supported a local populist power bloc at the expense of U.S. sugar corporations. The mortal blow was the implementation in 1941 of the 500-acre law (Mattos Cintrón 1980), which forced U.S. corporations to sell all land exceeding500 acres to the colonial government. These lands were used to enforce the agrarian reform that eradicated the agregados (peasants forced to pay in rent, kind, or labor for living on a landowner’s property) and mitigated the housing needs of thousands of peasants. State military considerations during the Second World War fundamentally structured these policies. Puerto Rico was central to the mili-

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tary defense of the United States during the Second World War. Nazi submarines attacked several ships in the Caribbean and the Nazi military occupations of France and the Netherlands increased the fear that they might use the French and Dutch colonies in the Caribbean as beachheads to attack the Americas. U.S. elites understood that a local population angry at the exploitation and abuses of U.S. sugar corporations in Puerto Rico was completely undesirable since it could represent a security problem for the military use of the island in wartime. The new governor of Puerto Rico in 1941, the reformist liberal Rexford Tugwell, conﬁrmed the military priority of Puerto Rico in his memoirs: “My duty as a representative of my country in Puerto Rico was to shape civil affairs, if I could, so that military bases, which might soon (before they were ready) have to stand the shock of attack, were not isolated in a generally hostile environment” (1947: 148). In short, the U.S. strategy in Puerto Rico was one of extending basic democratic rights to Puerto Ricans in exchange for the military exploitation of the island.

postwar puerto rico The U.S. symbolic interest in Puerto Rico regained dominance immediately after the Second World War. Puerto Rico became a token played on the symbolic battleground between the Soviet Union and the United States, and particularly in the United Nations. The Soviets claimed that Puerto Rico symbolized U.S. colonialist and imperialist aims in the world. Concerned about the image of the United States in the eyes of the newly independent Third World countries, the State Department pressed for concessions to Puerto Rico. These concessions developed into a strategy to make Puerto Rico a showcase of democracy and capitalism during the 1950s and 1960s (Grosfoguel 1992). The ﬁrst concession was the appointment of a Puerto Rican as governor in 1946. The right to elect a local governor was established shortly afterward in 1948. Following this, the metropolis fostered the creation of a new status called Estado Libre Asociado (Commonwealth), approved in 1952. Lastly, a program of industrialization through massive foreign capital investments (that is, the model of industrialization by invitation) was implemented and thus radically improved the island’s infrastructure. The above transformations allowed the U.S. State Department to designate Puerto Rico in 1950 as the Point Four Program’s international training ground for technical development of Third World elites. This program was more ideological than technical to the extent that these

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elites learned ﬁrsthand about the American model of development for “Third World” countries as opposed to the competing Soviet model. Puerto Rico’s symbolic role during the cold war explains the massive U.S. federal assistance given to Puerto Rico in areas such as housing, health, and education (Grosfoguel 1992). Puerto Rico was treated like any other federated state in need of federal assistance. The main difference between Puerto Rico and other states was, however, that Puerto Rico’s residents did not have to pay federal taxes. This privileged status was not granted to any other U.S. colonial territory in the Paciﬁc or the Atlantic. To fulﬁll Puerto Rico’s symbolic role and foster a successful economic program, the U.S. government cooperated with local elites to foster a massive labor migration of the marginalized Puerto Rican labor force. The creation of the institutional framework to facilitate migration through the availability of cheap air fares between Puerto Rico and the United States, as well as an advertising campaign for jobs in the United States, provided the framework for the process of massive migration. This migration program aimed to stabilize the local labor market, which was characterized by high unemployment rates. The Migration Office attached to Puerto Rico’s Labor Department was organized to foster mass migration from the island to the metropole.

the crisis years: 1970–90 Puerto Rico experienced a major economic restructuring after the 1973 international oil crisis. Although the colonial administration wanted to change the industrialization strategy from labor-intensive to capitalintensive during the mid-1960s, the transformation only occurred after 1973. At the time, Puerto Rico was the most important producer of apparel products for the U.S. market. By 1979, however, it represented an insigniﬁcant portion of the market (Dietz 1986). The cost of living increases due to the 1970s’ stagﬂation and labor unrest also brought about wage increases that made Puerto Rico unattractive to labor-intensive industries, further worsening the situation. In addition to these structural shifts, the U.S. federal minimum wage was extended to Puerto Rico during the late 1970s. By 1980, the average salary per hour was $3.84 and the minimum salary per hour was $3.10. A Dominican worker’s wage per hour, for example, represented 34 percent of a Puerto Rican manufacturing worker’s at the end of the 1970s (Informe Económico al Gobernador 1985: 84). Thus, many labor-

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intensive industries moved to the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, and Southeast Asia, which in turn increased unemployment in Puerto Rico from 11 percent in 1970 to 20 percent in 1977. This trend toward deindustrialization that began in the late 1960s and accelerated during the 1970s continued to dominate during the 1980s Caribbean Basin Initiative’s opening of U.S. markets to exports from other countries in the region. Using Puerto Rico as a symbolic “showcase” for the U.S. model of development vis-à-vis the Cuban pro-Soviet model, the U. S. instituted several measures to guarantee the survival of the “industrialization by invitation” strategy of development. Since Puerto Rico could no longer compete in labor-intensive light industries, measures were instituted to provide a framework for the transition to capital-intensive industrial development. One measure in this direction was the approval of the 936 law in 1976, which exempted from federal taxes the proﬁt remittances of the subsidiaries on the island to the matrix corporations on the mainland. This gave a new impetus to the industrialization program. The capital-intensive parts of the industrial labor process of pharmaceuticals and electronics expanded on the island. Many corporations used the 936 law to launder their proﬁts from the mainland through an accounting game that transferred their proﬁts to the Puerto Rican subsidiaries (Weisskoff 1985); this stimulated the growth not only of high-tech manufacturing industries but also of the ﬁnancial sector. Many foreign and U.S. banks, competing for the 936 funds, opened subsidiaries on the island. But capital-intensive industries do not generate jobs at the same rate as labor-intensive industries. Thus, this new industrial strategy would not solve the instability created by thousands of unemployed urban dwellers. The United States could not afford social unrest in this capitalist showcase and strategic military location. Thus, the U.S. government extended its food-stamp program to the island, thus increasing the amount of federal transfers; these federal transfers to individuals increased from $517 million in 1973 to $2.5 billion in 1980 and then to $4 billion in 1989. In 1973, federal aid represented 8 percent of the island’s GNP, and federal transfers to individuals represented 10 percent of personal income. By 1980 these ﬁgures increased to 23 percent of the GNP and 22 percent of personal income, and by 1989 21 percent of the GNP and 21 percent of personal income (calculations made from Junta de Planiﬁcación 1991b). In 1980, food stamps were used by approximately 60 percent of Puerto Rican families. As a result, Puerto Rico became a service and high-tech manufactur-

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ing economy. The growth in the service sector was basically in production services and social services. The latter were the public administration jobs, which increased from 15 to 25 percent of total jobs between 1970 and 1988 (Junta de Planiﬁcación 1983, 1990). Public administration jobs became the third countercyclical cushion to the crisis. The decline of jobs in the extractive and transformative sector was absorbed by the public sector with a dramatic increase of more than 100,000 jobs during the 1970–89 period. Although manufacturing jobs increased by 26,000 between 1970 and 1989, this increase concealed a major qualitative transformation. Traditional industries like apparel and textiles declined from 62,500 jobs in 1970 to 40,500 by 1985. The loss of close to 22,000 jobs in this sector, due to the ﬂight of 302 companies that moved to other peripheral societies, was compensated for by the increase of jobs in the capital-intensive industries. The electronics industry increased from 11,800 jobs in 1970 to 32,300 by 1985; today, part of Puerto Rico’s export of services includes electricity to the Dominican Republic. The pharmaceutical industry increased from 4,900 jobs in 1970 to 16,000 by 1985; and the professional and scientiﬁc instruments industries increased from 4,100 in 1970 to 12,500 in 1985. These three industries together accounted for approximately 40,000 new manufacturing jobs during this period (Junta de Planiﬁcación 1986a: 95–98). Puerto Rico’s highly developed infrastructure is a primary attraction for these industries. This infrastructure, created over time, developed from federal grants and bond sales on Wall Street.

farewell to the showcase: the post–cold war period (1991–?) The dissolution of the Soviet Union has changed the priorities of the core powers and the articulation among the different global logics. Today, U.S. economic interests take primacy over geopolitical considerations; domestic economic concerns dominate foreign policy. As Anthony P. Maingot states in his excellent chapter about the Caribbean in the post–cold war era, “geopolitics have given way to geoeconomics” (1994: 12). Therefore, the symbolic and military importance of Puerto Rico for the United States has become a secondary concern. In this sense, Puerto Rico is perceived by U.S. political elites more as an expense to the state than as an important military bastion and/or symbolic showcase. The economic crisis in the United States (such as the huge U.S. public debt)

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has created the context for Congress to cut 936 law beneﬁts for U.S. corporations in Puerto Rico, to freeze federal transfers, and (among several factions of the U.S. political elites) to articulate a sympathetic position toward a more autonomous status for the island. These trends suggest that a change in Puerto Rico’s colonial status could result in the formation of a neocolonial relationship with the United States. If Puerto Rico were to become a neocolony, the United States would be relieved of the expenses of a modern colony and would create a “colony without any beneﬁts.” Puerto Rican popular sectors would be particularly affected by this redeﬁnition.

u.s. cultural strategy: “puertorriqueñista” colonialism U.S. cultural strategy by 1900 was to assimilate Puerto Ricans to AngloSaxon culture. At that time the United States, through the colonial administration, tried to impose English as the only language in schools and prohibited symbols such as the Puerto Rican ﬂag. Since the failure of the assimilation program in the 1940s, American colonialism has become more sophisticated by reproducing Puerto Rican culture, identity, and national symbols. The Estado Libre Asociado (Commonwealth status) in the 1950s institutionalized what already existed: (1) the use of Spanish in the schools and state institutions; and (2) the recognition of Puerto Rican culture and national identity. The recognition of these two pillars pulled the rug out from under the feet of the Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista) by undermining their claims (subversive at that time) of Puerto Rican identity affirmation. After the Estado Libre Asociado, the old nationalist banner “Yankees or Puerto Ricans” lost its subversive character and no longer made sense to thousands of Puerto Ricans, reﬂected in the decline of the percentages of votes for independence since 1952. With the Estado Libre Asociado, Puerto Rican culture could be affirmed without prohibitions, while maintaining the island under colonial status. The Estado Libre Asociado institutionalized a form of “puertorriqueñista” colonialism by recognizing the Spanish language, the Puerto Rican ﬂag, and Puerto Rican identity in public spaces. This created a false illusion of autonomy, as if Puerto Ricans have control over their own political destiny, when in fact it is U.S. Congress that dictates policy and wields the power over the local administration. The recognition of Puerto Rican culture is the central ideological mechanism through which American colonial domina-

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tion is exercised on the island today. This is the “rock-a-bye baby” (“duermete nene”) with which U.S. hegemony operates. Today the U.S. exploits and colonizes Puerto Rico in Spanish with the “boricua” ﬂag and with commercials affirming Puerto Rican identity. Puerto Rican national identity is reproduced by the colonial state apparatus in schools, courts, and public institutions. This is why the “independentista” and “autonomista” demand for “Spanish only” and for the defense of “national identity” does not subvert or question U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico today. The right to Puerto Rican identity and to speak Spanish was won ﬁfty years ago under the current colonial status. Thus, the nationalist claim for “national identity” and for “Spanish only” is not subversive anymore and contributes to reproducing “colonialismo Puertorriqueñista.” “Spanish only” in Puerto Rico is a movement of the creole elites to exclude those working-class Puerto Ricans whose ﬁrst language is English or whose Spanish does not correspond to the rules of the “Academia Real Española.” Worse still is how the nationalist deﬁnition of Puerto Rican-ness as a “national identity” privileges the Spanish over the African heritage. Nationalist discourses and intellectuals reproduce a colonialist discourse that underestimates and subordinates the heritage of African cultures in Puerto Rico. For many nationalists, the “Madre Patria” is Spain. This partly contributes to the unpopularity of “independence” among Afro– Puerto Ricans. To be Puerto Rican is not a question of color or language. There are heterogeneous forms of being Puerto Rican. Thousands of Puerto Ricans on the island and in the United States speak English as their ﬁrst language, while at the same time identifying themselves as Puerto Ricans. Some of the best Puerto Rican “salsas” are created in New York by Puerto Ricans whose ﬁrst (and in some cases only) language is English. To say that being bilingual threatens Puerto Rican identity is not only wrong but also obsolete. The Dutch Antilles is a living example of how “national identity” has nothing to do with language. In Aruba and Curaçao nearly everyone speaks four languages perfectly (Papiamento, Spanish, English, and Dutch), and no one questions their national identity as Arubans or Curaçaoans. There is no reason to fear bilingualism or multilingualism. Being bilingual does not threaten but instead enriches our heterogeneous Puerto Rican identities. The opposition to bilingualism is a nationalist political strategy to justify the obsolete nationalist slogan of “Yankees or Puerto Ricans,” a slogan that does not account for the complex and contradictory current cultural dynamics of U.S. colonialism in the island. Na-

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tionalist discourse that portrays U.S. colonialism as a threat to our “national identity” forms part of the old colonial rhetoric of those who look to vehemently justify a neocolonial proindependence project without taking into consideration the negative consequences that this would have on the Puerto Rican working classes. As Juan Duchesne (2002) argues, those who oppose bilingualism are already bilingual because they had the privilege of private education, but they work to negate that opportunity to the children of the working class who have to educate themselves in public schools with substandard systems of English pedagogy. Bilingual skill is indispensable to expand opportunities in education and jobs as well as to strengthen links to the rest of the world. The new forms of American imperialist cultural assimilation on the island are of a different character. Puerto Ricans have been assimilated to the cultural practices of consumerism and the lifestyle of American middle classes. The mass construction of suburban housing, the exaggerated proliferation of cars, together with the spread of malls all over the island, all assimilated millions of Puerto Ricans to the American way of life, where social needs are commodiﬁed and where culture and entertainment are synonymous with shopping in malls and going on vacation to Disneyland. This assimilation to the practices of American consumerism is done in Spanish so as to affirm Puerto Rican identity. Transnational corporations sell their products on the island with advertising that boasts “our product is 100% Puerto Rican” and that uses salsa music and the symbol of the Puerto Rican ﬂag (Dávila 1997). To defend Puerto Rican culture is an obsolete form of social transformation in a global capitalism that uses “national identities” to merchandise products. Today Puerto Rican Spanish-speaking middle classes on the island are more assimilated to American cultural practices than the thousands of marginalized English-speaking “boricuas” living in the American urban ghettos. This paradox is impossible to capture by the old nationalist slogan of “Yankees or Puerto Ricans.” The widespread ennui and mediocre way of life, built on entertainment in the form of consuming in “malls,” is today a pillar of the American cultural assimilation on the island; this is ignored by those who insist on the ghost of the lost Spanish language or national identity. The central point here is to question the supposed subversive or progressive character against U.S. colonialism and global capitalism of nationalist discourses’ defense of “national identity” or “Spanish only.” Global capital today incorporates into its commodity advertisement national symbols and cultures of the local market, thereby canceling the

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subversive potential of nationalism. Global capital promotes everything that is sold and gains a proﬁt from national symbols and diverse forms of identity. To continue vindicating the “nation” as a battle ﬂag does not threaten the new forms of global capitalism but rather serves as an ideological mechanism to focus attention away from the new colonizing strategies of American colonialism. The new rock-a-bye-baby strategy is to move the island to a neocolonial status in the name of “decolonization” and “sovereign powers.” This move justiﬁes the exclusion of Puerto Ricans on the island from access to federal funds and civil/labor rights recognized under the present modern colonial arrangement.

neocolonial recolonization Throughout the twentieth century, the United States has, at its convenience, transformed its relationship with Puerto Rico. According to the different historical changes in the century, the United States has revised its colonial project in Puerto Rico. From 1898 to 1945, Puerto Rico was a colony where military interests were dominant and military governors ran the island. From 1945 to 1980, Puerto Rico was transformed into a modern colony with access to metropolitan rights and federal transfers as part of a symbolic and ideological interest of the United States in transforming the island into a “showcase” of American capitalism during the cold war. Today, with the end of the cold war, globalization and the neoliberal global coloniality, the United States seeks to recolonize the island by transforming it into a neocolony. The neocolonial recolonization seeks to cheapen Puerto Rican wages, eliminate environmental regulations, and reduce the social and civil rights won by popular sectors. The main goal is to reduce the cost of transnational capital production and the expenses of the metropolitan state, while maintaining the military use of the island in the new post–cold war context. In Puerto Rico, there are four reactions to this new colonial strategy. The ﬁrst reaction is to blindly support the neocolonial republic, in its associated autonomous and independent versions, thus facilitating the neocolonial recolonization of Puerto Rico by the United States. The argument used to justify this position is that, given Congress’s refusal to grant statehood, the associated republic (autonomy) is the only viable option. The supporters of this option use developmentalist arguments such as those that call for economic development by acquiring a false sovereignty. The question is: Sovereignty for whom? The neocolonial pseudosovereignty would permit the local and transnational bourgeoisie to

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better compete at the international level, while pauperizing Puerto Rican workers by eliminating those federal laws, rights, and transfers so costly to capital. Even though this is not the intention of many people who support these alternative statuses, in practice, this is the most colonialist option of all because structurally it beneﬁts the interests of transnational corporations and the local creole bourgeoisie. Currently all the neocolonial republics in the Caribbean and Latin America are intervened with by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, disciplinary agencies of global capitalism that have imposed neoliberal programs of capitalism such as privatization and cuts in social welfare. The neocolonial republic is the quickest step toward the neocolonial recolonization. The second reaction has been to support unconditionally the Commonwealth status, known in Spanish as Estado Libre Associado (ELA). This position does not consider that the ELA is an essential part of the problem that needs to be resolved. The ELA was created during negotiations between Truman and Muñoz as a juridical mechanism to facilitate the special privileges that Puerto Rico required to be transformed into an American developmentalist “showcase” during the cold war. Such status provided the necessary ﬂexibility to receive federal funds as a state, but without paying federal taxes. The ELA is sufficiently colonial that the American elites can transform it at their convenience. If the ELA provided the institutional mechanism to allow the transformation of Puerto Rico into a “showcase” during the cold war, now it can once again be transformed by Congress into an associated neocolonial republic, that is to say, a “colony without the beneﬁts of the colony.” Congress could do this without calling Puerto Rico a “republic” but instead a “Free Associated State,” or even without changing the name of the actual colonial status. This process began in the 1980s, when Puerto Rico lost its strategic value and its showcase status. At that time, the Reagan administration began to freeze federal transfers to Puerto Rico. This position argues that support of the ELA is going to stop a neocolonial recolonization of Puerto Rico; indeed, such a process has already begun and will accelerate in the coming years if there is no change in this colonial status. The third reaction has been to support a right-wing neoliberal statehood program, initially conceived under Governor Rosselló’s administration. Put forth by the new republican right, the idea was to promote a project of neoliberal politics, privatization, free markets, and cuts in the welfare state and civil rights, to sell a statehood that would not cost in federal transfers to the U.S. federal government. This way the statehood

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project could be better sold to the new right in the United States. The Rosselló administration, with its neoliberal statehood project, moved the island toward the opposite goal, actually accelerating the U.S. neocolonial recolonization of the island. Privatizing everything and cutting social welfare funds brings Puerto Rico closer to the conditions of other neocolonial republics in the Caribbean. The only Caribbean islands to escape World Bank and IMF interventions have been “modern colonies” like Puerto Rico and Martinique. This is due to their access to metropolitan ﬁnancial markets and transfers used to pay debts and state deﬁcits. How pathetic that what was imposed by international capitalist agencies in neocolonial republics at enormous social cost, an increase in poverty, and social polarization, in Puerto Rico is realized without outside imposition, but rather by the ideology of the new prostatehood neoliberal leadership. Contrary to the old prostatehood rhetoric, after Rosselló, statehood is no longer for the “poor” but for transnational corporations. The fourth alternative is to resist neoliberal privatizations and cuts in federal transfers, making it difficult for the United States to implement the neocolonial recolonization of the island. Any decolonization of the island should claim a “historic indemniﬁcation” from the United States to rebuild Puerto Rico’s economy after one hundred years of colonialism. Decolonization should also imply a radicalization of the existing democratic structures in alliance with social movements and oppressed groups in the metropole, mobilizing U.S. citizenship as a means to ﬁght and demand social justice and equality within the U.S. empire. This is a new type of social struggle that attempts to expand Puerto Ricans’ citizenship rights and demand democratic representation within the U.S. empire. Some have called this approach “statehood from a radical-democratic perspective” (Duchesne et al. 1997).

modern colonies in the postwar caribbean “Modern colonialism” is the term that addresses the dramatic change of the colonialism implemented by core countries in the postwar Caribbean (Pierre-Charles 1979). In terms of standards of living and civil rights, postwar Caribbean colonial incorporations to the metropoles have been more beneﬁcial to popular sectors than neocolonial relationships. This can be illustrated by comparing U.S., French, and Dutch postwar modern colonies to neocolonial republics. Anticolonial struggles and cold war geopolitical military and symbolic considerations forced Western metropoles to make concessions to their

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colonies. While certain colonies, such as Jamaica, Guyana, and most of the English Caribbean, became nation-states, other territories remained colonial possessions because of their strategic location or symbolic/ideological importance. U.S., French, and Dutch modern colonies such as Puerto Rico, Martinique, and Curaçao, respectively, were granted economic and democratic reforms to preclude the success of any potential anticolonial struggle. The following are beneﬁts modern colonial populations enjoy vis-à-vis their neocolonial neighbors: (1) annual transfers of billions of dollars of social capital from the metropolitan state to the modern colony (for example, food stamps, health, education, and unemployment beneﬁts); (2) constitutional recognition of metropolitan citizenship and democratic/civil rights; (3) the possibility of migration without the risks of illegality; and (4) the extension of Fordist social relations that incorporate the colonial populations to metropolitan standards of mass consumption. These are some of the current reasons why few from Puerto Rico, Martinique/Guadeloupe, and Saint Maarten/Curaçao are willing to renounce their respective U.S., French, and Dutch citizenship.6 The fact that half of the Surinamese population moved to Amsterdam when, for economic reasons, the Dutch imposed the formation of Suriname as a nation-state supports this argument (Grosfoguel 1994).7 Undoubtedly the colonial administration of these modern colonies developed ideological and cultural colonization strategies. However, the people of these modern colonies are neither passive recipients of colonial policies nor ignorant about what is happening in the region. On the contrary, observing the situation of neighboring neocolonial republics, speaking with immigrants from these countries (for example, people from the Dominican Republic in Puerto Rico, Grenadians in Curaçao, Haitians and Dominicans in Guadeloupe) and listening to the authoritarian and elitist discourses of proindependence leaders, modern colonial peoples of the Caribbean fear the authoritarian and exploitative poten-

6. The most absurd campaign pursued recently by some proindependence leaders is to resign their U.S. citizenship. They will be subject to deportation once their resignation is recognized by the U.S. state. This “revolutionary” luxury can only be afforded by individuals with enough income to sustain their families without working or who do not depend on the welfare state. This campaign shows once again the elitist character of the proindependence leadership and their “alienation” from the Puerto Rican people (see “EU impediría ingreso Mari Brás a Puerto Rico,” Claridad, February 18–24, 1994, p. 12). 7. Recently, in a referendum on November 19, 1993, 73.6 percent of the people of Curaçao voted for continuance of the island’s present status. Only 0.5 percent voted for independence.

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tial of a nation-state. It is not a coincidence that Puerto Ricans, Guadeloupeans, and Martinicans repeat the same sentiments in the streets: “Para ser independientes como la República Dominicana o Haití, mejor ser colonia” (“If being independent means being like Haiti or the Dominican Republic, it’s better to be a colony”). Although authoritarianism is not intrinsic to independence, these issues continue to worry those who enjoy democratic and civil rights under modern colonial arrangements vis-à-vis neocolonial relationships. Their preoccupation should not be underestimated in light of the clientelistic/caudillista political traditions and the weak peripheral economies of small Caribbean islands. The possibilities of a dictatorship under these conditions are relatively high, as exhibited by the long-term dictatorships of Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic during the twentieth century. Moreover, even the recently formed independent Caribbean states like Suriname, Dominica, Guyana, and Grenada have suffered military coups and/or authoritarian regimes. The anti-independence and pro-permanent union political positions of most modern colonial peoples of the Caribbean should not be caricatured as the product of a “colonized” or “ignorant” people. Given the drastic difference between the situation of popular sectors in modern colonies and neocolonial nation-states of the region, these people prefer a modern colony, which beneﬁts from metropolitan transfers, over a neocolonial nation-state with the same colonial exploitation of a modern colony, but without beneﬁts from the metropolitan state. It should not be assumed that modern Caribbean colonial peoples are “alienated” or “assimilated”; instead, their position suggests a political pragmatism rooted in conditions where options are extremely limited. In the current Caribbean context there is no space external to U.S. hegemony over the region. Even the most “independent” republic cannot escape U.S. control. Any attempt to subvert this order is militarily or economically destroyed, as happened in Grenada, Nicaragua, and Jamaica. The Puerto Rican peoples’ strategy has been pragmatic rather than utopic; that is, they are not struggling to be freed from imperialist oppression (which is highly improbable under the present circumstances), but are instead attempting to struggle for a milder version of this oppression. They would rather be exploited with some beneﬁts than be exploited without any beneﬁts (as is the case in the Dominican Republic). In this sense, the unpopularity of the independence movement is a pragmatic rejection of a neocolonial independence project. As a Puerto Rican prostatehood worker said, “We cannot let the Americans enforce an in-

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dependence status on us in order to cut their budget deﬁcits. Through independence they will keep controlling us but without the commitment to extend welfare beneﬁts and civil rights. After destroying our economy and exploiting the best energies of the Puerto Rican working class during this century, now they want to get rid of us. That I will never accept. After the Americans ate the meat, let them now suck the bones.”8 I am neither suggesting that colonialism is the solution to Third World problems nor recommending that we stop struggling against colonial oppression. These islands are no paradise.9 Instead, I am trying to understand, without resorting to traditional nationalist moralization or colonialist explanations, why the people from modern colonies like Puerto Rico, Curaçao, and Martinique prefer a status of permanent union with the metropolis to independence. Considering the history of imperialist exploitation and destruction of the local economies, it is legitimate to pose the following questions: On whose shoulders would the sacriﬁces required by the economic reconstruction for an independent state fall? Whose salaries and wages would be reduced for local and transnational industries to compete favorably in the world economy? Who would be affected by the reduction of state assistance (for example, food stamps and housing subsidies) in favor of the republic’s economic reconstruction? Obviously, the sacriﬁce will not be the burden of the lawyers, merchants, doctors, or professors of the proindependence leadership, but instead the working classes. Does the rejection of this scenario imply a “colonized” mentality? When people ask proindependence militants how they will survive if Puerto Rico becomes a nation-state, the response they receive usually refers to the new equality and justice for all which will be achieved under the republic. This vague response does not address the legitimate concern that Puerto Rico imports approximately 80 percent of its food. Those who demand a serious answer are arrogantly accused of being colonized, assimilated, or ignorant. However, people eat neither ﬂags nor hymns; nor do they outlive the sacriﬁces necessary to reach the future “paradise republic.” The romantic rhetoric of the proindependence movement cannot conceal the dire reality awaiting a future republic. In the contemporary

8. This is taken from ethnographic work done by the author in Puerto Rico during the summer of 1990. 9. There has been a cost to this special relationship of Caribbean modern colonies. In the Puerto Rican case, the high crime rate suggests an acute social polarization.

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world-system, where no space is external to global capitalism (Wallerstein 1979), the transition toward an independent nation-state will entail overwhelming sacriﬁces for the popular sectors.

revolutionizing reforms All attempts to transform the system in the Caribbean and Central America have been systematically destroyed by commercial blockades and/or military aggression (for example, Nicaragua, Jamaica, and Grenada). The end of the cold war and the disappearance of the authoritarian Soviet bloc has made it even more difficult for a Caribbean peripheral country to circumvent U.S. power in the region. Therefore, social and revolutionary movements with a frontal strategy against imperialism are suicidal. This is why Salvadorean revolutionaries changed their political platform from socialist to democratic capitalism, recognizing that certain popular demands could be obtained under the latter system (Garcia 1993; Bonasso and Gómez Leyva 1992). Despite the current impossibility of achieving a socialist democratic society due to the difficulty of creating a space external to the capitalist world-system, the left should not sit back and wait for a favorable historical context to break with the system. Instead, we should redeﬁne what we mean by social change. Before I address the form of this redefinition, two propositions must be deconstructed: The ﬁrst proposition refers to the false opposition between right wing and left wing regimes in the Third World. Despite the fact that the socalled leftist regimes emerged from popular movements and revolutions, they became authoritarian states with monolithic parties. Repressive measures, entailing the death or incarceration of thousands, are taken when the state’s power is challenged. These left-wing regimes marked the formation of state capitalism where bourgeois bureaucrats control, and proﬁt from, state enterprises. By contrast, right-wing regimes institute military dictatorships to purportedly avoid the expansion of communism. These forms of savage capitalism make political parties illegal, assassinate political dissidents, and suspend civil rights. Historically, leftwing regimes had been supported by the Soviet Union, and right-wing regimes by the United States. The differences between the Marxist-Leninist dictator Mengistu in Ethiopia and the anticommunist dictator Mobutu in the former Zaire, or between Castro in Cuba and Pinochet in Chile, were insigniﬁcant in terms of the restricted political autonomy, the location of decision-making

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power, and the security of labor and civil rights of individuals, groups, and popular sectors in all of these countries. Consequently, political projects for social change in the Third World need to redeﬁne the binary opposition between right and left, and its derivative mode of thinking. Reform versus revolution is the second false opposition. Revolutionary discourses put forward apocalyptic leftist projects for a complete break with global capitalism and, in turn, the construction of a new utopian society insulated from that same system. These left-wing regimes imposed sacriﬁces and austerity programs in the name of a future earthly paradise, a secular translation of the Judeo-Christian legacy. The authoritarian results of the revolutionary discourses of the twentieth century have taught us that it is impossible to destroy the world capitalist system from a corner of the planet. No space can be insulated from capitalism. A global system requires a global transformation, that is, a global problem requires a global solution. However, the rhythm of the anticapitalist struggles around the world is currently too uneven and contradictory to articulate a struggle that could destroy the system. By contrast, the social-democratic struggle for reforms in the Third World has been reduced to immediate demands that do not transform the quality of life of the popular sectors. During the 1980s, they have instead implemented the neoliberal policies of the IMF and dismantled state services and social rights achieved by popular struggle. Social democrats simply adapt to the “realities” imposed by capital. The concepts of reform and revolution need to be redirected toward a third path that, for lack of a better name, I will call “revolutionary reformism” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). The political practice of revolutionary reformism would privilege the improvement of oppressed subjects’ quality of life in the present rather than in a distant future “paradise.” This movement would include a multiplicity of projects to promote and support the struggles of diverse oppressed subjects such as blacks, women, youth, gays and lesbians, and workers. The coalitions between these groups can only be possible if differences and organizational autonomy are respected without privileging the demands of one group at the expense of another. Although these demands may not entail the immediate destruction of capitalism, they can at least weaken the power bloc and improve the quality of life of different social groups. This is a strategy of what I call “subversive complicity” with the system against capital, patriarchy, racism, heterosexism, and authoritarianism. A metanarrative articulated to struggle against the system from the vantage point of an

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utopian space beyond capitalism makes the movement vulnerable to an authoritarian response from the state. By contrast, the strategy of subversive complicity would imply the radical resigniﬁcation of the symbols of U.S. hegemonic discourses in the region such as democracy, civil rights, and equal opportunities. This means using a democratic discourse rather than a socialist discourse, but resignifying it in a radical democratic direction. This is a subversion from within the dominant discourses. A radical democratic project in Puerto Rico would “democratize democracy” through the deepening of democratic and civil rights for oppressed subjects and the increasing of their control over the conditions of everyday life. Several struggles can exemplify a radical democratic project: 1. A struggle against environmental pollution. Currently, the colonial government’s Junta de Calidad Ambiental (Board of Environmental Control), in alliance with transnational capital, has a pernicious effect on the island’s environment. The Junta overlooks pollution increases and allows the destruction of the island’s natural resources. A radical democratic project could struggle for the right to a healthy life by demanding legal measures that criminalize harmful industrial practices. The focus would be the democratization of political power over the environment. 2. A struggle for women’s rights. Stronger social measures to transform the sexual division of labor that subordinates thousands of women could be developed in the name of equality of opportunities. For instance, the creation of child-care centers combining public and private funds would signiﬁcantly reduce the amount of work women do in Puerto Rico. 3. Struggles to improve the quality of life. Two measures that would radically improve quality of life are the construction of monorail systems in the major cities and a train route throughout the whole island. This form of transportation would decrease the use of cars (Puerto Rico has one of the highest car per capita rates in the world) and would in turn immediately improve the quality of life by eradicating traffic jams, lowering pollution levels, and indirectly increasing salaries due to the decrease in car expenses (for example, gas, auto parts, insurance, and loans). 4. A struggle to decrease the crime rate. Most homicides and robberies in Puerto Rico are a result of two factors: unemployment

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and drugs. First, the legalization of highly addictive drugs (for example, heroin) and the free distribution of drugs among the addicted population would eliminate the need to kill or steal to gather the necessary money to maintain an addiction. Experimental programs in England have had impressive results using this strategy. Second, shortening the workday while keeping constant the eight-hour workday salary would increase the job supply, enabling the massive incorporation of unemployed workers to the formal economy. Given the trend toward automatization and technological development, global capitalism cannot continue to expand or create new jobs indeﬁnitely. Thus, it is meaningless to plead for the creation of new eight-hour day jobs. Moreover, these measures would decrease the importance of illegal informal economic activities (for example, selling drugs and stealing) for a large number of unemployed workers. These activities, criminalized by the state, constitute the economy of a large unemployed/ underemployed sector of our society. The four areas of struggle outlined above serve as examples of radical vindications possible under capitalism, once the present impossibility of creating a space external to U.S. domination in the Caribbean region is recognized. Following the strategy of subversive complicity, many other radical democratic measures in the areas of health, education, recreation, sexuality, and culture can be pursued to improve our everyday life. Historically, different oppressed groups have used the strategy of subversive complicity to ﬁght a hegemonic group while simultaneously being complicit with another relation of oppression. For example, male workers could develop a strategy of subversive complicity against capital but a complicit relationship with patriarchy or heterosexism. Thus, the organizational autonomy of each oppressed group struggle should be respected. The strategy of subversive complicity has been used by many social movements during the last two centuries to obtain improvements, although limited, in the quality of life of groups (for example, African-Americans during the civil rights movement, members of the working class ﬁghting for an eight-hour workday, women struggling against machismo, gays and lesbians against homophobia). A good example is the use and abuse of the discourse of Americanism in the early twentieth-century working-class movement in Puerto Rico. Our task today is to deepen, expand, and radicalize what has already been achieved.

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toward a nonessentialist treatment of the status question: challenges and options Whether Puerto Rico becomes an independent republic, a reformed Commonwealth, the ﬁfty-ﬁrst state, or an associated republic, the island will remain under U.S. hegemony. Thus, the relevant question is: Which status alternative will protect, deepen, and expand the social and democratic rights already recognized under the current colonial status (for example, federal minimum wage, unemployment beneﬁts, social security, abortion rights, civil rights)? The failure of the independence movement in the past referendum (only 4 percent of the votes) manifests the historical divorce of nationalist discourses from the Puerto Rican people. If the left wants to convince the Puerto Rican people of its project, it needs to offer a politicaleconomic-ecological-sexual program superior to that of other status alternatives.10 This alternative program would have to signiﬁcantly improve the standard of living and the democratic and civil rights that Puerto Ricans already enjoy. However, this challenge is difficult to meet within the present context of global capitalism. The free-trade agreement between Mexico and the United States, the increased opening of Cuba, the incorporation of the Central American economies after a decade of civil wars, the absence of a Puerto Rican “national” economy, the island’s extreme dependence on federal assistance, and the competition posed by other low-wage countries in the Caribbean region all make the economic viability of an independent Puerto Rico extremely questionable. An independent Puerto Rican nation-state would have to pauperize its population in order to compete in the capitalist world-economy by: (1) reducing the minimum wage and government transfer to individuals; (2) submitting to neoliberal policies of the IMF to subsidize the trade and balance of payment deﬁcits; and (3) reducing environmental controls. Thus, given the impossibility at present to offer a proindependence project superior to that of the other status options, the proindependence movement has three alternatives: (1) to continue supporting the independence project, but making clear to the people the necessary sacriﬁces and risks of a transition to an independent state; (2) to abandon the independence project and support one of the two remaining status alternatives, thus submitting to their currently conservative programs 10. Although the left and nationalist movements are not inherently equivalent, they have been so in Puerto Rico since the foundation of the Nationalist Party in the 1920s.

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and leadership; (3) to stop understanding the status issue in essentialist terms or as a question of principle. Instead, the movement could struggle for a “democratization of democracy” in all spheres of everyday life, pressure the other parties to develop progressive programs, and leave open to the future the pragmatic question of which status alternative will protect and improve Puerto Rico’s ecology, quality of life, and democracy. The possibility of renegotiating the status of the island with the United States will be postponed anyway for possibly more than a decade because of the victory of the Commonwealth status in the past referendum. However, this should not paralyze progressive forces that could channel themselves beyond the limits set by the status debate. Given the unconvincing platform of the proindependence movement as opposed to the other status options, the third option—a radical democratic project—could become a viable alternative. The second alternative basically supports the traditional conservative programs and colonialist leadership of the pro-Commonwealth and prostatehood options. To gain legitimacy, the left needs to disassociate itself from essentialist discourses regarding the status issue and stop defending independence as a matter of principle. Contrary to the discourses and practices of Puerto Rican political culture, status alternatives are not essentially progressive or reactionary. The progressive or reactionary character of a status alternative is contingent on the relation of forces, the strengths or weaknesses of social movements, and the discourses articulating the status options in a speciﬁc conjuncture of the capitalist world-system. Just as there can be reactionary or progressive nation-states, there can also be statehood or an associated republic that can be either progressive or reactionary. For instance, compare Hawaii’s or Vermont’s progressive health care policies to Pennsylvania’s reactionary policies in the United States, or compare the Russian state’s authoritarian control over the autonomous republics of the old Soviet Union to the democratic autonomous regions of Spain. The prostatehood movement in Puerto Rico has been hegemonized by conservative and right-wing factions.11 However, the statehood alternative is not inherently reactionary. One can imagine an antimilitarist and a radical-democratic prostatehood movement in Puerto Rico that makes alliances with, and defends the democratic struggles of, other oppresed groups (for example, Latinos, African-Americans, women, gays and les11. The only exception has been the socialist prostatehood movement of the 1910s and early 1920s.

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bians) in the United States. The early-twentieth-century movement of Puerto Rican workers is a good example. This socialist prostatehood movement built coalitions with U.S. workers’ unions and defended Americanism as a strategy to extend to Puerto Rico the civil and labor rights recognized on the mainland. Similarly, we can imagine an autonomous status, called the associated republic, that could eliminate certain federal laws to improve the quality of life of the population instead of pauperizing it. For example, there could be increased autonomy from federal environmental laws to develop more strict regulations, or there could be the elimination of the federal minimum wage so that an increased wage could be instituted. In a more progressive direction, the transformation of the Puerto Rican party system, traditionally organized in terms of status alternatives, presupposes the development of a popular radical-democratic movement that deﬁes the boundaries of current debates by undoing the correspondence between status alternatives and political parties. This movement could bring together people with diverse political positions regarding the status issue who want to protect and expand the existing democratic, sexual, civil, and social rights. They could struggle for the decolonization of the island by demanding the right of self-determination for the Puerto Rican people without imposing a status option, which would unnecessarily divide the movement. This mass democratic movement could struggle against any potential turn toward authoritarianism irrespective of the eventual political status of the island. All in all, the status is not a matter of principle and, consequently, remains secondary in relation to the primacy of radical-democratic struggles. Discourses warning against the threat of losing our “national” identity and language under the actual colonial status or statehood are mainly employed by nationalist groups in Puerto Rico to justify their defense of independence as a matter of principle. To speak Spanish at school and in public administrative life was achieved through the struggles of the Puerto Rican people more than ﬁfty years ago. Moreover, the Quebecois in Canada, the Catalans in Spain, the Guadeloupeans under France, and the Curaçaoans under the Netherlands are also “nations” without independent states. These “nations” without nation-states have not lost their languages or their “national cultures,” although their culture and language have been transformed due to the inﬂuence of the metropoles. This transformation can be seen as an enrichment rather than a hindrance. Thus, statehood or some other form of union with the metropolis does not necessarily entail cultural or linguistic genocide. Puerto

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Ricans can be part of the struggle, together with other Latinos, for the recognition of linguistic diversity in the United States. The Puerto Rican people share a feeling of nationhood that has not translated into traditional nationalist claims to form a nation-state. Puerto Ricans have formed an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) with an imaginary belonging to a territory that spans the island as well as certain areas in the mainland (for example, South Bronx, Spanish Harlem, North Philadelphia). This imagined community oscillates between feelings of nationhood and ethnicity; Puerto Ricans simultaneously imagine themselves as a nation within a nation, an ethnic group within a nation, and an independent nation. There are Puerto Ricans of all political persuasions, both on the mainland and the island, articulating one or several of these positions simultaneously contingent on the context. There are even proindependence people who want to keep their U.S. citizenship in a future republic. Puerto Ricans’ self-perception does not ﬁt either the concept of a “nation” or that of an “ethnic group.” I believe the notion of “ethnonation,” understood not as a concept but as a process, accommodates these diverse and peculiar subject positionalities better than that of “nation.” Proindependence ideologies that attempt to equate the status debate with a matter of principle constitute the political project of a minority seeking to become a national elite or bourgeoisie. This movement’s emphasis on the purportedly inevitable cultural and linguistic genocide has precluded a serious discussion of the socioeconomic consequences of independence for popular sectors today. Their struggles could be more effective if they concentrated on the development of a radical-democratic movement that protects, expands, and improves the quality of life and the democratic and civil rights that Puerto Ricans enjoy today.

chapter 2

World Cities in the Caribbean Miami and San Juan

Capitalism was from the beginning an affair of the worldeconomy and not of nation-states. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy

In the past two decades studies of the urbanization process in the Caribbean tend either to (1) consider urbanization processes in the Caribbean outside of a global context (for example, Hope 1986); or (2) consider the local urban dynamics of urbanization apart from the Caribbean city system (Portes and Lungo 1992a; Cross 1979; Potter 1989). Hope (1986), in line with the modernization theory, analyzed the Caribbean urbanization as an internal phenomenon of each society, but overlooked linkages to the world-economy. This approach has serious limitations when dealing with Caribbean societies that have a long history of dependency and subordination to core powers in the worldsystem (Wallerstein 1980; Mintz 1989). Cross (1979) offers a more sophisticated version of the Caribbean by linking urbanization to dependency and the plantation system. Peasant poverty and underemployment caused by the legacies of colonialism and plantations produced the mechanisms that fostered rural-urban migration. Despite the fact that Cross’s book was published in 1979, it does not address the developments after the 1973 global capitalist crisis. Potter (1989) and Portes and Lungo (1992a) offer a more updated analysis of recent developments in the Caribbean urban processes. Potter links the urbanization processes to the Caribbean dependency on different core powers (United States, France, England, Holland), whereas Portes links it to the 1980s world78

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economic crisis.1 Although both offered important insights about the effects of the global economy on different Caribbean cities, they still analyzed Caribbean urbanization in terms of each country’s separate relation to the world-economy, rather than as a regional urban system with hierarchical linkages among different cities. Their unit of analysis is the nation-state, rather than the global system. Moreover, neither mentioned Miami as an integral part of the Caribbean city system. The limitations of the studies that examine Caribbean urbanization are also seen in the literature on Miami. This literature (for example, Portes and Stepick 1993; Grenier and Stepick 1992; Didion 1987; Allman 1987; Porter and Dunn 1984; Mohl 1983; Greneau 1981) tends to analyze Miami in isolation from its transnational linkages as a world city that exercises functions of “control and management” of global capital (Friedman and Wolff 1982; Sassen 1991) within the Caribbean city system. When they relate Miami to the Caribbean it is in terms of the Cuban exile presence or the increase in trade with this region. However, the “internal” transformations of Miami’s class structure are not analytically linked to the transformations in the role of the Caribbean city system within the world-system. The Caribbean city system refers to a regional division of labor that produces transnational linkages between the most important Caribbean cities; this regional division of labor is based on the movement of commodities, capital, and people across cities, which challenges traditional state boundaries. This movement produces a hierarchical division of labor among the region’s cities in three distinctive roles: core, semiperiphery, and periphery. Historical-structural developments explain the emergence of Miami and San Juan as world cities within the Caribbean city system during the decades of the 1970s and 1980s. Miami, here, is conceptualized as a core city and San Juan as a semiperipheral city. I structure my analysis of these cities according to three global logics: the capitalist accumulation logic, the geopolitical military logic, and the geopolitical symbolic logic. The literature on world cities formation normally considers the capitalist accumulation logic and tends to overlook the two geopolitical logics. I incorporate the symbolic and military logics to the analysis of the formation of world cities. 1. Portes et al. (1992b: 9–10) mistakenly present their work as the ﬁrst study of Caribbean urbanization, ignoring the prior work by Cross (1979), Hope (1985), Potter (1989), and others who have written extensively on this topic.

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the global logics of world cities: a theoretical overview Debates about world cities often emphasize the spatial aspect of the capitalist accumulation logic, or what others call an international division of labor in the world-economy (Friedmann and Wolff 1982; Friedmann 1986). Important work has been done in this area (Braudel 1984; Sassen 1991; Chase-Dunn 1985), making it unnecessary to repeat all but the arguments pertinent to this study. World cities are usually conceptualized as nodal points of coordination, command, control, and management of global capitalist production and trade (Sassen 1988; Friedmann and Wolff 1982). In contemporary capitalism these are cities from which transnational capital or international banks coordinate, supervise, control, or manage capital investments in one or several regions. So, for example, world cities can control and manage capital investments over the entire world (for example, New York, Tokyo, and Paris), over only one region (for example, Houston, Sydney) or mediate between a core city and a peripheral region (such as semiperipheral world cities like Singapore, Johannesburg, and Sao Paulo). Although these conceptualizations are fruitful for understanding the role of world cities in the capitalist world-economy, they do not adequately consider other global logics that also explain their emergence and their multiple functions in the world-system. One such logic is the geopolitical military/security strategies of core states within the interstate system. Certain world cities play a strategic military/security role over other regions; they centralize some of the military commands and coordinate a core state’s global security strategy. These strategies have a spatial component in that they make use of strategic locations within speciﬁc regions. The other logic refers to the geopolitical symbolic strategies of core states. These are ideological/symbolic strategies developed by core states to gain symbolic capital within a region. Here, I am applying Bourdieu’s (1977: 171–83) conceptualization, developed in his ethnographic work, to certain strategies employed by core states. Symbolic capital is the strategy of accumulating a capital of prestige and honor against a competing adversary. Core states usually exercise symbolic strategies vis-à-vis the development model of another core state or of a challenging peripheral state, for example, the “showcasing” or presentation of a country, city, or an ethnic group as “success stories” to ideologically “conquer the minds” of other people within a region or to

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affect the prestige of an alternative model of development. Symbolic capital involves the transfer of capital in the form of a grant, gift, or credit, which is always expensive in economic terms. However, in the long run, symbolic proﬁts could be translated into economic proﬁts for the core. The capital accumulation logic, the military logic, and the symbolic logic correspond, respectively, to the structural relations of exploitation, domination, and hegemony within the world-system. The actual entanglement and interfacing of these structuring logics can lead to various scenarios, instances where these logics can reinforce or contradict each other. The conceptualization of the relationship among these structuring logics is neither one of full autonomy nor one of complete reduction of one logic to another. Rather, the relationships among them are conceptualized here as semiautonomous and historically contingent, where the dominance of one logic over another is dependent on the particular historical-structural context (Kontopoulos 1993). World cities simultaneously reproduce the three logics over a speciﬁc region or the entire globe. These cities perform functions of economic control, military domination, and ideological inﬂuence over other regions. These are not abstract logics, but instead are concretely inscribed in real life by such actors as transnational corporations, military organizations, intelligence agencies, communication and media enterprises, and foreign-policy officials. Depending on which global logic dominates, some world cities will have a primary economic, military, or symbolic role. Thus, the concept of “command and control” used in the literature about world cities (Friedmann and Wolff 1982) needs to be analytically expanded so as to include these geopolitical logics. Because of the literature’s emphasis on world cities as economic articulators, cities with a dominant political-military function of control and command over the world-system, such as Washington, D.C., are excluded from the world city analysis. By reconceptualizing world cities in this way, we can better account for the variety of world cities within the world-system and for the multiple functions world cities can simultaneously articulate.

the historic background: san juan and miami Since early in the sixteenth century, Puerto Rico and Florida have played an important military/security role for the core powers in the Americas. Puerto Rico, located on the northeastern side of the Caribbean, was a

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crucial military outpost for the defense of the Spanish colonies; it helped to combat any military aggression from Europe. Florida was another important military outpost; it was used as part of the strategy to defend the Spanish ﬂeets that carried gold and silver from Mexico to Europe. Until the early nineteenth century, Puerto Rico was primarily a Spanish military stronghold, with a weak local economy; it was highly dependent on the core-state transfers from the wealth produced in other colonies. San Juan was a large, walled city where most of the island’s population was located. During this period, Puerto Rico and San Juan were almost synonymous; outside of San Juan there were only scattered pockets of people. In addition, San Juan contained the military forts of El Morro and San Cristóbal. Similarly, in the early nineteenth century, Florida was also a Spanish military stronghold with another walled city, St. Augustine. By the mid-nineteenth century, thirty years after the United States snatched Florida from the Spaniards, Florida was largely an unpopulated territory with several military outposts, including Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale, and Fort Dallas, which is now called Miami (Portes and Stepick 1993). Although many local Indians had been killed, some tribes survived. Miami was formally founded in 1896 as a tourist resort for wealthy families from the Northeast. However, its role as an important geopolitical military location to guard core power interests in the Caribbean region continued. By 1898, during the Spanish-American War, Camp Miami was a strategic outpost for U.S. regional operations (Portes and Stepick 1993). Military operations for the U.S. occupations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic during the First World War were also coordinated from Miami. During the Second World War, dozens of airﬁelds were built. As of 1942, the Army Air Corps occupied Miami Beach, renting more than one hundred tourist hotels to provide shelter for soldiers stationed there (Mohl 1983: 60). Since Nazi submarines were moving around Caribbean waters, Miami served as a rear guard of the U.S. military bases in Cuba, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica to protect the Caribbean region from military aggression. After the Spanish-American War, Puerto Rico became a U.S. colony. Because of Puerto Rico’s strategic importance for the defense of the U.S. political and military interests in the region, the United States maintained the island under the jurisdiction of the Department of War until 1934. San Juan, where Fort Buchanan was located, was an important coordinating and control center for the Caribbean operations. By 1941, the fort

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became one of the three centers of the U.S. Caribbean Defense Command (García-Muñiz 1988: 57). From Puerto Rico the United States commanded the U.S. bases in Jamaica, Antigua, and the Bahamas. With the construction of new military bases in other parts of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, some of the military operations in both San Juan and Miami were signiﬁcantly reduced during the postwar years. However, both have continued to play a central role in the intelligence agencies’ operations in the Southern Hemisphere. After the Cuban revolution, anticommunist operations were established by intelligence agencies in Miami. Miami became the center of the counterrevolutionary activities of the anticommunist Cuban exiles. In the ﬁrst half of the 1960s, an alliance was established between the CIA, the Maﬁa displaced from Cuba after the revolution, and Cuban exiles (Garreau 1981: 174; U.S. House of Representatives 1979: 149–95). During that same period, the University of Miami had the largest CIA station in the world after its headquarters in Virginia (Grenier and Stepick 1992: 11). Approximately twelve thousand Cubans were on the CIA payroll in the early 1960s (Grenier and Stepick 1992: 11). Millions of dollars circulated around Miami as part of these operations. They subsidized many Cuban-owned businesses that served as fronts for CIA operations (Stepick 1992: 77; Arguelles 1982: 31). As Grenier and Stepick stated, “This investment served far more to boost Cubans in Miami than it did to destabilize the Castro regime” (1992: 11). The Cuban-CIA-Maﬁa alliance had important consequences for the future development of the city. The alliance had three effects: ﬁrst, Miami became the undisputed “drug capital” of the world (Mohl 1983:77); second, Miami became the center for a successful Cuban ethnic economy (Portes and Bach 1985); and third, Miami became the center for the control and coordination of the CIA operations in Central America and the Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s (Cockburn 1987: 53–76; Dickey 1987: 156–59). During the 1980s, U.S. operations with the Contras in Nicaragua and in El Salvador’s civil war pumped millions of dollars once again into Miami’s economy. Speciﬁcally, the Contras not only received millions of dollars a year from the U.S. government, but also they raised a fortune through drug smuggling. The latter was distributed and laundered from about a dozen companies and several Cuban banks in Miami (Sklar 1988: 294; Lernoux 1984). In the early 1980s, federal officials calculated that approximately $28 billion worth of illegal drugs was entering the

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United States through Miami each year (Mohl 1983: 77). Drug trafficking is currently the number one industry in the city.

symbolic showcases After the Cuban revolution, the United States developed ideological/symbolic strategies to diminish communist inﬂuence over the region. These strategies developed in response to the U.S. need for a successful capitalist model to gain symbolic capital vis-à-vis the Soviet socialist model exempliﬁed by Cuba. Puerto Rico became the showcase of capitalism for Latin America and the Caribbean (Grosfoguel 1992). Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress in the 1960s used Puerto Rico’s capital-import-exportoriented industrialization as a model of development for the whole region. San Juan became a center for many international conferences and visits by foreign officials. Tours were organized by the U.S. State Department for Third World visitors to learn about the “industrialization by invitation” model of development. Between transfers to individuals and grants, Puerto Rico received $3.3 billion in federal aid during the 1960s for the improvement of its infrastructure and its standard of living (Grosfoguel 1992: 206–7). No other country in the Western Hemisphere received nearly as much U.S. foreign aid during this period. Miami became another capitalist showcase, but in a different manner than Puerto Rico. Thousands of the Cuban political and economic elites moved to Miami. Refugees escaping communism had a more powerful symbolic/ideological function than any anticommunist manifesto. Cuban refugees became symbols of the struggle between the two superpowers. To have an ideological effect on the Cubans that remained on the island as well as on the entire Caribbean region, the United States developed speciﬁc policies to make Cuban exiles a “success story.” Otherwise, they could have become a powerful weapon used in communist propaganda during the cold war years. As it had done with Hungarian refugees several years before, the United States developed the Cuban Refugee Program to facilitate the successful incorporation of the Cuban elites into the receiving society (Pedraza-Bailey 1985a, 1985b). Part of the strategy was to resettle thousands of Cuban refugees outside of Miami. The goal was to relieve the local economy from “overpopulation” pressures, guaranteeing the successful incorporation of those that stayed in Miami as well as those that were resettled around the country (Moncarz-Percal 1978; Pedraza-Bailey 1985b). Approximately $1 billion were invested in education, bilingual

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programs, food, health care, employment, and relocation for a population of less than 600,000 people during the 1960s and early 1970s. Some of the welfare programs implemented in the late 1960s as a response to the African American social struggles had already been implemented since the early sixties with the Cuban refugees. In addition, between 1968 and 1979, Cubans received approximately 46.9 percent ($47.6 million) of the total dollar amount of loans by the Small Business Administration (SBA) in Miami compared to just 6.3 percent ($6.4 million) for African Americans during the same period (Porter and Dunn 1984: 197). Cubans received approximately 66 percent of the total number of loans, while blacks received just 7.9 percent (Porter and Dunn 1984: 197). Around one-third of the Cuban small businesses created between 1968 and 1977 (the period identiﬁed by Portes and Bach as when the socalled enclave economy was formed) were subsidized by the SBA.2 If we add that the CIA had on its Miami payroll around twelve thousand Cubans in the early 1960s (thus becoming one of Florida’s largest employers) (Grenier and Stepick 1992: 11) together with the capital and entrepreneurial skills that the Cuban bourgeoisie brought with them (Fagen, Brody, and O’Leary 1968), it is easy to understand why they became a successful business community. A conservative estimate of the total amount of capital transferred by the United States (including CIA money) to the Cubans would be approximately $1.3 billion.3 The U.S. core-state’s symbolic and military strategies during the cold war’s ﬁrst challenge to U.S. domination in the Caribbean provide the historical background for the emergence of both Miami and San Juan as world cities in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Strategic cities provide

2. This percentage was calculated in the following way: in 1967 there were 919 Cuban enterprises in Miami (Portes and Bach 1985). By 1977, there were 7,336 Cuban enterprises in Miami Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) (U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1980: 95–96). Thus, 6,417 Cuban enterprises were created between 1968 and 1977. Out of this total, approximately 1,985 were created through Small Business Administration (SBA) loans awarded between 1968 and 1977 (Porter and Dunn 1984: 197). The overall role of the SBA in the formation of the Cuban middleman entrepreneur might be greater, but we do not have the exact number of loans given to Cubans between 1960 and 1967 because the agency ﬁrst began to keep racial and ethnic statistics in 1968. However, several Miamibased Cuban entrepreneurial projects, subsidized by the SBA in the mid-1960s, were shown as “success stories” to blacks in Cleveland, New York, and Chicago (Business Week 1969: 41). 3. This amount was calculated as follows: approximately $1 billion from the Refugee Program, approximately $47 million from the SBA in Miami (not counting the SBA loans to Cubans in the rest of the country), and approximately $250 million from CIA payroll and investments in some of their businesses (Pedraza-Bailey 1985b; Porter and Dunn 1984; Arguelles 1982).

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better political, social, and infrastructural conditions for the control and management of global capital.

the contemporary period: global capitalist restructuring after 1973 The oil crisis of 1973 was part of a long-term crisis that started with the end of the gold standard and the breakdown of the postwar BrettonWood agreements. The inﬂation created by both of these events and the labor-capital Fordist agreements increased the cost of production in the core economies. Transnational industries responded with new strategies to cope with the crisis. Many transnational corporations pursued a strategy of the mobility of capital to peripheral and semiperipheral areas in search of cheaper labor and lower costs of production; this reduced the amount of manufacturing jobs in core economies (Sassen-Koob 1988). Similarly, by 1978, regional banks in the United States were doing better than the larger Chicago and New York money center banks. Business Week (1978: 66) reported, “Return on average assets—the most important measure of a bank’s proﬁtability—stood at 0.72% at the regionals, compared with 0.48% for the titans, which include Citicorp, Chase Manhattan, Manufacturers Hanover, J.P. Morgan, Chemical, Bankers Trust, and the two Chicago giants, Continental Illinois and First Chicago.” Thus, both transnational industries and global banks decentralized their operations, paying more attention to regional and peripheral processes. Rather than having a centralized headquarters from which global investment strategies were coordinated, multinational industries and global banks opened regional headquarters in strategic cities around the world. This is the global context that explains the emergence of new world cities in the global economy after 1977 (for example, Singapore and Barcelona). Consequently, as global capital intensiﬁed manufacturing investments in peripheral regions such as the Caribbean Basin, there was a need for a closer and more direct supervision over capital investments. New York, where multinational global headquarters concentrate, became an obsolete location for the closer management of Caribbean investments. Within this context, Miami emerged as an alternative to New York. Miami is an example of a recently formed world city. It became an international banking and trade center exercising functions of control and management of global capital for the entire Caribbean Basin (Baer

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1975; Greneau 1981; Grenier and Stepick 1992). As the core city of the entire region, Miami became known as the capital of the Caribbean. By 1970 mainland U.S. labor-intensive industries had moved from San Juan to new peripheral regions like the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica looking for cheaper labor as part of the same process of global capitalist restructuring. Puerto Rico reindustrialized with highly skilled manufacturing industries. The island was transformed into a center for capital-intensive industries, with San Juan providing business services not only to the latter but also to industries located on other Caribbean islands. San Juan became a semiperipheral world city, sharing with Miami the role of capital management and control over the other islands’ industrial processes. From a world-system perspective we can better understand these changes. The transformations in Miami and San Juan form part of a single process of capitalist restructuring in the entire Caribbean city system that transformed the regional division of labor. Before 1973, most of the Caribbean islands were agrarian or mining enclaves, exporting primary products to the core economies. In the post-1973 period, capitalist restructuring produced a “new international division of labor” within the Caribbean Basin. Caribbean countries are now exporters of manufactured consumer goods. The industrialization of peripheral cities like Port-au-Prince, Santiago de los Caballeros, Kingston, and Port of Spain now form part of the same regional division of labor that transformed Caguas, Manatí, and Humacao (in Puerto Rico) into capital-intensive industrial cities and turned Miami and San Juan into ﬁnancial and producer service centers. Miami By 1977, approximately ﬁfty-ﬁve multinational corporations had located their regional headquarters for Latin America and the Caribbean in the Miami area. By 1980, these regional headquarters increased to more than one hundred (Mohl 1983: 75). Among them are included such conglomerates as Exxon, Gulf Oil, Texaco, Dow Chemical, International Harvester, ITT, DuPont, Alcoa, General Electric, Goodyear, Uniroyal, and American Express (Mohl 1983: 75). In 1977, there were just ten Edge Act banks in Miami. Five of them were subsidiaries of banks with headquarters in New York and two in California. There were no foreign banks in the area. The liberalization

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of U.S. international banking regulations over Edge Act corporations and foreign bank agencies, plus Miami’s proximity and infrastructure related to Latin America and the Caribbean dramatically transformed the city in a few years. By 1983, there were forty-two Edge Act banks, forty foreign bank agencies, and eight foreign bank representative offices in Miami (Baer 1985: 221). Even regional banks located in the area developed a more sophisticated core of international departments. Miami became second only to New York as an international banking center in the United States (Grenier and Stepick 1992: 2). In the 1960s, Miami was a point of entry for U.S. imports from Latin America. Imports, measured in tons of cargo, exceeded exports 3 to 1 (Cruz 1985: 165). However, by the early 1970s exports started surpassing imports. In 1972, exports represented 55 percent of the total tons of cargo, which had almost doubled since 1960 from 411,000 to 800,000. This reﬂected the new role of Miami as a trade export center for U.S. capital goods to Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1982, out of a total of 3.1 million tons of cargo, 70 percent were exports and 30 percent were imports (Cruz 1985: 165). That same year, the port of Miami had the largest Caribbean and Latin America market shares among all the ports of the United States. This market represented 91.2 percent of Miami’s total market ($6.8 billion), followed by Houston with 26.5 percent ($4.6 billion), Tampa with 23.1 percent ($.5 billion), New Orleans with 14.1 percent ($2.6 billion), and New York with 10.8 percent ($3.4 billion) (Lipner 1985: 163). As much as 40 percent of Miami’s trade was with the Caribbean (Lipner 1985: 162). Miami exceeds Houston in the number of banks and ﬁnancial institutions with a Latin American and Caribbean base. Miami’s airport accounts for a larger proportion of exports to Latin America than Houston’s. The trade with this region is of such magnitude that in 1992 the U.S. Customs Service moved the Andean/Caribbean Help Desk from Washington, D.C., to Miami. Miami’s share has reached 35 percent of the total U.S. trade with the Caribbean Basin (Bamrud 1992). Once a tourist and retirement haven in the 1960s, Miami has emerged as a center of international trade and ﬁnance. The question is: Why Miami and not New Orleans? The latter was a more important trade center in 1960 (Grenier and Stepick 1992: 9). The global logic of capital accumulation is necessary, but not sufficient to explain the relocation of banks and transnational corporations’ regional headquarters for the Caribbean and Latin America from New York to Miami rather than New Orleans or the displacement of New Orleans as the country’s principal trade outlet with Latin Amer-

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ica. Economic processes are always embedded in political, social, and cultural processes. More than just economic structures are needed to exercise functions of management and control of global capital. Here geopolitical strategies are necessary to understand the economic transformation of Miami. The following is a list of reasons that explain this relocation: The Cuban Connection The massive ﬂow of Cuban exiles after the revolution in 1959 has changed the sociocultural landscape of Miami. Today Miami is a bilingual city where you ﬁnd more stores with signs saying “We speak English” than “Se habla español.” The Spanish-speaking population grew from just 20,000 in 1950, to 50,000 in 1960, 300,000 in 1970 (23.6 percent of the total population in the Miami metropolitan area), and 581,000 in 1980 (35.7 percent of the total population for the metropolitan area) (Mohl 1983: 70). Nowadays, Latinos compose more than half of the population of Miami (Grenier and Stepick 1992: 5). Cubans compose more than 70 percent of the Latinos (Clark 1991: 45). Anglos have decreased from 85 percent of the total population in 1950 to just 30 percent by 1990 (Clark 1991: 45). The Miami metro area has the largest proportion of foreign-born residents (35.3 percent) of any U.S. city, even larger than Los Angeles (22.3 percent) and New York (21.3 percent) (Clark 1991: 4). With the entrance of thousands of Jamaicans, Haitians, Puerto Ricans, Nicaraguans, Dominicans, and Salvadorans to Miami during the 1980s, the city has become the most desirable migration point in the Caribbean Basin (Clark 1991: 14). But large Spanish-speaking populations exist in other cities of the United States. Thus, what has transformed the city is not just the presence of a large Spanish-speaking community, but also the presence of an economically successful Cuban community that emerged with the assistance of the U.S. federal government. The Cuban revolution uprooted and transplanted an entire national bourgeoisie to Miami. The latter not only transferred from Cuba some of its established networks in the Caribbean and Latin America but also created new ones. One of the Cuban exile community’s niches within the Miami area since the early 1960s has been import/export businesses. Cubans were the ﬁrst to start the trend toward exports to the Caribbean region (Garreau 1981: 201; Grenier and Stepick 1992: 9–10; Mohl 1983: 78). In my own ﬁeldwork, I found several Cuban owners of import/export businesses who explained how friends and relatives who established themselves in Costa Rica, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and other Caribbean Basin countries were

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the initial linkage to their trade within the region. Their knowledge of the culture and language facilitated their access to these markets. Once the linkage was established, business proliferated. Between 1970 and 1980, the number of import/export businesses in Miami tripled to more than three hundred. Cubans exported consumer goods in the 1960s; at present, they export whole factories (Garreau 1981: 200–1). Cubanowned banks also started the ﬁnancing of these trade activities. By the mid-1980s, Latinos owned 40 percent of Miami’s banks. The presence of the counterrevolutionary Cuban elites in Miami and the CIA operations linking them with other anticommunist elites within the Caribbean Basin gave Miami an exalted position as a safe haven for the regional elites’ capital and families. After the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979, Miami was the initial location where the Somoza family established their operations. During the Salvadoran civil war in the 1980s, the economic elites not only moved their families to the Miami area but also transferred their capital to Miami-based banks. Regional elites, escaping political turmoil or economic instability, found in Miami a large Spanishspeaking community and the political-economic stability unavailable in their country of origin. In addition, the Latin ambience of the city attracted the upper middle classes of the region to purchase luxury goods that were too expensive or unavailable in their own countries. Miami became the shopping district for the elites of Latin America and the Caribbean Basin (Grenier and Stepick 1992: 2; Garreau 1981: 177). During the oil boom of the 1970s and early 1980s, Venezuelan elites reinvested most of their proﬁts in Miami. Now, most of the tourists come to Miami from the South rather than the North (Mohl 1983: 71). Miami’s social relations with the Caribbean are unique compared to those of other cities in the United States. The transnational social networks, fostered by Cubans who settled during the 1960s and by U.S. geopolitical strategies, are one of the reasons for the relocation of many banks and transnational corporations to the Miami area. They facilitate investments and trade with Latin America for the internationally oriented corporations. But today there is an additional advantage: the presence of a large pool of second-generation young professional Cubans with bilingual and bicultural skills. Although the upper level of Miami’s ﬁnancial community is controlled by Anglos, Cubans constitute a signiﬁcant number of the middle- and lower-management level employees (Perez 1992: 104). This facilitates signiﬁcant business transactions with the region. Anglo middle classes have become redundant to the new

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Latin-oriented businesses in the city. The rapid ﬂight of Anglo middle sectors from Miami during the 1980s has consolidated the Cubans’ increased dominance over these positions. Thus, Cubans transformed the geographic orientation of Miami’s economy, from a city looking north for tourists and retirees to one looking south for trade and investments (Perez 1992: 172). No wonder the Wall Street Journal referred to the Cubans as “the Phoenicians of the Caribbean” (Perez 1992: 176). Foreign Investments Foreigners have been investing in Miami on an unprecedented scale. Not only Latin American elites but also the Maﬁa and transnational corporations have invested sizable amounts of laundered money in South Florida’s real estate markets. Because of the reactivation of the Cuban-CIA-Maﬁa alliance during the 1980s civil wars in Central America massive ﬂows of capital circulated in the Miami economy (Lernoux 1984). This has created a real estate boom, which partially insulated the area from some of the negative effects of the 1982 recession. According to Charles Kimball, an economist researching the real estate markets in South Florida, 40 percent of all property sales over 300,000 dollars in the Miami area are paid with illegal cash money (Garreau 1981: 190). Half of these investments are from anonymous offshore corporations; the other half is drug money. In 1980 alone, property sales to taxfree Netherlands Antilles corporations totalled $1 billion in Dade County (Mohl 1983: 76). It is suspected that billions of dollars from the Medellín cartel was invested in South Florida. In 1979, the Federal Reserve found in excess of $5.4 billion of untraceable cash money arriving in Florida’s banks from other parts of the world (Garreau 1981: 175). This ﬂow of cash money is another source of attraction for banks to the area. Institutional and Physical Infrastructure Miami has more advanced facilities in communications, port, airport, and business services than any city in Latin America and the Caribbean. In part, the advanced infrastructural conditions are because of the historical development of the city as a major resort for North American tourism. However, the city’s infrastructural orientation toward Latin America is not just for market reasons but also as a result of the history of the Miami area as a geopolitical military location for core power domination over the region. Moreover, the CIA invested millions of dollars after 1959, improving the social networks of Miami with the Caribbean Basin (Didion 1987: 90–91; Arguelles 1982: 31). The transnational headquarters and

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international banks that proliferated in Miami after 1975 took advantage of these facilities for their own operations. In a sense, they inherited a whole infrastructure built for different purposes than those for which they are currently used. Another reason for the relocation of many internationally oriented businesses in Miami was the institutional formation of a free-trade zone (FTZ). Near Miami’s international airport is located the largest FTZ in the United States. Approximately two hundred companies involved in international trade relocated there by the early 1980s (Mohl 1983: 76). Most of these are import-export companies that store, manufacture, assemble, or reexport goods from abroad without paying customs tariffs (Mohl 1983: 76). This provided international banking and transnational headquarters an attractive institutional environment for trade and capital investments in the Caribbean Basin. The three factors outlined above are crucial for understanding the relocation of many North American banks and corporations’ regional departments and headquarters for Latin America and the Caribbean to Miami. The post-1973 global restructuring of capitalism jointly with geopolitics, infrastructural/institutional facilities, and transnational networks provides a more comprehensive explanation of these geographical shifts. A good example is DuPont’s relocation of its Latin American headquarters from Wilmington, Delaware, to Miami. According to Kenneth Trelenberg, a DuPont executive, the area of Coral Gables in Miami was selected after considering eight other cities: Mexico City, San José, Bogotá, Caracas, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and San Juan (Garreau 1981: 201). They used eighteen criteria in a scorepoint analysis to decide which city could best serve as the capital of its Latin American operations. This is how Trelenberg described the selection process: Buenos Aires and Bogotá were disqualiﬁed because of concern for the personal safety of employees transferred to those cities. . . . Caracas was disqualiﬁed because of operational problems. That is, visa difficulties, acute shortage of hotel rooms, tax clearances needed for departure, and so forth. . . . San José and San Juan are somewhat isolated and lacking in direct air service to other locations in the area, so they were wiped out. The remaining four cities—Mexico City, Coral Gables [in the Miami area], Sao Paulo, and Rio—were surveyed and rated using the following criteria: Number one, political stability and good business climate; Number two, centrality of location; Number three, regional air-transportation service;

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Number four, telecommunications and mail service; Number ﬁve, ability to maintain area perspective. . . . We have major subsidiaries in Mexico City and Sao Paulo and in Buenos Aires. There was fear that there would be trouble with the local management maintaining its local perspective and the division management maintaining a regional perspective. The fear was that the regional management would always be telling them what to do. . . . The sixth category was ease of expatriate adjustment and living. In other words, living conditions. . . . The seventh was operating costs. (Quoted in Garreau 1981: 201–2)

These ﬁrst seven criteria were so important that they were assigned double weight. The remaining eleven criteria were secondary. Out of a total score of 100, Coral Gables in Miami had 87, followed by Rio with 70, Sao Paulo 60, and Mexico 55 (Garreau 1981: 202). According to Trelenberg, “The reasons those others bombed out, primarily were poor communications from that city to other cities in Latin America—not to the United States, but to other cities in Latin America—and poor air connections” (Garreau 1981: 202). Communication facilities, transportation infrastructure, and political stability were a result of both Miami’s original tourist-oriented economy and its geopolitical role. In addition, the Cuban connection and the corestate’s geopolitical strategies created a good business climate for the relocation of transnational corporations’ Latin American and Caribbean regional headquarters to Miami as part of the post-1973 global capitalist restructuring. By the late 1970s, Miami was transformed into a world city with functions of global control and management of capital ﬂows across the region.

Miami’s Employment Distribution In contrast to many other cities in the United States, Miami was never a manufacturing center. It has always had a strong service oriented economic base. However, its new role as a global city after 1973 transformed the local service economy from tourism into ﬁnancing and producer service. This is reﬂected in the radical transformations of employment distribution between 1970 and 1998 (see Table 1; all tables are in the appendix). Manufacturing jobs increased from 75,384 jobs in 1970 to 103,715 during the 1970s because of the proliferation of apparel and textile sweatshops using cheap immigrant labor (Grenier, Stepick et al. 1992; Grenier 1992). However, during the next decade, as a result of

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the Caribbean Basin Initiative, manufacturing jobs declined to 89,577. A similar pattern of growth during the 1970s and decline in the 1980s can be seen in the transportation/public utilities and construction sectors. During the 1990s, the manufacturing and construction sectors continued their respective decline. Trade, services, and FIRE (Finance, Trade, and Real Estate) constituted most of the city’s employment growth during the past three decades. Services and FIRE represented 62 percent of the total employment growth of Dade County between 1970 and 1998 (see Table 1). Services have long been a growing industry in Dade County; however, there is a major difference from past service sector growth, not just in numbers but in the quality of those jobs. In this period, there was a dramatic increase in the number of producer service jobs. These ﬁgures give some indication of the emerging role of Miami as a global city where job growth increasingly came to be concentrated speciﬁcally in services related to multinational headquarters and international bank operations. This can be seen in the employment distribution of the producer service jobs classiﬁed under both services and FIRE (see Table 2). Of the 217,104 new jobs created in services and FIRE during the 1970–98 period, close to half (44 percent, or 96,191 new jobs) were in the producer service industry, and of the total new jobs created in the entire city during the same period one-quarter (27 percent) were in this sector. It is interesting to emphasize that jobs in hotels and other lodging places, the dominant sector of the old tourist oriented economy of the city, decreased from 22,922 in 1970 to 22,245 in 1998 (U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1971a, 2000a). The number of establishments in this sector decreased from 766 to 397 during the same period. In contrast, the number of establishments in the producer service industries increased during the same period: banking from 72 to 738; freight transportation from 196 to 975; credit agencies from 326 to 858; insurance agents, brokers, and services from 476 to 1,517; holding and other investments from 96 to 651; and business services from 1,066 to 3,726 (U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1971a, 2000a). In sum, Miami’s reinsertion within the international division of labor as a core city for the Caribbean and Latin America transformed the local economy into a banking and trade center. San Juan Between 1950 and 1970, Puerto Rico was the main center for U.S. laborintensive manufacturing industrial investments in Latin America. Cheap

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wages combined with access to the U.S. market free of customs duties, federal tax-free holidays, and a strong U.S. military presence gave U.S. investors the institutional framework and political stability to invest in the island. In 1969, Puerto Rico was the world’s largest supplier of clothing to the U.S. market (Dietz 1986: 249). By 1970, with the decline of agricultural production to insigniﬁcant proportions, Puerto Rico had become an industrial-urban society. However, the post-1973 crisis transformed the island’s relationship to the world economy. Most of the labor-intensive industries moved to peripheral regions that offered cheaper wages than Puerto Rico. For example, in the late 1970s the wage per hour of a Dominican worker was 34 percent of that of a Puerto Rican manufacturing worker (Junta de Planiﬁcación 1986: 84). From being the most important producer of apparel products for the U.S. market, the island’s share of the market was insigniﬁcant by 1979 (Dietz 1986). The official unemployment rate increased from 10.3 percent in 1970 to 20 percent in 1977 (Junta de Planiﬁcación 1991a: Table 32; Dietz 1986: 275). Three measures were taken to save the symbolic showcase: the 936 law to stimulate capital intensive industrial investments, the massive transfer of federal funds, and the growth of public employment. The context of global restructuring provides a better framework for understanding San Juan’s new role within the regional division of labor. In 1963, the San Juan metropolitan area concentrated approximately half of the new light-industries ﬁrms and more than one-third of the new manufacturing jobs created after 1950 (Dietz 1986: 251). By 1970, San Juan was still a labor-intensive manufacturing city and the public administration center for the colonial administration. After the post-1973 global crisis the most dramatic changes in San Juan occurred. Between 1970 and 1998, construction and manufacturing jobs in San Juan declined 39 percent and 70 percent, respectively (see Table 3). Both sectors accounted for 36 percent of San Juan’s total employment by 1970. However, by 1998, together both sectors accounted for just 12 percent of the total jobs. Manufacturing jobs declined from 29,446 (18 percent) in 1970 to only 8,871 (4 percent) in 1998. The services and FIRE sectors accounted for most of San Juan’s job increases between 1970 and 1998. Services increased by 166 percent and FIRE by 99 percent (see Table 3). In 1970, both accounted for 28.6 percent of San Juan’s total jobs; by 1998 they accounted for 51.6 percent, becoming by far the largest source of employment in the city. Services increased during this period from 32,081 to 85,391 jobs, and FIRE from

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14,979 to 29,739. Of 92,815 total new jobs created in San Juan between 1970 and 1998, 73 percent (68,070 jobs) were in the services and FIRE sectors. Producer service represented a signiﬁcant proportion of the new jobs created in these two sectors during the 1970–98 period. Of the 68,070 new jobs created in services and FIRE, 60 percent (40,503 jobs) were in producer service (see Table 4). The latter were mainly high-wage jobs. The rest of the jobs in the service sector were low-wage menial jobs. As in other contemporary world cities, new immigrants provided many of the low-wage services (Sassen 1988). Dominican immigrants in San Juan, whose numbers surpassed 50,000 during the 1990s, participate in low-wage services (for example, domestic servants, fruit peddlers, janitors, dishwashers). San Juan’s transformation can also be illustrated by the number of establishments of each sector in the city. For example, manufacturing establishments in San Juan decreased from 681 in 1970 to only 359 by 1997; banking establishments increased from 17 in 1970 to 134 in 1997; business services increased from 263 to 697 (U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1971b, 1999). As part of the manufacturing sector, the apparel and textile products industries declined the most, from 104 establishments in 1970 to just 41 in 1997 (U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1971b, 1999). This shift from a labor-intensive manufacturing center into a producer service economy represents the new role of San Juan as a semiperipheral world city in the Caribbean city system. It shares with Miami some of the functions of management and control of the region’s capital investments. Several important international banks, such as Citibank and the Chase Manhattan Bank, moved their Caribbean Basin departments to San Juan. Producer service jobs share between one-fourth and one-third of the total employment of Miami and San Juan respectively (see Table 5). Miami increased its employment share of producer service from 16.5 percent in 1970 to 21 percent in 1998; San Juan increased from 16.7 to 30 percent during the same period. However, producer services in San Juan are mostly oriented toward secondary cities in Puerto Rico, where most of the new capital-intensive industrial investment is concentrated. Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) The 1983 Caribbean Basin Initiative was the economic response of the Reagan administration to the political-military challenge to U.S. domination within the region. The Grenadian revolution, the Nicaraguan revolution, Manley’s democratic-socialist government in Jamaica, and

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the civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador were perceived and constructed by U.S. political elites as an East-West problem rather than as a North-South conﬂict. At the political-military level the United States responded with the Contra war in Nicaragua, the military intervention in Grenada, and military aid to the dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador. These events increased the geopolitical importance of both Miami and San Juan as centers of military control for the region. The military intervention in Grenada was rehearsed in Puerto Rico two years before the 1983 intervention. The training of soldiers for the military intervention and the coordination of the entire operation was done from U.S. military bases in Puerto Rico. Fort Buchanan in San Juan became the location for several operations of the U.S. Southern Command transferred from Panama. The Contra war was subsidized, coordinated, and supervised from Miami (Cockburn 1987; Dickey 1987; Sklar 1988). The city served once again as the CIA headquarters for the Caribbean and Central American operations. Besides the proﬁt remittances from the Central American elites to their Miami bank accounts, millions of dollars were running through Miami’s ﬁnancial system as part of the CIA undercover operations (Cockburn 1987; Dickey 1987; Sklar 1988). Unlike in the 1960s, the 1980s CIA-Maﬁa-Cuban alliance in support of the Contras had access to a well-established Cubancontrolled ﬁnancial system in Miami through which billions of dollars were laundered (Lernoux 1984). In the 1990s, Miami’s geopolitical importance increased when the U.S. Southern Command transferred its headquarters from Panama to Miami. On the economic front, the United States responded to the region’s political instability with increased foreign aid and the liberalization of trade barriers to encourage U.S. direct foreign investments through the 1980s’ CBI program. This economic intervention was premised on the assumption that providing an institutional framework would facilitate the mobility of capital to the region, which would result in the resolution of social unrest and social problems in the region. As a result, although original U.S. interest in the CBI was geopolitical, it articulated the perspective of the dominant post-1973 capitalist restructuring trends in the global arena: capital mobility from the core to the periphery in search of cheap labor. Labor-intensive manufacturing for export to the U.S. market started during the 1970s with the establishment of Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in several Caribbean cities. However, the CBI accelerated this process during the 1980s. In 1983 there were only ﬁfteen Caribbean EPZs; by 1988 they had increased to more than ﬁfty (Hillcoat

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and Quenan 1991: 214). For example, in the Dominican Republic the number of workers in the EPZs by 1970 was just 504 (0.5 percent of the country’s total manufacturing employment). In 1980, with the global restructuring, this number increased to 18,339 (10.6 percent of the total manufacturing jobs). However, after the CBI in 1983, the jobs in the EPZs dramatically increased from 22,272 (12.4 percent of the total manufacturing jobs) in that year to 85,468 (35.3 percent of the total manufacturing jobs) by 1988 and 142,339 by 1992 (Lozano and Duarte 1992; Secretaría de Estado de Industria y Comercio 1992). Likewise, by 1988 there were 33,000 manufacturing jobs in Haiti’s four EPZs (mostly in Port-au-Prince); 17,000 in Jamaica’s EPZs; and 14,000 in Cartago’s EPZ (Costa Rica) (Hillcoat and Quenan 1991: 214). Within the context of the CBI Puerto Rico plays a semiperipheral role. The CBI provides tariff reductions for industrial linkages between capital-intensive industries in Puerto Rico and labor-intensive manufacturing in the Caribbean Basin. There were sixty-one twin plants or production-sharing arrangements built between 1986 and 1992 (Sagardía 1992: 43). However, the program declined after the initiation of the use of 936 funds for investments in the CBI (Sagardía 1992: 43). In 1987, Congress approved a new program that allows the 936 proﬁts deposited in Puerto Rico’s ﬁnancial institutions to be made available for industrial loans to CBI beneﬁciary countries. By 1991, the program had created a total of 23,229 jobs in the Caribbean with a total of $892 million in direct investments (Junta de Planiﬁcación 1992: 16). In sum, recent developments in the Caribbean have created new roles for Miami and San Juan as world cities during the 1980s and 1990s. The increased capital investments in the Caribbean periphery form part of the same process that changed the urban economy in both San Juan and Miami. Management and control activities in one part of the Caribbean city system form part of the same process that produces peripheral industrialization in another part.

conclusion There is a regional division of labor among the Caribbean cities. Miami, the capital of the Caribbean Basin, underwent a transformation into a banking and trade center for global capitalism that has to be understood in relation to the peripheral industrialization of cities such as Santo Domingo, Santiago, Port-au-Prince, Kingston, Port of Spain, and Cartago. Miami is the core city exercising the global coordination, con-

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trol, and management of the capital investments in the entire region, while San Juan is a semiperipheral city sharing some of these functions with Miami. However, San Juan’s role consists primarily in directing the control and management of the local high-tech manufacturing industries that developed after the island’s deindustrialization when labor-intensive industries moved to new peripheral locations. Economic explanations are insufficient to understand the historical formation and functions of world cities. In the cases of world cities such as San Juan and Miami, we need to articulate the global capitalist restructuring with the core state’s geopolitical military and symbolic strategies. Otherwise, it is difficult to understand why transnational corporations selected Miami and San Juan as world cities rather than New Orleans, Santo Domingo, or Caracas. Both San Juan and Miami were symbolic showcases of capitalism and geopolitical strategic places during the cold war. These factors partly contributed to the physical infrastructure, political stability, and social networks linked to the Caribbean Basin, which later served transnational and ﬁnancial capitals for their functions of management and control. By not linking the local transformations of Miami to the urban restructuring of Caribbean peripheral cities, or vice versa, previous studies have provided a limited and fragmented view of the urban processes in the region. Miami is not even mentioned in studies about urbanization processes in the Caribbean (for example, Hope 1985; Portes and Lungo 1992; Cross 1979; Potter 1989). These studies reiﬁed nation-state boundaries by not conceptualizing Caribbean cities as a city system. In contrast, the world-city approach provides a more comprehensive explanation for the region’s urban transformations.

pa rt t wo

Puerto Rican Migration and the Caribbean Diapora in the United States

chapter 3

Migration and Geopolitics in the Greater Antilles From the Cold War to the Post–Cold War

[I]n the struggle for the production and imposition of the legitimate vision of the social world, the holders of bureaucratic authority never establish an absolute monopoly, even when they add the authority of science to their bureaucratic authority, as government economists do. In fact, there are always . . . conﬂicts between symbolic powers that aim at imposing the vision of legitimate divisions. . . . Symbolic power, in this sense, is a power of “world making.” . . . Symbolic power has to be based on the possession of symbolic capital. The power to impose upon other minds a vision, old or new, of social divisions depends upon the authority acquired in previous struggles. Symbolic capital is a credit; it is the power granted to those who have obtained sufficient recognition to be in a position to impose recognition. Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words

Caribbean migration has been conceptualized in recent historicalstructural theories as a labor migration that responds to the needs of capital accumulation in the core of the world-economy. The spatial unit within which migration occurs is the world-system, characterized by its axial international division of labor between core, peripheral, and semiperipheral areas that cut across nations and regions. Labor mobility is a systemic feature, especially in those peripheral regions where core capital penetration has produced important transformations in the traditional forms of local production. Historical-structural approaches have correctly expressed that the migration process occurs within a single 103

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overarching capitalist world-economy wherein world-systemic processes beyond the actors’ control condition the migration process (Portes 1978; Petras 1981; Portes and Walton 1981). The limitation of this approach lies in its overemphasis on the economic aspects of the core-periphery relationship. Although this conceptualization is superior to push-pull migration theories and to the human capital approach, which conceptualizes migration at the nation-state and individual level, it still misses an important structure of the world-system: the geopolitical strategies of the interstate system (see Wallerstein 1984). Caribbean migration and other migrations such as the Southeast Asian migration (for example, Vietnamese, Cambodian) have been determined not only by capital accumulation but also by geopolitical relationships at the world-system level. Recent developments in the policy of the United States toward the Caribbean exemplify the interfacing of migration and geopolitics. The reversal of the cold war policies toward Cuban refugees and the U.S. intervention in Haiti are crucially linked to the emergence of post–cold war security strategies. However, to understand these new events one must understand the historical relationship between migration and geopolitics in the Caribbean. Geopolitics has been one of the main factors that has historically fostered Caribbean mass migration to the metropoles. The interstate system is one of the crucial determinants of Caribbean migration; it contains U.S. geopolitical strategies and migration processes in Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.

brief theoretical overview The recent literature on labor migration has moved away from the classical equilibrium theory, which stated that migration occurs between two separate/autonomous societies where workers’ motivations to emigrate from the “backward” countries are built on a rational calculation of the economic advantages of migrating to the most “advanced” countries. This image, based on the free-market metaphor of rational calculation among individuals, is contradicted by the fact that the poorest countries in the world are not necessarily the ones that export most of their labor. As Portes and Walton said: Sustained labor migration requires the penetration of the political and economic institutions of the dominant unit—nation-state or region—into the subordinate one. This penetration creates imbalances between sectors and institutions of the subordinate unit, which lead eventually to labor displace-

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ment. Imbalances are induced from the outside, but become internal to the structure of the weaker societies. These internal imbalances, not invidious comparisons with the wealth of more developed regions, are what underlie sustained processes of labor migration. . . . Imbalancing of peripheral societies can take many forms—from deliberate measures to produce labor migration to displacements which are the unintended consequence of other forms of penetration. (1981: 31–32)

Portes and Walton illustrate these imbalances with examples of political and economic inducements of labor migration. Core penetration of peripheral areas creates imbalances that induce labor migration. Transnational corporations and state policies such as taxation can induce labor migration in the periphery. However, an important mechanism of inducement of labor migration overlooked by Portes and Walton (1981) is core-state geopolitical strategies. Peripheral regions with strategic military/security importance for core states, such as the Caribbean for the United States, experienced many instances of labor migration induced by military or political intervention in the internal affairs of a peripheral state. The purpose of these strategies is either to obtain political stability or military security or to gain symbolic/ideological capital. To understand this point, it is important to reconceptualize the concept of geopolitics. Geopolitics is often conceptualized as either an instrument of capital accumulation or as a military/security issue. The former tends to reduce geopolitical dynamics in the interstate system to the capital accumulation interest of multinational corporations, while the latter limits the scope of states’ geopolitical strategies to only military interests. By contrast, the problem with economic reductionism is that not all geopolitical strategies respond directly to economic interests. Geopolitical strategies can serve or hinder capitalist investments depending on the historicalstructural context of the world-system. Although accumulation and geopolitical strategies interface with each other (that is, state geopolitical strategies are constrained by economic resources and capital accumulation strategies need politico-military stability), state geopolitical interests are semiautonomous from economic relations and thus cannot be fully reduced to the logic of capital accumulation. By contrast, military reductionism in conceptualizations of geopolitics underestimates the interplay between capital accumulation and military geopolitics by limiting the scope of geopolitical strategies to issues of military security. There is a second component to state geopolitical strategies often ignored by military reductionist positions: ideological/symbolic strategies. These

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ideological/symbolic geopolitical strategies attempt to gain symbolic capital vis-à-vis competing states. Symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977) is a strategy for accumulating a capital of prestige and honor in the interstate system. Usually core states develop symbolic capital strategies by showcasing a peripheral country or an ethnic group as opposed to a challenging peripheral country or ethnic group. These strategies are economically expensive because they entail the investment of capital in different forms such as gifts, credits, aid, and assistance programs. Nevertheless, symbolic proﬁts can translate into economic proﬁts in the long run. As Bourdieu said, “When one knows that symbolic capital is credit, but in the broadest sense, a kind of advance, a credence, that only the group’s belief can grant those who give it the best symbolic and material guarantees, it can be seen that the exhibition of symbolic capital (which is always very expensive in material terms) is one of the mechanisms which (no doubt universally) make capital go to capital” (1990: 120). Some of the recent “new economic sociology” literature reduces social relations to micronetworks, erasing the global political and ideological determinants of the migrants’ labor market incorporation. It reproduces the premises of the “culture of poverty” theory, but with a fancier terminology. For example, Portes and Sesenbrenner (1993) reduce the understanding of the “success” of the Cubans in comparison to the Puerto Ricans in the U.S. labor market to the former’s “positive social capital” and the latter’s “negative social capital.” As an important strategic location for U.S. military/security interests, the Greater Antilles were directly affected by a diversity of geopolitical strategies during the cold war. Puerto Rico was transformed into a positive symbolic showcase of the U.S. development model for the Third World; Cuba suffered a trade embargo as part of a strategy to transform it into a negative symbolic showcase of the Soviet model of development in the region; the Dominican Republic was militarily invaded by the United States, which feared another Cuba in the Western Hemisphere; and Haiti’s Duvalier dictatorship received continued support from the United States because it was considered an anticommunist state that guaranteed U.S. security interests in the region. These geopolitical strategies were predominantly symbolic/ideological in the case of Cuba/Puerto Rico, military/security in the case of the Dominican Republic/Haiti, and a combination of both during the United States destabilization policies toward Jamaica’s Manley regime in the 1970s. These diverse geopolitical strategies developed by the United States, the hegemonic power during the cold war, resulted in different migration processes and policies for

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each peripheral state. “Policy” is understood here in the broad sense used by Aristide Zolberg (1978), which includes the absence of speciﬁc legislation through permissive indifference as well as administrative practices related to incentives and sanctions. This is not an argument for geopolitical determinism, but rather for enriching the historical-structural approach, which has traditionally emphasized economic relations when attempting to understand Caribbean migration. In sum, three global logics articulate the world-system dynamics: the capital accumulation logic, the military/security geopolitical logic, and the ideological/symbolic geopolitical logic (Grosfoguel 1994). These logics in reality operate as one single process, but it is important to establish these distinctions for analytical purposes. The dominance of one logic over another is contingent on the historical context of the worldsystemic dynamics. In the postwar Caribbean, depending on the particular historical and political conditions of the peripheral state under discussion, one of these logics dominated the core-periphery relationship. This chapter discusses in detail two of these global logics—the symbolic geopolitical logic and the military geopolitical logic—as they have affected postwar Caribbean migration processes.1

the cold war era Puerto Rican Migration Immediately after the Second World War newly independent countries emerged in the periphery of the world-economy. National liberation movements defeated the centuries-old European colonial administrations. The interstate system was divided in two spheres of inﬂuence: the United States and the Soviet Union. The major preoccupation of the superpowers toward the periphery was how to control the elites of the newly independent countries if the old colonial means of domination had been destroyed. The Truman administration’s response to this challenge 1. A discussion about the articulation of the three global logics as they determine Caribbean migration is beyond the scope of this chapter. Capital accumulation logic has been extensively discussed in the migration literature. However, discussions about how geopolitical logics affect migration have been limited. Thus, this chapter’s purpose is to demonstrate how symbolic geopolitical logic and military/security logic have affected Caribbean migration. These geopolitical strategies have affected in different ways the migration processes in other parts of the world, such as the cases of Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees. However, the discussion of these cases would require another chapter. For further discussion of the articulation of these global logics as they relate to the worldcity literature, see Grosfoguel 1994.

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was to develop the most ambitious foreign aid and technical-training programs to ideologically co-opt Third World elites. The purpose of these programs was to increase the symbolic capital of the U.S. model of development vis-à-vis that of the Soviet model. One of these was the Point Four Program run by the U.S. State Department. The Point Four program was established to give Third World elites technical skills in order to purportedly help them break the chains of underdevelopment. Needless to say, the underlying agenda of the curriculum was propaganda favoring the American way of life. As part of a long negotiation process between the Truman administration and Muñoz’s colonial government in Puerto Rico during the late 1940s, the international training ground for the Point Four Program was located in San Juan (Grosfoguel 1992). The idea was to transform Puerto Rico into a symbolic showcase of the American capitalist model of development for the Third World. But in order to use San Juan without causing major embarrassment to the U.S. government, it was necessary to eliminate San Juan’s huge shanty towns (50 percent of the housing in 1950), improve the economic conditions of the islanders (most people lived under conditions of extreme poverty), and conceal Puerto Rico’s colonial status. Thus, as part of the late 1940s Truman-Muñoz negotiations, they agreed to: 1. Conceal the colonial status of the island by creating a more subtle form of colonial relationship called the Commonwealth. 2. Include Puerto Rico in U.S. federal programs for health, education, housing, and other infrastructural programs without its paying federal taxes. 3. Support Operation Bootstrap, which consisted of attracting U.S. labor-intensive industries by offering tax-exemptions and a cheap-wage labor force. 4. Reduce the cost of air fares between the island and the mainland to foster mass migration. (Grosfoguel 1992) In a short visit to Puerto Rico while these negotiations were taking place, President Truman said: I believe very strongly in local self-government, and the nomination of an island-born Governor was a signiﬁcant step toward the increasing measure of self-government in Puerto Rico to which we are all committed. . . . This is a relationship which is mutually beneﬁcial. It is the democratic way of

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collaboration between friendly peoples. It represents what the American people are trying to encourage in the world at large. . . . Your program of industrial and agricultural development . . . [and] your program of training and placement for young men and women who wish to go to the mainland are all highly resourceful and give to the continental United States and to all the world an example of American democracy working effectively to meet and solve its problems. . . . Within this framework, the peoples of Puerto Rico and the mainland have a unique demonstration for the world. Differing languages and differing cultural backgrounds are not an obstacle to democratic unity. (1964: 154; emphasis added)

Puerto Rico became part of the core-state’s geopolitical symbolic strategy to gain symbolic capital vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. For the next twenty years more than thirty thousand members of the Third World elites visited the island and stayed from six months to two years as part of the Point Four Program. The visitors were shown the industrialization program, the housing projects, the health system, and other construction work. The purpose was that the Third World elites would return to their countries and sell the Puerto Rican model to their fellow citizens. Important here is that the condition of possibility for this geopolitical symbolic strategy of showcasing Puerto Rico was to encourage the migration of the poorest sectors of Puerto Rican society to the urban areas of the United States. Puerto Ricans formed the great majority of the Caribbean migrants to the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. It is true that after the Second World War there was a large demand for cheap labor for manufacturing industries in urban centers such as New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. However, to understand why Puerto Ricans rather than Jamaicans or Cubans ﬁlled these positions at that time, it is important to understand the geopolitical strategies of the United States and Puerto Rico’s concomitant role. The emigration of the lower strata of the island made possible the showcasing of Puerto Rico to the extent that it allowed the upward mobility of those who stayed. The Truman administration provided one of the most important institutional mechanisms for the “highly resourceful” placement of young men and women “who wish to go to the mainland”: the reduction of airfares between the island and the mainland. This was done through pressures on the Federal Aviation Administration to set low rates for air transportation between the island and the United States as well as to foster as much competition as possible to destroy the virtual monopoly of Pan American over this air route (Padilla 1987; U.S. Dept. of the Interior 1949). The

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Migration Division of Puerto Rico’s Department of Labor organized the migration of thousands of Puerto Rican workers. This office received federal funding for the massive recruitment of Puerto Rican workers (Lapp 1990). The model worked during the 1950–70 period, creating the ﬁrst mass airway migration in world history. Approximately seven hundred thousand Puerto Ricans, mostly rural unskilled workers (Friedlander 1965; Levine 1987; Gray 1966; Senior and Watkins 1966; Lapp 1990), migrated to the mainland in those twenty years. Since the Puerto Rican showcase was directed at islanders and not migrants, U.S. state resources were channeled to the former, not the latter. Those who migrated did not receive the proper state support in bilingual programs, education, health, housing subsidies, and job training. They ended up in the metropoles’ urban ghettos as unskilled low-wage workers with one of the highest poverty rates in the United States. The Cuban Refugees The emergence of the Cuban revolution led to a major transformation in the ethnic composition of Caribbean migration to the United States. Cuban political refugees represented the highest number of Caribbean migrants during the 1960s and 1970s. The Cuban revolution changed the relation of forces in the Caribbean. The materialization of the United States government’s worst fears concerning the cold war was now only 90 miles away from its shores. This created a new geopolitical situation where the primary objective of the United States was to destroy the Cuban government through military means. In this sense, the initial interest in stimulating the migration of Cuban refugees was threefold: ﬁrst, to organize a military force composed of Cuban exiles for what came to be known as the Bay of Pigs intervention; second, to stimulate the migration of the professional and managerial class as a way of destabilizing the Cuban economy; and third, to embarrass the Cuban government. The military defeat at the Bay of Pigs and the secret United StatesSoviet agreements during the 1962 missile crisis marked a shift in U.S. geopolitical strategies toward Cuba from military to ideologicalsymbolic concerns.2 The United States now wanted to transform Cuba

2. In exchange for the Soviet withdrawal of missiles from Cuba, the United States agreed not to militarily attack Cuba. See the declassiﬁed letters of October 27–28, 1963, between Kennedy and Krushchev, reprinted in Chang and Kornbluh 1993: 197–98, 223–32.

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into a negative showcase by imposing a trade embargo that would limit its trade with the Western Hemisphere. As George W. Ball, undersecretary of the State Department, declared in 1964: [W]e must actively pursue measures against Cuba. . . . In this effort we are exploiting the propaganda potential to the fullest. But an information program must be regarded primarily as a supplement to substantive policies. Given the present limits of action, we must rely, as our major instrument, on a systematic program of economic denial. This is the only policy—short of the use of force—that gives promise of having a signiﬁcant impact on Cuba and its continuance as a Communist base in the Western Hemisphere. . . . In discussing the effectiveness of this program, let us make one point quite clear. We have never contended that a program of economic denial— short of an act of war such as a military blockade that would cut off bloc as well as free-world trade—is likely by itself to bring down the present Cuban regime. The objectives which this program can accomplish are more limited. They are four: First—and most important—to demonstrate to the peoples of the American Republics that Communism has no future in the Western Hemisphere; Second, to make plain to the people of Cuba and to elements of the power structure of the regime that the present regime cannot serve their interests; Third, to reduce the will and ability of the present Cuban regime to export subversion and violence to the other American states; Fourth, to increase the cost to the Soviet Union of maintaining a Communist outpost in the Western Hemisphere. Those are the objectives which we seek to achieve by a program of economic denial against Cuba. (U.S. Dept. of State 1964)

This shift affected the role of Cuban refugees in the United States. Rather than continuing to see Cuban refugees as a temporary migration for military purposes, the U.S. government began to see Cuban refugees as a potential symbolic showcase that could ideologically inﬂuence the Cubans who remained in Cuba as well as other Caribbean and Latin American peoples. Cuban refugees became an example of the superiority of capitalism over socialism (Prieto 1984; Pedraza-Bailey 1985b; Grosfoguel 1994). The success of Cubans in the United States was crucial for the United States to gain symbolic capital vis-à-vis the Soviet model. Thus, massive state resources were channeled to the refugees. Cuban refugees received welfare payments, job training, bilingual-language programs, educational support, subsidized college loans, health care services, help in job search efforts, and money for resettling out of Miami through the Cuban Refugee Program under the Health, Education and

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Welfare Department (HEW) of the United States. As President Kennedy stated regarding a bill on the reorganization and reenactment of refugee aid legislation: [T]he proposed bill . . . also includes a general authorization for the United States Escapee Program, the program for assisting the Cuban refugees, and similar programs for refugees, escapees, and selected persons whom the President may determine from time to time should be helped in the interest of the United States. . . . From the earliest days of our history, this land has been a refuge for the oppressed and it is proper that we now, as decendants of refugees and immigrants, continue our long humanitarian tradition of helping those who are forced to ﬂee to maintain their lives as individual, self-sufficient human beings in freedom, respect, dignity, and health. It is, moreover, decidedly to the political interests of the United States that we maintain and continue to enhance our prestige and leadership in this respect. . . . With the enactment by the Congress of the requisite authorization and appropriation legislation for these programs, the Department of State will continue its responsibilities for overseas refugee activities and the assistance programs for the Cuban refugees in the United States will continue to be a responsibility of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. (Kennedy 1962: 296–97, emphasis added)

The services Cubans received were superior to what was available for other immigrants at the time, or, for that matter, citizens or residents of the United States (Dominguez 1992: 31). They were the only ethnic group in the United States that received welfare “European style.” This massive assistance increased after 1965 when President Johnson created a task force that included the Departments of State, Labor, Agriculture, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and the Small Business Administration to coordinate federal assistance to avoid placing a burden on the Dade County (Miami) community where these refugees were concentrated as well as on other communities where they were resettled (see Johnson 1966; Miami News 1966). This local assistance was channeled to the Cubans. For example, the Small Business Administration in Miami gave Cubans 66 percent of its total loans between 1968 and 1979, compared to a mere 8 percent of loans given to African-Americans during that same period (Grosfoguel 1994: 358–59). In only ﬁfteen years, between 1961 and 1974, Cubans (numbering approximately seven hundred thousand by 1975 [Boswell and Curtis 1984]) received approximately $1.3 billion in welfare assistance, which was close to half of the total amount of U.S. foreign aid to Brazil (a country of more than one hundred million people) between 1945 and 1983 (thirty-eight years) (U.S. Bureau of the

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Census 1984: 810). Thus, contrary to the microreductionist approaches (Portes and Sesenbrenner 1993; Portes and Stepick 1993) that attempt to explain the “Cuban success story” in terms of the micronetworks that fostered “positive social capital,” Cubans improved their labor market incorporation and increased their number of entrepreneurs through the direct assistance (welfare “European style”) of the U.S. government. This privileged treatment can be accounted for by the geopolitical symbolic strategies of the cold war. As Pedraza-Bailey states: While the Cuban state utilized the exodus to externalize dissent, on our shores the question remains: Why should the United States so eagerly receive the exiles? Because in America during the Cold War years, all the political migrations—the Hungarians, Koreans, Berliners, and Cubans— served a symbolic function. When West and East contested the superiority of their political and economic system, the political exiles who succeeded in the ﬂight to freedom became touching symbols around which to weave the legitimacy needed for foreign policy. (1985b: 154)

In sum, the privileged mode of incorporation for the Cuban refugees is the result of U.S. efforts to accrue a capital of prestige and honor in the world-system vis-à-vis the Soviets.

The Geopolitics of the Dominican and Haitian Migration During the Trujillo dictatorship Dominican migration to the United States was limited (Grasmuck and Pessar 1991). Only after the 1961 U.S.-backed military coup against Trujillo did emigration take off. The out-migration process was politically induced by the elites of the United States and the Dominican Republic given their perception of emigration as a safety valve against social unrest and political instability. Several studies on Dominican migration have mentioned this geopolitical strategy designed to perpetuate a stable pro-U.S. government (Bray 1984: 221; Báez-Evertz and D’Oleo Ramírez 1986: 19; Castro 1985; Mitchell 1992: 89–123; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991: 31–33). It is important to remember that these were the years of the Cuban revolution and that U.S. foreign policy toward the Caribbean concentrated on avoiding another Castro-style regime (Grasmuck and Pessar 1991: 32–33). John Bartlow Martin, the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic at the time, provides the clearest evidence to support this argument. In a fascinating political autobiography about the 1962–63 events in the Dominican Republic, Martin said:

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The riots mounted. Cautiously, the Consejo [the Council of State] began to deport agitators under the Emergency Law. The Castro/Communists denounced it in the name of freedom. So did the political parties, seeking votes of deportees’ relatives. And we became involved—we had to issue U.S. visas for people that the Consejo deported to the United States. So the Castro/Communists denounced us too. Sometimes Amiama or Imbert [the military leaders] would simply send a man’s passport to our Consulate for a visa. I told them they must give us forty-eight hours’ notice so we could check the man. I took personal charge of all such visa requests. . . . The Consejo forbade airlines and steamships to sell returning tickets. It had already asked us to impose departure controls on people deported to the United States—that is, to keep them there. (1966: 99–100) Few Dominicans had known that the United States had cooperated, at the Consejo’s request, by refusing to permit the deportees to leave the United States. . . . We had imposed departure controls to help maintain stability so elections could be held. (1966: 347–48)

Nevertheless, the out-migration consisted not just of activists but of thousands of Dominicans from middle sectors of the working class (Bray 1984; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991), which were the social bases of the political opposition. The political situation was increasingly unstable. This is how Martin describes it: Our Consulate was far from the Embassy, in the center of the city. Dominicans by the thousands were still trying to get U.S. visas. Trujillo fallen, they were free to go. . . . The Consulate had a backlog of thousands of applications for visas, a waiting period of months. Every morning by 10 a.m. applicants formed a line four abreast from the sidewalk around the corner into the building and upstairs to the office, jamming the stairway, standing in the fetid heat pressed tightly together. Police could not keep order. Every time a turba erupted, it hit the Consulate, for the consulate was on the line of march from the old Spanish quarter near the waterfront up to the Palace on the hill. Rioters found ready recruits among hundreds of disgruntled people waiting in line. So day after day turbas turned into fullﬂedged anti-American riots at the Consulate, and on some days it almost seemed to me that the young vice consuls spent more time throwing tear gas out the windows than issuing visas. I cabled and telephoned the [State] Department repeatedly, trying to move the Consulate and get more vice consuls. (1966: 98)

At a 1962 meeting with State Department Secretary Dean Rusk in Washington, they took several important measures to achieve political stability in the Dominican Republic. One of these measures was to accelerate the processing of visas, which would increase the ﬂow of outmigration for the next two decades. As Ambassador Martin remembers,

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“I described the visa mess—incredibly, I had to ask the Secretary himself to resolve it. He was wholly sympathetic, and said we should send a planeload of young visa officers to the Republic immediately. . . . We got what we needed—a new Consulate building out at the Fairgrounds, far from downtown Santo Domingo, three extra vice consuls, and a new consul. . . . By the fall the visa uproar had ended” (1966: 120). As a result of this increase of vice consuls and removal of the consulate from downtown Santo Domingo to a place where visa lines were less visible, visas issued by the U.S. Consulate almost tripled between 1962 and 1963 (Mitchell 1992: 93). The issuance of visas increased from 1,789 in 1961 to 9,857 in 1963 (Mitchell 1992: 93). As part of the strategy to contain the emergence of another Cuba in the Caribbean, U.S. military forces invaded the Dominican Republic to defeat the Constitutionalists’ forces in 1965. Political stability and military security became a high priority for U.S. foreign policy toward the Dominican Republic. The amount of out-migration multiplied after the U.S. military intervention. Dominicans legally admitted to the United States jumped from 9,504 in 1965 to 16,503 in 1966. From 1961 to 1965, 35,372 Dominicans were legally admitted to the United States. During the 1966–70 post-invasion period the number of legally admitted Dominicans increased to 58,744 (Grasmuck and Pessar 1991: 20). This coincided with the new Immigration Act of 1965, which facilitated immigration to the United States. However, compared to other countries in the Western Hemisphere, the Dominican Republic (with a total population of less than ﬁve million people) has one of the highest rates of legal immigration to the United States. This correlation between political instability and migration has also been documented in the Haitian migration (Stepick 1992; Loescher and Scalan 1984; DeWind 1990). During the early years of the Duvalier regime the political dissidents and persecuted mulatto upper classes comprised most of the 1958–63 Haitian immigration to the United States. Black middle classes began to leave as a result of the dictatorship’s post1964 repression (Stepick 1992: 128; Loescher and Scanlan 1984: 319). Cold war considerations underpinned U.S. policies. As Alex Stepick states: Despite the size of the Haitian community in New York City and the fact that a substantial number appear to be in the country illegally, this immigration was never deﬁned as a political problem and has received little public attention. In Haiti, U.S. consular officers readily approved nonimmigrant Haitian visas, and virtually all of these immigrants arrived legally via

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airplanes. Many subsequently overstayed their visas, but the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) did not pursue their cases; in contrast to later policies toward Haitians who arrived by boat in south Florida, a few were deported. The U.S. tacit welcoming of Haitian immigration was at least partially conditioned by U.S. foreign policy toward Haiti at the end of the 1950s and in the early 1960s. The Eisenhower administration, fearing another Cuba and feeling no one other than Duvalier would be more stable, gave early support to the Haitian regime. (1992: 129)

Despite the Kennedy administration’s concern with the dictatorial regime’s human rights record, Duvalier managed to survive U.S. sanctions by becoming a strong cold war ally in the Western Hemisphere. During the Cuban missile crisis the Duvalier regime offered Haiti’s harbors to the United States and provided the crucial vote to expel Cuba from the Organization of American States (OAS). The Johnson administration was not concerned with violations of human rights. During the years of the Johnson administration, Haitian immigration increased from a yearly average of 1,400 legal immigrants and 3,750 nonimmigrants admitted during the Kennedy administration to an average of 4,153 legal immigrants and 10,390 nonimmigrants admitted per year (Stepick 1992: 130). Thousands of the nonimmigrants admitted stayed after the expiration of their visas, becoming illegal migrants in the United States. During the Nixon administration Haitian temporary and permanent migration to the United States became more difficult. Although the Nixon administration increased U.S. economic and military support for the Haitian regime, they had more restrictions regarding migration. Temporary migrants had to provide stronger proof of their future return to Haiti, and permanent migrants had to prove they had a job in the United States (Stepick 1992: 133). It remained in the geopolitical interest of the United States to encourage the Haitian migration, as it had been in the 1950s and 1960s, but there were other considerations that played a role against the continuation of this policy. First, the class composition of the Haitian migration began to include unskilled workers who were perceived as creating a burden for the United States given the economic crisis in the early 1970s. Second, and even more important, racism against Haitians has a long tradition dating to the nineteenth century in the United States. Haiti’s successful slave revolt, the ﬁrst in the world, was the nightmare of last century’s Southern white planters. The prejudices against Haitians emerged once again with the 1970s’ economic crisis.

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The perception was that an increase in the black population could increase the burden on the local communities where they settled. To bring more Haitian immigrants was certainly not an attractive or popular measure given this racist perception. The restrictions on legal migration from Haiti produced an increase in unregulated migration of Haitian boat people during the 1970s. The Haitian government stimulated these outﬂows as a safety valve against political turmoil. Estimates state that ﬁfty to seventy thousand Haitian boat people arrived in Miami during the 1977–81 period (Stepick 1993: 58). Many Haitians were placed in detention camps, and others were deported. By 1980, the contradictions in the discriminatory treatment toward Haitian immigrants became obvious during the massive migration of Cuban Mariel boat people. Although many Haitians claimed to be ﬂeeing the political repression of “Baby Doc” Duvalier and many Cubans claimed to be escaping harsh economic conditions, the U.S. government deﬁned Cubans as political refugees to be granted legal status immediately and deﬁned Haitians as economic migrants to be detained indeﬁnitely or processed for deportation. Since a few months earlier Carter had signed the Refugee Act of 1980 promising to eliminate the U.S. bias in favor of refugees ﬂeeing communism at the expense of refugees escaping friendly authoritarian regimes, the Carter administration was accused of hypocrisy, ideological bias, discrimination, and racism against the Haitian refugees at the domestic and international level. These accusations jeopardized the Carter administration rhetoric regarding human rights and its domestic political alliance with African-Americans, obliging the White House to become directly involved in Haitian migration to the United States for the ﬁrst time. Carter “solved” the problem by granting temporary legal status to both Cubans and Haitians rather than refugee status. However, Cuban boat people were able to receive permanent resident status through the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 (Stepick 1992: 141). Although Carter never ofﬁcially accepted that Haitians were political refugees and never offered them permanent status, he did guarantee certain rights for Haitian boat people who arrived before October 10, 1980 (Stepick 1992: 141). Although many Haitians arrived after that date, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) did not take any action against them despite the fact that they were technically not covered by the Carter administration’s measures. The Reagan administration marked a reversal of certain liberal policies put forward during the last months of the Carter administration.

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Reagan implemented the following measures toward the Haitians: the detention without parole of new arrivals; the interdiction of Haitian boat people in the ocean and their forced return to Haiti; and an agreement with the Haitian government to stop the refugee ﬂow (Stepick 1992: 142). These policies were promoted by the Florida congressional delegation and sectors of the Cuban-American community through the Chamber of Commerce (DeWind 1990: 127; Stepick 1992: 155). They all feared Haitian immigrants for racist and economic reasons. But the Reagan administration’s discriminatory policies toward the Haitian refugees also involved geopolitical reasoning to the extent that the new measures were not extended to Cuban refugees. New York representative to Congress Shirley Chisholm said in a congressional hearing about Cuban and Haitian refugees: Our problems . . . with ﬁrst asylum issues, largely stem from our political inability to accept this deﬁnition without political qualiﬁcations. As a country, the United States has been far more interested . . . in responding to refugee concerns when we gain some political beneﬁt than addressing deepseated humanitarian need. In fact, only in the case of Cubans, and to a lesser extent, Nicaraguans, has the United States responded positively to its obligation as a country of ﬁrst asylum. In both cases, we perceived that it was in our political interest to accept Cubans as refugees and to grant extended voluntary departure to Nicaraguans. For example, Haitian political prisoners who were released from prison through the intervention of former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, were dissuaded by our own State Department officials from applying for political asylum in the United States. In this instance we obviously saw no political gains from accepting Haitian political prisoners. Geopolitical considerations reveal far more about why we have prejudged Haitian asylum claims as somewhat frivolous in some respects, and rejected Salvadoreans as refugees than any other explanation. These considerations then begin to raise the question generally of whether we have equal application of refugee laws or differential treatment. (U.S. Senate 1981: 110)

The revival of the cold war during the early years of the Reagan administration is crucial to understanding this double standard. Haitians were ﬂeeing a friendly authoritarian regime, which, after all, was a loyal U.S. ally in the struggle to contain communism in the region. To declare them political refugees would imply a denunciation of the Duvalier regime. Unlike the Haitian boat people, Cuban refugees were ﬂeeing a regime that, in the eyes of the Reagan administration, was causing the spread of communism in Central America and small Caribbean states

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such as Grenada. The Reagan administration policy of receiving Cubans with open arms was a reenactment of the old geopolitical strategy to symbolically capitalize on refugees ﬂeeing communism. In sum, geopolitical considerations have been a crucial determinant of U.S. policies toward Dominican and Haitian migration. In the Haitian case, there is also a strong racist element. However, in the interplay between racism and geopolitical considerations, geopolitical considerations dominated the U.S. policy of not extending refugee rights to the Haitians. Josh DeWind rightly states this case: U.S. foreign policy shaped the INS’s treatment of Haitians even more than domestic concerns or racism. The Assistant Secretary of State, Thomas Enders, defended the distinct treatment of Cubans and Haitians by appealing to the “foreign policy aspects” of the two migrations. The Cubans, he explained, had been forced out by a totalitarian and unfriendly government, while the Haitians had chosen to come here from a country whose “friendly government . . . wishes to cooperate with the United States in bringing illegal migration under control.” The United States . . . supported the Haitian government because it was an ally against communism. . . . Haiti also has strategic geopolitical importance because of its proximity to Cuba and because its undeveloped port, Mole St. Nicholas, could become a military base if the United States Navy is forced to leave Guantanamo when its lease with Cuba expires. . . . Maintaining the political collaboration of the Duvalier regime became the primary motive for the United States’ refusal to recognize the legitimacy of Haitians’ claims that they were persecuted by their government. . . . In order to keep the Haitian government as an anticommunist ally, the United States was willing to overlook persistent violations of human rights and persecution that forced many Haitians to ﬂee their homeland. (1990: 129)

Jamaican Migration Since the 1965 Immigration Act, Jamaica has had a steady migration in large numbers to the United States. Much of the increased migration to the United States compensated for restrictive legislation passed in 1962 in Great Britain, which was host for Jamaican labor migration during the 1950s and early 1960s. The post-1962 geopolitical shift from a British colony to a nation-state transformed the direction of the migration ﬂow from Great Britain to the United States. An important feature of Jamaican migration to the United States is the large numbers of professionals and skilled laborers compared to other immigrants from the Caribbean (Portes and Grosfoguel 1994). However, the dramatic increase in the numbers of these highly skilled migrants in the late 1970s is related to geopolitical issues.

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During the 1970s the Manley regime attempted to establish a democratic socialist society. His administration increased the taxes to the U.S. transnational corporations involved in the exploitation of Jamaica’s bauxite and opened relations with Cuba. A “strike of capital” (Mandle 1982) and a destabilization campaign by the United States allied to the local opposition (Ambursley 1983; Beckford and Wicker 1982; Manley 1982; Payne 1984) was orchestrated a few months before Manley’s reelection in December 1976. This strategy had the effect of decreasing dramatically the net direct investment of the country from $164.4 million in 1970 to –25 million in 1978 (Mandle 1982). This economic stranglehold together with propaganda linking Manley with communism fostered a massive migration by the most educated and skilled sectors in the country. According to the INS, during the 1970s 40 percent of Jamaican legal immigrants were from the professional, technical, managerial, and administrative occupational backgrounds (Portes and Grosfoguel 1994: 58). Between 1970 and 1976, only 16.4 percent (6,403 people) of the total migrant workforce to the United States were upperlevel labor migrants such as professionals, technicians, or managers (my own calculations from Cooper 1985: 737). Between 1977 and 1979 this ﬁgure increased to 27.8 percent (6,615 people). In three years Jamaica suffered from a severe “brain drain” that affected even more its economic performance. This jump in the numbers of educated and highly skilled workers needs to be contextualized within the U.S. geopolitical strategies during the cold war. The United States was worried about another Chile, that is, a socialist regime elected through democratic means. Once Manley was reelected in 1976, the United States rehearsed some of the destabilization strategies it had exercised earlier against the Allende regime in Chile. In addition to the economic “strike of capital,” another strategy was to provoke anticommunist hysteria in the middle classes jointly with the “vote with their feet” strategy against communist regimes. These destabilization strategies in turn affected the economic performance of the country and fostered the migration of the more skilled and educated labor (Manley 1982). The last four years of the Manley administration were an economic disaster, and the country teetered on the edge of a civil war. Finally, in 1980 Manley lost the election to the neoliberal Edward Seaga. The Seaga administration was transformed by the Reagan administration into a showcase of neoliberal capitalist policies vis-à-vis the Grenadian revolutionary regime in the English Caribbean. There was a U.S. interest in turning Jamaica into the “Taiwan of the Caribbean,” that

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is, a symbolic showcase of capitalist development. Thus, Seaga’s liberal and anticommunist rhetoric was rewarded with the following (see Payne 1988):3 1. One of the highest per capita economic U.S. aid packages in the world ($600 million between 1981 and 1985, or 75 percent of the total U.S. aid to Jamaica between 1946 and 1985), second only to Israel. 2. The Reagan administration used its inﬂuence to secure funds for Jamaica through multinational institutions. 3. Favorable IMF conditions and concessions from other lending institutions, which had no comparison with any other country in the region: (a) elimination of currency devaluation; (b) elimination of wage and price controls; (c) elimination of restrictions on private-sector borrowing; (d) placement of a ceiling on government borrowing abroad allowed loans to reﬁnance existing debts and loans from foreign governments or multilateral lending organizations; (e) approval of support despite not passing IMF quarterly tests; (f) approval of rescheduling for debt payments to private and bilateral creditors ($1.3 billion between 1981 and 1986); and (g) concession of nearly $2 billion of concessionary ﬁnancing from all sources between 1981 and 1984. 4. The Reagan administration cushioned the impact of the world recession on Jamaica’s bauxite industry by purchasing this mineral for the U.S. government stockpile at a time when adequate stocks were at hand. 5. The establishment of a U.S.-Jamaica business committee led by David Rockefeller, who was invited at Reagan’s personal request. Overall, this favorable international environment toward the Seaga administration alongside Seaga’s dogmatic attachment to neoliberal development policies made Jamaica a test case of the neoliberal development recipe for the Third World countries during the 1981–88 period.

3. For a discussion about Seaga’s privileged treatment by the Reagan administration and the international community while Jamaica was in the middle of the debt crisis, see Payne 1988.

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Nevertheless, even with the billions of dollars received from the IMF loans and U.S. foreign aid, the Jamaican economy never recovered from the late 1970s crisis. The symbolic importance of the Seaga administration faded away with the military intervention in Grenada and Perestroika in the Soviet Union. Migration from all sectors of society increased during the 1980s; however, large numbers of migrants continued to come from the upper and middle sectors of the Jamaican society.

the post–cold war era Once the Soviet Union stopped its confrontational policies during Perestroika and later collapsed, U.S. migration policies toward the Caribbean were no longer determined by the cold war geopolitical context. Migration policies began to reﬂect domestic economic priorities. The late 1980s economic crisis created a xenophobic and racist environment in all the Western capitalist powers (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991). In Europe and the United States, the increase in unemployment rates and the decline in incomes has been perceived as “foreign immigrants taking the jobs away from white populations” rather than a crisis of the capitalist world-economy. Scapegoating has become a dominant ideological trend and an easy way to explain the decline in the economic performance of the advanced capitalist metropoles. In Europe, white discontent is channeled against North African immigrants, and in the United States whites blame Caribbean and Mexican immigrants for their misfortunes.4 Algerians and Moroccans in France suffer xenophobic discrimination similar to what Mexicans, Haitians, and many Caribbean migrants experience in the United States. Thus, U.S. foreign policy is more concerned today with domestic pressures to preserve and defend its borders from nonwhite illegal immigrants than with symbolic or military geopolitical struggles against another superpower. The times when the United States privileged a group of immigrants because they were ﬂeeing communism are gone. This explains the recent reversal under the Clinton administration of the tradition of receiving Cuban refugees with open arms (Jehl 1994a:1, 10). Rather than extending to Haitians the rights enjoyed by Cuban refugees, the Clinton administration extended for the ﬁrst time to Cubans the same discriminatory policies that have been in place against 4. The recent debate in California on Proposition 187 is an example of this xenophobic, racist hysteria in the United States. See Dunn 1994.

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the Haitian refugees for the last ﬁfteen years (Jehl 1994a: 10). Instead of “Cubanizing” the Haitian refugees, the Clinton administration “Haitianized” the Cuban refugees. The post-cold war geopolitical environment also explains the U.S. military invasion of Haiti. Domestic pressure to stop the constant Haitian refugee ﬂow to South Florida placed the United States in the difficult symbolic situation—from a human rights standpoint—of stopping the embarkations and sending refugees back to Haiti, despite the fact that their ﬂight was the result of the unbearable repression of the Haitian military dictatorship. Today there are no cold war considerations that would justify, in the eyes of U.S. political elites, keeping these dictators in power. In the televised speech to justify the U.S. intervention in Haiti, referring to three hundred thousand Haitians in hiding, President Clinton said, “If we do not act, they will be the next wave of refugees at our door” (Jehl 1994b: 1, 10; Apple 1994). Thus, what we witness today is the subordination of geopolitics to domestic economic and political pressures. Cuban and Haitian refugees are perceived as a security threat and a burden to the U.S. government. The ﬁscal crisis of the state (that is, over $200 billion deﬁcit each year) and the decline of the country’s overall world competitiveness constrains the availability of resources. White populations (including white Cubans) in South Florida affected by these processes blame nonwhite Cubans and Haitians for their difficult situation. They perceive blacks of different ethnicities as the cause of decline in South Florida’s quality of life. Blacks are perceived as lazy, criminal, degenerate, and dangerous. Crime is a hot issue where these stereotypes are reﬂected. In this sense, racist dynamics affect the perception of these ethnic groups.5 Having discussed U.S. policies toward Cuban and Haitian migration within the context of the post-cold war interstate system, the question remains: What will the post-cold war migration policies toward Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic be? Jamaica has continued

5. Another rationale for the invasion of Haiti was the collapse of U.S. hegemony around the world. The disaster of U.S. policies in Somalia and Bosnia has led to the questioning of U.S. leadership in terms of world peace and global order. The Caribbean has historically been the playground where the United States reconstitutes its hegemony in times of crisis. In 1983, just a few days after the U.S. marines were defeated in Beirut, the Reagan administration invaded Grenada. While the “victory” over “communism” in Grenada was being celebrated, U.S. troops were quietly withdrawing from Lebanon. Today Haiti is the latest geopolitical showcase to the extent that it reestablishes the hegemonic power of the United States in matters of peace and stability in the world-system. However, this is a topic for another chapter.

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in crisis since the decline of the bauxite exports in the 1970s. It experienced some growth of manufacturing in export processing zones and nontraditional agrarian products, but not enough to contain the emigration process. Thousands of Jamaicans keep coming to the United States each year either as legal immigrants or as illegals who overstay their visas. The prospects are that Jamaica will continue educating laborers to export them to the centers of the world economy (ThomasHope 1992). Their geographical location far from U.S. shores makes it difficult for Jamaicans to have masses of boat people, as do the Haitians, Dominicans, and Cubans. This makes them more vulnerable to U.S. institutional and legal constraints on migration. The Dominican Republic has displaced Puerto Rico as the center for U.S. labor-intensive industrial investment in the Caribbean (Grosfoguel 1994: 370–77). However, the incorporation of the Central American market as a site for the United States to invest after the negotiated peace agreements ended civil wars in the region and the attraction of Mexico as a site of capital investments with the NAFTA agreements affected recent industrial growth of the Dominican Republic. The decline of this model of development fostered large population movements from the Dominican Republic to the United States in the 1990s. It is well known that large numbers of Dominican boat people constantly cross the Canal de la Mona to Puerto Rico (Morris 1996). The great majority of the Dominican boat people end up landing in New York City via the San Juan international airport. Until today, the U.S. response to this process has been a reenforcement of the Coast Guard in the Canal de la Mona. What other repressive measures could be taken if mass migration from the Dominican Republic continues due to the loss of industries to Mexico or Central America is an open question that cannot be answered a priori. However, repressive measures will not solve the problems of poverty and misery created by a long history of exploitation as a peripheral country in the capitalist world-economy. By contrast, Puerto Rico has lost symbolic geopolitical importance for the United States now that the cold war is over; it has no showcase role to play.6 In addition, the island’s economic performance is rapidly declining due to the competition from Mexico and other Caribbean islands that offer cheaper wages and production costs. The perception of U.S. politi-

6. Puerto Rico lost its showcase value as of 1974 when hundreds of labor-intensive industries moved to Southeast Asia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico. This fast deindustrialization raised the unemployment rate on the island to more than 15 percent for the next twenty years.

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cal elites is that Puerto Rico has become more of a tax burden than an asset. Billions of federal dollars are invested in Puerto Rico each year. In the context of the ﬁscal crisis of the state and racist pressures against minority groups in the United States, political pressures to decrease these expenses should not be underestimated. Puerto Ricans are one of the least popular ethnic groups in the United States because of a long colonial history of discrimination and racism. Moreover, since Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, they continue to migrate by the thousands to the United States. Consequently, it should not take anybody by surprise if the United States pressures to reform the Commonwealth status toward a greater autonomy. A more autonomous status would reduce U.S. federal expenses on the island and allow the regulation of population movements to the mainland, while maintaining the military bases. The only importance Puerto Rico has for the U.S. government right now is its strategic location for military operations in the Caribbean. As was done in the invasions of Grenada and the Dominican Republic, the recent Haitian invasion was rehearsed in and departed from Puerto Rico. A more autonomous status would enable the United States to continue its military operations on the island without any federal expenses. However, if this autonomy is imposed without the consent of the Puerto Rican people—by way of the metropolitan state—we can predict a replay of the “Suriname syndrome.”7 In a matter of a few years, one-third of the Puerto Rican population might move to the United States. But even if there is no change in status, the economic decline of the island could still lead to a similar mass migration. A historical irony would be if Puerto Rico’s contradictory situation led to a mass migration crisis in Florida similar to those the United States has tried to avoid through the military intervention of Haiti and a change in the Cuban refugee policies. Thus, the weakest point of U.S. migration policies toward the Caribbean is the uncertainty and potential instability of the Puerto Rican colonial situation.

conclusion The close relationship between geopolitics—understood in the broad sense used here—and migration in the Caribbean context described

7. By the mid-1970s, the Dutch had imposed an independent status on Suriname. In a matter of ﬁve years, approximately one-third of Suriname’s population migrated to the Netherlands. Most of them feared the loss of the Dutch citizenship and the future of a Surinamese republic.

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above is an important factor, although not the only one, for the understanding of migration processes. Capital accumulation processes and migrants’ transnational social networks are also crucial determinants of Caribbean migration. However, geopolitical factors have been ignored in most of the literature on Caribbean migration. During the ﬁrst half of the century, Caribbean migration was fostered by U.S. military interventions in the region and labor needs during the two world wars. Forty-ﬁve years of cold war determined different geopolitical priorities for each of the islands discussed here. The migration of highly skilled labor from Jamaica in the late 1970s was related to the destabilization strategies the United States exercised against the democratic socialist experiment of Michael Manley. Mass migration from Haiti and the Dominican Republic was initially fostered by U.S. military/security geopolitical strategies. Political stability and safeguards against another Cuba in the region inﬂuenced migration policies of the United States during the peak years of the cold war. Similarly, geopolitical concerns also articulated the Puerto Rican and Cuban migration to the United States. But in the Puerto Rican and Cuban cases it was the symbolic geopolitical strategies against the Soviet Union that overdetermined the particular features of their respective migration processes. While Cubans received all kinds of state assistance for their successful incorporation to the new society, Puerto Ricans were used as cheap labor with no similar state efforts to incorporate them successfully in the new society. Cuban refugees were the showcase against communism in Cuba; Puerto Rico itself was the showcase, and not the migrants. The context of the post-cold war has again moved U.S. policies toward migration in a different direction. The migration policy is now more related to domestic economic concerns and the emergence of racist discourses against immigrants rather than to foreign policy directed at undermining a competing superpower. This is reﬂected not only in the reversal of the long-standing Cuban refugee policies but also in the recent military intervention in Haiti. The possible post-cold war scenario of a Puerto Rican or Dominican mass migration discussed above could represent a setback for U.S. government attempts to contain a refugee crisis such as those of Cubans and Haitians in South Florida. Americans who feel threatened by mass migration from the Caribbean should understand that this migration is partly due to the military inva-

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sions and geopolitical strategies the United States has exercised in the region for the last one hundred years. This history of exploitation and domination is what has been erased in the recent racist scapegoating of immigrants as the cause of the economic misfortunes of white Americans. The task as social researchers is to refresh “history’s memory.”

chapter 4

Puerto Ricans in the United States A Comparative Approach

Today immigrants appear as threatening outsiders, knocking at the gates, or crashing the gates, or sneaking through the gates into societies richer than those from which the immigrants came. The immigration-receiving countries behave as though they were not parties to the process of immigration. But in fact they are partners. International migration stands at the intersection of a number of economic and geopolitical processes that link the countries involved; they are not simply the outcome of individuals in search of better opportunities. Part of the problem of understanding immigration is recognizing how, why, and when governments, economic actors, media, and populations at large in highly developed countries participate in the immigration process. Saskia Sassen, Guests and Aliens

theoretical framework The traditional sociological paradigms on immigrants in the United States—the assimilation school (Park 1950; Gordon 1964) and the cultural pluralist school (Glazer and Moynihan 1963)—have been based on ethnicity approaches. Both schools used turn-of-the-last-century European migrations as a model. According to the assimilation school, all groups pass through several stages in the process of assimilation to the host society. First, they become acculturated to the values, norms, and culture of the host society. Usually it takes two or three generations to lose their native language, values, and culture of origin. Second, once as128

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similated to “Anglo-American” culture, which eliminates any discriminatory obstacles that could affect their successful incorporation to the labor market, they are structurally assimilated to the mainstream American economy. The ﬁrst generation normally makes the biggest economic sacriﬁces to uplift the next generations. The cultural pluralist school assumes a similar teleological stagism but with one main difference. Even though ethnic groups eventually assimilate, this does not mean that the new identity is a “melted” identity that belongs to a homogenous “American” culture. Groups lose their language and customs, but ethnicity continues to be re-created in a new form of identity that is neither a “melting pot” nor a simple repetition of their communities of origin. It is a new hyphenated identity (for example, Irish-American, Italian-American, Polish-American) that emerges out of common political interests. They are interest groups that deliver political power that is eventually translated into economic gains, leading to “upward mobility” for the whole community. The more sophisticated versions of both schools recognized that their models need to take into account processes of discrimination through extraeconomic means such as the black experience in the United States (Gordon 1964; Glazer and Moynihan 1963). They recognized that despite the cultural “assimilation” of blacks, blacks experienced discriminatory obstacles that affected their integration to the mainstream of the American economy unlike European ethnic groups. However, the “cultural pluralist” and the “assimilation” schools shared two basic assumptions. First, the longer an ethnic group is in the United States, the more structurally assimilated or integrated it becomes to the mainstream American economy. Second, once equal opportunity legislation was enforced, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians experienced the same processes of integration as any other ethnic group in the United States. The timing of a group’s migration as well as the racial discrimination suffered by immigrants of color are erased from the analysis. The assumption is one of a unilinear process of integration into the host society. Moreover, the cultural pluralist school recognizes the ethnicity of all the “white” groups, but subsumes “blacks,” “Hispanics,” and “Asians” under the “they all look alike” racial reductionism (Omi and Winant 1986). The diverse ethnic groups among the black, Latino, and Asian populations are not recognized within this paradigm. They keep using racialized categories to lump together a diversity of ethnic groups. I distinguish a variety of ethnic groups that are erased with the use of racialized categories such as Hispanic or black. This allows for important an-

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alytical distinctions among different ethnic groups depending on class origin, educational backgrounds, the political economy of the city, and the broad context of incorporation to the new society. Recent approaches to migration emphasized the context of reception to the host society and the modes of incorporation to the labor market (Portes and Böröcz 1989; Portes and Rumbaud 1990). The context of reception refers to the state policies toward a speciﬁc migrant group, the reaction/perceptions of public opinion, and the presence or absence of an ethnic community. This context provides the sociological framework that determines the diverse labor-market incorporation. This approach represents an improvement over the timeless and unilinear deterministic conceptualizations of the old paradigms. However, three points need to be emphasized. First, the “context of reception” approach remains state-centric. This approach conceptualizes the context of reception and the modes of incorporation in terms of the “national” setting of the United States, overlooking the global historical-structural processes that condition both (Petras 1981). Whether the state policies toward a migrant group are positive, negative, or neutral is something that is frequently related to the geopolitical strategies and capital accumulation processes on a world scale. It is crucial to locate each racial/ethnic group within the broader context of the core-periphery relationships between their state of origin and the United States. For instance, migrant reception is largely determined by whether the core-periphery relationship is colonial, neocolonial with an active military intervention by the United States, or peripheral without geopolitical importance for the core state. Migrants’ country of origin makes for an important difference in terms of the migrants’ class origin/educational background, U.S. policies regarding their reception, and their public perception, which, in turn, affect their modes of incorporation to the labor market (Grosfoguel 1997b). Another consideration is the geographical proximity of a peripheral state to the core state, which allows lower-class migrants to bypass the institutional barriers to migration by crossing the borders illegally (for example, Mexico). A somewhat different case is presented by countries that have “broken” the neocolonial linkages with the United States and are treated by American foreign policy as enemies (for example, Cuba, Nicaragua during the Sandinista regime, Vietnam). In these cases the migrants are usually treated as refugees with a more positive context of reception than many other immigrants. Second, the “context of reception” approach shares with the other ap-

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proaches a static and unilinear conception of immigrants. Immigrants are assumed to leave for good their country of origin and settle in a new country with no circulatory complex/dynamic relationships across borders. In this sense, although this approach focuses on the state, it overlooks the transnational dimension of international migration processes (Basch, Schiller, and Szanton-Blanc 1993). Third, an important overlooked aspect that is central to the context of reception is the racial/ethnic composition of the migrants. The difference between “white” Europeans and nonwhite others is a crucial axis that articulates social relations in the United States. There are groups of migrants that are socially constructed as “white,” such as European migrants, and others that are constructed as “black,” such as certain migrations from the English-speaking Caribbean. There are groups, such as Puerto Ricans and Mexican-Americans, that, although they have a mixed racial composition, are racialized as a group. All of these variations in racialization and colonial experiences are crucial to understand the different reception of an immigrant group in a racialized society such as the United States. Thus, it is important to look at the totality of the migration process of each migrant group in its historical-structural complexity—that is, to analyze the time and space dimensions as well as the racial and ethnic dynamics—to understand why some groups are more successfully incorporated to the labor market than others. Where are they coming from and why? When did they arrive? What is the dominant class origin of the migration ﬂow? What is the racial/ethnic composition? Where are they settled? What are the geopolitical, economic, and social dimensions of the migration processes for each immigrant group? What are the relations between the host society and the country of origin? What is the history and political-economy of the region in which they settled at the time they migrated? What is the context of reception for each migrant group in the city in which they settled? How do the narratives of the nation in the host society affect the migrants’ identity and/or racialization processes? After accounting for all these factors, we can start making sense of the diverse labor-market incorporations among different ethnic groups and the diverse social networks built by their communities. Not accounting for the broad historical-structural context experienced by each particular migrant group in the process of incorporation to the host society, a common mistake, results in stereotyping. By ignoring the broad historical and political-economic context that precedes migrant incorporation to the labor market, and by placing the emphasis only on the

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latter, it is easy to conclude simplistically that the failure or success of an ethnic group depends on how hard they work, how disciplined and motivated they are, and whether the community’s social capital is positive or negative. This kind of reductionism leads to praising the privileged and blaming the victims. To avoid an economistic interpretation, I conceptualize in a broader sense the notion of mode of incorporation, which so often is used to refer mainly to the labor market. “Mode of incorporation” here includes the global and national political, cultural, and social dynamics of the processes of incorporation to the new society; I call this the “sociopolitical mode of incorporation.”

historical origins of caribbean migration to the united states By the late nineteenth century, the United States had special economic and political interests in the Caribbean region. The Caribbean was perceived by U.S. political elites as an important region both for commercial routes to South America and as a strategic military location for the defense of the U.S. mainland against an European invasion (Estades-Font 1988). These two considerations mobilized political elites to establish an aggressive strategy of direct military interventions for the politicaleconomic control of the region. Four of the ﬁve islands in the Greater Antilles were invaded between 1898 and 1916. Puerto Rico and Cuba were invaded in 1898, Haiti in 1915, and the Dominican Republic in 1916. These interventions reperipheralized the four islands from a dominant European control over their political and economic processes to one of U.S. domination (Grosfoguel 1997b). U.S. capital investments increased dramatically in the region, resulting in the direct control of the sugar plantations and the sugar trade. Official labor recruitment was established in the territories under U.S. military control: Puerto Ricans after 1900 were recruited by U.S. sugar corporations to work in Hawaii, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba; Haitians were recruited to work at sugar estates in the Dominican Republic and Cuba after 1915; Jamaicans, who were under British rule in the 1900s, were recruited by the thousands to work at U.S. sugar estates in Cuba; and thousands of Barbadians were recruited to build the Panama Canal under the U.S. ﬂag (Castor 1971: 84; Perez de la Riva 1979: 34–39; Foner 1983: 9; Báez-Evertz 1986: 188–96). From 1900 to 1920 the mass labor migration from the Caribbean to the U.S. mainland and the foundation of the ﬁrst Caribbean communi-

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ties in the United States took shape. This shift was part of a global transformation of migration processes. This movement of people was not a colonizing migration from the expanding commercial centers of the world-system to the subordinated regions; instead, it became a population movement from the periphery in response to the needs of the new industrial centers (Portes and Walton 1981). During the First World War the ﬂow of immigrants coming from Europe to the United States decreased, thus increasing the recruitment of Caribbean labor. Thousands of Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans were recruited for agrarian and menial jobs as part of the ongoing war efforts. By 1920, there were approximately thirty-ﬁve thousand AfroCaribbean West Indians in New York City (Light 1972). For the next twenty-ﬁve years (1920–45) the absolute numbers of Caribbean migrants declined compared to their large numbers of the ﬁrst two decades of the century (Bryce-Laporte 1983). The labor unions’ demand to restrict immigrants, the Great Depression, and the Second World War affected the entrance of new Caribbean migrants. Thus, the “internal minorities,” especially southern blacks but also Puerto Ricans, who after 1917 were U.S. citizens, became the main source of cheap labor for the northeastern industrial complex. New York City became one of the main destinations of these racialized/colonial migrants. During the Second World War the United States relied on Mexican immigrants (through the Bracero program) for cheap labor in southwestern agriculture and on women in northern industries. Puerto Ricans were recruited through a war-effort federal program to work in agriculture and industries in the Northeast during the Second World War (Maldonado 1979). After 1945, when the war was over and women were sent back to the “kitchens,” Caribbean migration increased to the former pre-1920s’ levels. This was a period of increased segmentation in the labor market (Portes and Bach 1985). At this time a dual-labor market divided between an oligopolistic sector and a competitive sector emerged. The former was characterized by stable labor relations in capital-intensive industries through internal promotion and increases in wages as productivity increased. The latter were low-wage, menial jobs in labor-intensive industries. Caribbean migrants were massively recruited in the competitive sector. In the 1940s and 1950s the great majority of Caribbean migrants were Puerto Ricans recruited for low-wage jobs in the postwar expansion of the competitive capitalist manufacturing and service industries in New York City. The Cuban revolution during the 1960s and the approval of the lib-

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eral 1965 Immigration Act brought about a major transformation in the ethnic composition of Caribbean immigrants in the United States. Cuban political refugees became ﬁrst in total numbers of Caribbean immigrants throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The most interesting development in this period was the substitution of African-Americans and Puerto Ricans for the “new immigrants” as the major source of cheap labor in the secondary labor market of “global cities” like New York, especially after the 1973 oil crisis (Sassen 1988). Labor migration from the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and other Caribbean islands (not including Puerto Rico and Cuba) increased to proportions never seen before. From comprising merely 7 percent of the total Caribbean legal immigrant population in the 1950s, these combined populations geometrically increased to 46 percent in the 1960s, 60 percent in the 1970s, and 63 percent in the 1980s (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). This increase of “new immigrants” was also reﬂected in the signiﬁcant decrease of Puerto Rican migrants, from the peak of 450,413 (79 percent of the total Caribbean legal migrants) in the 1950s, to only 57,217 (7 percent) in the 1970s (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). This is signiﬁcant because it reﬂects a major change—from domestic minorities to the “new immigrants”— in the source of cheap labor in the U.S. economy. This leads us to our next question: Who migrates? From what sectors of the sending societies come these migrants?

the class composition of the post-1960s caribbean migrants Since these islands do not share a border with the receiving society, the majority of Caribbean nation-states send those who can afford to get a visa and pay for the journey. Contrary to popular belief, those who migrate tend to be the most urban, educated, skilled workers, those with household incomes that are higher than the sectors at the bottom of the sending society (Bray 1984; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991; Stepick and Portes 1986; DeWind and Kinley 1988; Foner 1979, 1983; Portes and Bach 1985; Pedraza-Bailey 1985a). Because of the transnational networks built by the ﬁrst migration wave, the second migration wave tends to have higher representation from the poorest sectors, though they are still not the majority. In Table 6 we see that the class origins of migrants change over time and come to include more people from the lower classes. Nevertheless, the middle sectors of the working classes remain the largest proportion of the migrant population. During the past two

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decades, with the exception of the Dominican migration, in all cases there was an increase of low-service and/or agricultural workers. Cuban, Haitian, and Jamaican migration of white-collar workers decreased over time, but, particularly when compared to population ﬁgures for these countries of origin, blue-collar workers were numerically overrepresented in the migrant population. Blue-collar workers are middle sectors of the working classes and are not the people at the bottom of the labor market in the country of origin. In the 1990s, Haitians experienced a dramatic decrease in blue-collar worker migration but a signiﬁcant increase in agricultural laborer migration. This exception to the pattern resulted from the mass migration of boat people during the 1990s. During that same period, the Dominican Republic experienced an increase in white-collar worker migration and a decrease in low-service and agricultural workers. However, the Dominican Republic kept sending high numbers of blue-collar workers, who are not from the poorest sectors in that country. Blue-collar workers represent an intermediary location among the workers in the country of origin. In sum, we can conclude that, as a trend, members of the country of origin’s poorest sectors are not the ones who migrate from Caribbean nation-states. There are three exceptions to these patterns: the Puerto Rican migration, the Haitian “boat people,” and the Cuban “Marielitos.” First, Puerto Ricans represent an anomaly because they are U.S. citizens and live in a territory under U.S. jurisdiction. Pre-1950s Puerto Rican migration was composed of urban skilled and educated workers because they were the only people who could afford the transportation expenses (Vazquez-Calzada 1979); after 1950 air fares were signiﬁcantly reduced (Bach 1985). An unrestricted border along with the reduced air fare led to the fact that migration of the bulk of the 587,535 Puerto Rican migrants during the 1950–80 period came from the unskilled and lowincome sectors, many of them from rural areas (Grosfoguel 1992; Levine 1987; Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños 1979). During the 1980s, more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans migrated to the United States. This migration was more representative of all social classes on the island and the majority settled in new communities outside of New York City. However, the proportion of low-service workers, agricultural laborers, and other laborers is quite high for the Puerto Rican migration compared to the migrants from Caribbean nation-states (see Table 7). There is a constant overrepresentation of agricultural workers, especially when taking into consideration that after 1975 less than 5 percent of the labor force on the island were agricultural workers.

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The second exception is the recent wave of new Haitian immigrants that landed illegally on the shores of South Florida after crossing 700 miles of open sea aboard small boats. Estimates are that between ﬁfty and seventy thousand Haitians arrived between 1977 and 1981. Managing to avoid border restrictions, the Haitian “boat people” are deﬁnitely of a lower status and have a more rural background than the Haitian legal immigrant cohort to the United States, arriving between 1962 and 1980 (Stepick and Portes 1986). The former settled in South Florida, while the latter settled in New York City. Haitian “boat people” come from low educational and occupational backgrounds. Results of a survey reveal a population with above-average levels of education and income by Haitian standards (Stepick and Portes 1986). Even though illegal sea migration is accessible to more Haitians than is legal air travel with a visa, only those with an above-average income can afford to pay the illegal sea migration fare. The migration of 125,000 Cubans in 1980 through the Cuban port of Mariel to South Florida is another exception to the Caribbean upperand middle-level labor immigration pattern. Most of these immigrants were unskilled laborers from the lower strata of Cuban society (PedrazaBailey 1985a; Portes and Bach 1985). In sum, Caribbean migrants can be characterized as a labor migration composed mainly of the most urban, employed middle-sector workers in the sending countries. Only colonial migrants such as Puerto Ricans and “boat people” such as Haitians/Cubans in South Florida are exceptions to this general trend. This leads to our next question: What are the modes of incorporation of Caribbean immigrants in the United States?

modes of incorporation to the host society Contrary to the human capital approach, which emphasizes individual attributes, structuralist explanations emphasize the macrostructures of the capitalist labor process. However, both approaches share an overemphasis on societies’ economic processes, overlooking the social and political relationships mediating the relations between an ethnic group and the labor market. This is where a nonreductive social relational approach emphasizing the sociopolitical mode of incorporation can offer new insights that enrich the structuralist perspective. A basic assumption of this approach is that market relationships are embedded in social relations (Granovetter 1985; Block 1991): the market is not insulated from political relations, state policies, and social relations. Rather than a rational

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subject consciously calculating the most proﬁtable choices, there are individuals or groups embedded in social relations with other individuals or groups, all of which condition alternatives and choices within peculiar social contexts. The sociopolitical mode of incorporation approach implies the reconceptualization of the economistic conception of the immigrants’ modes of incorporation. This is conceptualized as embedded in social, political, and cultural relations; in other words, a particular immigrant group’s labor market incorporation is the outcome of the interaction between the class origin of the immigrant group and the multiple social determinations composed by the sociopolitical mode of incorporation within the host society. Whether the host government’s policy is one of active support or opposition to the immigrant group, whether public opinion is one of acceptance or discrimination, whether the country of origin is perceived by the core state as a friend or an enemy, or whether the immigrant group has access to an ethnic community that provides capital and social networks of solidarity to the newly arrived or not, all make a signiﬁcant difference in terms of the particular mode of incorporation into the labor market. The notion of “sociopolitical modes of incorporation” is close to Portes and Rumbaut’s (1990) notion of “context of reception.” The main difference is that while the former emphasizes the global political-economic relationship between the host and sending society, the latter emphasizes the national setting of the host society. Contrary to Portes and Rumbaut’s argument (1990), the U.S. government’s geopolitical policies toward the Caribbean overdetermines public opinion and ethnic community resources. The U.S. government’s policy toward Caribbean migrants has been dependent on political strategic considerations in the region (Grosfoguel 1997b). Global symbolic strategies to gain capital of prestige vis-à-vis the Soviet Union during the cold war are crucial to understand U.S. policies toward the Cuban and Puerto Rican migration. For example, Cubans in Miami became a geopolitical showcase vis-à-vis the Cuban regime. The success of these immigrants was an important ideological weapon during the cold war years, a weapon that could inﬂuence ideologically those who stayed in the island (Grosfoguel 1994, 1997b). Thus, they received millions of dollars in government aid to open businesses, ﬁnd jobs, and improve their educational levels (Cronin 1981; Pedraza-Bailey 1985b; Dominguez 1992; Grosfoguel 1994). By contrast, Puerto Ricans on the island served as a geopolitical showcase of capitalism vis-à-vis the Soviet model represented by Cuba. Puerto Rico’s model of development,

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better known as “industrialization by invitation,” was showcased around the world by the United States as a way of gaining capital of prestige and honor, or symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977), to the U.S. model of development in contrast to the Soviet model (Grosfoguel 1997b). Thus, the migration of the lower strata was stimulated and encouraged as a way of clearing the island of the unemployed and the shantytowns (Grosfoguel 1997b). This policy paved the way for the ﬁrst mass airway migration in world history. Approximately six hundred thousand Puerto Ricans, mostly rural unskilled workers, migrated to the mainland in the twenty years period between 1950 and 1970. Since the Puerto Rican showcase was the island rather than the migrants, the United States channeled its resources to the island. Those who migrated ended up in the urban ghettos of the metropole and had one of the highest poverty rates in the United States. Similarly, U.S. policies toward Haitian refugees have been discriminatory for racial as well as geopolitical reasons. In this case one consideration was the support to the Duvalier dictatorship as a containment strategy against communism in the region (Grosfoguel 1997b). If the United States provided support to the refugees it would have been interpreted as an indirect critique of a friendly anticommunist dictatorship. Thus, in contrast to the Cuban refugees, who until very recently were received with open arms, Haitians were detained or deported to Haiti. This difference in treatment is crucial to account for the success or failure in the incorporation to the labor market of different Caribbean groups in the United States. Caribbeans offer an excellent example of the immigrants’ multiple forms of incorporation into the receiving society’s labor market depending on their class origins and diverse sociopolitical modes of incorporation. Diverse modes of incorporation exist within the same ethnic groups. However, each ethnic group has a dominant trend. On one extreme sit the Cubans who migrated during the 1959–79 period and, on the other extreme, sit the Haitian “boat people” who arrived during the 1980s. Both arrived in South Florida. The mode of incorporation for the Cuban refugees during the cold war years was characterized by: (1) an active government support with the creation of the Cuban Refugee Program to help Cubans resettle successfully into the host society (PedrazaBailey 1985b); (2) positive public opinion; and (3) an entrepreneurial ethnic community that offered jobs and opportunities to the newly arrived, insulating them from discrimination in the open market (Portes and Bach 1985). In contrast to this migration, the Haitian “boat people”

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in South Florida encountered opposition to entry from the host government, discriminatory public opinion, and no ethnic community to serve as a buffer against discrimination. Between these two extremes there are a variety of other modes of incorporation. The 1980s “Mariel” Cubans experienced discriminatory public opinion, had no active government support, and had an entrepreneurial ethnic community that incorporated them at least more successfully than the Haitians in South Florida (Portes and Stepick 1985). The next two cases are the skilled/white-collar immigrants from Jamaica and Haiti in New York City who arrived between 1965 and 1980. New York’s large black community and a multicultural environment served as a curtain for both ethnic groups to pass unnoticed. Thus, both have experienced passive acceptance from the government and relatively positive public opinion concerning their particular ethnicity. In a post-civil rights era, the Euro-American elites and policymakers used the West Indian presence in the city to “showcase” them vis-à-vis African-Americans. West Indians were portrayed as “hard-working people” in comparison to the “lazy” domestic minorities such as African-Americans. This is not only a white American construction, West Indians themselves developed a strategy of ethnic distinction visà-vis African-Americans after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In the Haitian case, there was no public hysteria against their settlement in New York before 1980 as there was in South Florida during the 1980s. Since both Haitians and Jamaicans are primarily of Afro-Caribbean descent and settled near African-Americans, they avoided the racism directed against the African-American community in New York City by emphasizing ethnic over racial identity. However, one major difference between the African-Americans and the immigrants from Haiti and Jamaica is the higher educational levels of the latter (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). Meanwhile, the main differences between Haitians and Jamaicans in the United States are: (1) the host society’s stronger prejudices against Haitian culture; (2) the existence of a large whitecollar community in the Jamaican case versus a more diversiﬁed working-class community in the Haitian case; and (3) the Jamaicans’ ﬁrst language is English, whereas Haitians speak Creole. Thus, despite the fact that both groups share high educational levels, Jamaicans are economically more successful than Haitians. Puerto Ricans have some of the worst socioeconomic conditions in the United States. The ﬁrst large wave of Puerto Rican migrants were skilled/urban laborers between 1900 and 1945. During this period,

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Puerto Ricans were actively recruited during and after the First World War as cheap labor for the manufacturing industries in New York City. The second large wave of Puerto Rican migrants were mostly unskilled/rural laborers during the 1950s and 1960s. Most of them found support networks in the Puerto Rican working class communities in New York City. They encountered a passive acceptance by the U.S. government, a negative acceptance by the public, and an inefficient/bureaucratized Migration Division Office, the office of Puerto Rico’s Department of Labor organized to encourage mass labor migration. The Migration Division established offices in New York and Chicago to assist the migrants to ﬁnd jobs and follow up any complaint concerning their civil rights (Lapp 1990). However, the Migration Division had little power and will to intervene on behalf of the workers. Despite this minimum institutional support, Puerto Rican migrants were subjected to extremely negative discriminatory public opinion. Puerto Rican migrants’ social conditions in the communities also greatly deteriorated. The new migrants suffered from overcrowded and dilapidated housing, a lack of institutional support for education, and poor medical services. In New York’s racial/ethnic division of labor Puerto Ricans occupied the economic niche of low-wage manufacturing jobs. By 1960, more than 50 percent of Puerto Ricans in New York were incorporated as low-wage labor in this sector. During the 1960s, Puerto Ricans were actively organized in labor unions and through the civil rights struggles started claiming equal rights. Many labor rights that were violated in the past by the employers through repressive mechanisms and misinformation were now claimed by Puerto Ricans as part of their citizenship rights. Puerto Ricans’ successful struggles for labor rights made them “too expensive” for the increasingly informalized manufacturing sector (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). Simultaneously, the deindustrialization of the Northeast, the region where most of the Puerto Ricans settled, led to the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Most of the manufacturing industries moved to peripheral regions around the world; those that stayed in locations like New York, Philadelphia, or Hartford informalized their activities. The manufacturing industry, in constant need of cheap labor, relied heavily on new Latino immigrants, legal or illegal, who had even fewer rights than internal colonial subjects such as Puerto Ricans (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). Currently, only 14 percent of Puerto Ricans are in manufacturing, and more than 50 percent are either unemployed or out of the labor force (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). Today approximately 40 percent of the Puerto Rican labor force is con-

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centrated in retail trade and in services such as health, administrative support, and educational occupations (U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1993, table 4). In sum, Puerto Rican migrants’ unskilled working-class backgrounds combined with a negative sociopolitical mode of incorporation produced a massive incorporation to the secondary labor market and later, with deindustrialization, a massive marginalization from the labor market. Today they have one of the worst socioeconomic proﬁles of all ethnic groups in the United States. Puerto Ricans have one of the highest unemployment rates, lowest labor force participation rates, and highest poverty rates among Caribbean groups in the United States.

puerto rican identification strategies What strategies have racialized subjects pursued in the struggle against racism in the United States? An important strategy has been the construction of identities that subvert the exclusion from the dominant imagined community called the nation. Different ethnic groups in the United States have used hyphenated identities in order to deconstruct the attempt by the dominant groups to exclude them from citizenship rights on the bases of race and/or ethnicity. Today we see the black community using the term African-American as a strategy of incorporation to the mainstream of American society. A similar strategy has been pursued by other groups such as Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, HaitianAmericans, Korean-Americans, and even Dominican-Americans. The only racialized group to have resisted this hyphenated identity are the Puerto Ricans. It is very rare to ﬁnd a Puerto Rican using this hyphenated form of identity. Even those born and raised in the United States keep using the nonhyphenated Puerto Rican identity. This is partly related to resistance against being fully assimilated in a society that marginalizes and racializes Puerto Ricans. Discrimination reinforces a feeling of belonging to, and an idealization of, the imagined place of origin. Moreover, this feeling is more pronounced with the constant circulation of Puerto Ricans given the open border between the island and the mainland. Many second-, third-, and even fourth-generation Puerto Ricans in the United States retain a feeling of belonging to the Puerto Rican “imagined community,” even if they have never visited the island. This sense of belonging is fed through family and social networks between the island and the metropolitan communities. Puerto Rican identity persists despite the rejection and discrimination suffered when second- and third-generation

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Puerto Ricans visit the island. Similar to the term “negropolitan” in the Martinican experience, second-generation Puerto Ricans who return are frequently stereotyped with names such as “nuyorican.” The cultural hybridity of Puerto Ricans in the United States is not tolerated not only by nationalist intellectuals on the island but also by Puerto Rican middle classes. The “nuyoricans” question some of the racist and elitist representations of Puerto Rican identity on the island. The cultural hybridity of the Puerto Ricans in the United States represents a form of identity that includes elements of African-American culture that threatens island elites’ efforts to conceal their African heritage while privileging the Spanish culture. For example, the Afro-Caribbean music and religious practices that many “nuyoricans” are proud to vindicate are seen by island elites as a threat to the Spaniard-centric construction of the “nation.” Moreover, it shows that there are heterogeneous ways of being Puerto Rican not reducible to a question of a common language, or a common anything for that matter. Puerto Rican as a form of identity means different things for Puerto Ricans born and raised either on the island or in the United States. Many middle-class Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans on the island are more assimilated to American “white” middle-class cultural practices with their suburban houses, cable TV, racist representations of Puerto Rican identity and mass consumption in fancy shopping centers than many non-Spanish-speaking Puerto Ricans in the United States living segregated in urban ghettos. Thus, there is an important difference in the content and claims of Puerto Rican identity in the island and the mainland. To identify as Puerto Rican with no hyphenation implies a challenge to the racism of the U.S. urban racial/ethnic hierarchies. However, there is a cost attached to this challenge in the United States that does not exist on the island, where Puerto Rican identity has become the colonial administration’s “national identity” vindicated by all political forces (Grosfoguel et al. 1997). Some people have used the metaphor of “commuter nation” to refer to the Puerto Rican “guagua aérea” (airbus) between the island and the mainland (Rodriguez-Vecchini 1994). Although the nonhyphenated Puerto Rican identity in the United States might seem close to a notion of a deterritorialized nation, it would be essentialist to think of Puerto Rican identity in the United States as a simple extension of the Puerto Rican national identity produced on the island. The implication of this would be a static, nonrelational notion of identity, as if the migration experience did not transform the identity of the migrants into a new hybrid form of identity both in the metropole as well as on the island. Puerto

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Rican migrants’ emerging forms of identities do not reproduce exactly either the national identity of the country of origin or the identities of the metropolitan society. They mix, redeﬁne, resignify, and reappropriate a multiplicity of practices from different cultures, redeploying cultural practices of the country of origin in new and transformed ways. The identiﬁcation processes of Puerto Ricans transcends the concepts of nation and ethnicity. Puerto Ricans articulate their identity in the transnational space between the metropole and the island through ethnic and national claims simultaneously. When social and civil rights are at stake, Puerto Ricans make claims as an ethnic group within the metropolitan state, that is, as a minority that belongs to a broader unit. When cultural and political rights are at stake due to certain inconvenient metropolitan policies, Puerto Ricans mobilize a national discourse claiming autonomy. In this sense, notions of “nation” or “ethnicity” used separately come up short when attempting to understand the identity processes of Puerto Ricans. Puerto Ricanness has diverse meanings in different contexts. Thus, the notions of transnation (Appadurai 1996), transnationalism (Basch, Schiller, and Szanton-Blanc 1994) and “ethnonation” (Grosfoguel et al. 1997) are better notions if we mean by that an emerging form of hybrid identity that transcends the categories of ethnicity and nation by assuming and surpassing both forms simultaneously. The transnational identities of Puerto Ricans are new forms of hybrid, postnational identities that capture and mobilize, according to the sociopolitical context, diverse forms of identities such as ethnic, national, or minority simultaneously. “Ethno-nation” refers more to a process rather than to a concept or a ﬁxed reality with emphasis on both sides of the hyphen depending on context (Grosfoguel et al. 1997). Each individual, even those with extreme nationalist positions, reproduces the ambiguities of transnationalism which emerge from the ambiguous status of colonial people like Puerto Ricans. Sharing citizenship and a nonindependent status with the metropoles produces an ambiguous situation to the extent that on some issues people mobilize discourses on national identity while on others they articulate themselves as an ethnic group within the metropole. Puerto Ricans use their metropolitan citizenship to claim access to U.S. government programs, or deploy discourses on national identity to defend cultural rights or to avoid unwanted metropolitan laws both on the island and in the metropole. Identities need to be understood as constructions that emerge out of political strategies within speciﬁc power relationships. It is in a postnational sense that Puerto Rican identity formation is transnational.

chapter 5

“Coloniality of Power” and Racial Dynamics Notes Toward a Reinterpretation of Latino Caribbeans in New York City with Chloe S. Georas

[I]n the [colonial] cultural process . . . anything that is not recognized or mentioned by those who control the transmission and circulation of information does not exist. Power asserts itself by suppressing and negating both what is not considered relevant or is considered dangerous. Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance

In the last ﬁfteen years, the rubric of the “Latino” identity has been used to support bilingual education, cultural claims, and immigration rights, and to oppose police brutality. “Latino” has been used as an alternative to “Hispanic,” because the latter is perceived as a colonial identity imposed by the dominant Anglo groups in the United States. Although useful for building broad coalitions among groups of diverse Latin American and Latino Caribbean origins, the term Latino obscures the complex, heterogeneous, and contradictory relationships between and within the so-called Latino groups. The “Latino” category collapses the differences between and among populations who have diverse historical experiences of oppression. To avoid the conﬂation, we propose to distinguish among “colonial/racial subjects,” “colonial immigrants,” and “immigrants” in the U.S. empire. We are grateful to Enrique Dussel, Agustín Lao, Hector Cordero-Guzmán, Walter Mignolo, Aníbal Quijano, James Cohen, Nina Glick Schiller, Louis Mazzari, and Immanuel Wallerstein for their intellectual inﬂuence and many conversations that contributed to the theoretical framework of this chapter.

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These distinctions provide a starting point for a new theoretical framework that addresses the social positioning of racialized immigrant groups in the United States. Most often the social position of these immigrants has been addressed in terms of the question of assimilation, context of reception, or in terms of the relationship between nation-building and whiteness. However, the contemporary location of Latino migrants in New York City’s racial/ethnic hierarchy needs to be understood in relation to both the historical dynamics and contemporary positioning of the racialized/colonial subjects of the U.S. empire and of the U.S. domination of Latino Caribbean countries. We emphasize the racial categories as constructed in the EuroAmerican social imaginary, which are the dominant racial categories used in the United States. For reasons of space, we do not here deal with how racial categories are constructed within each racial/ethnic community. Racist perceptions of subordinated groups are not an exclusively “white” phenomena, although it is important to acknowledge that Euro-American racist perceptions represent the society’s dominant views. We address the Latino-Caribbean experience in a way that offers a new approach to the question: Why do some minorities in the United States succeed economically and others remain impoverished? This question has been raised by other scholars (Glazer and Moynihan 1963; Lieberson 1980; Sowell 1981; Steinberg 1981). Our purpose is to rethink old assumptions and open up a debate. We prefer to make a provocative attempt to stimulate debate rather than provide a deﬁnitive solution. To understand these dynamics we build on the notion of “coloniality of power” developed by Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (1991, 1993, 1998). Originally applied to the Latin American context, this concept can be very useful for understanding contemporary racialization of immigrants in the United States. “Coloniality of power” addresses the way social power relations today continue to be organized, constituted, and conditioned by centuries of Western colonial expansion. We attempt to reconceptualize three social processes: (1) the construction of Puerto Ricans as a colonial racialized minority in the Euro-American imaginary; (2) the transformation of Dominicans into “colonial immigrants” in the New York metropolitan area, that is, how Dominicans became “Puerto Ricanized”; and (3) why the pre-1980s Cuban migrants were able to disassociate themselves from the “Puertoricanization” experienced by the Dominicans.1

1. The unit we use in this chapter is the New York metropolitan area, which is larger than New York City. We sometimes use New York or New York City interchangeably to refer to the New York metropolitan area.

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four points of clarification First, our use of the word “colonial” does not refer only to “classical colonialism” or “internal colonialism,” nor is it reduced to the presence of a “colonial administration.” A colonial situation of exploitation and domination, formed by centuries of European colonialism, can persist in the present without the existence of a “colonial administration.” Instead, we use the word “colonialism” to refer to “colonial situations” enforced by the presence of a colonial administration such as the period of classical colonialism, and, following Quijano (1991, 1993, 1998), we use “coloniality” to address “colonial situations” in the present period in which colonial administrations have almost been eradicated from the capitalist world-system. By “colonial situations” we mean the cultural, political, and economic oppression of subordinate racialized/ethnic groups by dominant racial/ethnic groups with or without the existence of colonial administrations. It is crucial to point out that “coloniality” in the contemporary world-system stems from the long history of European colonialism that preceded it. Five hundred years of European colonial domination and expansion formed an international division of labor between Europeans and non-Europeans that is reproduced in the present “postcolonial” phase of the capitalist world-system (Wallerstein 1979, 1995). Today the core zones of the capitalist world-economy overlap with predominantly white/European/Euro-American societies such as Western Europe, Canada, and the United States, while peripheral zones overlap with previously colonized non-European people.2 The global racial/ethnic hierarchy of Europeans and non-Europeans was an integral part of the development of the capitalist world-system’s international division of labor (Wallerstein 1983; Quijano 1993; Mignolo 1995). The international division of labor produced by European colonialism has also created a global racial/ethnic hierarchy since the 1500s (Quijano and Wallerstein 1992; Mignolo 1995). In the current “postindependence” times, this hierarchy continues to be an integral part of the contemporary global division of labor. To make our argument, we use a conceptualization that goes against 2. Japan is the exception that conﬁrms the rule. It was never colonized or dominated by Europeans and, similar to the West, it played an active role in building its own colonial empire. China, although never completely colonized, was peripheralized through the use of colonial entrepôts, such as Hong Kong and Macao, and through direct military interventions.

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the grain of commonly held assumptions. The social sciences and the humanities produce knowledge that is predominantly focused and oriented toward the nation-state as the unit of analysis (Wallerstein 1991a). The dominant assumption is that nation-states are independent units and the main explanation for global inequalities is accounted for by the internal dynamics of each nation-state. Although in the past decade, scholarship on globalization has challenged this assumption, none of this literature has adequately addressed the continued coloniality of formally independent states (Robertson 1992; Mittleman 1997; Sassen 1998). The dominant representations of the world today assume that “colonial situations” ceased to exist after the demise of “colonial administrations” ﬁfty years ago. This mythology about the socalled decolonization of the world obscures the continuities between the colonial past and current global colonial/racial hierarchies and contributes to the invisibility of “coloniality” today. For the last ﬁfty years, states that had been colonies, following the dominant Eurocentric liberal discourses (Wallerstein 1991a, 1995), constructed ideologies of “national identity,” “national development,” and “national sovereignty” that produced an illusion of “independence,” “development,” and “progress.” Yet their economic and political systems were shaped by their subordinate position in a capitalist world-system organized around a hierarchical international division of labor (Wallerstein 1979, 1984, 1995).3 These multiple hierarchies (including the racial/ethnic hierarchy), together with the predominance of Eurocentric cultures (Said 1979; Wallerstein 1991b, 1995; Lander 1998; Quijano 1998; Mignolo 2000), constitute a “global coloniality” between Europeans/EuroAmericans and non-Europeans. Thus, “coloniality” is entangled with, but is not reducible to, the international division of labor. The “colo-

3. Recent critiques to the world-system approach emphasized a “state-centric” approach (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol 1985). However, the “state-centric” approach reproduced the developmentalist myth that a peripheral state can develop if it builds a developmentalist state that can foster the “proper” strategies of development. Taiwanese and South Korean “miracles” are the examples frequently used in this literature. What this approach conceals is the “manufacturing of showcases” during the cold war through billions of dollars of U.S. foreign aid, U.S.-led radical agrarian reform, and U.S. officials’ direct intervention in these peripheral state reforms (Grosfoguel 1996). Taiwan’s and South Korea’s mobility in the world-system from periphery to the semiperiphery was part of a U.S. strategy to contain “communism” in Southeast Asia (Grosfoguel 1996). The recent “Asian” crisis contributed to the demise of these cold war “miracles” and to the deconstruction of the idea that developmentalist states could escape world-systemic processes. In sum, the statecentric critique perpetuates the developmentalist and decolonization myths and reinforces the “nation-state” as the unit of analysis.

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nial” axis between Europeans/Euro-Americans and non-Europeans is inscribed not only in relations of exploitation (between capital and labor) and domination but also in the production of subjectivities and identities in the modern world. Second, although the literature on whiteness and nation-building (Omi and Winant 1986; Gilroy 1987; Roediger 1991; Almaguer 1994; Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton-Blanc 1994) has inﬂuenced our work, we want to take this analysis a step further by putting whiteness studies in a more global framework. Scholars in this ﬁeld have addressed the shifting meanings and discontinuous processes of racist discourses and their relations to nationalism, national identity, and nation building. However, they have underestimated the continuities between the colonial past and the present racial/ethnic hierarchies. Oppressed groups that have been incorporated into the U.S. empire including those within the nation’s borders throughout a long history of colonialism are best understood as “colonial/racialized subjects.” Power relations at the level of the nation-state in the United States are still organized and constructed through structures, institutions, and cultural criteria that privilege white Europeans over non-European populations. This racial/ethnic hierarchy constitutive of power relations in the United States has shifted meanings and strategies over time, but has existed since the beginning of European colonization of the Americas (Quijano and Wallerstein 1992; Mignolo 1995). The diverse racial/ethnic hierarchies of different regions in the United States constitute and inform the experience of AfricanAmericans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Native-Americans. Today, they live with the pernicious persistence of what Quijano (1991, 1993, 1998) calls the “coloniality of power.” Third, we use the term “colonial immigrants” to refer to those groups that, even though they come from countries that were never colonized directly by the United States, still suffer from forms of racial discrimination and stereotypes that are similar to those suffered by the “colonial/racial subjects” of the empire. These migrants frequently come from regions dominated by the United States, and their status in the host society is in many instances associated with the low standing of their country of origin in the international division of labor (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997; Grosfoguel 1997b). Fourth, following the European immigrant experience to the United States, we reserve the term “immigrants” for only those incoming populations who, although they may face some initial discrimination, are al-

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lowed access within a few generations to the mainstream of U.S. society. In centers of power, such as the United States, only upwardly mobile newcomers are able to obtain treatment as “immigrants.” Despite their difficulties, “immigrants” have a higher status than colonial subjects who continue to experience a negative racialization. In some cases, including the pre-1980 Cuban refugees, these groups have experienced economic success in the ﬁrst generation because of positive U.S. state policies at the time of arrival. The outlined distinctions between “racial/colonial subjects” of the U.S. empire, “colonial immigrants,” and “immigrants” have important implications for understanding the positive or negative reactions of dominant “Euro-American” groups toward a particular “Latino” ethnicity. “Colonial/racial subjects” have historically been the targets of racist representations in the Euro-American imaginary as a particular expression of the worldwide history of colonialism. For instance, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans are colonial/racial subjects of the U.S. empire who have been the target of many racist stereotypes. As the longest standing black and Latino groups in New York City, the racial stereotypes of African-Americans and Puerto Ricans established a precedent that new “black” and “Latino” immigrants must encounter to the extent that they are frequently confused with African-Americans or Puerto Ricans in the hegemonic imaginary. This produces contradictory relationships among different Latino groups. Many Colombians, Mexicans, Dominicans, Cubans, or Ecuadorians in New York City make an effort to avoid being placed under the rubric of “Puerto Ricans” or “African-Americans” for multiple and complex reasons. It is not merely a romantic attempt to mark out a distinct cultural identity. After all, to be confused with Puerto Ricans or African-Americans could be useful for illegal immigrants who want to take provisional cover under the U.S. citizenship guaranteed to Puerto Ricans and AfricanAmericans. This ethnic strategy of disentanglement has more to do with an effort to avoid the racialized and stereotypical construction of the “colonial/racial subjects” of the U.S. empire. To be identiﬁed as “Puerto Rican” in the ethnic/racial hierarchy of New York City is a racist marker for a new Latino immigrant. Similarly, to be associated with “African-Americans” is also a racist marker for many immigrants of African descent. The association of “Puerto Rican” and “AfricanAmerican” identity in the Euro-American imaginary with racist stereotypes such as laziness, criminality, stupidity, and uncivilized behavior

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has important implications in the labor market, seriously affecting the new immigrants’ opportunities.4 Puerto Ricans have migrated to New York since the turn of the twentieth century, but the largest migration occurred in the 1950s (Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños 1979: 186–87). The mass migration of Dominicans started quite recently, after the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in the mid-1960s (Grasmuck and Pessar 1991: 20–21). Although Cubans have also migrated to the United States since the turn of the twentieth century, they came in larger numbers as anticommunist refugees between 1960 and 1980 (Boswell and Curtis 1984: 40–42). The class origin of the post-1950 Puerto Rican migration is similar to the pre-1960 African-American migration to New York City. Migrants have come from predominantly unskilled/rural labor backgrounds and arrived with little education (Friedlander 1965; Gray 1966; Osofsky 1966; Ottley and Weatherby 1967; Levine 1987; Grosfoguel 1995).5 By contrast, the Dominicans that arrived between 1965 and 1985 were mainly from urban middle-sectors of the working classes with higher skill levels than the average workers in the Dominican Republic (Bray 1984, 1987; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991).6 However, despite these differences, both the Puerto Ricans and the Dominicans in New York City are at the bottom of the labor market, experiencing the worst economic conditions. Puerto Ricans and Dominicans have the highest unemployment rates (13.5 and 16.5 percent, respectively), the lowest labor force 4. Many new immigrants of African descent reject any association with colonial/racial subjects of the U.S. empire (namely, African-Americans). The same holds true for some new Latino immigrants, who reject any relation to Puerto Ricans (Foner 1998). Many immigrant groups of African descent whose identities are perceived as indistinct from AfricanAmericans in the Euro-American “social imaginary” have been ascribed the same racist stereotypes as the latter. Some black groups, such as Caribbean immigrants, emphasize ethnic identity over racial identity in order to avoid the stereotypes targeted against AfricanAmericans in the United States (Kasinitz 1992). Still, there are groups of African descent whose identity is perceived as distinct, but they still suffer racist discrimination due to the pernicious prevalence of color discrimination in the Euro-American imaginary (Halter 1993). 5. Most of the unskilled rural migrants from Puerto Rico came to the United States between 1950 and 1970. By 1970, since Puerto Rico had changed from a rural to an urban society, most of the migrants, still with unskilled labor backgrounds, came from urban areas rather than rural zones. During the 1980s there was a skilled labor and middle-class migration from Puerto Rico to Florida and Texas. However, most of the Puerto Rican migrants to the New York metropolitan area continued to come from unskilled labor backgrounds (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). 6. As time passed, the Dominican migration has included large numbers of people from poor sectors of the Dominican Republic, especially during the 1980s (see Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). This is a factor that has strengthened the similarities between the Dominican and Puerto Rican migrations.

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participation rates (58.6 and 63.6 percent), and the highest poverty rates (38.3 and 32.4 percent) in the New York metropolitan area (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). Similar patterns are repeated when controlling for gender (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). The Cubans who arrived in the New York metropolitan area between 1960 and 1980 came from urban middle-class backgrounds similar to the Dominican newcomers (Cronin 1981; Boswell and Curtis 1984: 49). However, in contrast to the Dominicans, the Cubans were able to improve their socioeconomic situation (Cronin 1981; Boswell and Curtis 1984; Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). The relevant questions are: Given the higher socioeconomic background of the Dominicans relative to the Puerto Ricans, why did the former end up in a similar structural position to the latter in New York’s labor market? Given the similar class origins of the Dominicans and the pre-1980s Cuban migrants in New York, why did the situation of the former deteriorate and the latter improve? The following argument is threefold: (1) the racialization of Puerto Ricans was entangled with the racialization of African-Americans as colonial/racial subjects within the U.S. empire, that is, Puerto Ricans were “African-Americanized”; (2) the racialization of Puerto Ricans conditioned the mode of incorporation of Dominicans to New York’s labor market, that is, Dominicans were “Puertoricanized”; and (3) Cubans that arrived before 1980 circumvented a similar construction because, as part of the cold war strategy of the United States, the Cubans received “European-style welfare” programs through the Cuban Refugee Program.7 Issues of coloniality, language, and identity are crucial to understanding these multiple forms of incorporation.

symbolic capital and global coloniality The identities of different populations within the United States are embedded in multiple structural levels (global, nation-state, and local). We approach identities as social relationships and see them as constituted in relation to other groups’ identiﬁcation strategies in an unequal ﬁeld of power relations within symbolic, economic, and political structures (Said 1979; Bourdieu 1977, 1994b; Hall 1990, 1995). The dominant groups of the symbolic, economic, and political ﬁelds are the ones with

7. However, this was not the case for the post-1980 Cuban “Marielitos.”

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the power to make their social classiﬁcations of a society hegemonic. In the United States, this power of classiﬁcation is in turn related to the history of the racial/ethnic construction of groups within a white supremacist/colonial system of domination of internally differentiated populations linked to the growth of a colonial power. As is the case elsewhere, in New York different ethnicities are invested with different social value. The symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977, 1994b), that is, the capital of prestige and honor, of each group varies. Groups at the top of the racial/ethnic hierarchy enjoy a high or positive social prestige. Prestige is frequently translated into greater economic opportunities and access to economic capital. On the contrary, groups at the bottom of the racial/ethnic hierarchy have a low or negative symbolic capital—that is, no prestige—and their identities are usually tied to a negative/bad public image. These groups suffer discrimination in the labor market, ﬁnding barriers to economic opportunities. W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the ﬁrst intellectuals in the United States to conceptualize the subordination of racialized subjects within the core of the capitalist world-economy as an aspect of a colonial relationship. On November 7, 1945, in a meeting of the East and West Association, Du Bois said: [W]e must conceive of colonies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as not something far away from the centers of civilization; not as comprehending problems which are not our problems—the local problems of London, Paris, and New York. They are not something that we can consider at our leisure but rather [are] a part of our own present local economic organization. Moreover, while the center of the colonial system (and its form and pattern) is set in the localities which are called deﬁnitely colonies and are owned politically and industrially by imperial countries, we must remember also that in the organized and dominant states there are groups of people who occupy a quasi-colonial status: laborers who are settled in slums of large cities; groups like Negroes in the United States who are segregated physically and discriminated against spiritually in law and custom; groups like the South American Indians who are the laboring peons, without rights or privileges, of large countries; and whole laboring classes in Asia and the South Seas who are legally part of imperial countries and, as a matter of fact, have their labor treated as a commodity at the lowest wage, and the land monopolized. All these people occupy what is really a colonial status and make the kernel and substance of the problem of minorities. (1970: 183–84)

For Du Bois racialization and colonization are entangled processes. Racial discrimination is an aspect of the colonial use of subordinate labor. Domestic “colonial” groups such as blacks in the United States be-

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came a “commodity at the lowest wage.” In the early 1970s, Robert Blauner (1972) developed a similar analysis, referring to the colonial status that minorities occupy in the centers of empire as “internal colonialism.” Blauner provided a framework for understanding the different forms of incorporation of diverse ethnic/racial groups within the United States. In this framework, Blauner distinguished between “immigrants” and “internal colonial” groups. Those groups that were incorporated into the United States as part of an experience of immigration had a more privileged form of incorporation than those that were incorporated through violence as part of an imperial/colonial expansion (Blauner 1972; Lieberson 1980). European groups of different ethnicities formed part of the immigrant experience, while people of color experienced colonization. Blauner used this analytical distinction to deconstruct the “immigrant analogy.” The foundational myth of the nation, the “American Dream,” portrayed America as the land of opportunities where immigrant groups of all social and racial origins had equal opportunities. In this myth all immigrant groups experienced difficulties in the ﬁrst generation, but after a few generations were able to become socially mobile. According to Blauner, this myth could not explain the colonial experience of racialized groups in the United States. An important distinction had to be made between “immigrants” and those who originated in internally colonial populations. Immigrant labor was incorporated as wage labor, while colonized groups suffered coerced forms of labor. Although this conceptualization is historically accurate, it is not useful to understanding the post-1965 period. Once the old colonial forms of coerced labor disappeared and the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, it was conceptually difficult to sustain an “internal colonialism” approach to understanding the experience of the post-1965 new immigrants and domestic minorities. One of the limitations of the concept of “internal colonialism” lies herein. Colonialism is understood as consisting of extraeconomic mechanisms or institutions such as a colonial administration or colonial methods of labor coercion. Therefore, many scholars (including Blauner himself) abandoned the “internal colonialism” approach altogether for the so-called postcolonial period. However, to think of the post-1965 period as a complete, discontinuous break with the past is inaccurate. Although the racial/ethnic hierarchy has changed with the ascension of some groups previously classiﬁed at the bottom to intermediary positions (Koreans, Jamaicans, or Cubans), there are still important continuities with the colonial past, given that Euro-Americans

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remain at the top of the hierarchy and people of color at the bottom. How can we think about the continuities of the colonial past while acknowledging the discontinuities? How can we reconceptualize the notion of “internal colonialism” in a way that accounts for the post-1965 transformations and complexities of the race/ethnic hierarchy of the United States? Although we can learn much from more recent approaches to racial dynamics, these do not adequately formulate the continuing structures of power that emerged from U.S. colonial history. As a consequence, racial categories are dehistoricized. For example, the “racial formation” approach developed by Omi and Winant (1986), although important to understanding the shifting meanings of race across time, and crucial for a nonreductionist approach to race, still underestimates the historical continuities between colonial and “postcolonial” times. Their conceptualization is useful for understanding the ways in which current relationships of power differ from the past, but it is unable to address adequately historical continuities. We can conceptualize colonial continuities in the present by rethinking the “internal colonialism” approach in terms of noneconomistic and noncoerced forms of reproduction of a disenfranchised “colonial” labor force. The recent “postcolonial” literature has tried to address this issue in the ﬁeld of literary criticism and cultural studies. However, the “post” in the term “postcolonial” itself implies a temporality that undermines the initial intention of conceptualizing colonial continuities in the present (McClintock 1992; Shohat 1992). There is no “post” in colonial/racial hierarchies in the world today. Instead, there are cultural and political processes that reproduce a “colonial situation” without the presence of a “colonial administration” or “colonial laws” to visibly enforce a colonial subordination. Although racist culture is not instrumental to capitalist accumulation, it was and continues to be an integral and inherent feature of historical capitalism (Wallerstein 1983). Quijano’s (1991, 1993, 1998) concept of “coloniality of power” is crucial to overcome the limits of the outlined approaches. “Coloniality of power” names the continuities in the so-called postcolonial era of the social hierarchical relationships of exploitation and domination between Westerners and non-Westerners built during centuries of European colonial expansion emphasizing the cultural and social power relations. As Quijano states: Racism and ethnicism were initially produced in the Americas and then expanded to the rest of the colonial world as the foundation of the speciﬁc

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power relations between Europe and the populations of the rest of the world. After ﬁve hundred years, they still are the basic components of power relations across the world. Once colonialism becomes extinct as a formal political system, social power is still constituted on criteria originated in colonial relations. In other words, coloniality has not ceased to be the central character of today’s social power. . . . With the formation of the Americas a new social category was established. This is the idea of “race.” . . . Since then, in the intersubjective relations and in the social practices of power, there emerged, on the one hand, the idea that non-Europeans have a biological structure not only different from Europeans, but, above all, belonging to an “inferior” level or type. On the other hand, the idea that cultural differences are associated with such biological inequalities. . . . These ideas have conﬁgured a deep and persistent cultural formation, a matrix of ideas, images, values, attitudes, and social practices, that do not cease to be implicated in relationships among people, even when colonial political relations have been eradicated. (Quijano 1993: 167–69; our own translation)

The concept of “coloniality of power” for the study of race is important because it enables us to understand why the present racial/ethnic hierarchy of the capitalist world-system is still “constituted on [cultural] criteria originated in colonial relations.” “Coloniality of power” historicizes and explains why certain groups are at the bottom of the hierarchy while others remain at the top. It moves beyond the tendency in studies about race to focus only on the persistence of a color hierarchy. Such a focus can lead to the reiﬁcation of color categories. Moreover, a focus on color does not address the fact that, although diverse colonized groups may be phenotypically undistinguishable from dominant colonizer groups, they can nevertheless be racialized as inferior others in a colonial situation. The racialization of the Irish in the British empire is a good example of how this process is not fundamentally about skin color but about a location within a colonial relationship. The same process of racialization occurs with “white” Puerto Ricans in the United States. This is why we prefer to use the category “colonial/racial” subjects of empire rather than simply “racial subjects.” Racial categories are built in relation to colonial histories. They must be looked at together. Thus, the shifting meanings and structures that Omi and Winant (1986) conceptualize as a “racial formation,” we prefer to call a “colonial/racial formation.” Shifting meanings about race have a historical continuity that can only be understood in relation to the colonial histories of empires. The categories of modernity such as citizenship, democracy, and national identity have been historically constructed through the “colonial-

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ity of power” between Europeans and non-Europeans (Quijano 1991, 1998). In the United States, this “coloniality of power” is constitutive of the symbolic and structural racial/ethnic hierarchies. Euro-American elites have historically deployed their symbolic capital, that is, the power of social prestige, to classify, racialize, exclude, and subordinate colonial subjects. If the concept of “coloniality of power” is stretched beyond the nation-state to a global scale, we can speak of a “global coloniality” (Georas 1997). Despite the eradication of the juridical-political institutions of colonialism, “global coloniality” names the continuities of colonial practices and imaginations across time and space at a global level. This can explain why an immigrant group from a sending society that was not a colonial territory of the metropole to which they migrated, can enter the labyrinth of colonial/racist constructions of identity. For example, Turkish immigrants in Germany today suffer the oppression of a German racist/colonial culture that originates in the European colonial expansion without Turkey ever having been a German colony. Similarly, Turkish and Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands (Verkuyten 1997) suffer the effects of colonial/racist discourses, although Turkey and Morocco were never colonies of the Dutch empire. Thus, Turks in Germany, and Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands are, according to our conceptualization, “colonial immigrants.” The global coloniality of power from colonial to postcolonial times helps us understand the ongoing power of the white male elites to classify populations and exclude people of color from the categories of citizenship and from the “imagined community” called the “nation.” The civil, political, and social rights that citizenship provided to members of the “nation” were selectively expanded over time to “white” working classes and “white” middle-class women. However, “internal” colonial groups remained “second-class citizens,” never having full access to the rights of citizens and to the “imagined community” called the nation (Gilroy 1987). “Coloniality of power” is constitutive of the metropolitan nation-states’ narratives of the nation. Who belongs and who does not belong to the “nation” is informed by the historical power relations between Europeans and non-Europeans. The persistence of a colonial culture in the present informs and constitutes social power today. The central aspect of the concept of “coloniality of power” is that it allows us to understand the interface between racist cultures and social power relations with a long colonial history in the capitalist worldsystem. It shows how social power today is still informed by criteria built

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over a long colonial history. Yet it is important to highlight that coloniality is not a homogeneous, but rather a heterogeneous process. There are multiple forms of colonialities according to the different colonial powers and the diverse histories of each colonial empire. Although colonial/racial subjects of an empire have a longer history of racialization than some recent immigrants, this does not mean that the latter are immune to similar racial categorization of older colonial subjects of empire. There are immigrant experiences that can only be understood in relation to the “coloniality of power” of the host society (“colonial immigrants”) while other immigrants were able to escape certain forms of coloniality (“immigrants”) because of their skin color, class origins, and/or the particular policies of the state.

global cities as microcosms of empire In the United States, male elites of European descent (“whites”) have dominated the social classiﬁcation of peoples throughout a long historical process of colonial/racial domination over Native-Americans, Africans, and other non-European subjects. Racialized representations of the “colonial subjects” are not peculiar to the United States. Other colonial subjects in other parts of the world have also been subjected to the history of empire and its related “global coloniality.” Groups with a long historical-colonial relationship to an imperial state are particularly vulnerable to negative representations of their identities. They are at the heart of the “global coloniality” still present in an officially “postcolonial” era. The targets of “coloniality” vary according to the global city such as Paris, Amsterdam, London, and New York. These cities, centers of empire in the past, are today “microcosms of empire” (Georas 1997). They reproduce in their spatial boundaries the racial/ethnic hierarchies of the old colonial empires. Colonized populations who live in a former colonial power, but not the one that had colonized their country, often ﬁnd they confront less stereotyping than at home. For example, AfricanAmericans and Puerto Ricans in Paris or Amsterdam often experience a “neutral” and sometimes even a “positive” reception among the Dutch and French people (Baldwin 1972; Oppenneer 1995; Stovall 1996). There is in general no negative preconceived notion attached to the “Puerto Rican” and “African-American” identities in the Dutch and French hegemonic imaginary. However, the moment someone identiﬁes him/herself as Puerto Rican or African-American in New York City, there is a list of preconceived negative ideological representations that

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are immediately mobilized against these racialized subjects. As Pedro, a Puerto Rican informant we interviewed, who has lived in Paris for the last twenty years, said: I moved from a rural town in Puerto Rico to New York City in 1957. East Harlem was my residence for the next twenty years. I worked making shirts in a fabrica. I also worked in a supermarket carrying merchandise, and as a janitor cleaning offices. In New York, life was very difficult for a guy like me. Every place I went and said I was Puerto Rican, the only job I could aspire to was menial, cheap-wage jobs. Whites thought Puerto Ricans were lazy and criminals. They always treated us like shit. . . . One day I realized that no matter how hard I worked, I was condemned to live in a ghetto and work as cheap labor all my life. That was when I decided to take an airplane and move to Paris even though I did not know anything about this country. That was when things changed for me. Here nobody discriminated against me for being Puerto Rican. I only suffered discrimination when they thought I was Algerian. But when I clarify that I am Puerto Rican, they politely excuse themselves. . . . I learned the language and worked for several years as a janitor. At night I went to a university to study. You know here is not like in the United States where to get a university degree you need thousands of dollars. . . . After I ﬁnished my degree, I started working in my ﬁrst office job where I did not have to be a janitor.

Pedro’s experience as a Puerto Rican is not unique. African-Americans have a long history of moving to Paris to escape the racism of the United States (Stovall 1996). However, the same can be said of Afro-Surinamese and Algerians in New York City.8 There is in general no negative preconceived notion about these groups’ identities in the Euro-American imaginary. The absence of a colonial history within a particular empire makes an important difference in terms of how the identities of migrants are constructed and, thus, perceived. However, in Amsterdam and Paris it is a different story. Afro-Surinamese and Algerians are racialized colonial subjects with an old colonial history with their respective metropoles. They are subaltern subjects marked by the workings of “coloniality,” that is, the reproduction of old racial/colonial hierarchies inside the metropoles. Afro-Surinamese in Amsterdam and Algerians in Paris are represented in the “white social imaginary” with the same racial stereotypes as African-Americans and Puerto Ricans are represented in New York City: as criminals, lazy, dirty, opportunists, and stupid (Guillette and Sayad 1976; Laval 1984; Essed 1990, 1991; Wieviorka 1992; van

8. This does not mean that they do not suffer discrimination in these cities. After all, today Algerians and Arabs are experiencing an anti-Arab backlash.

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Dijk 1993; Grosfoguel 1999). The “identities” of “colonial/racial subjects” acquire a negative or pejorative meaning because of the articulation of the hegemonic “colonial/racial formation.” Something similar can be said of West Indians in New York and London. In the post-civil rights era, they are frequently portrayed in New York’s “Euro-American imaginary” as “hard working, educated, and entrepreneurial people,” while in London they are represented with the same racist stereotypes as are Puerto Ricans and African-Americans in New York (Hartmann and Husband 1973; Hall et al. 1978; Grosfoguel 1997a, 1999). This is partly related to the fact that West Indians were historically colonial/racial subjects of the British empire but not of the American empire (Grosfoguel 1999). However, the social conditions of possibility for the emergence of a positive image about West Indians in New York City are also related to important transformations in the racial discourses of the United States. During the 1920s and 1930s, the strong biological racist discourses in the United States made it difficult for West Indians to distinguish themselves ethnically from African-Americans in the “white social imaginary” of New York City. Although West Indians did not have a long colonial history with the United States, they nevertheless experienced the effects of the “coloniality of power” directed at AfricanAmericans. West Indians lived and were racialized together with African-Americans (Watkins-Owens 1996). During those years, they joined forces with African-Americans against racial exclusion in New York City (W. James 1998). Thus, their political strategy emphasized racial over ethnic identity (Kasinitz 1992). However, the post-civil rights transformations of the American racial discourses from biological racism to cultural racism made possible ethnic strategies of distinction within the “black” community. To distinguish themselves from the negative symbolic representations of African-Americans, the post1965 ﬁrst-generation West Indians emphasized ethnic over racial identity (Kasinitz 1992). The West Indian English “accent” contributed to distinguishing them in the Euro-American imaginary from the negative symbolic capital associated with “African-American identity.” This is an important strategy of “ethnic” distinction vis-à-vis U.S. colonial/racial subjects (for example, African-Americans and the Puerto Ricans). The fact that ﬁrst-generation West Indians were no longer grouped with African-Americans meant that their higher skilled backgrounds would not be offset. Thus, they were successfully incorporated into the

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host labor market in better-paid public and private service jobs. West Indians are currently portrayed by the “white” establishment in New York as a “hard-working model minority” as opposed to the “laziness” of African-Americans. “White” political elites have fostered the ethnic rather than racial identity of West Indians as a “divide and rule” strategy to defeat African-American candidates in the city’s politics (Kasinitz 1992). The symbolic capital of West Indian “identity” in the racial/ethnic hierarchy of the city is higher than that of colonial/racial groups. This is not to say that there is no process of racialization toward West Indians in New York City. As a group predominantly composed of AfroCaribbeans, they also suffer from the hierarchies established by the coloniality of power but in a different way. Rather than being marginalized from the labor market as are Puerto Ricans and African-Americans, they face discrimination that limits income. It has been documented that West Indians receive lower salaries than “whites” and even African-Americans in professional and skilled occupations (Modell 1991). As a result, they have an intermediary location in New York City’s racial/ethnic hierarchy. In sum, ﬁrst-generation West Indians’ English accents and their higher cultural capital (that is, higher educational backgrounds) in the context of the post-civil rights era led to their ethnic distinction from AfricanAmericans and, thus, to their positive symbolic capital and more successful incorporation. However, it is important to make the point that second-generation West Indians in New York are a different story (Waters 1994). They live, study, and share “colonial” spaces together with African-American youth. Their “accent” is no longer as British Caribbean as that of the ﬁrst generation of West Indians. They became “African-Americanized” in the “Euro-American” imaginary, suffering similar racial stereotypes and discrimination in public spaces and the labor market. As a result of their African-Americanization, they have been resubsumed as colonial subjects of the U.S. empire. James Baldwin, the African-American writer who lived in Paris for many years, provides an excellent description of the paradoxical relationship experienced by colonial subjects of one empire in another empire. Respectful treatment by Parisians made him initially believe that the French were not racist until he discovered that: [I]n Paris, les misérables are Algerians. They slept four or ﬁve or six to a room, and they slept in shifts, they were treated like dirt, and they scraped such sustenance as they could off the ﬁlthy, unyielding Paris stones. The

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French called them lazy because they appeared to spend most of their time sitting around, drinking tea, in their cafés. But they were not lazy. They were unable to ﬁnd work, and their rooms were freezing. . . . French students spent most of their time in cafés, too, for the same reason, but no one called them lazy. . . . Every once in a while someone might be made uneasy by the color of my skin, or an expression on my face, or I might say something to make him uneasy, or I might, arbitrarily (there was no reason to suppose that they wanted me), claim kinship with the Arabs. Then, I was told, that I was different: le noir Americain est très évolué, voyons! But the Arabs were not like me, they were not “civilized” like me. (1972: 24–27)

The negative symbolic images of colonial racialized subjects in their respective metropoles are related to the colonial histories of each empire and the “global coloniality” still present under a “postcolonial,” “postimperial” capitalist world-system. Global cities are today the new “contact zones” of “colonial encounters” (Pratt 1992). According to Mary Louise Pratt, “the ‘contact zone’ refers to the space of colonial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conﬂict” (1992: 6). Although Pratt used the notion of “contact zones” to talk about the space of colonial encounters during European expansion, the classical colonial period, it can be a useful concept to use in contemporary global cities today. What is common to Puerto Ricans and African-Americans in New York, Surinamese in Amsterdam, West Indians in London, and Algerians in Paris is their respective long historical relationships as colonial/racial subjects within each empire and their subordinated location in the reproduction of those hierarchies today. This is not to imply that African-Americans or Puerto Ricans in Paris, or West Indians, Surinamese, or Algerians in New York City, suffer no discrimination, but rather to point at how the degree to which they encounter racism is markedly lower, or is frequently related to being confused/associated with one of the local colonial subjects (for example, a Puerto Rican mistaken for an Algerian in Paris, or a Surinamese mistaken for an African-American in New York City) so that they become transformed into “colonial immigrants.” The symbolic capital (negative or positive) attached to the “identity” of different groups in the racial/ethnic hierarchy of a global city is related to the ongoing “coloniality of power,” even though colonialism generally has been eliminated as a political system in the late twentieth century.

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african-americans and puerto ricans as colonial/racial subjects Categories such as Hispanic or Latino, although politically useful for certain struggles, mix together diverse ethnic groups that have heterogeneous experiences and that cannot be subsumed under a single label. At the same time, these broad groupings have come to be described as “ethnic groups,” which has become a code word for race in the United States. “Ethnic” refers to those groups, either previously or currently racialized and so excluded from the “imagined community” of white Anglo-Saxon America. This shift in the dominant discourses on race occurred as a response to the 1960s civil rights movement. This emerging dominant discourse was elaborated by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan (1963) in their now classic Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. The experience of people of color in the United States is equated to that of the “white” immigrants from Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. By transmuting racial discrimination into ethnic discrimination, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans are presented as able to follow the same trajectory as previous waves of “white” European migrants. They are seen as candidates for eventual economic, social, and political incorporation. Since the door is open to their incorporation, any poverty and marginalization that they continue to face is attributed to a “cultural problem” within the “ethnic” community rather than a structural problem of discrimination by Euro-American dominant groups. This approach obliterates the history of racial/colonial oppression experienced by African-Americans and Puerto Ricans. The situation of both populations cannot be fully understood if they are categorized as simply migrants or members of an ethnic group. Instead, their situation is better understood if they are seen as colonial/racialized subjects in the United States. Both are formally citizens, but cannot exercise their full rights because of the history of racial/colonial oppression. Although the formal colonial barriers to social mobility have disappeared, African-Americans and Puerto Ricans still encounter the old racial/colonial stereotypes as barriers to equality and social mobility in a “contact zone” of “colonial encounter” such as a global city like New York. Although there have been Puerto Ricans and African-Americans in New York City since the nineteenth century, their mass migration did not occur until labor shortages increased due to the First World War

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(1914–18) and the imposition of legal restrictions to European migration in the 1920s (Ottley and Weatherby 1967). As part of the war efforts, African-Americans and Puerto Ricans were recruited to manufacturing industries and low-wage services in New York City (Ottley and Weatherby 1967; Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños 1979; Sanchez-Korrol 1983). Labor agents, aided by the U.S. Labor Department, directly recruited blacks from the South and Puerto Ricans from the island. New York City became one of the main destinations of these racialized/colonial migrants. The 1924 Immigration Act that restricted European migration to the United States further accelerated the massive migration of these “internal” colonial subjects to New York City. As the white workers became upwardly mobile (which did not happen on a massive scale until after World War II) with their increased skills and job opportunities in higherwage industries, the low-wage manufacturing jobs in the garment and apparel industries became an undesirable economic sector identiﬁed with racialized minorities. During the 1920s and 1930s, African-Americans became the main source of new cheap labor in New York City’s manufacturing sector and low- wage services. With approximately thirty thousand newcomers in the 1920s, Puerto Ricans were the second largest source of cheap labor. The racialization of these colonial subjects was reﬂected in the low wages they received in the garment industry sweatshops relative to whites of different ethnicities. As early as 1929, Puerto Ricans and African-Americans earned from $8 to $13 per week, while Jews and Italians earned from $26 to $44 per week (Laurentz 1980: 90, 104). As Du Bois would say, the colonial status of these groups is related to having “their labor treated as a commodity at the lowest wage” (1970: 184). The racialization of the Puerto Ricans as inferior “Others” in New York City was entangled with the racialization of the African-Americans. Puerto Ricans initially settled close to African-American communities such as Harlem (Sanchez-Korrol 1983). Given the large numbers of mulattos, blacks, and mestizos among the Puerto Rican migrants, many were initially “confused” in the white social imaginary with AfricanAmericans. The social construction of racial categories in the United States, where having “one drop of black blood” is enough to be classiﬁed as “black,” was a fertile ground for the initial classiﬁcation of Puerto Ricans as African-Americans despite their effort to maintain an autonomous identity. The following story is typical of many pre-1950 Puerto Rican migrants in New York City:

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When I came to New York everything was rationed, sugar, rice, everything. So my mamá sent me to get a ration card. My cousin Gino, the one who had written suggesting I come here, went with me. He spoke the language much better than I, so he did all the talking. I noticed the girl there was writing down everything in a questionnaire. She asked my nationality and my cousin answered Puerto Rican, but she wrote down Negro. My cousin protested, “No, no, no, not Negro, Puerto Rican.” She gave him a look but she erased “Negro” and wrote down “Puerto Rican.” It was my ﬁrst experience of that kind up here. (Narrated by Soledad, quoted in Lewis 1966: 227)

The history of Puerto Ricans in New York City is in many ways intertwined with that of the African-American community. Puerto Ricans were “African-Americanized” in a “colonial contact zone” like New York. But the social construction of Puerto Ricans as inferior “Others” in the Euro-American social imaginary is something that goes back to the colonial incorporation of the island as a result of the 1898 U.S. invasion. There was an autonomous construction of Puerto Ricans as inferior subjects that began early in the century and was later mobilized against Puerto Rican migrants in the metropole (Santiago 1994; Thompson 1995). However, it was after 1950 that the distinct racialization of the Puerto Ricans in New York City acquired a more pronounced form. The African-American mass migration to New York City diminished after 1950. However, this was not the case for the Puerto Ricans. After the Second World War, Puerto Rican migrants were incorporated in larger numbers to New York’s labor market. Why were Puerto Ricans massively recruited in the 1950s rather than Chicanos, AfricanAmericans, Dominicans, Cubans, or Jamaicans? The capitalist accumulation logic can explain the labor demand of the metropole, but not which ethnic group would be massively recruited. To answer this question, we must understand the ideological/symbolic global state strategies of the United States during the cold war. The showcase of Puerto Rico during the cold war is crucial to understand why Puerto Ricans, and not other national/ethnic groups, were massively recruited at this time.

puerto ricans: a new “race”? Since racialization is not merely about skin color, Puerto Ricans of all colors were increasingly perceived by Euro-Americans as a racialized “Other.” Puerto Ricans, as a colonial group within the United States, became a new racialized subject, different from whites and blacks, sharing with the latter a subordinate position to the former. The ﬁlm West Side

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Story probably marked a turning point where Puerto Ricans became a distinct racialized minority, no longer to be confused with blacks or Chicanos in the Euro-American social imaginary (Pérez 1997; SandovalSánchez 1997). However, West Side Story was a successful Broadway show before it became a movie production. Thousands of people in New York City were exposed to it before it became a successful Hollywood ﬁlm production seen by millions of Americans. Thus, for New Yorkers the turning point of perceiving Puerto Ricans as a new racialized subject was much earlier (1950s) than for national audiences (early 1960s). This racialization was the result of a long historical process of colonial/racial subordination on the island and the mainland (Vázquez 1991; K. Santiago 1994; Thompson 1995). The racism experienced by AfroPuerto Ricans in many instances can be stronger than that experienced by lighter-skinned Puerto Ricans. However, no matter how “blond and blue eyed” a person may be, or whether she or he can “pass,” the moment that person identiﬁes her- or himself as Puerto Rican, she or he enters the labyrinth of racial Otherness. Puerto Ricans of all colors have become a racialized group in the social imaginary of Euro-Americans, marked by racist stereotypes such as laziness, violence, criminal behavior, stupidity, and dirtiness. Although Puerto Ricans form a phenotypically variable group, they have become a new “race” in the United States. This highlights the social rather than biological character of racial classiﬁcations. The depreciative classiﬁcation of Puerto Ricans as “spiks” in the symbolic ﬁeld of New York designates the negative symbolic capital attached to the imagined “Puerto Rican identity.” In New York’s racial/ethnic division of labor, Puerto Ricans occupied the economic niche of low-wage manufacturing jobs. By 1960, more than 50 percent of Puerto Ricans in New York were incorporated as lowwage labor in this sector (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). During the 1960s, Puerto Ricans’ successful struggles for labor and civil rights made them “too expensive” for the increasingly informalized manufacturing sector. Simultaneously, the deindustrialization of New York led to the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs. Most of the manufacturing industries moved to peripheral regions around the world, and those that stayed in New York informalized their activities. The manufacturing industry, in constant need of cheap labor, relied heavily on new Latino immigrants, legal or illegal, who had even fewer rights than “internal” colonial subjects such as Puerto Ricans. The expulsion of Puerto Ricans from manufacturing jobs, and the racialized, segregated educational system that excluded Puerto Ricans from the best public schools, produced

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a redundant labor force that could not reenter the formal labor market. This led to the formation of what some have called the Puerto Rican “underclass,” which we prefer to call a “redundant colonial/racialized labor force.” Unable to ﬁnd jobs, many Puerto Ricans developed popular strategies, legal or illegal, to survive the crisis. Currently, only 14 percent of Puerto Ricans are in manufacturing and more than 50 percent are either unemployed or out of the labor force (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997).

the “puertoricanization” of dominicans in new york There was hardly any Dominican migration to the United States during the Trujillo dictatorship. Only after the 1961 U.S.-backed military coup against Trujillo did emigration escalate. The out-migration process was encouraged by U.S. and Dominican political elites as a safety valve to release social unrest and political instability and to perpetuate a stable, pro-U.S. government (Báez-Evertz and D’Oleo Ramírez 1986: 19; Grasmuck and Pessar 1992: 31–33; Mitchell 1992: 89–123; Grosfoguel 1997b). The U.S. foreign policy in the Caribbean sought to avoid another Castro-style regime (Grasmuck and Pessar 1992: 32–33). As part of the containment strategy, the United States invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965 to defeat the Constitutionalists’ forces, and outmigration increased dramatically. From 1961 to 1965, 35,372 Dominicans were legally admitted to the United States, but from 1966 to 1970, the number of legally admitted Dominicans increased to 58,744 (Grasmuck and Pessar 1992: 20). Most of the migrants came from urban middle-sectors of the working classes, many of which were politically active against the regime (Grosfoguel 1997b). In addition, the Immigration Act of 1965 facilitated skilled-labor immigration to the United States. The Dominican Republic, with a total population of fewer than ﬁve million people, has one of the highest rates of legal emigration to the United States of any country in the Western Hemisphere, made possible by U.S. and Dominican government policy, which in the years after 1965 actively encouraged Dominican “entry” to the United States. But the geopolitical interest of fostering migration to achieve security in the Dominican Republic did not translate into a policy of active incorporation. In fact, many of the Dominican migrants came with only tourist visas and were unable to obtain permanent resident visas. Dominicans who emigrated were able to enter the United States but then were left to fend for themselves.

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Dominicans in the New York metropolitan area initially settled in Puerto Rican communities located in the Lower East Side, the South Bronx, and Brooklyn (Hendricks 1974; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991; Guarnizo 1992). They relied on Puerto Rican social networks to ﬁnd jobs, acquire information about city services, and avoid the “migra” by assuming a “Puerto Rican identity” (Hendricks 1974; Guarnizo 1992). These Dominicans were racially mixed and probably included more people of African descent than Puerto Ricans.9 Moreover, most of the Dominicans could not speak English. Their “accents” when speaking English were not signiﬁcantly different from that of Puerto Ricans. Thus, Dominicans remained indistinguishable from Puerto Ricans in the Euro-American social imaginary. Even Dominicans who made an effort to distinguish themselves from Puerto Ricans to avoid being associated with their negative symbolic capital were unsuccessful. As José, a Dominican informant, said, “In New York City, if you are not white nor black, then you belong to a third racial category called ‘Puerto Rican.’ I am constantly telling white Americans that I am Dominican, not Puerto Rican, but they seem not to get it.” Dominicans were subsumed under the categories of the “coloniality of power” directed at Puerto Ricans, and even though they came predominantly from an urban middle-sector class/educational background, that is, a higher-class background than Puerto Ricans, it was not an accident that Dominicans in New York City came to occupy an economic niche similar to that of Puerto Ricans. They became “colonial immigrants” because their process of incorporation was close to the experience of the colonial/racial subjects who preceded them. As racialized noncitizens, Dominicans were an even cheaper source of labor than Puerto Ricans. Dominicans replaced the so-called expensive 9. However, Dominicans have more difficulties acknowledging their African heritage than do other Caribbean groups. The nation-building process of the Dominican Republic expelled the African heritage from its “imagined community.” In the context of the “coloniality of power” of the Dominican neocolonial state, “black” is a racial category used to refer to Haitians who are constructed as “savage,” “criminal,” “lazy,” and “opportunist.” In contrast, dark-skinned Dominicans are seen as “Indians” of different color shades (“dark Indian,” “clear Indian,” and so forth). This explains why many ﬁrst-generation Dominican migrants arrived in the United States with a national ideology that denied their “blackness.” Thus, many of them suffered a cultural shock, not only when they were confused with Puerto Ricans, but also when they were called “blacks” by other groups. Second-generation Dominicans have a more positive relationship toward acknowledging their African heritage. However, many of the ﬁrst-generation Dominicans are still reluctant to associate themselves with African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Haitians in the context of New York City. This has important political implications that cannot be discussed here.

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Puerto Rican labor force in the manufacturing sector (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). Many Dominicans worked in the city’s sweatshops for pay below the federal minimum wage. Moreover, the illegal status of many Dominicans provided a disenfranchised labor force for the American low-wage manufacturing industry. Illegal entry provided a new mechanism for transforming immigrant populations into colonial subjects, and Dominicans became what we call “colonial immigrants.” By 1980, Dominicans had formed their own ethnic community in Washington Heights. They started to be identiﬁed by many EuroAmericans as a “racialized other” distinct from Puerto Ricans. However, the “Puertoricanization” of the Dominican migrants in New York’s racial/ethnic division of labor was already an accomplished fact. The social construction of “Dominican identity” in the Euro-American social imaginary was associated with similar stereotypes toward the colonial/racial subjects within the city, such as lazy, criminal, and stupid. By 1980, around 50 percent of the Dominican labor force in New York City had ended up working as cheap labor in manufacturing. During the 1980s, more Dominicans ﬂowed into New York City than any other population. However, the deindustrialization of New York accelerated during these years. Many Dominicans either lost their jobs or were replaced by even cheaper sources of labor such as Ecuadorian, Mexican, and Chinese immigrants. This displacement, plus the large numbers of new Dominican immigrants entering the labor force and the difficulties of ﬁnding jobs in their traditional economic niche, formed a racialized, redundant labor force. Dominicans became marginalized in the labor force in numbers similar to Puerto Ricans, but in a shorter length of time (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). As “colonial immigrants,” they encountered racial discrimination similar to that of colonial/racial subjects in the United States.

cuban migration Most of the Cuban migrants in the New York metropolitan area arrived between 1960 and 1980 and settled in Union City, New Jersey. Many Cubans came to New York by way of the Havana-Miami “freedom ﬂights” between 1965 and 1973. These Cubans were part of an urban skilled labor migration (Prieto 1984: 7). Like Dominicans in New York City, Cubans were also confused with Puerto Ricans. Given the similar class, educational, and Latino origin of Cuban and Dominican migration, how did Cubans avoid ending up with Puerto Ricans at the bottom

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of the labor market? First, most of the Cuban refugees before 1980 were “white” (Pedraza-Bailey 1985a: 23). However, being phenotypically white does not necessarily preclude racialization in the Euro-American social imaginary. As the Dominican example illustrates, association with the Puerto Ricans is a racializing factor irrespective of a person’s color. “Ethnic” social practices and a “Puerto Rican accent” can also “color” a person. The pre-1980s Cuban migrants managed to escape the negative symbolic capital of Puerto Rican racialization because they received more than one billion dollars from the U.S. government’s Cuban Refugee Program.10 The federal government provided every city in which Cubans settled with millions of dollars in government assistance to cover the cost of education, welfare, hospitals, and other public services for Cuban refugees. As a result, local governments perceived Cuban settlement as a ﬁnancial gain rather than a burden, “whitening” the perception of their difference in the imaginary of “White” America. As a Puerto Rican informant from East Harlem said, “The federal government dipped the Cuban refugees in Clorox.” Therefore, Cubans escaped the symbolic subordination of the coloniality of power experienced by other colonial/racial subjects. The media, too, represented Cubans as members of a “model minority” who managed to lift themselves by their “bootstraps” (Pedraza-Bailey 1985b). In addition to their role in showcasing capitalism, Cubans were used as a model minority against the civil rights movement of the “internal” colonial/racial subjects of the U.S. empire during the 1960s. In Miami, as well as in Union City (New Jersey) and in New York City, urban areas where large numbers of Cubans settled, the Small Business Administration (SBA) practiced institutionally racist policies against Puerto Ricans and African-Americans while favoring disproportionately the Cubans in the provision of loan programs. SBA assistance correlates with successful entrepreneurship among the Cubans in Union City, New Jersey (Cronin 1981), as happened in Miami. A survey in the early 1980s of more than 120 Cuban-owned ﬁrms in Union City found that 73 percent had acquired their initial capital through the SBA’s direct or guaranteed

10. This section refers only to the pre-1980 Cuban refugees. It does not refer to the 1980s migration of a group known as the “Marielitos,” largely comprised by mulattos and Afro-Cubans. By the time the “Marielitos” came to the United States, most of the federal assistance programs for Cuban refugees had been terminated. Thus, the “Marielitos” were unable to escape being negatively racialized as the Cuban refugees who preceded them had.

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bank loans (Cronin 1981). Approximately 80 percent of the total initial capitalization of the 120 Cuban-owned ﬁrms consisted of SBA direct and guaranteed bank loans. The same survey found that the SBA in New Jersey and New York City favored Cubans over Puerto Ricans in their loan programs, even though 70 percent of the Cuban entrepreneurs had completed only eight years or less of formal education and came from class origins similar to those of Puerto Ricans. The study raises the following question: If Union City Cuban small business owners share a similar educational and economic proﬁle to Puerto Ricans in the metropolitan area, why have Puerto Ricans not experienced the same entrepreneurial success? This study found that when Puerto Ricans called the SBA offices in New Jersey and New York City, 75 and 80 percent of the callers, respectively, were given misleading information. When Cubans called the same SBA offices, 84 percent of the callers in New Jersey and 70 percent in New York received the correct information. The study concluded that there was a broad institutional policy favoring Cuban refugees over Puerto Ricans. As Pedraza-Bailey states, “In America, all the political migrations that took place during the peak years of the Cold War—the Hungarians, Berliners and Cubans—served an important symbolic function. In this historical period of the Cold War, West and East contested the superiority of their political and economic systems. Political immigrants who succeeded in the ﬂight to freedom became touching symbols around which to weave the legitimacy needed for foreign policy” (1985b: 16–17). This global symbolic strategy translated into economic resources for the Cuban refugees, increasing their ethnic symbolic capital. The most dramatic representation of how “Cuban identity” was associated with positive symbolic capital was the 1969 comedy, Popi, where a Puerto Rican from a New York City ghetto, holding down three jobs, decided that the only way he could give his sons a better life was to turn them into Cuban refugees arriving in Miami. He trained his sons to be “Cuban” and put them off the coast of South Florida to pass them off as refugees. After their “rescue” by the Coast Guard, they received all the beneﬁts for Cuban refugees. This sadly hilarious ﬁlm documents the positive symbolic capital associated with Cuban identity and its relation to state resources. During the 1980s, thousands of Cuban refugees from the “Mariel” migration moved from Miami to the New York metropolitan area. Compared with the pre-1980s Cuban migrants, more of these refugees were from working-class and agrarian backgrounds. Moreover, a large num-

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ber of the “Mariel” migrants were Afro-Cubans and mulattos. Because the Cuban Refugee Program had been phased out in the late 1970s, these migrants could not access state assistance and in turn were not cushioned against racial discrimination. As a result, the “Marielitos” were “Puerto Ricanized” in New York City and “African-Americanized” in Miami. They suffered a marginalization in the labor market similar to that of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York City. They became part of the “colonial immigrants” who experienced a social process similar to the U.S. empire’s colonial/racial subjects.

conclusion The coloniality of power, global ideological symbolic strategies, as well as the racial/ethnic symbolic ﬁeld of New York City, are crucial determinants in understanding the differences among Latino Caribbean migrants. Immigrants do not enter a neutral space when they migrate. The racial/ethnic hierarchy of the United States has a long-standing colonial history. Colonial/racial subjects have a long history of racialization in the “white” imaginary of metropolitan populations as a result of their colonial history within the U.S. empire. Some immigrants enter the labyrinth of colonial/racial subjects (“colonial immigrants”), while others escape this subordination, leading to a more successful sociopolitical and labor market incorporation (“immigrants”). Migrants from Caribbean nationstates experienced the “coloniality of power” when they were perceived by the dominant “Euro-American” populations to be culturally similar to Puerto Rican colonial/racial subjects. This was the case with Dominicans, who entered the Puerto Rican social networks, occupying the same position in New York’s racial/ethnic hierarchy, sharing the same negative symbolic capital. Factors at the global level also help determine how immigrants are received, and these factors affect their incorporation as immigrants, colonial immigrants, or colonial/racial subjects. The United States developed symbolic and military/security strategies in the Caribbean during the cold war that affected migration processes in different ways. Mass migration of Dominican urban middle sectors was fostered by the United States as part of a geopolitical strategy to gain political stability and avoid the emergence of another Cuba. Puerto Rico and Cuba waged, as surrogates, the symbolic cold war battle between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the case of Puerto Rico, the showcase was the island, not the migrants. The out-migration of rural, unskilled labor and the

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urban poor was what made possible the success of Puerto Rico as an American showcase. Thus, U.S. state resources were channeled to the islanders, not the migrants. In the case of Cuba, prior to 1980, the migrants themselves carried the symbolic value, and the United States channeled funds to the migrants, while the islanders suffered a trade embargo. Pre-1980 Cubans in the United States were not perceived as a burden by the local communities where they settled. Wherever Cubans moved, the federal government sent millions of dollars in assistance. Thus, Cubans developed a positive symbolic capital in the “Euro-American imaginary,” becoming incorporated as “immigrants,” perceived as being similar to white populations in the racial/ethnic hierarchy. This helps us understand why, contrary to the Dominicans, pre-1980 Cuban refugees in New York City were able to escape the racialization of the Puerto Rican community. The articulation between Quijano’s “coloniality of power” and Wallerstein’s “world-system approach” provides a powerful analytical tool to understand the complex historical continuities between present racial/ethnic hierarchies and past colonial legacies. Although shifting meanings over time, the predominance of a global racist/colonial culture in the capitalist world-system has its historical origins in the European colonial expansion. In the recent “postcolonial” era, “colonialism” has been replaced by “coloniality.” Power relations today are still constituted and informed by a colonial/racist culture that privileges Europeans/EuroAmericans/whites over non-Europeans even when colonial administrations have almost ceased to exist. The fusion between the “coloniality of power” and the “world-system” approach provides an important analytical framework to understand the differential modes of incorporation of different migrant communities and their unequal location in the racial/ethnic hierarchy of the “host country.” Moreover, this approach helps us to establish the connections between the immigrant status in the “host country” and the standing of their “home country” within the world-system. The majority of the migrant populations that end up as “colonial immigrants” come from subordinated peripheral zones in the capitalist world-economy. Migrants who are allocated as “colonial immigrants” remain attached to their home country and attempt to raise its standing in the world-system. Their struggle for a positive incorporation in the “host country” is entangled with a transnational political struggle to improve the standing of their “home country” within the world-system. Future studies should analyze the implications of the “coloniality of

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power” in the United States for the different ways civil rights, sense of entitlement, and residential segregation are constructed among the various Latino communities. Moreover, we need to explore in depth the transnational connections between the status of an ethnic group in the U.S. “coloniality of power” and the standing of each group’s country of origin in a world-system organized around a “global coloniality.”

pa rt t h r e e

Caribbean Colonial Migrants in Western Europe and the United States

chapter 6

Colonial Caribbean Migrations to France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States Vis-à-vis the developed West, we are very much “the same.” We belong to the marginal, the underdeveloped, the periphery, the “other.” We are at the outer edge, the rim, of the metropolitan world—always “South” to someone else’s El Norte. Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”

This chapter attempts to understand the peculiarities of the migration processes of colonial Caribbean migrations to the metropoles. Speciﬁcally, it compares the migration processes and labor market incorporation of Puerto Ricans to the United States, Martinicans/Guadeloupeans to France, Surinamese/Dutch Antilleans to the Netherlands, and West Indians to England. This broad comparative perspective is important for understanding the peculiar modes of incorporation of these colonial migrations to their respective metropoles. The emigration processes from nonindependent Caribbean territories such as Puerto Rico, Martinique, Guadeloupe, British Caribbean, Suri-

My research and travel expenses assumed while working on this chapter were covered by the Rockefeller Foundation during my tenure as a Rockefeller Fellow at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies in New York (Hunter College-CUNY) and by the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris during my position as a visiting scholar in 1993–94. I would like to express thanks to Maurice Aymard, director of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, and to Immanuel Wallerstein for their encouragement and constant support during my research for this chapter. I would also like to thank Michel Giraud, Chloe Georas, and Gert Oostindie for comments on previous drafts.

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name, and the Dutch Antilles during the postwar era are quite similar. Migrants from these islands all share citizenship with the metropole, their migration was more or less organized/stimulated by either the peripheral or the metropolitan state, their class/social origin was more rural and unskilled than migrants from Caribbean nation-states, and they all form part of a world-systemic process of colonial labor migration to serve the needs for cheap labor and menial laborers in the core zones of the capitalist world-economy during the postwar economic boom. Rather than placing the Puerto Rican, Dutch Antillean, or Martinican migration experiences in the spectrum of migration from Caribbean nation-states, we can better understand them in relation to the experience of other Caribbean colonial populations to their respective metropoles during the postwar era. Migrations from Suriname (before independence)/Dutch Antilles to the Netherlands, the West Indies (before independence) to England, Martinique/Guadeloupe to France, and Puerto Rico to the United States are peculiar in that these migrants come from a new type of colonies, “modern colonies” (Pierre-Charles 1979). “Modern colonies,” as opposed to old colonies, were formed after the Second World War. They share the metropolitan citizenship, have free labor mobility with the metropole, have access to democratic and civil rights, and receive large transfers in the form of welfare, loans, or credits from the metropolitan state. Despite the similarities in the socioeconomic origin of these Caribbean colonial migrants, there are interesting differences regarding the modes of incorporation to the labor market, the social contexts of reception, and the cultural/racial dynamics in the metropoles. A comparison of Caribbean colonial migrations during the postwar period of 1945 through 1990 provides a unique opportunity to understand the different racial, ethnic, and social dynamics in France, England, the Netherlands, and the United States.

the formation of modern colonies in the caribbean After the war, symbolic geopolitical strategies became an important structuring logic of the core-periphery relationships in the world-system. The defeat of the Nazis changed the geopolitical conﬁguration of the world-system. The bipolar division of the world between the Soviet Union and the United States and the emergence of newly independent countries in the periphery were two crucial features that transformed the

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interstate system. The decline of colonial administrations as the dominant means of core control of the periphery increased the instability in the system. Each superpower feared that the elites in the newly independent countries might make an alliance with the other side. Within this context strategies of symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1977) to gain “proﬁts” of prestige and honor vis-à-vis their adversary emerged as a central feature of the world-system. From the ﬁrst meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco, the Soviet Union and the United States began the struggle over who was the champion of decolonization, each accusing the other of being a colonial power. The Soviets used the case of Puerto Rico to support its claims about American imperialism. This context explains the political reforms that gave way to the emergence of modern colonies in the Caribbean. The ﬁrst step was the formation of the Caribbean Commission. This was an international organization composed of core powers such as France, the Netherlands, the United States, and Great Britain. The commission dealt with economic and technical cooperation issues and became a showcase of the “goodwill” of the West toward the development of the “underdeveloped” world. As Dr. H. R. van Houten, chairman of the Seventh Annual Conference, said: In no international organization have I ever felt such an atmosphere of cooperation and goodwill and such a desire to respect the points of view of others and to try to obtain results satisfactory to everybody. . . . [T]his organization could serve as an example to many international organizations. Fourteen countries are cooperating to the best of their ability to create happiness and a better way of life for their people. Any person, travelling in this area, will have to agree that enormous results have been obtained. (Caribbean Commission 1957: 98)

Thus, after the war, the Caribbean became a laboratory of the core states’ policies for economic development in the periphery of the capitalist world-economy and a showcase of their “goodwill” toward colonial people. The four colonial powers in the Caribbean pursued alternative statuses for their colonies: the British established a self-government federation within an imperial commonwealth community; the Dutch conceded autonomy; the French annexed the territories; and the United States basically concealed its colonial relationship with the semiautonomous Estado Libre Asociado in Puerto Rico. Despite this diversity of status alternatives, by 1955 the largest of the British West Indies (Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados, and Jamaica), the French West Indies, the Dutch Caribbean, and the U.S. Caribbean all

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formed what are called “modern colonies” (Pierre-Charles 1979). The extension of metropolitan citizenship and/or civil and social rights to the colonies was part of the institutional reforms that legitimized or facilitated the transformation of classical colonies to modern colonies. “Modern colonies” differ from classical colonies in that the colonial population has civil rights, universal suffrage, access to metropolitan state capital through welfare programs or budget transfers, high wages, mass consumption, modern forms of labor processes, and free labor mobility between the colony and the metropole. The relationship of modern colonies to the metropoles can be understood as a form of neocolonialism without a fully independent state or as a form of colonialism with access to certain state beneﬁts and rights of the metropolitan populations. In sum, a modern colony is neither a classical colony nor a nation-state. The formation of modern colonies fostered the integration of the peripheral labor market to the metropolitan labor market by making possible the emergence of a “migratory ﬁeld” between the colony and the metropole. As citizens of the metropole, laborers from modern colonies had free access to the core labor market. This coincided with the postwar world-economic expansion wherein the upper mobility of white workers to better paid jobs created a “labor shortage” at the bottom of the core labor market, which was ﬁlled by the colonial subjects. However, the entrance of colonial subjects to the core labor market was not perceived neutrally by the host society (Harris 1993). The history of colonialism preceding the migration from modern colonies marked their racialized and stereotypical representations as criminal, lazy, and dumb (Hartmann and Husband 1973; Hall et al. 1978; Anselin 1979; Fryer 1984; Essed 1990; Rodriguez 1991).

theoretical and historical rationale Recent historical-structuralist approaches to migration address the diverse class composition of Caribbean migrant populations. This has helped deconstruct the assumption of prior debates that all Caribbean immigrants are poor and illiterate. The historical structuralist approach also addresses the socioeconomic conditions that explain why certain countries send more migrants than others. According to this approach, Caribbean migrants come mainly from peripheral societies where imbalances were created by U.S. foreign capital penetration and are mainly from urban middle sectors of the sending countries (Portes 1978; Bray 1984; Grasmuck 1985; Portes and Truelove 1987; Grasmuck and Pes-

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sar 1991). This literature marks an advance relative to the human capital approach and the push-pull theories, both of which conceptualize the migration process as a result of the rational calculation of individual actors in a given national unit. Portes (1978) correctly states that the migration process occurs within a single overarching capitalist worldeconomy wherein world-systemic processes beyond the actors’ control condition the migration process. However, the problem of this approach is its overemphasis on the economic aspects of the core-periphery relationship, overlooking the role of the interstate system as a crucial structuring mechanism of the migration process. All the Caribbean postwar out-migration correlated with efforts of the local elites to move Caribbean economies away from sugar plantation production toward industrialization, mining, or tourism. The role of foreign capital penetration in this process of development is considered a major cause of international migration in the Caribbean (Portes 1978; Grasmuck 1985; Sassen 1988; Maingot 1992). However, if we look more carefully at the postwar Caribbean out-migration patterns, although all the islands share the same patterns of transnational capital penetration triggering out-migration, there are major differences among the islands in both the amount and the class/sectorial composition of the migrants contingent on the different legal-political incorporation of the peripheral state in the interstate system. The spatial/geographical conﬁguration of the Caribbean constrained the possibilities of out-migration. To migrate from an island is in general more difficult than to migrate from a peripheral country that shares a border with a core country (for example, Mexico). Thus, Caribbean people are more vulnerable to the legal-political institutional context of the interstate system at the time of migration. Whether a given society’s incorporation in the interstate system is that of a Caribbean modern colony or a Caribbean nation-state has crucial consequences for the specificity of its migration process in terms of quantity and class composition. Those Caribbean societies with a colonial legal-political incorporation (for example, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and the Dutch Antilles, along with Suriname and Jamaica before independence) have a proportionally larger migration than those societies with a nationstate incorporation (for example, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Cuba) (see Table 8). Moreover, the migration from Caribbean modern colonies has a larger rural and lower-strata composition than that of Caribbean nationstates, which send mainly urban middle sector populations. The middle-

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sector migration from Caribbean nation-states includes mostly educated and skilled workers with household incomes that are higher than the average income of the sending countries (Palmer 1974; Foner 1979, 1983; Koslofsky 1981; Bray 1984, 1987; Pedraza-Bailey 1985b; Portes and Bach 1985; Stepick and Portes 1986; DeWind and Kinley 1988; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991). By contrast, the lower-strata migration from Caribbean colonial societies consists largely of unskilled workers with low educational levels who come from low-income households. For instance, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Guadaloupe, Jamaica (before independence), the Dutch Antilles, and Suriname (before independence) not only had the largest number of migrants to the metropolitan centers as a percentage of the home population (see Table 8), but also the class composition of their migrants was more rural and lower class (Roberts and Mills 1958; BUMIDOM 1968; Bovenkerk 1979, 1987; Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños 1979; Koslofsky 1981; Rath 1983; Bach 1985; Freeman 1987; Levine 1987; Falcón 1990; Condon and Ogden 1991). Puerto Rico, Suriname, and Martinique are the most extreme cases where the agrarian question became obsolete with the massive exportation of the peasantry to the mainland’s urban centers (Grosfoguel 1994). Jamaica illustrates the relationship between colonial incorporation and lower-class migration in the Caribbean. During the 1953–62 period, while Jamaica was still a British colony, 179,049 Jamaicans migrated to Great Britain. A large proportion were unemployed rural workers, urban unskilled laborers, and semiproletarians (Roberts and Mills 1958; Koslofsky 1981). After Jamaican independence, from 1962 through 1980, approximately 108,843 people legally migrated to the United States (Bray 1987: 85). Because of the 1965 U.S. Immigration Act restricting entrance of poor and unskilled migrants, Jamaican migrant demographics changed to urban middle sectors (Palmer 1974; Foner 1979; Portes and Grosfoguel 1994). Therefore, the Jamaican case illustrates how whether a Caribbean territory is a colony or nation-state determines the migrants’ number and class origin. Out-migration of lower classes and rural populations from nation-states like the Dominican Republic has limitations. From 1961 to 1980 an estimated 268,770 Dominican immigrants had established themselves in the United States; most of them came from urban middle sectors of the working class (Grasmuck and Pessar 1991: 22, 75–80). As David Bray states: Unlike Jamaica, the Dominican Republic has not been a colony since the nineteenth century. Hence entry of Dominican citizens into the United States has always been regulated by immigration laws speciﬁcally designed to exclude the poor and unskilled. Although many of the rural and urban

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poor would clearly migrate if they could, it is difficult and expensive to enter the United States illegally from an island. . . . [T]hose who did leave the Dominican Republic were mostly middle and upper class. (1987: 88–89)

This is not the case with Caribbean colonial migrations. One of the most important aspects of colonial migration is the shared citizenship, which allows migrants to have direct access to their metropole. As a result, they do not need a visa to enter the core country and have access to the core’s welfare state. Migration thus becomes more accessible to the poorest sectors of the colonial population and viable for larger numbers, as opposed to the migration from peripheral nation-states where citizenship is not shared with a core country and monetary solvency is a prerequisite for a visa. Another distinct feature of Caribbean colonial migration is that it was organized, to varying degrees, by metropolitan and local political elites through state institutions as a so-called solution to the unemployment problem or through direct recruitment (Maldonado-Denis 1976; Maldonado 1979; Bovenkerk 1987; Koot 1988; Condon and Ogden 1991; Harris 1993). For example, the Puerto Rican colonial administration created the Migration Division under the Department of Labor. This division served as an intermediary between U.S. businessmen and Puerto Rican workers. The division identiﬁed labor shortages and recruited Puerto Rican labor to ﬁll the need. Inspired by the Puerto Rican example, the French state also fostered an organized migration in the French Caribbean (Anselin 1979: 42). They created the BUMIDOM (Bureau pour le développement des migrations intéressant les départements d’outre-mer), which served a similar role to the Migration Division in Puerto Rico. The BUMIDOM hired thousands of Martinican and Guadeloupean workers as cheap labor for the metropolitan labor market. In Curaçao and Barbados, the colonial administration also stimulated the recruitment of workers by metropolitan industries as a “solution” to unemployment (Koot 1988: 249; Harris 1993: 40, 42–43). Overall, the emigration processes of colonial peoples such as the Martinicans/Guadeloupeans, Surinamese/Dutch Antilleans, West Indians, and Puerto Ricans have more in common than when compared to the migration processes from Caribbean nation-states. Given the similar class, social, and political-legal background, what are the similarities and differences among them once they are incorporated to the metropolitan societies?

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brief comparative sociodemographic data Although all Caribbean colonial migrants are incorporated into their respective metropoles as cheap laborers or in jobs that the white population rejects, the social and economic conditions are not the same for each of these minorities. Table 9 shows interesting differences in the Caribbean colonial migrants’ modes of incorporation to the metropoles labor market. The ﬁgures in Table 9 reﬂect different measurement criteria for each country. However, they can give a rough estimate of the relative position of each ethnic group in their respective host society. French Caribbeans stand out vis-à-vis other groups in terms of unemployment rates, because their rates are quite similar to the French national average. In fact, the Martinicans’ unemployment rate is even lower than the French national average. However, this is not the case for the other colonial Caribbean migrants. The Puerto Ricans, Surinamese, Dutch Antilleans, and British Afro-Caribbeans have unemployment rates that are twice or more the national average of the colonizing country. The Puerto Ricans’ unemployment rate is double the U.S. national average; the Surinamese, Dutch Antilleans, and West Indians unemployment rates are more than double their respective national averages. The labor force participation rates (percentages of population sixteen years and older who are either actively employed or actively seeking a job) show a different pattern. The Puerto Rican and Dutch Antillean participation rate is lower than their respective national averages, while the other ethnic groups have higher participation rates than their respective national averages. The French Antilleans and British Afro-Caribbeans have a much higher participation rate than the French and British national average. The Surinamese have a slightly higher participation rate than the Dutch national average. It is important to mention that for 40 percent of the Surinamese and the Dutch Antilleans in the Netherlands, the principal source of income is state assistance as opposed to 19 percent for the Dutch national average (Penninx, Schoorl, and van Praag 1993: 119). Thus, the Surinamese and Dutch Antillean labor force participation rates might include high numbers of underemployed workers. In terms of occupational characteristics, the majority of the French Antillean labor force (55 percent for Martinicans and 53 percent for Guadeloupeans) are incorporated as public employees and only 12 percent are in manufacturing. This contrasts strongly with the French national average of 34 percent in public employment and 23 percent in manufacturing jobs. It is important to mention that of the four categories of public

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employment in France (agents de la fonction publique), the French Antilleans are located at the bottom of the ladder in terms of salaries, beneﬁts, and working conditions. Approximately 75 percent of the French Antillean public workers are classiﬁed in the C and D categories as opposed to 46 percent for the total of French workers in this sector (Marie 1986: 4). French Antilleans are generally clerks, janitors, drivers, auxiliary nurses, and postal workers in the French public administration. The employment level of the British Afro-Caribbean labor force in manufacturing is almost equal to Great Britain’s national average. Public employees are few in number in Britain compared to other Western European countries. There is no national data available for AfroCaribbean public employees. However, it has been documented that Afro-Caribbeans have made progress in public administration whitecollar jobs. In greater London, where the Afro-Caribbean population is concentrated, 18 percent of their jobs are in public administration, compared to 17 percent for white workers (Cross and Waldinger 1992: 166). Afro-Caribbean occupational distribution in Britain shows a sharp division between males and females. Around 58 percent of Afro-Caribbean employed females are concentrated as cheap labor in health, clerical, secretarial, and personal service occupations (HMSO 1993: table 13). Close to half of the Afro-Caribbean employed males are concentrated as machine operators, assemblers, and skilled tradesmen in the transport, manufacturing, and construction industries (HMSO 1993: table 13). Other groups show a different pattern. Puerto Ricans, Dutch Antilleans, and Surinamese have a higher concentration in manufacturing jobs compared to their respective national averages. Because of the accelerated deindustrialization of the United States, Puerto Ricans were displaced from their traditional economic niche in the labor-intensive manufacturing industry. Today around 40 percent of the Puerto Rican labor force is concentrated as cheap labor in retail trade and services such as health, administrative support, and educational occupations (U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1993: table 4). Similar to the Caribbeans in Britain, Puerto Ricans have more public administration jobs than the U.S. national average. This is probably a result of both populations being concentrated in urban areas. But in addition to this demographic factor, Puerto Ricans’ access to public jobs is related to the political elites’ response to the 1960s civil rights movement led by African-Americans (Piven and Cloward 1993). However, relative to other racial groups in urban areas such as African-Americans in New York City, Puerto Ricans have a much lower representation in the public sector (Rodriguez 1991: 87–88; Tor-

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res 1995: 87–88). The Surinamese have the highest percentage of their labor force in manufacturing jobs, with 43 percent as opposed to the Netherlands’ national average of 20 percent. Compared to the national averages of Western European countries and the United States, none of the Caribbean colonial migrants show high percentages of homeownership. Of the Caribbean colonial migrants, the British Caribbeans are the ones with the highest amount of owner-occupied households. This contrasts with their situation in the 1970s when the majority of the British Afro-Caribbeans were public housing tenants. This transition may be the result of the privatization of public housing during the Thatcher administration. However, the houses purchased by West Indians were council houses in bad condition (Brown 1984: 71–78). In terms of housing tenure, the French Antilleans, British Afro-Caribbeans, Dutch Antilleans, and Surinamese show high percentages of people living in public housing, amounts far above their respective national averages. It is well known that the Netherlands and France have an important social housing program (Preteceille 1973; Choay, Brun, and Roncayolo 1985: 295–304; Dieleman 1994). The same was true for Great Britain, at least until the late 1970s when the Thatcher administration came to power. Figures for public housing for the United States are not available. However, it is well known that, compared to Western European societies, the United States has never had signiﬁcant public housing programs (Keith 1973); it has instead relied on private housing as the main source of housing development. All Caribbean colonial migrants are geographically concentrated in the metropoles’ world cities. The French Antilleans are concentrated in Ile-de-France, better known as the Parisian region. Most migrant Surinamese and Dutch Antilleans live in the Randstad region, an urban network connecting the largest four cities of the Netherlands: Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, and the Hague. The majority of British West Indians are concentrated in greater London. One-third of all Puerto Ricans living in the United States live in the New York metropolitan region. This demographic aspect is crucial in relation to the modes of incorporation to the labor market. Since cities in the core of the capitalist worldeconomy were the most affected by processes of industrial mobility to the suburbs and deindustrialization in the last twenty years, those colonial Caribbean immigrants incorporated mainly in the manufacturing sector were the most affected in terms of unemployment rates and labor market marginalization. Puerto Ricans and West Indians were the most affected because of their large numbers of unskilled laborers and the dra-

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matic deindustrialization of England and the United States. Dutch Antilleans/Surinamese were also affected by these processes, although to a lesser degree because of the lower level of deindustrialization in the Netherlands. However, migrant concentration in the Randstad has affected them as well. As Atzema and De Smidt stated: In 1985, 63 percent of the male working population in the Randstad manufacturing sector were employed in manual jobs. Five years later this ﬁgure had dropped to 33 percent. The proportion of executive and specialist professions among the male working population in the Randstad, however, increased from 18 percent in 1985 to 39 percent in 1990. A spatial division of labor is developing whereby manual labour jobs are increasingly concentrated outside the Randstad, in the rest of the Netherlands. (1992: 294)

Compared to the white Dutch population, the Dutch Antilleans/Surinamese are underrepresented in mid- and high-level jobs and overrepresented in long-term unemployment (Roelandt and Veenman 1992: 135–37). Since 1985 unemployment rates have increased for these colonial migrants (Amersfoort 1992: 448; Roelandt and Veenman 1992: 136). The situation of the Martinicans/Guadeloupeans differs from that of the rest of the colonial Caribbean migrants. They were not affected by these processes because of the high number of workers concentrated in the relatively protected public sector. Their economic niche as low-level public employees has insulated them from the private market cycles. In terms of housing segregation, the Dutch and French cases more effectively disperse these ethnic populations, while Puerto Ricans are highly concentrated in urban ghettos and British Afro-Caribbeans are concentrated in urban slums (Brown 1984; Ratcliffe 1988; Massey and Denton 1989; Amersfoort 1992; Body-Gendrot 1993, 1994; Hamnett 1994). Nevertheless, the communities of Caribbean colonial migrants in France and the Netherlands have the potential of becoming ghettos of nonwhite immigrant populations. The Parisian banlieue area called Seine-Saint-Denis and the area called Bijlmermeer in Amsterdam concentrate high numbers of immigrant workers from different ethnicities. Approximately 20 percent of all the French Antilleans living in Paris are concentrated in Seine-Saint-Denis together with North African minorities (Marie 1993b). Approximately one-third of all Surinamese living in Amsterdam live in Bijlmermeer together with North Africans (Amersfoort 1992). Recent reforms shifting social regulation in favor of market regulation of housing provisions in the Netherlands and the increased racist demands undermining the situation of immigrants in

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France could lead to the formation of an underclass and the emergence of immigrant ghettos. The more the welfare state becomes inscribed in “us and them” racist discourses, the higher becomes the possibility of cuts in welfare programs. Puerto Ricans in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia live in segregated ghettos (Massey and Denton 1989). Similarly, many West Indians concentrated in greater London and Birmingham are also segregated but not in zones as devastated as the Puerto Ricans in the United States (Rex and Tomlinson 1979; Brown 1984). What accounts for the differences among the modes of incorporation of Caribbean colonial migrants to their respective metropoles? Why do the French Antilleans have similar unemployment rates and participation rates to the French national average? Why did the Surinamese and Dutch Antilleans show similar or worse economic conditions than the British Afro-Caribbeans and the Puerto Ricans, yet not experience the same ghettoization? What makes the British and American social systems produce marginalized communities such as New York’s Spanish Harlem, North Philadelphia’s Puerto Rican “barrio,” or the inner London boroughs such as Brixton, Hackney, and Lambeth? What are the prospects for the same occurring in France and the Netherlands? What are the differences in the racist discourses of each metropolitan society, and how do these differences create important nuances in the peculiar incorporation of each Caribbean ethnic group? These are complex questions that cannot be answered by looking at a single variable, but rather require an interdisciplinary, world-historical, and multidimensional approach. Obviously, the answers to these questions are well beyond the scope of a short chapter like this, but I pose them as guiding research questions. In what follows, I address the relative situation of each group’s incorporation to the metropolitan labor market.

differential modes of incorporation The main difference in the modes of incorporation between the four colonial migrations discussed above lies in the level of development of the welfare state in the metropole and what peculiar public policies the state implemented toward their colonial populations. We can advance the following proposition: the more developed the welfare state and the greater the state efforts to develop public policies addressed at the successful labor market incorporation of the colonial populations, the more successful the process of incorporation to the host society.

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The relative success of the French Caribbeans’ incorporation to French society exempliﬁes this proposition. The Martinicans and Guadeloupeans show a more successful incorporation to the labor market and the receiving society than the other colonial Caribbean migrants despite the absence of “positive discrimination” policies in the French system. The number of marginalized among Martinicans and Guadeloupeans is even lower than the French national average. This is the result of an organized migration process with sophisticated public policies to guarantee the relatively successful incorporation of these colonial migrants. The French state fostered the massive migration of French West Indians to France through the BUMIDOM. Although most of the migrants came from unskilled labor backgrounds, they were directly recruited by the BUMIDOM in the islands, helped with transportation costs, and trained in the metropole (Condon and Ogden 1991). This educational training developed skills proper for the French labor market. The dominant policy was to incorporate the migrants within the French public administration. This privileged incorporation insulated them from the cycles of the private market. When France suffered from deindustrialization, the French Caribbean population was the least affected ethnic group. Public employees in France enjoy job security as well as many beneﬁts not accessible to the majority of the workers in the private sector. In addition, the BUMIDOM helped with housing, social work, and orientation concerning welfare programs in the metropole. Despite experiencing a process of marginalization in the labor market similar to that of Puerto Ricans in the United States (see Table 9), Dutch Antilleans and the Surinamese have not experienced a similar process of pauperization in the metropole. This is because of the advanced development of the welfare state in the Netherlands relative to the United States. Social housing, as well as the high welfare beneﬁts for single mothers and unemployed persons, serve as a buffer against discrimination and marginalization in the labor market (Hamnett 1994). They have suffered the impact of deindustrialization more than the “native” Dutch in the Netherlands. However, this has not led to ghetto formation or extreme levels of poverty (Amersfoort 1992). The main difference between Dutch Caribbeans in the Netherlands and French Caribbeans in France is the lack of state policies oriented toward the successful incorporation of the former. There are positive discrimination policies for minorities in the Dutch system, but unlike in France, there are no speciﬁc public policies addressing the economic incorporation of the Dutch Caribbean population in the Netherlands.

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The West Indians in Britain are an interesting case. They had access to a well-developed welfare state before the rise of the Thatcher administration in the late 1970s. During those years the welfare state helped to contain the impact of racism in British society toward West Indians. However, after the dismantling of the welfare state, the West Indians have been vulnerable to the private market cycles, deindustrialization, and institutional racism. This led to an increase in the marginalization of the second and third generations of West Indians in Great Britain during the 1980s. Although they are not as marginalized in the labor market as the Dutch Caribbeans are in the Netherlands, they experience segregation and poverty similar to that of Puerto Ricans in the United States. An explanation for this lies in the lack of speciﬁc policies to address the economic incorporation of this population and the effects of cuts in welfare beneﬁts. However, because they enjoyed access to a well-developed welfare state during the 1960s and 1970s, their standard of living has not yet deteriorated to the level of Puerto Ricans in the United States. The Puerto Rican experience in the metropole is the worst among these colonial migrations. They were recruited as cheap laborers for the declining manufacturing sectors of the northeastern region of the United States. As a result of the deindustrialization process, the number of Puerto Ricans out of the labor force has increased (Torres 1995). Moreover, the United States has an underdeveloped welfare state relative to Western European countries. The United States lacks a national public educational system, national public health system, and public policies addressing the marginalization of Puerto Rican migrants. In other words, there are no social buffers for Puerto Ricans, as there were for Dutch Caribbeans, to contain the experience of deindustrialization. Thus, the deterioration of Puerto Rican communities in the United States has increased dramatically throughout the past twenty years.

conclusion Caribbean colonial migrations to the metropoles during the postwar era are similar. The common legal status as citizens of the metropolitan society, the more organized character of the migration process, and the large representation of low-skilled workers are distinct features that differentiate colonial Caribbean migrants from Caribbean nation-states migrants. The main differences among these colonial Caribbean migrations lie in the processes of incorporation to the metropoles. Different types of welfare states make a signiﬁcant difference in terms of cushioning the

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relative difficulties confronted by these migrants in the host society. French Caribbeans in France have a relatively more successful incorporation to the labor market than the other Caribbean colonial migrants, because the French state created a state institution to guarantee the successful incorporation of these migrants. Dutch Antilleans and Surinamese in the Netherlands have experienced a high marginalization in the labor market similar to Puerto Ricans in the United States. But the advanced welfare state in the Netherlands has been crucial to avoid the formation of ghettos or the dilapidation of the housing conditions experienced by Puerto Ricans in the United States. The Afro-Caribbeans in Britain are in an intermediate position. They had access to an advanced welfare society until the early 1980s when the Thatcher administration dismantled many welfare programs. Thus, they are now confronting processes similar to those of Puerto Ricans in the United States where marginalization in the labor market has translated into a deterioration of their living conditions. The comparison of the Caribbean colonial populations in the metropoles provides an opportunity to understand the differences and similarities between France, England, the Netherlands, and the United States. Future studies should focus on the different meanings of citizenship, race, and national identities in each metropolitan society and how they have affected Caribbean colonial populations. This research agenda is an attempt to break with our parochial approaches and to pursue a more comparative, transnational approach.

chapter 7

“Cultural Racism” and

Colonial Caribbean Migrants in Core Zones of the Capitalist WorldEconomy The racial classiﬁcation of the population and the early association of the new racial identities of the colonized with the forms of control of unpaid, unwaged labor developed among the Europeans the singular perception that paid labor was the whites’ privilege. The racial inferiority of the colonized implied that they were not worthy of wages. They were naturally obliged to work for the proﬁt of their owners. It is not difficult to ﬁnd, to this very day, this attitude spread out among the white property owners of any place in the world. Furthermore, the lower wages “inferior races” receive in the present capitalist centers for the same work as done by whites cannot be explained as detached from the racist social classiﬁcation of the world’s population—in other words, as detached from the global capitalist coloniality of power. Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America”

The boundaries constructed by the capitalist world-system are transnationally organized along the axis of an international division of labor beAn earlier version of this chapter was presented at the conference Les Populations Caraibéennes en Europe et aux Etats-Unis, held in Paris on June 20–22, 1996, with the support of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (MSH). Maurice Aymard, director of the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, was indispensable for the success of this transnational/global academic exchange. I am grateful to him for his strong support of my project.

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tween core and peripheral and semiperipheral regions (Wallerstein 1979). This division of labor implies different forms of labor and political structures. While free-labor forms developed in the core, coerced forms of labor developed in the periphery. The capitalist world-system has historically depended on the supply of a cheap-labor force in the periphery. The formation of an interstate system of sovereign states in the midseventeenth century became the organizational form of the modern world-system (Wallerstein 1984). This interstate system was central to the reproduction of the hierarchical international division of labor. Core states dominated peripheral and semiperipheral states through militarism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. In the nineteenth century the sovereign monarchies transformed into nation-states. States did not represent any more the “sovereign” monarch. Instead they pretended to represent the “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) known as the “nation.” Citizenship became an important mechanism in the formation of coreperiphery borders in the capitalist world-economy. These borders constrained the extension of the privileges, resources, and rights enjoyed by the European male elites to working classes, women, and non-European populations. Over time, citizenship rights were slowly extended to European working classes. However, these borders were always permeable. The core zones maintained a cheap labor force from the internal colonial periphery within the empire. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were Scottish and Irish workers in London, Bretons in Paris, and African slaves in New York. Racism was a central mechanism for the maintenance of a disenfranchised labor force. It produced a colonial labor force that served as cheap labor not only in peripheral regions but also within core zones (Wallerstein 1979). Those colonial populations with metropolitan citizenship within the core were kept under a subordinated and second-class citizenship status through the “geoculture” (Wallerstein 1991) of racism in the capitalist world-economy. Racism operated either to create a cheap labor force or to exclude populations from the labor market depending on the world-systemic cycles. Usually the former mechanism was used in periods of expansion and the latter in periods of contraction. The capitalist world-system covered the whole planet by the end of the nineteenth century (Wallerstein 1979). This expansion was entangled with other hierarchical relations. A simultaneous expansion of capitalists and white European males structured and reinforced the system of capitalism together with a gender, sexual, and racial hierarchy in the modern/colonial world.

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The racial/ethnic hierarchy at a world-scale implied a “global racial/colonial formation” of discourses and meanings about race. A “global racial/colonial formation” has existed since the formation of the capitalist world-system in the sixteenth century. Biological racism was the dominant discourse about race for several centuries. However, after the Second World War there was an important shift in the “global racial/colonial formation.” Biological racist discourses about genetically inferior “Others” fell into a crisis across continental Europe. The Nazi occupations delegitimized biological racist discourses in many continental Western European countries. The decline of biological racist discourses did not imply the end of racism in the core of the capitalist world-economy. After the defeat of the Nazi occupations in Western Europe and the 1960s’ civil rights struggles in Great Britain and the United States, global racial discourses shifted from biological racism to cultural racism. Antiracist movements were a crucial determinant in challenging biological racist discourses. Cultural racism became part of the new geoculture of the post-1960s capitalist world-economy. It formed part of the new “global racial/colonial formation.” Postwar Caribbean colonial migrations to the metropoles provide an important experience for the examination of the above-outlined issues. This discussion deals with the role of what has been called the “new racism” (Barker 1981) in the reproduction of “imagined historical borders” that exclude colonial people from access to equal rights within the core of the capitalist world-economy. Caribbean colonial populations migrated to the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, and the United States after the Second World War. These migrations have many processes in common. First, they were part of a colonial labor migration to supply cheap labor in core zones during the postwar expansion of the capitalist world-economy. Second, they were composed of citizens of the metropole. Third, the migrants had a long colonial/racist history with the core. Fourth, with the contraction of the capitalist world-economy after 1973, ﬁrst- and second-generation Caribbean colonial migrants began to be excluded from the labor market. Fifth, the migrants have been the target of the “new racist” discourses that attempt to keep them in a subordinated position within the core zones by using “cultural racist” discourses. Given those similarities the questions are: Why do Puerto Ricans, Surinamese, Dutch Antilleans, French Antilleans, and West Indians experience discrimination and, in many instances, marginalization despite the fact that they share metropolitan citizenship? What are the respective differences for each country in the discrimination and racism ex-

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perienced? How do these illustrate differences among the four core states?

nation, racism, coloniality To understand the outlined questions, three concepts are crucial: nation, race, and coloniality. These are entangled with each other. First, the concept of nation is central for the understanding of citizenship, identity, and the sociopolitical modes of incorporation. To talk about the rights (civil, political, social) and the obligations that citizenship (see T. H. Marshall 1964) implies, we need to understand the foundational myths, invented traditions (Hobsbawm 1990), and imagined communities (Anderson 1983) that states, dominant elites, dominant classes, and dominant racial/ethnic groups construct. A boundary/border/frontier is drawn between those who belong to and those excluded from the representations of the “nation.” The “nation” is frequently imagined in core zones as being equivalent to “white” middle-class values and behavior. The construction of national identity is entangled with racial categories. Second, racism is not universal, nor is it the same everywhere it exists. As Stuart Hall (1980) states, racism is always historically speciﬁc. There are two broad interpretations of racism and its shifting meanings. One is the traditional notion linked to scientiﬁc racism, that is, genetic or biological racism. The second is what is known as the “new racism,” sometimes called “cultural racism.” Taguieff (1987) and Balibar (1991) in France and Gilroy (1987, 1993) in England use this notion to refer to a racism of “ethnic absolutism,” or racisme différentialiste. In this kind of racism the word race is usually not even used. “Cultural racism” assumes that the metropolitan “culture” is different from ethnic minorities’ “culture” but understood in an absolutist, essentialist sense: “We are so different that we cannot get along together,” “minorities are unemployed or living under poverty because of their cultural values and behaviour,” or “minorities belong to a different culture that does not understand the cultural norms of our country.” Nevertheless, cultural racism is always related to a notion of biological racism to the extent that the culture of groups is naturalized in terms of some notion of inferior versus superior nature. Cultural racism is articulated in relation to poverty, labor market opportunities, and marginalization. The problem with the poverty or unemployment of minorites is constructed as a problem of habits or beliefs, that is, a cultural problem, implying cultural inferiority and thus naturalizing/ﬁxing/essentializing culture. “Culture of

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poverty” arguments ﬁt very well with the new “cultural racist formation.” Puerto Ricans in the United States and West Indians in England were among the ﬁrst groups to be racialized along these lines. The classic studies arguing for a culture of poverty used Puerto Ricans as an example (Lewis 1966). The way cultural racism is developed in each metropole differs according to the diverse “nation” formations and colonial experiences. Thus, the nation’s foundational myths are crucial to how this new racism is articulated. There are important differences between the Anglo-Saxon world and continental European countries to note when discussing racial discourses. First, the United States was a colonial society with slavery as one of the most important forms of labor. Since its formation, the United States has had a large, subordinated black population inside its territorial boundaries. Second, the United States and England were not invaded by the Nazis during the Second World War, unlike France and the Netherlands. This crucial factor must be addressed to understand the differences in the construction of racial discourses after the war. Postwar France and the Netherlands developed an official discourse against biological racism, while England and the United States did not problematize biological racism until much later. In the United States, the shift from biological racism to cultural racism emerged during the 1960s civil rights struggles of African-Americans and other racialized minorities such as the Native-Americans, Chicanos, and Puerto Ricans. After the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress, it became politically difficult to continue articulating a racist discourse based on traditional biological reductionism. In England this form of racist discourse was not problematized until the 1960s antiracist struggles of West Indians and South Asians and the subsequent approval of laws against racial discrimination such as the 1968 Race Relations Bill. Discrimination on the basis of biological racist discourses became criminalized. As a result, racist discourses shifted and acquired new forms and meanings. “Cultural racism” became the dominant discourse about race in France, the Netherlands, England, and the United States. It is the central racial discourse in today’s “global racial/colonial formation.” A common feature of the colonial Caribbean migrations is that each in its own way contributed to the emergence of a crisis in the metropolitan national identity, which in turn is related to a shift in racial discourses. This is related to the third concept, the “coloniality of power,” which persists despite the demise of colonialism as the main form of European/non-European relations within the capitalist world-economy.

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“Coloniality” refers to the reproduction and persistence of the old colonial racial/ethnic hierarchies in a “postcolonial” and “postimperial” world. The end of colonial administrations in the modern/colonial world did not imply the end of “coloniality.” With the large postwar colonial migrations, the “coloniality of power” is reproduced inside the metropoles. No colonial Caribbean migration passed unnoticed in the European imaginary. These migrants are colonial because of their long colonial relationship with the metropole as well as for their current stereotypical representation in the European imagination, reﬂected in their subordinated location in the metropolitan labor market. The representations of colonial subjects as lazy, criminal, dumb, inferior, stupid, untrustworthy, uncivilized, primitive, dirty, and opportunist have a long colonial history. Irrespective of a nation’s speciﬁc foundational myths and its particular racial constructions, the questions are: Given the shared citizenship, what implications did the core states’ national foundational myths have for the postwar colonial Caribbean migrants’ access to rights and equal treatment in the metropoles? How did these migrations undermine the foundational myths of the metropolitan “nation”? As Gilroy stated regarding the English case, black and British were incompatible notions. What role did racism play in the construction of an imagined national border? How did all of this affect the identity of Caribbean migrants in the metropoles? What strategies did Caribbean migrants develop to struggle against exclusion/discrimination and for inclusion/incorporation? How are the foundational myths resigniﬁed over time?

united states In the United States a central foundational myth is the “American dream.” The United States is supposed to be the land of opportunity for immigrants from all over the world, and the harder you work, the more successful you become. One implication of this myth is that if you fail, it is because you have not worked hard enough and that, therefore, there has to be something wrong with you. The 1776 Bill of Rights was constructed on the basis of “We the People” rather than “We the Citizens.” Here the notion of “People” refers to group rights as opposed to individual rights. This implies that citizenship is perceived more in terms of group rights than individual rights, nevertheless excluding those outside the “imagined community.” This allowed for the recognition of racial/ethnic rights for European immigrants. A country composed of

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multiethnic immigrants such as the United States did not base the reproduction of citizenship on terms of an ethno-cultural differentialist, Volk-centered approach such as in Germany, or on a centralized political unity expressed in the assimilationist policies striving for cultural unity such as in France (Brubaker 1992). To be American became identiﬁed with “whiteness,” which was the unifying theme for all of the multiethnic European immigrants. The myth of the “melting pot” was dominated by an Anglo-Saxon ethnicity and referred to the melting of “whites.” Thus, “race” became a central decisive category for people to be either included in or excluded from the “nation.” Since the establishment of the U.S. Constitution in the late eighteenth century, blacks were excluded from the Bill of Rights. The term “ethnic” was used to refer to Europeans and those considered to be “white,” while people of color were racialized and excluded from constitutional rights. Within the context of these foundational myths about the “nation” we can discuss how citizenship deﬁnes the “imagined borders,” that is, who is included in, or excluded from, the “imagined community.” In the United States, civil rights, in terms of rights to property, and political rights, in terms of rights to vote, have always been stronger than social rights. The “American dream” myth of making it through hard work leaves a narrow space in the social imagination for the notion of social rights. This is key to the understanding of the underdeveloped welfare state in the United States. However, whatever the rights, they are perceived or imagined to be deserved by whites, and racial/ethnic minorities are looked on as intruders or opportunists who want to take advantage of these rights. In the United States the social classiﬁcation of peoples has been hegemonized by white male elites throughout a long historical process of colonial/racial domination. The categories of modernity such as citizenship, democracy, and national identity have been historically constructed through two axial divisions: (1) between labor and capital, and (2) between Europeans and non-Europeans (Quijano 1991). White male elites hegemonized these axial divisions. According to the concept of “coloniality of power” developed by Aníbal Quijano, even after political independence, when the formal juridical/military control of the state passed from the imperial power to the newly independent state, “white” elites continued to control the economic and political structures. This continuity of power from colonial to postcolonial times allowed the “white” elites to classify populations and to exclude people of color from the full exercise of citizenship in the “imagined community” called the “nation.” The civil, political, and so-

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cial rights that citizenship provided to the members of the “nation” were selectively expanded over time to white working classes. However, internal colonial groups remained “second-class citizens,” never having full access to the rights of citizens (Gilroy 1987). Being American was incompatible with being black, Puerto Rican, Indian, or Asian. Thus, the civil rights struggles of these racialized subjects were built around the notion of equality, claiming equal rights as discriminated racialized ethnic minorities within the United States. The subsequent development was the implementation of minority group rights based on affirmative action programs. What rights did the Puerto Rican migrants have when they arrived and how were they perceived by the metropolitan populations? This is related to the history and particularity of the type of colonialism practiced by the metropoles. The extension of citizenship to colonial Puerto Rico in 1917 by the United States institutionalized the formation of second-class citizens. Puerto Ricans were supposed to have legal access to citizens’ rights; however, as a racialized colonial group within the United States, their access to those rights was limited. The racial construction of Puerto Ricans as lazy and criminal contributed to their current marginalization in the labor market. Moreover, in their demands for access to equal labor and civil rights as part of the 1960s’ struggles, Puerto Ricans came to be considered by employers as a more “expensive” labor force compared to the “new immigrants.” Employers today claim to prefer “hard-working” immigrants over “lazy” domestic minorities. Cultural racism is the new discursive form of racial exclusion in the United States. Thus, the situation of many Puerto Ricans today is not merely that of a cheap labor force. Rather the situation is one of being massively excluded from access to jobs (Grasmuck and Grosfoguel 1997). Puerto Ricans today have a poverty rate of approximately 40 percent, the highest in New York City.

france In France the national foundational myth is linked to the ideals of the 1789 French Revolution, that is, to the notion of les Droits de l’Homme, where a direct social contract is established between the state and individuals (Balibar 1994). People are either French or non-French, deﬁned in terms of a cultural assimilationist notion that divides citizens from noncitizens. According to the official French discourse, you cannot be a Martinican French or Basque French. Thus, the category of ethnicity is

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not acknowledged in the French tradition. There is no official recognition of ethnic groups within the French “imagined community.” Historically, the French Antilleans have occupied an ambiguous position in the French empire as citizens of African descent. The assimilationist drive of the French state attempted to erase this historical and cultural background through the colonialist educational, cultural, and social policies toward the French Antilles. Public schools in the Antilles date from the 1880s; its representation in the national assembly dates from 1848 (Abou 1988; Blérald 1988; Giraud 1992). This is a different colonial incorporation than the French colonial policies in Africa, where public schools were established much later and representation in the national assembly was in most of the cases a post-1945 event (B. Marshall 1973). Antilleans have been taught for years that their ancestors are the Gauls. These assimilationist policies proved to be useful for the French colonial administration in Africa. Educated black “Frenchmen” were sent from the Antilles to the African colonies as military and state officials of the French empire (Helenon 1997). They were a kind of “middleman minority,” “middleman” here referring, not as in the sociology literature, to entrepreneurs (Bonacich 1973), but to state officials who played a similar role. Rather than having only white French officials, Antilleans were sent as official representatives of the French state to Africa. They served as “middlemen” between the “white” French and the African masses in several French colonies. Instead of a “white” French person repressing Africans, Antilleans were sent as colonial officers. They played a similar role to the “middleman” entrepreneurs in the British empire, that is, Antilleans served as political buffers to channel Africans’ discontent against the French officials. Félix Éboué, a French Guyanese who was named governor of Chad, and Louis-Placide Blacher, a Martinican named governor of Niger, were the most dramatic examples of the “middleman” strategy of the French imperial state. As an attempt to reconstitute its empire after the Second World War, the French not only incorporated the French Caribbean as French Departments, but in addition named a black Guyanese man, Gaston Monnerville, president of the Conseil de la République. The Antilleans were used as a symbolic “showcase” of France’s “new face” for postwar colonial Africa, and their countries served as a symbolic example of these policies. The subtle message was: if you assimilate to the French culture as the Antilleans did, you will be given the same rights as they are within the French empire. During the postwar period, talk about race or racism was identiﬁed

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in the official French state discourses with the extremist Nazi positions. The word “race” was almost eliminated from French public discourse. Racial differences were constructed in terms of a culturalist differentialist approach. Starting in the 1950s, talk about race in France was metamorphosed into talk about cultural difference, understood in an essentialist, naturalized form. This preceded and was very similar to what happened in the Unted States in the post-civil rights era. The Algerian war was a turning point in the French colonial empire. It represented the ﬁnal demise of French colonialism in Africa. However, the end of colonialism did not mean the end of coloniality. The old colonial hierarchies were now reproduced inside the metropole. North Africans were incorporated mainly as a cheap labor force in the private labor market. They became the main source of cheap labor for manufacturing industries in cities like Paris and Marseilles. North Africans in France became a target for the new racist discourses (Taguieff 1987). The “new racism” in France claimed that North Africans’ cultural habits prevented them from successfully incorporating into French society. Some right-wing movements have gone as far as to say that North Africans are so different culturally that cohabitation is impossible, and, thus, they should be deported. Antillean labor migration to France took off in the early 1960s (Giraud and Marie 1988). There was a division of labor between the colonial migrants inside the metropole. While the North Africans occupied the cheap labor positions in the private labor market, Antilleans were incorporated as the cheap labor of the French public administration. The postwar economic boom expanded the public jobs. Many jobs at the bottom of the French public administration were no longer attractive to the “white” French. This created a labor shortage, which fostered a massive government-sponsored labor recruitment in the French Caribbean territories. Unlike many North Africans, Antilleans had French citizenship, which allowed them to be incorporated into the French public service. The French transition from imperial to postimperial policies can be conceptualized in terms of Quijano’s “coloniality of power.” This emphasizes the continuities rather than the discontinuities between the past and the present. Although colonialism signiﬁcantly declined, coloniality was reproduced with new devices. The postwar colonial labor migration reproduced the old racial/colonial hierarchies inside metropolitan France (Balibar 1992). North Africans were constructed as the unassimilable, undesirable, noisy, dirty, and culturally underdeveloped “Other.” Antilleans once again occupied an intermediary position. They were the assimilable “Other” that serves as an example to the unassimilable

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“Others.” Their incorporation at the bottom of the French public administration has given them certain privileges over migrants who are incorporated mainly as cheap labor in the private labor market. This mode of incorporation into the public sphere insulates the Antilleans from the ﬂuctuations and discrimination of the private labor market. Antilleans are located in strategic and sensitive positions of the French public administration, such as in the immigration offices, public transportation, and hospitals. However, the Antillean situation is not ideal. They are incorporated into those public administration jobs that no longer interest the “white” French: janitors, clerks, nurse’s aides, metro employees, and bus drivers. Qualiﬁed Antilleans are hardly ever considered for promotion to higher levels of the French public administration. French racism has created a glass ceiling through which Antilleans rarely break (Galap 1993; Marie 1993b). This racism is articulated through a “cultural meritocratic discourse.” Antilleans are excluded from promotion in the public administration through a discourse about lack of qualiﬁcations, knowledge, and experience. The Antillean experience shows how citizenship is not enough to stop racist discrimination. Lack of citizenship is not what keeps North Africans and Antilleans at the bottom of the private and public labor market. Rather there is a racist exclusion of those who do not ﬁt the dominant French representation of the “imagined community.” The fact that Antilleans work with “white” French people in public government jobs and live together with Africans in public housing gives the Antilleans an ambiguous position in the French racial/ethnic hierarchy (Marie 1991). Some Antilleans live the illusion of sharing a position of privilege in the racial/ethnic hierarchy when working with “white” French people in the better-compensated public government jobs. But, when they go home they confront nonwhite others as neighbors who remind them of their own “Otherness” in French society. This discontinuity between those with whom they work and those with whom they live places Antilleans in an ambiguous position. Antilleans “belong” when it comes to receiving the beneﬁts of public employees in France, but they do not “belong” when it comes to job promotion within the French public administration and housing/residential location (Galap 1993). Even their feeling of belonging should be qualiﬁed by their subordinated position within the French public administration. They are the public administration’s cheap-wage labor force. This ambiguity translates into, on the one hand, Antilleans affirming their Frenchness against the Africans on issues of identity and, on the other hand, forming alliances with Africans on issues such as police brutality in the Parisian banlieues.

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It is crucial to understand the strategies available to or developed by French Caribbean migrants in terms of identity. Are Caribbean migrants developing strategies to claim rights as equal metropolitan citizens, as different national groups in a nation, or as members of the metropolitan nation? In the metropole, ﬁrst-generation Antilleans discovered that the “Mère-Patrie” does not welcome them as French, but instead discriminates against them and treats them as second-class citizens (Marie 1993b). Accordingly, French assimilationism is perceived as a myth. Antilleans challenged the assimilationist, nonethnic, individual citizen ideology by developing a movement of identity affirmation during the 1980s (Giraud and Marie 1988). This movement was organized in associations claiming a distinct ethnic identity within the French system. “Antillaise” identity became a political strategy to claim rights as a distinct ethnicity within the French system, challenging the universalism of French assimilationist ideology. The intermediary location of ﬁrst-generation Antilleans in the symbolic ﬁeld of the French racial/ethnic hierarchy is not necessarily shared by second-generation Antilleans in the metropole. Because of high unemployment rates and the reduction of public employees in France in the 1980s and 1990s during the world economic contraction, young Antilleans are no longer incorporated in the labor market as public employees like their parents were. Thus, young Antilleans are not insulated from the discrimination and harsh conditions of the private labor market. They are now more vulnerable to the racism that many Algerians, Moroccans, and Senegalese experience in the French labor market. This has important implications in terms of the emergence of “new identities” in the Parisian banlieues. Today second-generation Antilleans often claim to be “blacks” rather than Antilleans. The term “black” in France, like in Britain in the early 1970s, includes a wide range of oppressed groups. An important cultural fusion is going on today in the Parisian banlieues between Algerian, Moroccan, and Antillean youth. There is no clear indication of what will come of this cultural fusion. However, the transnational cultural fusion among these colonial groups manifests itself politically in the form of riots, youth festivals, and French hip-hop.

the netherlands In the Netherlands, the nation’s foundational myth is constructed around the notion of the “four pillars.” This is the image of a society

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built on four separate pillars, the Catholics, Protestants, Liberals, and Socialists (Liphart 1968). The organizing principle is the division of the country between religious ideas (Protestants and Catholics) and class secular cleavages (middle and upper-middle class liberals, and working class socialists). Although the four pillars have been dismantled since the 1960s (Middendorp 1991), the imagined community is still constructed around the pillar myth (Rath 1991). Accordingly, the Dutch “nation” is constructed as tolerant, antiracist, respectful of differences, and as the “world’s mecca” of liberal ideas and welfare policies (Essed 1996). This national self-deﬁnition was questioned after the mass migration from Suriname and the Antilles to the Netherlands in the early 1970s. First, the Netherlands promoted the independence of Suriname in part because of the pressures from the Dutch population to create a juridical mechanism to stop Surinamese migration to the Netherlands (Bovenkerk 1975; Biervliet 1981). The Dutch press picked up on this and developed a campaign to stop Dutch Caribbean migration. As with the British case, this created the paradoxical effect of a larger migration wave from Suriname before the border was closed. Approximately one-third of Suriname’s population migrated to the metropole in a period of six years (1973–79). Second, black Dutch citizens such as Antilleans and Surinamese were viewed as undesirable, lazy, dirty, criminal, and not adapted to Dutch culture (Bovenkerk 1978; Bovenkerk and Breuning-van Leeuwen 1978; Verkuyten 1997). Since according to the national myth there is no Dutch racism (this is supposed to be a British problem), the talk of race was transmuted into talk about “ethnic minorities” who were constructed as a problem. Public policies moved from a cultural pluralist type of policies to assimilationist and neoliberal policies. Before 1980, the state promoted group-speciﬁc welfare institutions with minority social workers and community-building programs. They were to gradually “transform” the minority group’s ways of life and adapt group members to the “imagined” Dutch middle-class way of life (Rath 1993: 224). Compared to pre-1980s policies, post-1980 policies became less welfare-oriented and more oriented toward work and education (Lutz 1993). In the early 1980s, the Dutch emphasized the construction of policies toward ethnic minorities on the assumption that this was a sociocultural problem based on their lack of adaptation to Dutch culture and manners (Lutz 1993; Rath 1993). Accordingly, they attempted to develop state policies of “controlled integration” through the co-optation of community organizations that could serve as intermediaries between the government and

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the community. They subsidized any organization, religious or not, that could become “social partners” in the policy of ethnic integration. By the late 1980s, this policy changed once again, shifting its deﬁnition of “ethnic minority” policies as a sociocultural problem to that of an economic problem (Lutz 1993; Rath 1993). Rather than the state acting as a regulator of their sociocultural integration, the market became the terrain on which “ethnics” and “nationals” came into contact, helping “ethnics” adapt and assimilate to the “nationals.” This eliminated the emphasis on subsidizing community organizations; instead, emphasis was placed on the “magic” of the market as regulator of the minorities’ sociocultural incorporation. The new economistic policies were built as part of the dismantling of the welfare state in the early 1990s. Ethnic minorities such as the Surinamese and the Antilleans were portrayed as abusers of the “generosity” of the Dutch welfare state (Bovenkerk 1978; Essed 1996). As outsiders of the Dutch imagined community, the legitimacy of Antillean and Surinamese access to the many welfare programs that Dutch citizens enjoyed was questioned. Thus, the neoliberal logic of the new policies was as follows: let the free market rather than the state regulate the well-being of the marginalized groups. Cultural racism in the Netherlands operates under the ideology of “minorisation” (Rath 1993; Essed 1996; Verkuyten 1997). This term, as articulated by the Dutch scholar Jan Rath, refers to a form of discrimination, distinct from traditional biological deﬁnitions of racism, that excludes and discriminates on the basis of being constructed as an “ethnic minority.” In the Netherlands, this construction implies that to be an “ethnic” means exhibiting undesirable behavior and unadaptability to Dutch norms and culture. As Rath states: Minorisation, being an ideology of dominance, differs fundamentally from ethnicisation or ethnic categorisation, which treats ethnic as belonging per se on an equal basis, whereas in the Dutch case “ethnic belonging” is reinterpreted as a form of non-conformity and thus undesirability. . . . Minorisation also differs fundamentally from racialization in the strict sense of the term. After all, minorisation is not a matter of “naturalisation.” Contrary to “races,” “ethnic minorities” (in the Dutch sense of the term) are not “represented as having a natural, unchanging origin and status, and therefore as being inherently different.” (1993: 222)

According to Rath’s deﬁnition, the problem in the Netherlands is not one of racism but one of “minorisation.” Although I agree with Rath that “minorisation” is not equivalent to traditional biological racist discourses, this does not mean that it has nothing to do with racism. Mi-

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norisation is a form of cultural racism where superiority and inferiority are constructed in terms appropriate to the Dutch “middle-class” culture. Here cultural unadaptability lies in inferior essentialist features of the “Other’s” culture. The reiﬁcation of culture in a hierarchy of superior and inferior cultures is a form of naturalizing differences, which is entangled with biological racist discourses. The Surinamese and Antilleans have a long history of racialization and colonization in the Netherlands. They do not enter the Dutch labor market neutrally. They are racialized “Others” who are now referred to as “ethnic minorities” rather than racial minorities due to the postwar mutations in Dutch racial discourses. Racist discourses are now metamorphosed through the ideology of “minorisation.” As Rath himself admits, “This ideology contributes to the positioning of migrant workers outside privileged social positions. As long as ‘ethnic minorities’ are deﬁned as people that conform inadequately to the Dutch way of life, they are not considered to be fully-ﬂedged members of the ‘Dutch imaginary community’ and are consequently granted less access to scarce resources” (1993: 222). This exclusion is linked to race through a discourse about unﬁt and abhorrent cultural behavior and norms. Dutch Caribbean migrants in the Netherlands are racialized with similar stereotypes as biological racist discourses (lazy, criminal, opportunists, parasites) but through the mediation of a culturalist discourse. These racist stereotypes serve to conceal the discrimination that Dutch Caribbean people experience in the Netherlands. This cultural racist discourse blames Dutch Caribbean cultural habits and values for the exclusion they experience in the labor market. Similar to the Puerto Ricans in the United States, Dutch Caribbean populations suffer a high marginalization in the Dutch labor market (Grosfoguel 1997a). The old racial/ethnic hierarchies of the Dutch empire are once again reproduced, but this time within the metropole. Despite the racial discursive mutations and the demise of colonialism as a political system, the coloniality of power of the present social relations shows the continuities of Dutch colonial/racial hierarchies over time.

great britain In Great Britain the notion of empire, that is “Britishness,” deﬁnes the imagined community. To be British is equivalent to being white English. Accordingly, any talk about the “black British” is an oxymoron. As Paul Gilroy said about the British case, “Nationalism and racism become so

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closely identiﬁed that to speak of the nation is to speak automatically in racially exclusive terms. Blackness and Englishness are constructed as incompatible, mutually exclusive identities. To speak of the British or English is to speak of white people” (Gilroy 1993: 27–28). West Indian and South Asian migration to England provoked a crisis in the British imagined community. As in the Netherlands and the United States, colonial Caribbean migrants played a signiﬁcant role in questioning British national identity despite their relatively small numbers. The black British claim of belonging to the imagined community was too radical for the racist construction of the British nation. Unlike European migrants, West Indians were unwelcome in Great Britain. White workers from Poland and Ireland were accepted, but a massive ﬂow of black immigrants was something “white” British people from all social classes were unwilling to tolerate. For the government this created a contradictory situation between the British people’s racist rejection of a massive black colonial workers’ migration responding to labor needs in the metropoles and the postwar Labour government’s attempts to build a new imperial partnership between Britain and the colonial Commonwealth governments (Dean 1987). Many “black” people from the colonies were sent to the metropole as students and trainees so that they would return and spread British ideas, favoring the West in its struggle against communism. Negative experiences of “white” British racism and British hostility toward the presence of “black” people would jeopardize this strategic political education, affecting British attempts to reconstitute its colonial empire by way of the Commonwealth. Nevertheless, the British government secretly tried to stop this colonial migratory ﬂow (Harris 1993; Carter, Harris, and Joshi 1987; Layton-Henry 1992; Rich 1986: chap. 7). There were several reasons why these efforts were concealed from the public. First, immigration controls against colonial subjects would create negative international criticism that could affect Great Britain’s relations with the colonial Commonwealth governments and in turn affect its symbolic image worldwide. After the British Nationality Act of 1948, citizenship was extended to all Commonwealth subjects. It would have been an international embarrassment to prohibit the entrance of black British citizens while recruiting noncitizen “white” European labor. Second, even more embarrassing and controversial would have been the association of immigration controls with racism immediately “after a world war partly waged against the racial genocide of the Hitler regime” (Layton-Henry 1992: 71). These contradictions prevented the British government from

208

Caribbean Colonial Migrants

passing anti-immigration laws earlier than it did. This context allowed the massive migration from the West Indies to England during the 1950s and early 1960s, especially after the U.S. Congress passed a law in 1952 limiting West Indian migration. In the mid-1950s, there were new attempts by the Conservative government to control immigration. Cyril Osborne attempted to introduce a private member’s bill to control black immigration. This is well summarized by Carter, Harris, and Joshi: In discussions before the Common Affairs Committee, it was pointed out that the measures proposed in the Bill were difficult to reconcile with British position as head of Commonwealth and Empire. As the Chief Whip summarized: “Why should mainly loyal and hard-working Jamaicans be discriminated against when ten times that quantity of disloyal [sic] Southern Irish (some of them Sinn Feiners) come and go as they please?” The timing, too, created problems. With the forthcoming General Election, there was a desire to avoid controversial issues which might improve the chances of a Labour victory. The celebration of Jamaica’s three hundredth anniversary of British rule in 1955—at which Princess Margaret was the principal guest—also made it inopportune to present what would have appeared as an “anti-Jamaican Bill.” This was underlined by the feeling in some quarters that colonial development and not legislation was the solution to immigration. Finally, the measure was refused on the grounds that it was too important a measure to be left to a Private Member. (1987: 343)

The measure was again presented as a draft bill in the cabinet by the home secretary in October 1955. The same objections to Osborne’s bill were put forward. But, in addition, new arguments were raised in the November 3 cabinet meeting. First, they realized that there was no consent in public opinion toward this racist bill. Second, colonial immigration was recognized as a means of increasing British “labour resources” (Carter, Harris, and Joshi 1987: 344). For the ﬁrst time there were arguments in cabinet meetings about the economic beneﬁts of immigrants. Third, there was a recognition that immigration could be stopped by creating jobs in the colonies. The advantage of this alternative was that it would not jeopardize British capital and the reconstruction of the empire in the colonial territories. As a result, the British cabinet did not approve the bill. Since the extension of full citizen rights to “blacks” with the passing of the 1948 Nationality Act, there have been dissident voices against colonial migrants. From many circles, including British labor, there was a questioning of this legislation based on a racialized construction of “Britishness.” The latter excluded and included groups

“Cultural Racism”

209

based on skin color. Belonging to British national identity was equivalent to being “white,” whereas immigrants and foreigners were associated with being “black.” These racialized identities continued throughout the 1950s. The 1958 antiblack riots in Nottingham and Notting Hill were the turning point that shifted British public opinion in favor of black immigration control. From then on it was a matter of time before the controls were actually approved. By July 1, 1962, the government approved an immigration control bill prohibiting the continued ﬂow of migrants from Commonwealth territories to the “Mother Land.” Great Britain was the only country to impose state controls over colonial Caribbean migrations to the metropole. Although migration from the Commonwealth colonies signiﬁcantly declined after this date, the existence of a “black” British minority was already an irreversible process. The success and inﬂuence of African-American civil rights struggles in the early 1960s stimulated and fostered “black” British struggles. The 1968 Race Relations Bill was an important achievement by the antiracist movement. However, this bill was a turning point from biological racist discourses to cultural racist discourses. The new racism was articulated by British Conservative leader Enoch Powell in the late 1960s. This was a racism where the word race was hardly mentioned and biological racism was criticized. To the accusation of being a racist, Powell responded: [I]f, by being a racialist, you mean be conscious of differences between men and nations, some of which coincide with differences of race, then we’re all racialist. . . . But if, by a racialist, you mean a man who despises a human being because he belongs to another race, or a man who believes that one race is inherently superior to another in civilisation or capability of civilisation, then the answer is emphatically no. . . . I do not talk about black and white. I would very much doubt if you can ﬁnd a passage, you might ﬁnd one, where I have used the terms black and white. I certainly have never talked about differences in quality. Never. Never. Never. (Quoted in Smithies and Fiddick 1969: 119, 122)

The new racism was articulated in terms of blacks’ high propensity toward crime, unassimilability to British culture, and irreconcilable cultural differences. These differences were understood as natural, ﬁxed, and essential or, as Gilroy would say, as an “ethnic absolutism.” The new racist discourse is entangled with a sectarian deﬁnition of the “nation.” As Powell said in response to those who criticized his views for being

210

Caribbean Colonial Migrants

racist, “It is even a heresy to say that the English are a white nation” (quoted in Stacey 1970: 200). Thus, one of the consequences is to stop “blacks” from entering the country and, if possible, repatriate them. As Powell said, “suspension of immigration and encouragement of reemigration hang together, logically and humanly, as two aspects of the same approach” (quoted in Smithies and Fiddick 1969: 38). Part of the new racist rhetoric is to transmute racist arguments into a rhetoric of population growth as a major factor justifying the policies against “black” migration. This is how Powell articulates his justiﬁcation for stopping “black” migraton: I would have thought that a glance at the world would show how easily tensions leading to violence arise where there is a majority and a minority . . . with sharp differences, recognizable differences, and mutual fears . . . when the numbers of the minority are small, then this danger hardly exists. It is as the numbers of the minority (which in some areas is the majority) rise, that the danger grows. Consequently the whole of this issue to me . . . is one of numbers. (Quoted in Stacey 1970: 56)

The new racism articulated by Powell was further developed by Margaret Thatcher. The association between crime and “blacks” was politically mobilized during the Thatcher years to dismantle the welfare state (Hall et al. 1978). “Blacks” in Britain today experience a marginalization from the labor market similar to Dutch Caribbeans in the Netherlands and Puerto Ricans in the United States.

conclusion We can observe from the above examples how racism works both ways: to justify the reproduction of a cheap labor force and to exclude populations from the labor market. Historically, Caribbean people were incorporated in the labor market during a capitalist systemic expansion, but did not receive the same income, jobs, or status compared to the dominant European/Euro-American populations. In times of crisis, Caribbean people have been marginalized from the labor market. In both cases, a cultural racist discourse has been mobilized to justify either a low-wage incorporation or a marginalization from the labor market in terms of cultural behavior, habits, and values that do not ﬁt the dominant imagined community. The borders of exclusion in the new “global racial/colonial formation” are built on cultural racist premises rather than biological racist

“Cultural Racism”

211

discourses. By essentializing and naturalizing culture, cultural racist discourses share biological racist premises. The cultural construction of the “nation” is a central border of racial exclusion mobilized today by metropolitan populations against Caribbean colonial migrants. The coloniality of the social relations show how the old racial/colonial hierarchies are still present within the metropoles. Colonial Caribbean migrations are a good example of how the borders of exclusion articulated by a cultural racist discourse are a global phenomenon that is not exclusive to a single core country. “National identity” is entangled with racist premises in all of the four core countries discussed here. Those who belong are imagined to share values with, and behave as, “white” middle classes. The incorporation of Caribbean colonial migrants to the core has been a traumatic experience for many “white” populations. Being simultaneously metropolitan citizens and colonial “Others” questioned the dominant representation of the “nation” as “white.” However, these same borders of exclusion created by cultural racist discourses are not mobilized exclusively against colonial Caribbean migrations. The same discourses are also mobilized today against Mexicans in the United States, Turks in Germany, Moroccans in the Netherlands, Algerians in France, Pakistanis in Great Britain, and Dominicans in Spain.

Appendix

table 1. number of employees by major industry, dade county, florida (percentage of total per column) Sector Agricultural services Mining Construction Manufacturing Transportation and public utilities Wholesale trade Retail trade Finance, insurance, and real estate Services Total

1970

1980

1990

1998

Total Growth (1970–98)

2,438 (1%) 48 — 33,733 (7%) 75,384 (16.2%) 55,492 (11.9%) 37,184 (8%) 103,331 (22.2%) 40,634 (8.7%) 116,241 (25%)

2,561 (0.4%) 592 — 41,959 (6.5%) 103,715 (16.1%) 71,721 (11.1%) 54,138 (8.4%) 128,747 (20%) 54,659 (8.5%) 183,408 (29%)

3,250 (0.5%) 1,156 — 37,532 (5%) 89,577 (12%) 70,617 (9.5%) 66,898 (9%) 154,514 (21%) 72,646 (10%) 243,899 (33%)

4,085 (0.5%) 446 (0.05%) 32,120 (4%) 68,677 (8.41%) 93,780 (11.5%) 76,040 (9.3%) 166,538 (20.4%) 68,554 (8.4%) 305,425 (37.4%)

+1,647 (0.5%) +398 (0.1%) –1,613 (–0.5%) –6,707 (–1.9%) +38,288 (10.9%) +38,856 (10.9%) +63,207 (18%) +27,920 (8%) +189,184 (54%)

464,485 (100%)

641,500 (100%)

740,094 (100%)

815,665 (100%)

+351,180 (100%)

sources: U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1971a, 1982a, 1991a, 2000a.

213

214

Appendix

table 2. employment in producer service industries, dade county, florida Industries Banking Credit agencies Commodity brokers Insurance carriers Insurance agents Real estate Holding and other offices Business services Legal services Membership organizations Miscellaneous services (engineering, architectural, accounting, etc.) Total

1970

1980

1989

1998

Total (1970–98)

6,198 4,518 1,492 5,741 2,660 17,894 2,039

11,876 7,880 1,483 6,189 4,966 18,104 2,642

16,026 12,108 2,690 5,635 6,458 20,954 3,592

17,276 5,887 4,546 13,380 6,478 18,295 2,523

+11,078 +1,369 +3,054 +7,639 +3,818 +401 +484

20,700 3,024 6,950

32,502 8,202 7,476

48,262 13,234 10,002

67,551 14,380 10,764

+46,851 +11,356 +3,814

5,656

9,063

9,910

11,983

+6,327

76,872

110,383

148,871

173,063

+96,191

sources: U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1971a, 1982a, 1991a, 2000a.

Appendix

215

table 3. number of employees by major industry, san juan, puerto rico (percentage of the total per column) 1970

1980

1990

Agricultural services and mining Construction

335 (0.2%)

256 —

111 —

393 (0.2%)

+58 —

29,822 (18%) 29,446 (18%) 12,112 (7.3%) 16,226 (10%) 28,957 (18%) 14,979 (9%) 32,081 (19.5%)

22,259 (14%) 20,386 (13%) 11,914 (7%) 15,946 (10%) 27,647 (17%) 17,733 (11%) 44,480 (28%)

19,871 (11%) 14,828 (8%) 19,150 (0%) 17,032 (9%) 36,528 (19%) 24,617 (13%) 56,371 (30%)

18,279 (8.2%) 8,871 (4%) 25,333 (11.4%) 14,568 (6.5%) 40,423 (18.1%) 29,739 (13.3%) 85,391 (38.3%)

–11,543 (–19.5%) –20,575 (–34.8%) +13,221 (+22.4%) –1,658 (–2.8%) +11,466 (+19.4%) +14,760 (+25%) +53,310 (+90.3%)

163,958 (100%)

160,621 (100%)

188,508 (100%)

222,997 (100%)

+59,039 (100%)

Manufacturing Transportation and public utilities Wholesale trade Retail trade Finance, insurance, and real estate Services Total

sources: U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1971b, 1982b, 1991b, 2000b.

1998

Total Growth 1970–98

Sector

216

Appendix

table 4. employment in producer service industries, san juan, puerto rico Industries

1970

1980

1989

1998

Total (1970–98)

Banking Credit agencies Commodity brokers Insurance carriers Insurance agents Real estate Holding and other offices Business services Legal services Membership organizations Miscellaneous services (engineering, architectural, accounting, etc.)

3,950 2,170 123 1,751 1,705 5,032 217

5,866 3,858 94 2,554 2,522 2,357 220

8,310 6,226 359 3,672 3,421 2,433 220

9,942 5,117 602 3,829 4,434 5,604 117

+5,992 +2,947 +479 +2,078 +2,729 +572 –100

6,208 1,162 2,290

11,498 1,646 2,825

14,564 2,003 3,519

26,919 2,804 3,516

+20,711 +1,642 +1,226

2,553

2,918

3,599

4,780

+2,227

27,161

36,358

48,326

67,664

+40,503

Total

sources: U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1971b, 1982b, 1991b, 2000b.

table 5. employment share of producer services in all industries, miami and san juan, puerto rico

1970 1980 1989 1998

Miami

San Juan

16.5% n = 464,485 17% n = 641,500 20% n =740,094 21% n = 815,665

16.7% n = 163,958 22.3% n = 160,621 25.6% n = 188,508 30% n = 222,997

sources: U.S. Dept. of Commerce 1971a, 1971b, 1982a, 1982b, 1991a, 1991b, 2000a, 2000b.

table 6. occupational distribution of caribbean immigrants at the time of arrival (%) Occupations

Professional or managerial Clerical or sales Blue collar Services Agriculture Total

Cubans

Dominicans

Haitians

Jamaicans

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

29

15

10

12

13

13

4

17

25

17

8

6

17

22

18

14

22 38 10 1

17 56 11 1

15 53 21 1

11 61 15 1

9 42 31 5

8 49 19 11

14 48 28 6

11 47 10 15

11 46 17 1

12 52 18 1

7 40 38 7

5 16 7 66

13 24 44 2

18 32 26 2

18 26 34 4

13 11 49 13

122,528

118,051

73,126

55,235

36,787

50,645

72,912

94,114

18,875

22,386

72,454

66,471

46,086

59,537

88,064

57,689

sources: Calculations were made from U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service 1962–77, 1978–97.

218

Appendix

table 7. occupational origins of puerto rican migrants Occupations Professional and semiprofessional Owners and managers, except farm Clerical, sales, and kindred workers Craftsmen, foremen, and kindred workers Operators and kindred workers Service Agricultural laborers Other laborers Total

1960

1982–83

1991

12.8% 12.5% 10.8% 5.2% 15.8% 6.7% 33.6% 2.6%

14.1% 2.7% 14.7% 17.6% 18.6% 13.8% 11.2% 7.2%

10.4% 5.0% 9.5% 11.8% 13.1% 15.3% 22.4% 12.5%

99,400

64,136

36,016

sources: Senior and Watkins 1975: 711; Junta de Planiﬁcación de Puerto Rico 1986b: 64, 1995: 12.

table 8. caribbean migrants in the metropoles

Country

Year

Home Population

Migrants Living in the Metropolis

Puerto Rico (1)

1980 1990 1975 1980 1990 1982 1990

3,196,520 3,522,037 365,000 356,000 422,000 326,717 359,572

1982 1990

328,400 386,987

Netherlands Antilles (5) 1990 Jamaica (6) 1990

248,000 2,404,000

Haiti (7)

1990

6,349,000

Dominican Republic (8) Cuba (9)

1990

6,948,000

1983 1990

9,771,000 10,500,000

2,014,000 2,651,815 150,000 176,000 228,722 95,704 109,616 175,200 (ancestry) 87,024 101,934 161,806 (ancestry) 75,722 435,024 (ancestry) 685,024 (includes illegals) 325,000 (ancestry) 1,010,024 289,521 (ancestry) 689,521 (includes illegals) 520,151 (ancestry) 745,151 (includes illegals) 910,867 1,053,197

Suriname (2) Martinique (3) Guadeloupe (4)

Metropolis United States Netherlands France France Netherlands United States England United States and England United States United States United States

Migrants in the Metropolis as a Percentage of Home Population 63% 75% 41% 49% 54% 29% 30% 48.7% 26% 26% 42% 30.5% 18% 28% 13.5% 42% 4.5% 10.8% 7.4% 10.7% 9.3% 10%

sources: (1) U.S. Bureau of the Census 1980, 1990, 1993. (2) Rath 1983; Bovenkerk 1987; OECD 1993: 85; United Nations 1990. (3) Condon and Ogden 1991; Freeman 1987; Marie 1993a. (4) Condon and Ogden 1991; Freeman 1987; Marie 1993a. (5) I am including in this category Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles. OECD 1993: 85; United Nations 1990. (6) U.S. Bureau of the Census n.d. Estimates are that people with Jamaican ancestry are around 65 percent of the 499,964 total black Caribbean population in Great Britain. The total black Caribbean population: Table 6 of HMSO 1993: vol. 2; Maingot 1992. (7) U.S. Bureau of the Census n.d.; Maingot 1992. (8) U.S. Bureau of the Census n.d.; Maingot 1992. (9) U.S. Bureau of the Census 1993; Maingot 1992.

table 9. sociodemographic characteristics of colonial caribbean migrants in the metropoles

Colonial Population

Martinican Guadeloupean France

Puerto Rican United States

British AfroCaribbean Great Britain

Surinamese Dutch Antillean The Netherlands

Unemploy- Participation Rate, ment Rate Age 16 and over (%) (%)

Government Worker (%)

1990

1990

1990

10.8 12.2 11.1

78 77 55

55 53 34

1990

1990

1990

12.4 6.3

60.4 65

18.4 15.1

Manufacture (%)

Owner Occup. (%)

Private Rented Tenant

Public Tenant (%)

Dweller in Main Urban Center (%)

1990

1990

1990

1990

Parisian Region (Ile-de-France) 1990

11 12 23

27 26 54

25 26 25

47 48 21

72 75 19

1990

1990

1990

1990

New York SMSA 1990

20 17.6

26 50

74 (rent) 50 (rent)

— —

35 7

1991

1991

1991

1991

Greater London 1991

1991

1991

1991

19.0

73

—

17

53

4

34

58

9.2

61

—

18

66

7

21

12

1994

1994

1986

1986

1986

1986

Randstad Cities 1991

43 27 20

14 16 43

13 17 14

70 65 40

59 34 13

19 16 7

62 57 60

— — —

sources: Marie 1993a; Recensement Général de la Population 1991, 1992; HMSO 1993; U.S. Bureau of the Census 1993; Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek 1986, 1988, 1995; Penninx, Schoorl, and van Praag 1993.

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Index

affirmative action, 199 Africa: blacks not deﬁned in, 22; French colonial policies, 200–201; left/right regimes, 70; migrants in France from, 33–34, 122, 158, 160–61, 187, 201–3; migrants in Netherlands from, 156, 187, 211; migrants in U.S. from, 158; transmigrants, 29; white discontent against migrants in Europe, 122. See also AfricanAmericans; Afro-Latino Caribbeans African-Americanization: of Mariel Cubans, 171; of Puerto Rican migrants, 151, 163–64 African-Americans, 141; blood criteria for, 34, 163; Carter administration and, 117; cheap labor, 133, 134, 163; coloniality of power, 148; as colonial/racial subjects, 162–64; Cuban refugees aided more than, 85, 112, 169; in European cities, 157; incorporation as ethnic group, 141, 162; inner city economics, 27–28, 85; internal colonial peripheral transmigrants, 29; New York migration, 150, 163, 164; public administration jobs, 185; racial labor discrimination, 152–53; racist stereotypes, 123, 149, 150n, 157–60, 162; West Indians distinguished from, 139, 159–60. See also blacks; civil rights movement Afro-Latino Caribbeans: Cuban, 169n,

171; Dominican, 167; New York, 29, 133, 139, 142, 158–61; Puerto Rico and identity as, 7, 33, 62, 142; racist stereotypes, 33, 149–50, 159–60; world cities, 159–61. See also blacks; British West Indians; Latinos agency, structures vs., 13–14 agriculture: agrarian capitalism, 47, 87, 95; agrarian reform, 3–4, 56, 147n; labor, 135; Puerto Rican coffee landowners, 53, 54–55. See also peasants; plantation system; sugar air travel: Havana-Miami freedom ﬂights (1965–73), 168; Puerto Rico-U.S., 108, 109–10, 142 Alarcón, Norma, 22 Algerians: France, 122, 158, 160–61, 203; New York, 158; war vs. colonialism, 201 alienation, 44–45, 67n, 68 Allende regime, Chile, 120 Alliance for Progress (1960s), 84 ambiguous identiﬁcation, 9, 142–43 American Dream, 153, 197–98 Americanism, Puerto Rico discourse, 76 Amsterdam: Bijlmermeer, 187; racialization, 157, 158; Randstad region, 186; Surinamese, 67 Anglos: hierarchy with Caribbean Hispanics, 52–53; Miami, 89, 90–91. See also whites Antigua, U.S. military bases, 83 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 22

243

244 apparel industries, 58, 60, 93, 95, 96, 163 Arabs, expelled from Spanish empire, 22 Arbenz administration, Guatemala, 4 Army Air Corps, Miami, 82 Aruba, 62 Asians: Great Britain, 196, 207, 211; honorary whites, 31; sociological migration models, 129. See also China; Japan; Koreans; Southeast Asia assimilation: Dutch policy, 204–5; French policy, 198, 199–203; Puerto Rican migrants and, 44–45, 61, 63, 68, 141, 142; social positioning and, 145; sociological school, 128–29 associated republic, 76 Atzema, Oedzge, 187 authoritarianism: Puerto Rican status change and, 44n, 67–72, 76; Soviet, 70, 75; Spanish, 54; U.S. alliances, 53, 55. See also dictatorships autonomization, of transnational corporations, 6 autonomous arenas: economic/political/ sociocultural, 14–15, 36; semiautonomous geopolitical logics, 49, 81 autonomy. See autonomization; autonomous arenas; independence axial divisions: capital/labor, 31–32, 198; European/non-European, 31, 147–48, 198; heterosexual/homosexual lesbian, 31; male/female, 31, 32 Bahamas, U.S. military bases, 83 balance of payments deﬁcits: Latin American, 4; Puerto Rican, 74 Baldwin, James, 160–61 Balibar, Etienne, 195 Ball, George W., 111 banks: and capital-intensive industrialization, 59; Cuban-owned, 26, 90; decentralizing, 86; discrimination by, 33; foreign, 87–88; illegal cash money, 91, 97; international, 26, 80, 86–96; Latino-owned, 90; Miami, 86–97; San Juan, 96; SBA loans, 27, 85, 112, 169–70; U.S. Federal Reserve, 91; U.S. money center banks, 86–88; U.S. regional, 86, 88. See also ﬁnancial sector; International Monetary Fund (IMF); World Bank (WB) Barbados: labor migration, 132, 183; modern colony, 179–80 bauxite industry, Jamaica, 120, 121, 124 Bay of Pigs intervention, 110 Beyond the Melting Pot (Glazer and Moynihan), 162

Index Bill of Rights, U.S., 197, 198 biological racism, 155, 165, 195; shift to cultural racism from, 25, 159–60, 194–96, 201, 205–6, 209–11. See also inferiority Birmingham, British West Indians, 188 blacks, 131, 159–67; Americanness incompatible with, 198–99; blood criteria for, 34, 163; Britishness incompatible with, 197, 206–10; Caribbeans disassociating identity from, 139, 149, 159–60, 167; Cuba, 19; Haitian, 115, 116–17; hyphenated identity, 141; Latin America, 34; New York, 139, 163; Nicaragua, 19; not deﬁned as, in Africa, 22; racist stereotypes, 123, 139, 150n, 159, 204, 210; second-generation Caribbean migrants identifying as, 167n, 203; sociological migration models, 129, 131; subordinated/disenfranchised in coloniality of power, 24; U.S. internal minorities, 133, 139, 163, 196, 199. See also African-Americans; AfroLatino Caribbeans blanquito (white creole) elites, 9, 10, 12, 19, 62 Blauner, Robert, 153 blood, racial deﬁnitions based on, 22, 34, 163 boat people, 124; Cuban, 117; Dominican, 124; Haiti, 117–19, 135, 136, 138–39. See also refugees borders: core-periphery, 181, 193; imagined, 23–24, 194, 197, 198; internal/external, 19–24; nation concept and, 195; Puerto Rican open, 141; racial exclusion, 210–11 bounded solidarity, 27 Bourdieu, Pierre, 3, 27–28, 80, 103, 106 Bracero program, 133 Bray, David, 182–83 Brazil, 3, 112–13 Bretton-Wood agreements, 86 Britain. See Great Britain British Afro-Caribbeans. See British West Indians British Nationality Act (1948), 207, 208–9 Britishness, 197, 206–10 British West Indians, 177–96; antiracist struggles (1960s), 196; citizenship, 67, 207, 208–9; cultural racism, 195, 207–8; historically colonial/ racial subjects, 159; homeownership, 186; labor force participation rates, 184; labor migration, 207–9; Lon-

Index don, 159, 161, 185, 186, 188; occupational distribution, 185; population, 219table; unemployment rates, 184; urban slums, 187. See also Afro-Latino Caribbeans; Barbados; Jamaica; Trinidad BUMIDOM, 183, 189 businesses: import/export businesses, 89–90, 92; Small Business Administration (SBA), 27, 85, 112, 169–70. See also corporations, transnational; entrepreneurs; ﬁnancial sector; industrialization; producer service center; real estate; retail; trade canal, Central America, 48, 50–52, 56, 132 capital: capital/labor axis, 31–32, 198; Fordist social relations, 67, 86; human capital approach, 104, 136, 180–81; social, 25–28, 32, 106, 113; strike of, 120; transnational, 47, 80, 86, 97. See also capital-importexport-oriented industrialization; capital-intensive industrialization; economic transfers; foreign investments; symbolic capital capital formation: of Cuban entrepreneurs, 26–27. See also capitalist world-system; social capital; symbolic capital capital-import-export-oriented industrialization, 46, 84 capital-intensive industrialization: CBI and, 98; export-oriented (1973–90), 47; high-tech transnational industries, 46, 59–60, 99; labor, 59–60, 95–96; oligopolistic labor sector, 133; Puerto Rico, 46, 47, 58–60, 95–96, 98, 99; world cities ﬁnancial and producer service, 86–87, 98–99 capitalism: agrarian, 47, 87, 95; Cuban showcase, 169; democratic, 70; historical, 18, 154; Jamaican showcase, 120–21; Miami showcase, 84; monopoly, 50; Puerto Rican showcase, 46, 57–59, 64, 84–86, 108–10, 137–38; savage, 70; state, 70; superiority over socialism, 26, 111–12. See also capitalist accumulation; capitalist world-system; economic proﬁts; success story capitalist accumulation, 11–18, 105–6; geopolitical logic, 49–50, 54, 79–81, 88–89, 107, 164; Marx and, 35; migration and, 103–4, 126; racist culture not instrumental to, 154

245 capitalist world-system, 2–7, 13–25, 49; colonial/racist culture, 22, 24, 154–57; crises, 78, 86, 95, 116–17, 122; cultural/economic, 13–15; dependentistas and, 16–17, 19–20; disciplinary institutions, 6–7; economic restructuring (after 1973), 86–99, 194; entangled, 15–18; formation of, 22–24; imaginary, 21–25; migration process, 103–4, 181; neocolonial recolonization, 65; nineteenth-century expansion, 22–24, 193; postcolonial, 131, 146–48; revolutionaries and, 70–72; transmigrants, 29; Wallerstein on, 13, 14–15, 16, 78; world cities role, 80. See also capitalism; core zones; corporations, transnational; international division of labor; peripheral zones; semiperipheral zones Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 47 Caribbean: class of migrants from, 116–17, 120, 122, 134–36, 141, 150, 151, 166, 167, 180–83, 217–18tables; colonial migrants in Western Europe and U.S., 175–211; as core state battleﬁeld, 49; CubanCIA-Maﬁa alliance, 83, 91, 97; cultural racism from core zones toward, 192–211; diaspora in U.S., 101–73; exports/imports through Miami, 88, 89–90; independent nation-states, 2, 5, 8–9, 11, 51, 67–68, 119, 125, 181–82, 204; investment management, 86–88; labor migration from, 103–27, 132–36, 139–40, 150, 162–63, 166, 171, 178–83, 189, 194, 201, 207–9; Miami as the capital of, 87, 98–99; modern colonies, 10–11, 66–70, 103–27, 177–83; neocolonial, 65, 66; New York migrants from, 27–28, 29, 62, 115–16, 124, 133–73, 186, 188; occupational distribution of migrants, 134–36, 185, 217table; peripheral incorporation of, 50–53, 66, 179, 181; population of migrants in metropoles, 181, 182, 219table; postwar, 66–70, 103–27, 177–91, 194, 201; regional division of labor, 79, 87, 95, 98–99; revolutionaries, 70–73; world cities, 78–99. See also Afro-Latino Caribbeans; British West Indians; Central America; Dutch Antilles; French Antilles; Greater Antilles; Grenada; Miami; Suriname; U.S. geopolitics in Caribbean

246 Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), 59, 93–94, 96–98 Caribbean Commission, 179 Caribbean Defense Command, U.S., 82–83 cars per capita, Puerto Rico, 72 Carter, Bob, 208 Carter administration, 117 Cartesian dualism, 13 Castro, Fidel, 70, 113–14 Catholics, Netherlands, 204 CBI (Caribbean Basin Initiative), 59, 93–94, 96–98 Central America: canal, 48, 50–52, 56, 132; CIA operations, 83; incorporation of economies, 74; revolutionaries, 70. See also civil wars, Central America; Colombians; Costa Rica; El Salvador; Guatemala; Nicaragua Central Intelligence Agency. See CIA Césaire, Aimé, 20 Chad, French colonial administration, 200 character loans, 26 Chardón Plan, 56 cheap labor, 46, 86–87, 95, 97, 178, 184; African-American, 133, 134, 163; Africans in France, 201; British Afro-Caribbean, 185; cultural racism and, 192–94, 201–2, 210; Dominican, 167–68; French Antilleans, 183, 202; Mexican, 133, 168; Puerto Rican, 10, 64, 108, 126, 133, 134, 139–40, 158, 163, 165, 185, 190; San Juan, 94–95; transnational corporations, 10, 64, 86, 93; U.S. manufacturing, 93, 109, 133, 140, 165–66, 168, 185, 190 Chicago: money center banks, 86; Puerto Rican housing, 188; Puerto Rico Migration Division Office, 140 chicken-egg dilemma, 14 Chile, 3, 4, 70, 120 China, 3, 146n, 168 Chisholm, Shirley, 118 Christianity: in colonial imaginary, 1, 23; Netherlands, 204; Puerto Rico, 55 CIA: Guatemala, 4; Miami, 83, 85, 90, 91, 97; Nicaragua, 19 citizenship, 155–56; British Commonwealth, 207–9; Caribbean modern colonies, 67, 180; category, 24; coreperiphery borders, 193; Dutch colonies/migrants, 67; French colonies/migrants, 67, 200–203; metropolitan, 11, 67, 143, 180, 190–99; nation concept and, 156,

Index 195, 197; racial stereotypes assumed for rights of, 149; second-class, 156, 193, 199, 203; U.S./Puerto Rican, 8–9, 66–67, 133, 140–43, 149, 162, 197–99. See also civil rights civil rights: Caribbean modern colonies, 66–69, 180; laws, 139, 153, 196, 209; non-white U.S. immigrants, 198–99; Puerto Ricans in U.S., 10, 140, 165, 199; Puerto Rico, 53–57, 64–66, 72, 74, 76. See also citizenship; civil rights movement Civil Rights Act (1964), 139, 153, 196 civil rights movement: British blacks and, 209; Cubans as models vs., 169; and Puerto Rican public administration jobs, 185; shift from biological racism to cultural racism after, 159–60, 194–96, 201, 209; shift to ethnic groupings after, 162 civil wars, Central America, 74, 91, 124; El Salvador, 70, 83, 90, 96–97; Guatemala, 96–97 class: assimilation and, 63; Caribbean migrants, 116–17, 120, 122, 134–36, 141, 150, 151, 166, 167, 180–83, 217–18tables; dependentistas perspective, 17; ethnic micronetworks, 28; Netherlands four pillars, 204; Puerto Rican political parties, 54; transmigrants, 31–32. See also elites; hierarchies; middle classes; peasants; underclass; working classes classical colonies, 146, 180 classical equilibrium theory, 104 clientelistic/caudillista political traditions, 68 Clinton administration, 38–39, 122–23 closed systems, language of, 15 coffee landowners, Puerto Rico, 53, 54–55 cold war: Caribbean colonies, 66–67, 103–27; core zones, 107–8; Cuban refugees, 26–27, 84, 110–13, 138–39, 151; era after, 60–61, 64–66, 122–25; Haitian outmigration, 115–16; manufacturing of showcases, 3, 147n, 171–72; Puerto Rico as developmental showcase, 2–3, 5–7, 46, 57–65, 84–86, 99, 106–10, 124–25, 137–38, 164, 171–72 Colombians, racist stereotypes, 149 colonial administration, 4–6, 19, 147, 201; Caribbean postwar, 67–68; colonialism without, 146, 154; French, 200–201; national liberation

Index movements and, 107; Puerto Rico, 4–6, 56, 58, 142, 183; Puerto Rico governors, 44n, 57, 65–66, 108–9 colonial axis: European/non-European, 31, 147–48, 198. See also axial divisions colonial difference, 9–10, 20, 23–24, 29, 32–39 colonial encounters, contact zones of, 161, 162, 164 colonial immigrants, 148, 156–57, 172; colonial/racial subjects vs., 144–45, 149, 161, 171; Dominicans, 145, 167–68; immigrants vs., 144–45, 149, 156–57, 171; Mariel Cubans, 171 colonial incorporation: and class of migrant, 181–82; Cuba, 23, 50, 51–52; expansionist period, 22–24, 50–53; French Antilleans, 200; migration size and, 181; postwar Caribbean, 50–53, 66, 179, 181–82; Puerto Rico (1898–1991), 8, 23, 45–56, 82–83, 164, 181. See also colonial administration; mode of incorporation; subalternization colonialism, 2, 193; beyond, 5–11; classical, 146, 180; coloniality distinguished from, 4, 6, 18, 146, 161, 172; deﬁned, 146; internal, 146, 153–54, 156, 163, 199; “puertorriqueñista,” 61–64; settler vs. exploitation, 7–8; sociological migration models, 130. See also colonial incorporation; decolonization; modern colonies; neocolonialism coloniality, 4–5, 17–18; Caribbean vs. Puerto Rican, 5; colonial difference and, 9–10, 20; colonialism distinguished from, 4, 6, 18, 146, 161, 172; cultural racism and, 195–97; deﬁned, 197; heterogeneous not homogeneous, 157; internal, 10, 22–23, 29–30; international division of labor, 4, 5–6, 146–48; invisibility today, 147; modernity and, 24; multiple forms, 157. See also colonialism; coloniality of power; global coloniality; postcoloniality coloniality of power, Quijano’s, 3, 6–7, 15–21; Cuban, 19, 26–27; described, 4, 17–21; formation of, 24; French imperial to postimperial policies, 201–2; incorporation of Puerto Rico and Cuba, 52–53; after MexicanAmerican War, 52–53; neoculture of poverty and, 28; Puerto Rico, 9;

247 racial dynamics, 31, 34, 144–73, 192, 196–97, 198, 201–2 colonial/racial formation, 155, 159; global, 194, 210–11. See also colonial/racist culture; racial formation colonial/racial hierarchies, 16, 23, 158, 196. See also colonial/racial subjects; global racial/ethnic hierarchy colonial/racial subjects: AfricanAmericans, 162–64; colonial immigrants vs., 144–45, 149, 161, 171; DuBois and, 152; illegal immigrant status, 168; immigrants vs., 144–45, 149, 171; postwar core labor market, 180; Puerto Rican migrants, 27, 162–66; U.S. empire, 145, 148–51, 155–57; world cities, 157–66, 171 colonial/racist culture, 11–12, 22, 24, 33, 154–57, 172. See also colonial/racial hierarchies; colonial/racial subjects; colonial/racist social imaginary; cultural racism; racism colonial/racist social imaginary, 24; EuroAmerican/white, 2–3, 145, 149–50, 158–69. See also colonial/racial hierarchies; colonial/racist culture; global racial/ethnic hierarchy colonial situations, 47, 146, 147, 154 color. See skin color command and control, world cities, 81 common grounds, conﬂict resolution, 37–39 Commonwealth status: British, 207–9; Puerto Rico Estado Libre Asociado (ELA), 57, 61, 65, 74, 108, 125, 179 communism: British colonial policies vs., 207; dictatorships vs., 70, 106, 119, 138; intelligence agencies in Miami and, 83; U.S. geopolitics in Caribbean vs., 84, 106, 111, 117–23, 126, 138; U.S. geopolitics in Southeast Asia, 147n. See also cold war; Cuba; Marx, K./Marxism; Soviet Union community. See ethnic community; imagined community commuter nation, Puerto Rico, 142 comparative approach, Puerto Ricans in U.S., 128–43 conﬂict resolution, 36–38 Congress. See U.S. Congress Conseil de la République, 200 conservatives: Puerto Rico, 74–76. See also right construction: Miami, 94; Puerto Rico, 95 consumerism, 63–64, 67, 90

248 contact zones, of colonial encounters, 161, 162, 164 context of reception to host society, 130–31, 137, 145 Contras, Nicaragua, 83, 97 controlled integration, Dutch minorities, 204–5 core zones: Caribbean as battleﬁeld for, 49; Caribbean dependency on, 78–79; cold war, 107–8; colonial/racist history, 194; coreperiphery borders, 181, 193; cultural racism, 192–211; dependency theory, 47; economic crisis (1973), 78, 86, 95, 116–17, 194; emergence in capitalist world-system, 23; freelabor forms, 193; geopolitical strategies, 2–4, 11–12, 19–20, 36, 50–58, 80–81, 84–94; Miami’s importance to, 84–86, 91; militarism, 36, 193; nation concept in, 195; after Pax Britannica, 50; postwar, 178–80; racial/ethnic overlap, 146; symbolic capital strategies, 106, 108–9; transmigrants, 29, 30, 133; transnational capital, 47, 80, 86, 97; world cities, 79, 98–99. See also hegemony corporations, transnational: autonomization increases, 6; cheap labor, 10, 64, 86, 93; consumerism promoted by, 63; cost-cutting, 86; decentralizing, 86; Florida investments, 91–92; high-tech, 46, 59–60, 99; labor migration induced by, 105; Manley regime taxes, 120; Puerto Rican agrarian reform and, 4, 56; and Puerto Rican statehood, 66; sugar, 46, 53, 55, 56, 57, 132; tax exemptions (including 936 law), 46, 48n, 59, 61, 91, 95, 98, 108; U.S. economic interests embodied by, 46–48, 56; world city headquarters, 87, 89–90, 91–94, 99. See also foreign investments Costa Rica: Cartago EPZ, 97; showcase, 3 cost-cutting: corporation, 86. See also wages cost of living increases: Puerto Rico, 58. See also standards of living courts, subaltern perspective, 9 Creole: Haitian, 139; Puerto Rican, 9, 10, 12, 19, 62 crime rate, Puerto Rico, 72–73 criminality stereotype, 180, 197; AfroLatino Caribbeans, 33, 149–50; blacks, 123, 204, 210; Dominicans,

Index 149, 168; Puerto Ricans, 33, 158, 199 Cross, Malcolm, 78 Cuba: Bay of Pigs intervention, 110; Castro dictatorship, 68, 70, 113–14; elites, 19, 84, 90, 110; increased opening, 74; intelligence agencies and, 83; Jamaican relations, 120; missile crisis (1962), 110, 116; nationalism, 51, 52; nation-state incorporation, 181; OAS expulsion, 116; revolution, 83, 110, 133–34; Soviet model, 3, 59, 84, 106, 110, 111, 137–38; sugar, 132; trade embargo, 106, 110–11, 172; U.S. colonization, 23, 50, 51–52, 55; U.S. military, 52, 82, 119, 132. See also Cuban refugees Cuban Adjustment Act (1966), U.S., 117 Cuban Refugee Program, 26–27, 84, 111–12, 138–39, 151, 169, 171 Cuban refugees: banks owned by, 26, 90; boat people, 117; Haitians vs., 118, 138–39; labor migration, 133, 135; Marielitos, 135, 136, 139, 151n, 169n, 170–71; Miami, 26–28, 32, 83–99, 106, 110–13, 117–19, 126, 134–41, 149–51, 169–71; New York, 151, 168–72; “Phoenicians of the Caribbean,” 91; population in metropoles, 181, 219table; and Puertoricanization, 145, 149, 168–69, 171; social networks, 26, 27, 89–90, 91, 92, 99, 113, 169–72; success story, 26–27, 28, 32, 83–85, 89, 106, 113, 138, 149, 170; symbolic showcase, 84–86, 99, 111–12, 137–38, 169–70, 172; U.S. discrimination toward, 122–23; U.S. economic transfers to, 26–27, 84–85, 91–92, 111–13, 126, 137–38, 151, 169–72 Culebra, island of, 52 culturalism, 14 cultural meritocratic discourse, France, 202 cultural pluralism: Netherlands, 204; sociological school, 128–29 cultural racism, 25–28, 159–60, 192–211; shift from biological racism to, 25, 159–60, 194–96, 201, 205–6, 209–11. See also colonial/racist culture; inferiority; Other; stereotypes, racist cultural racist formation, 196 culture: autonomous arena, 14–15, 36; capitalist world-system, 13–14;

Index economy vs., 13–15, 16; integrated networks of economic/political/cultural processes, 15–16, 17; knowledges, 36–37; national, 76; New York, 139; of poverty, 25–28, 106, 195–96; Puerto Rican cultural hybridity, 142–43; U.S. strategy, 61–64. See also assimilation; Christianity; colonial/racist culture; cultural racism; ethnic community; geoculture; language; sociocultural arena Curaçao: citizenship, 67; economic and democratic reforms, 67; independence rejected by, 66n; labor migration, 183; languages, 62; modern colony, 10–11 custom duties, 88, 95 Dalai Lama, viii decolonization, 2, 5, 64–66; ﬁrst and second, 18; independence without, 6–9, 18, 24; myth of, 6–7, 24, 147; Soviet-U.S. competition, 179. See also neocolonialism; postcoloniality deindustrialization: France, 189; Great Britain, 186–87; Netherlands, 187, 189; New York, 165, 168; Puerto Rico, 59, 124n, 140–41; U.S., 185, 186–87, 190 democracy: Caribbean postwar, 67, 68; category, 24; democratization of, 74; Puerto Rican rights, 53–57, 64, 65, 72, 74; Puerto Rican showcase, 57, 108–9; racial, 34; radical, 45, 66, 72–73, 75–77; revolutionary, 70, 71–72. See also democratization; elections; rights democratization: of democracy, 74; of social hierarchies, 19 demography. See sociodemographic data denial of coevalness, 12 dependency: Caribbean urbanization and, 78–79; dependency situation, 47; dependentistas (dependency school of political economy), 16–17, 19–20, 45, 47 Dependency and Development in Latin America (Cardoso and Faletto), 47 De Smidt, Marc, 187 developmental strategies, 80–81; Caribbean as core states’ showcase, 179; Caribbean postwar outmigration and, 180–81; dependentistas and, 16–17; illusion of, 147; modern/colonial world-system, 8–9;

249 postcoloniality and, 12–13, 20, 147; Puerto Rican showcase, 2–3, 5–7, 46, 57–65, 84–86, 99, 106–10, 124–25, 137–38, 164, 171–72; sovereignty, 64–65; Soviet model, 2–3, 26, 46, 58, 59, 84, 106, 108–9, 126, 137–38; state-centric approach, 147n. See also capitalism; foreign investments; socialism DeWind, Josh, 119 dictatorships, 68, 70, 97; Dominican Republic, 68, 113, 114, 166; Haiti, 68, 106, 115–17, 119, 123, 138; Somocista, 19. See also authoritarianism dirtiness, racial stereotypes, 158–59, 197, 204 disciplinary institutions: capitalist worldsystem, 6–7. See also International Monetary Fund (IMF); World Bank (WB) discrimination, 39, 122, 194–95; British laws vs., 196; colonial immigrants, 148; vs. Cuban refugees, 122–23, 139, 171; vs. Dominican migrants, 168; vs. Dutch Caribbeans, 205; vs. French Antilleans, 202, 203; vs. Haitians, 117, 118, 122–23, 138–39; labor, 152–53; positive, 189; vs. Puerto Rican migrants, 33, 35–36, 38, 125, 140, 141–43, 165, 170; racial transmuted to ethnic, 162; SBA loan, 85, 112, 169, 170; sociological migration models, 129; in world cities, 33–34, 157–61. See also civil rights; gender inequalities; marginalization; oppression; racism; segregation domination, 4, 146, 151–52, 193; colonial axis and, 148; dominant/subordinate relations, 24, 44; military logic and, 81, 91; perception of, 34–35; U.S. in Caribbean, 127, 132, 145; white male elites, 157. See also core zones; elites; hegemony Dominica, 68 Dominican migrants, 113–15, 126, 134, 135, 141, 171; class, 150, 151, 167, 182–83; as colonial immigrants, 145, 167–68; Miami, 89; New York, 124, 145, 150–51, 166–68; population in metropoles, 181, 219table; Puertoricanization of, 145, 151, 166–68; racist stereotypes, 149, 168; redundant colonial/racialized labor force, 168; San Juan, 96; Spain, 211. See also Dominican Republic

250 Dominican Republic: Constitutionalists, 166; dictatorship, 68, 113, 114, 166; electricity, 60; labor, 95, 97; laborintensive industries, 58–59, 124; nation-state incorporation, 181; sugar, 132; U.S. presence, 51, 55, 82, 106, 125, 150, 166. See also Dominican migrants double consciousness, Duboisean, 9 les Droits de l’Homme, 199–200 drugs, illegal: Contras smuggling, 83; Miami as world capital of, 83–84, 91; Puerto Rico, 72–73. See also pharmaceuticals industry dualism, 15–16; Cartesian, 13 Du Bois, W. E. B., 9, 152, 163 Duchense, Juan, 63 DuPont, 92–93 Dutch Antillean migrants: class, 182; Florida real estate, 91; housing, 186; labor force participation rates, 184; languages, 62; manufacturing jobs, 185, 187; Netherlands, 177–78, 182–91, 204–6; population in metropoles, 181, 182, 219table; unemployment rates, 184, 187; world cities, 186–91 Dutch Antilles: colonial legal-political incorporation, 181. See also Curaçao; Dutch Antillean migrants Duvalier dictatorship, 106, 115–17, 119, 138 Eastern Europe, 3 Éboué, Félix, 200 economic interests, geopolitical, 56, 60, 105–6; historical-structural approach, 107, 181; world cities, 81, 93. See also capitalist accumulation; corporations; developmental strategies; economy; U.S. economic interests economic proﬁts: bank, 86; capitalintensive industrialization period, 59; minimum wages and, 9; from symbolic capital, 3 economic research school, 48–49 economic sociology, new, 25–28, 106 economic transfers: core state to Puerto Rico, 82; modern vs. classical colonies, 180; modern vs. neocolonial colonies, 67. See also U.S. economic transfers; welfare economistic interpretation, 45, 47, 132 economy: autonomous arena, 14–15, 36; capitalist world-system, 13–14; Caribbean, 68; consumer, 63–64, 67,

Index 90; crises, 60–61, 78, 86, 95, 116–17, 122; Cuban ethnic, 26–27, 28, 83; culture vs., 13–15, 16; dependentistas perspective, 17; Dutch Caribbean incorporation through, 205; enclave, 47, 85; global capitalist restructuring, 86–99, 194; global redistribution of wealth, 11; illegal informal, 73; inﬂation, 86; integrated networks of economic/political/cultural processes, 15–16, 17; Miami, 83–84; nationally controlled export, 47; new economic sociology, 25–28, 106; Puerto Rican, 58, 74, 82; showcase’s growth, 3; stagﬂation, 58; world economy (terminology), 14. See also businesses; developmental strategies; economic interests, geopolitical; economic proﬁts; economic transfers; free markets; income, personal; labor; political economy; poverty; service economy; success story, ethnic community; taxes; trade Ecuadorians: cheap labor, 168; racist stereotypes, 149 Edge Act banks, Miami, 87–88 education: Cuban, 170; as cultural capital, 160; Dominican migrants to U.S., 150; ethnic-related skepticism toward, 28; French Caribbeans in France, 189; Haitian migrants to U.S., 136, 139; Jamaican migrants to U.S., 120, 139; neoculture of poverty and, 28; New York West Indians, 159; Puerto Rican migrants to U.S., 150; U.S. lacking national public system, 28. See also humanities; schools; social sciences Eisenhower administration, 116 ELA (Estado Libre Asociado), Puerto Rico, 57, 61, 65, 74, 108, 125, 179 elections: Puerto Rican governor, 57. See also referendums electricity supply, 60 electronics industries, 46, 59, 60 elites: Cuban, 19, 84, 90, 110; Haitian, 115; Jamaican migrants, 120, 122; Latin American and Caribbean, 90; Third World technical-training programs, 107–8, 109. See also elitists; middle classes; white elites elitists: proindependence, 44, 67; vs. Puerto Rican “nuyoricans,” 142. See also elites El Salvador: civil war, 70, 83, 90, 96–97. See also Salvadoreans

Index empire: world cities as microcosms of, 157–61. See also core zones; EuroAmerican hegemony Enders, Thomas, 119 enemies, U.S. foreign policy, 130 enforceable trust, 26 England. See Great Britain English language, 55, 62; Dominicans and, 167; “English only,” 8, 45, 61; Jamaicans, 139; Miami, 89 entanglement, of multiple relations, 12, 15–18 entrepreneurs, 159, 200; Cuban success story, 26–27, 28, 32, 83–85, 89, 106, 113, 138, 149, 170. See also businesses environmental regulations, 64, 72, 74, 76 epistemologies: border, 19–24; colonial difference, 10, 20, 35–36. See also Eurocentric epistemologies; knowledge EPZs, 97–98 equal opportunity, 72, 129 equal rights, 10, 199. See also civil rights; gender inequalities Essed, Philomena, 33 essentialism, 34, 75, 142; new racism, 195, 201, 206; nonessentialism, 74–77 Estado Libre Asociado (ELA)/Commonwealth, Puerto Rico, 57, 61, 65, 74, 108, 125, 179 Ethiopia, Mengistu in, 70 ethnic absolutism, 195, 209 ethnic community, 162; Cuban, 26–27, 28, 83, 84–85, 112, 138–39; Dutch minorities, 204–6; France not acknowledging, 199–200; internal dynamics, 26, 27; Miami Latinos, 26–27, 28, 83, 84–85, 89–91; mode of incorporation, 138–41, 162; public perceptions, 123, 137–40, 159–60; Puerto Rican identity transcending, 143; racial identity replaced by identity as, 150n, 159–60; sociological migration models, 128–32; symbolic capital, 137–38, 152, 159–60, 170; transmigrant, 31–32, 137–38; U.S. European immigrants, 198. See also ethno-nation; global racial/ethnic hierarchy; minorities; race; social networks, transnational; success story, ethnic community; symbolic showcases ethno-nation, 9, 76, 143 eugenics, 25. See also biological racism Euro-American hegemony, 4, 7, 123n;

251 racial hierarchy, 2–3, 23–24, 145, 149–50, 153–54, 158–69; social imaginary, 2–3, 145, 149–50, 158–69. See also core zones; France; Great Britain; Netherlands; Portuguese empire; Spanish empire; U.S. hegemony; white supremacy Eurocentric epistemologies, 36–37; hegemonic, 4, 24; postcoloniality and, 12–13, 18, 19–21, 147. See also Euro-American hegemony; superiority Europe: African-Americans in cities of, 157; Caribbean colonial migrants, 175–211; Caribbean control replaced by U.S., 132; Eastern, 3; economic crisis, 122; European/nonEuropean axis, 31, 147–48, 198; exploitation and domination, 146; military threat to U.S., 56, 81–82; U.S. immigrants from, 133, 153, 162–63; whiteness, 22. See also Euro-American hegemony; Eurocentric epistemologies; France; Germany; Great Britain; Netherlands; Spain exploitation, 4, 146; capital accumulation logic and, 81; Caribbean nationstates vs. modern colonies, 11, 67–69; colonial axis and, 148; denial of coevalness and, 12; perception of, 34–35; with Puerto Rican national identity, 61–62; U.S. in Caribbean, 7–8, 127. See also exploitation colony; labor exploitation colony, Puerto Rico, 7–8, 11, 68–69 exports: capital-import-export-oriented industrialization, 46, 84; capitalintensive export-oriented industrialization (1973–90), 47; to Caribbean through Miami, 89–90; CBI and, 59; Jamaican, 120, 121, 124; laborintensive export-oriented industries (1950–70), 47; Miami import/export businesses, 89–90, 92; through Miami to Latin America, 88 external border thinking, 19–24 Fabian, Johannes, 12 Faletto, Enzo, 47 false dilemma, 14 Federal Aviation Administration, U.S., 109 federal funding. See economic transfers Federal Party, Puerto Rico, 54 Federal Reserve, U.S., 91

252 females: British Afro-Caribbean occupational distribution, 185; male/female axis, 31, 32; women’s rights, 72. See also gender feudalmania, 12–13 ﬁnancial sector, 66; Miami, 86–99; Puerto Rico, 59, 87, 95–96, 99. See also banks; capital FIRE (Finance, Trade, and Real Estate): Miami, 94; San Juan, 95–96. See also ﬁnancial sector; real estate; trade ﬂag, Puerto Rican, 61–62 Florida, 81–82; Caribbean and Latin America market shares, 88; employment distribution (Dade County), 93–94, 213–14tables; and Haitians, 27, 89, 118, 123, 136; and Puerto Rican mass migration, 125; transnational corporation investments, 91; U.S. snatching from Spaniards, 82. See also Miami Font, Estades, 53 food-stamp program, 59 Fordist social relations, 67, 86 foreign aid. See economic transfers; U.S. foreign aid foreign investments: in capital-importexport-oriented industrialization, 46, 84, 137–38; Caribbean postwar outmigration and, 180–81; CBI, 97; illegal cash money, 91; Miami, 57, 86–88, 91–92; Puerto Rico, 94–95; U.S. in Caribbean, 132. See also corporations, transnational; economic transfers foundational myths, 197; France, 199–200; Netherlands four pillars, 203–4; U.S., 197–98 France: African migrants, 33–34, 122, 158, 160–61, 187, 201–3; assimilationist policy, 198, 199–203; vs. biological racism, 196; “black” in, 203; BUMIDOM, 183, 189; Caribbean Commission, 179; Caribbean migrant population, 219table; colonial administration postwar, 200–201; cultural racism, 195, 196, 199–203; deindustrialization, 189; foundational myths, 199–200; French Antilleans, 67, 177–78, 183, 189, 191, 201–3; housing, 186, 187–88; labor force participation rates, 184; labor migrations to, 183, 189, 201; manufacturing jobs, 184; modern colonies in Caribbean, 179–80; Nazi occupation, 57; public administration jobs,

Index 184–85, 187, 189, 201–2, 203; second modernity, 23; statuses for colonies, 179; unemployment rates, 184; urban ghettos, 187–88. See also French Antillean migrants; Paris free-labor forms, 193 free markets, 65–66, 104, 205 free-trade agreement (NAFTA), MexicoU.S., 74, 124 free-trade zone (FTZ), Miami, 92 French Antillean migrants, 201–3; class, 182; in France, 67, 177–78, 183, 189; and French Africans, 200, 202, 203; French citizenship, 67, 200–202; housing, 186, 202; labor force participation rates, 184; population in metropoles, 181, 182, 219table; public administration jobs, 184–85, 187, 189, 201–2, 203; second-generation, 203; unemployment rates, 184; world cities, 186–91, 201 French Antilles. See French Antillean migrants; Guadeloupe; Martinique French Revolution (1789), 199 fundamentalism, 34 garment industries. See apparel industries gender: dependentistas ignoring, 17; male/female axis, 31, 32; patriarchal masculinist imaginary, 36; sexual division of labor, 72. See also females; gender inequalities; males gender inequalities: global racial/gender/ sexual hierarchy, 31, 34–35, 193; postcoloniality and, 12, 18; sexism in capitalism, 13, 18; structural location and perception of, 35, 36; transmigrant, 31, 32; women’s rights, 72 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 6 geoculture, 3, 8–14, 24, 193, 194. See also cultural racism geoeconomics: geopolitics given way to, 60. See also economic interests, geopolitical geopolitics, 60, 105; colonial difference, 10; core zone strategies, 2–4, 11–12, 19–20, 36, 50–58, 80–81, 84–94; of knowledge, 21–25, 34–36; labor migration and, 103–27, 132–34. See also economic interests, geopolitical; global geopolitical symbolic/ideological strategies; logics, geopolitical; military interests, geopolitical; U.S. geopolitics in Caribbean

Index Georas, Chloe S., 144–73 Germany: military threat to U.S., 51, 57; second modernity, 23; Turks, 156, 211; Volk-centered approach, 198. See also Nazis Gilroy, Paul, 195, 197, 206–7, 209 Glazer, Nathan, 162 global capitalism. See capitalist worldsystem global cities. See world cities global coloniality, 2, 6–7, 22, 147–48, 173; capitalist accumulation logic and, 18; deﬁned, 156; IMF, 5, 6–7; as independence without decolonization, 6; invisibility of, 24, 147; neoliberal, 64; North-South divide, 10; symbolic capital and, 151–61; WB, 5, 6–7; in world cities, 157–61 global colonial/racial formation, 194, 210–11 global geopolitical symbolic/ideological strategies, 80–81, 105–6, 171, 178–80. See also symbolic showcases global logics. See logics, geopolitical global political-economic forces, 26–27. See also geopolitics; political economy global racial/ethnic hierarchy, 4, 6, 194; coloniality of power, 144–73, 201–2; Dutch, 206; Euro-American, 2–3, 7–8, 23–24, 52–53, 145, 149–50, 153–69; formation of, 23, 194; French, 201–3; global racial/gender/ sexual hierarchy, 31, 34–35, 193; historical continuities/discontinuities, 7, 153–55, 172, 201, 206; Latinos, 7–8, 145, 149, 157–66; migration changing, 33; nonhyphenated identity and, 142; postcolonial, 12, 17–18, 19, 146–48, 153–61, 196–99, 201–2; symbolic capital, 152, 159–60, 165, 167, 172; world cities, 4, 33–34, 145, 157–68. See also colonial/racial subjects; colonial/racist culture; white supremacy global racial/gender/sexual hierarchy, 31, 34–35, 193 global redistribution of wealth, 11 god’s-eye standpoint, 36–37 gold standard, end of, 86 Good Neighbor foreign policy, U.S., 56 governors, Puerto Rico, 44n, 57, 65–66, 108–9 Great Britain: “black” in, 197, 203; Caribbean Commission, 179; Commonwealth, 207–9; cultural racism,

253 195, 196, 206–10; deindustrialization, 186–87; drug programs, 73; housing, 186; immigration restrictions, 119; labor force participation rates, 184; Labour government, 207; manufacturing jobs, 185; modern colonies in Caribbean, 179–80; Pakistanis, 211; Pax Britannica, 50; public administration jobs, 185; racialization of Irish, 155; second modernity, 23; South Asians, 196, 207; statuses for colonies, 179; Thatcher administration, 186, 190, 191, 210; unemployment rates, 184. See also British West Indians; London Great Depression, 56, 133 Greater Antilles: migration and geopolitics, 103–27; U.S. military interventions, 123, 125, 132, 150, 164, 166. See also Cuba; Dominican Republic; Haiti; Jamaica; Puerto Rico Greece, 3 Grenada: communism, 118–19, 123n; Jamaica and, 3, 120–21, 122; revolution, 96–97; U.S. hegemony, 68, 70; U.S. invasion (1983), 97, 122, 123n, 125 Grenier, Guillermo, 83 Guadeloupe, 67–68; colonial legalpolitical incorporation, 181; manufacturing jobs, 184–85; public administration jobs, 184–85, 187. See also French Antillean migrants Guantanamo, U.S. military base, 52, 119 Guatemala, 4, 96–97 Guevara, Che, vii Gulbenkian commission, 15 Guyana, 68; British, 179–80; French, 200; nation-state, 67 habitus, individual, 27–28 The Hague, 186 Haiti: dictatorship, 68, 106, 115–17, 119, 123, 138; EPZs, 97; labor-intensive industries, 58–59, 124n; nation-state incorporation, 181; negative perceptions of, 167n; showcase, 123n; slave revolt, 116–17; sugar labor, 132; U.S. military interests, 51, 55, 82, 119, 123, 125, 132; U.S. policies toward, 115–19, 122–23, 138. See also Haitian migrants Haitian migrants, 115–19, 122–23, 126, 132, 141; boat people, 117–19, 135, 136, 138–39; Miami, 27, 89; New York, 115–16, 136, 139; population in metropoles, 136, 181, 219table

254 Hall, Stuart, 177, 195 Haraway, Donna, 21 hard workers: showcased vs. laziness stereotype, 32, 139, 159–60, 198, 199. See also labor Harris, Clive, 208 Havana-Miami freedom ﬂights (1965–73), 168 Hawaii: acquisition of, 51; progressive health care policies, 74; sugar corporations, 132 Health, Education, and Welfare Department (HEW), Cuban Refugee Program, 26–27, 84, 111–12, 138–39, 151, 169, 171 hegemony, 151–52; colonial difference, 10; ideological, 3–4, 24; “rock-a-bye baby,” 62, 64; symbolic logic and, 81. See also core zones; EuroAmerican hegemony; hierarchies; superiority; U.S. geopolitics in Caribbean heterarchies, 12, 15–16, 18 heterosexual/homosexual lesbian axis, 31 hierarchies, 193; complex entangled, 12, 15–18; global racial/gender/sexual, 31, 34–35, 193; labor, 79, 146–48, 193; nested, 15. See also class; colonial/racial hierarchies; elites; global racial/ethnic hierarchy; hegemony; inferiority; racism; sexism; subaltern perspective; superiority high-tech transnational industries, 46, 59–60, 99 Hispanics: African heritage concealed by, 142; Anglo hierarchy with Caribbean, 52–53; as distinct racialized group, 53; inferiority to whites, 23; Latino term vs., 144; sociological migration models, 129. See also Afro-Latino Caribbeans; Latinos; Puerto Rican migrants; Spain; Spanish language historical capitalism, 18, 154 historical continuities/discontinuities, racial/ethnic hierarchy, 7, 153–55, 172, 201, 206 historically contingent geopolitical logics, 81 historical-structural approach, 103–4, 107, 131–32, 180–83. See also history; structures historical systems: integrated networks of economic/political/cultural processes, 15–16, 17; society vs., 1 historic indemnization, 66 historic speciﬁcity, of racism, 195

Index history: colonial/racist, 194; empire and global coloniality, 157; migration from Caribbean, 132–34; Puerto Rico (1900s), 48–50, 56–57. See also historic . . . homeownership: Caribbean migrants, 186. See also housing homogenizing, diverse migrant experiences, 29 homosexuality: heterosexual/homosexual lesbian axis, 31; homophobia, 18 Hope, Kempe Ronald, 78 housing: Caribbean migrants in Europe, 186–88, 189, 202; discrimination in, 33; homeownership by Caribbean migrants, 186; peasants, 56; privatization of, 186; public, 186, 202; Puerto Ricans in U.S., 33, 140, 188, 191; reforms, 187–88; San Juan, 108; segregation, 187–88; shantytowns in Puerto Rico, 108, 138; social, 186, 189 Houston, 88 Houten, H. R. van, 179 human capital approach, 104, 136, 180–81 humanities: knowledge production, 147; social sciences vs., 13–14 human rights, and Haitians, 116, 117, 119, 123 identity: ambiguous, 9, 142–43; Antillaise, 203; colonial axis, 148; hyphenated, 129, 141, 142; identity politics, 34; melting pot, 129, 162, 198; multiple levels (global/nationstate/local), 151–52; nation concept and, 195; new, 203; postnational, 143; Puerto Rican migrant, 141–43, 165; transnational, 143. See also ethnic community; gender; national identity; race ideologies: global, 3, 11–12, 36; hegemony, 3–4, 24; world cities, 81. See also epistemologies; global geopolitical symbolic/ideological strategies Ile-de-France, Caribbean migrant concentration, 186 imaginary: border, 23–24, 194, 197, 198; coloniality as dominant, 22; EuroAmerican racist, 2–3, 145, 149–50, 158–69; of modern/colonial worldsystem, 21–25; patriarchal masculinist, 36. See also colonial/racist social imaginary; imagined community imagined community: British, 206–7; Dominican, 167n; Dutch, 204, 206; ex-

Index clusions from, 197–99, 202; French, 200, 202; nation, 7, 141, 156, 193, 195, 198–99, 204; Puerto Rican, 77; white, 162. See also imaginary immigrant analogy, 153 immigrants, 148–49; colonial immigrants vs., 144–45, 149, 156–57, 171; colonial/racial subjects vs., 144–45, 149, 171; Cubans incorporated as, 172; Europeans in U.S., 133, 153, 162–63, 197–98; internal colonial groups vs., 153; new, 134–36, 149–50, 199. See also migration; refugees; transmigrants; U.S. migrants; world cities Immigration Act (1924), U.S., 163 Immigration Act (1965), U.S., 119, 133–34, 166, 182 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), U.S., 116, 117, 119, 120 immigration laws: British anti-immigration laws, 207–9. See also U.S. immigration laws imports: capital-import-export-oriented industrialization, 46, 84; import substitution industrialization, 4; Miami import/export businesses, 89–90, 92; through Miami from Latin America, 88 income, personal: Caribbean migrant, 182; decline in U.S. and European, 122; federal transfer percentage, 59; Haitian migrants to U.S., 136. See also wages; welfare incorporation mode. See mode of incorporation independence: Caribbean countries, 2, 5, 8–9, 51, 67–68, 125, 181, 182, 204; without decolonization, 6–9, 18, 24; illusion of, 147; Jamaican, 182; Latin American hegemonized, 24; neocolonialism and, 2, 6–9, 11, 61–69, 180; Suriname, 125, 204. See also autonomous arenas; nationalism; nation-states; Puerto Rican independence; sovereignty Indians: deﬁnition before European expansion, 22; Dominicans as, 167n; Florida, 82; Latin America, 34; Nicaragua, 19. See also British West Indians; Native-Americans individual habitus, 27–28 individualism, 26 individual rights, group rights vs., 197–98 industrialization: capital-import-exportoriented, 46, 84; Caribbean postwar

255 out-migration and, 181; Chardón Plan, 56; import substitution, 4; by invitation, 57, 59, 84, 137–38. See also capital-intensive industrialization; corporations; deindustrialization; labor; labor-intensive industries industrial-urban society, Puerto Rico becoming, 95 inferiority: cultural racism, 25, 192, 194, 195–96, 197, 206; Hispanic, 23; neoculture of poverty and, 28; nonEuropean, 155; Puerto Rican, 164; unpaid labor, 192. See also biological racism; colonial/racial subjects; stereotypes, racist inﬂation, 86 infrastructure, Miami, 91–94 infrastructure/superstructure paradigm, 11–12 instrumentalist approach, 18, 49 integration: Dutch minorities, 204–5; economic/political/cultural, 15–16, 17 intelligence agencies, 6–7, 83. See also CIA Interior Department, U.S., 46, 56 internal border thinking, 19–24 internal colonialism, 146, 153–54, 156, 163, 199 internal coloniality, 10, 22–23, 29–30 internal minorities. See minorisation; U.S. internal minorities internal power relations: Puerto Rico, 53–56. See also governors; political parties international banking, 26, 80, 86–96. See also International Monetary Fund (IMF); World Bank (WB) international division of labor, 192–93; colonial immigrants, 148; coloniality, 4, 5–6, 146–48; dependency, 16–17; formation, 22–23; hierarchical, 146–48, 193; new, 4, 87; postcoloniality, 11, 13, 146–48; world cities and, 80, 94 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 6–7, 66; global coloniality, 5, 6–7; and Jamaica, 121, 122; neoliberalism, 65, 66, 71, 74 international organizations, 179. See also United Nations interstate system, 12, 49, 50–53, 193; geopolitics and migration, 104; postwar, 178–83; two spheres of inﬂuence (U.S. and Soviet Union), 107–8, 178–79. See also world-system

256 investments. See capital; economic transfers; foreign investments Irish, racialized, 155 islands: migration difficulties, 181. See also Caribbean Italians, New York garment industry, 163 Jamaica: class of migrant, 120, 122, 182; colonial legal-political incorporation, 181, 182; EPZs, 97; and Grenada, 3, 120–21, 122; independence, 182; labor migration, 119–22, 124, 126, 132, 133, 134, 135, 139, 182; Manley democratic-socialist government, 96–97, 106, 120, 126; Miami migrants from, 89; modern colony, 179–80; nation-state, 67, 119; population of migrants in metropoles, 181, 182, 219table; three hundredth anniversary of British rule (1955), 208; U.S. hegemony, 68, 70; U.S. military bases, 82, 83 James, C. L. R., 43 Japan, 4, 146n Japanese, honorary whites, 31 Jews: expelled from Spanish empire, 22; New York garment industry, 163 Johnson administration, 112, 116 Joshi, Shirley, 208 Junta de Calidad Ambiental (Board of Environmental Control), 72 Kennedy administration, 84, 112, 116 Khan, Hazrat Inayat, vii Kimball, Charles, 91 knowledge: geopolitics of, 21–25, 34–36; production of, 25–26, 28, 36–37, 147; racism in complicity with, 25–26, 28; scientiﬁc, 25–26, 28, 36–37, 147; situated, 21, 35–36; subjective/particularistic, 37; universalistic, 36–37. See also epistemologies Kontopoulos, Kyriakos, 15 Koreans: American, 141; honorary whites, 31; Southeast Asian miracle, 3–4, 147n labor: capital-intensive industrialization, 59–60, 95–96; capital/labor axis, 31–32, 198; Caribbean regional division of, 79, 87, 95, 98–99; coerced, 24, 193; discrimination, 152–53; ethnic group success/failure, 25–28, 32, 85; expensive, 167–68, 199; Fordist social relations, 67, 86; free forms, 193; global redistribution of

Index wealth, 11; hierarchical division of, 79, 146–48, 193; incorporation mode for migrants, 130–32, 136–41, 151, 153, 164–65, 177, 184–91, 201–2; labor force participation rates, 184; Miami employment distribution, 93–94, 213–14tables; migrants taking jobs shunned by whites, 163, 202; migrants taking jobs from whites, 122, 127; migration of, 103–27, 132–36, 139–40, 150, 162–63, 166, 171, 178–83, 189, 194, 201, 207–9; New York’s racial/ethnic division of, 168; occupational distribution of Caribbean migrants, 134–36, 185, 217table; oligopolistic/competitive sectors, 133; paid/unpaid, 192–93; postwar shortages, 180, 183, 201; Puerto Rico internal politics, 53–56, 58; racist exclusions from, 149–50, 194, 199, 210; redundant colonial/racialized, 166, 168; rights, 53–56, 64, 65, 76, 140; San Juan employment distribution, 95–96, 215–17tables; sexual division of, 72; slavery, 116–17, 196; sociological migration models, 130–32; sugar, 132; transmigrant, 30–32, 58; unions, 54–55, 76, 133, 140; workday reduction, 73; workfare vs. welfare, 9; World War I shortages, 162–63. See also cheap labor; hard workers; international division of labor; labor-intensive industries; manufacturing jobs; public administration jobs; unemployment rates; wages; working classes Labor Department: Puerto Rico, 58, 110, 140, 183; U.S., 112, 163 labor-intensive industries, 124n; capitalist restructuring, 58, 87; Caribbean Basin, 98; competitive labor sector, 133; Dominican Republic, 58–59, 124; export-oriented (1950–70), 47; industrialization strategy, 47, 58–59; light, 46, 59, 95; Puerto Rico, 94–95, 96, 97, 108. See also manufacturing language: bilingualism, 62–63; Creole, 139; and national identity, 61, 62–63, 76–77; old social science, 14–15, 18; and Puerto Rican statehood, 8, 45. See also English language; Spanish language Latin America: coloniality of power, 19, 24; elites in Miami, 90; exports/imports through Miami, 88; indepen-

Index dence without decolonization, 6, 24; neocolonial, 65; racial democracies, 34; U.S. economic imperialism, 4; U.S. Good Neighbor policy, 56. See also Brazil; Caribbean; Central America; Chile; Ecuadorians; Guyana; Mexico Latinization, threat of, 8 Latinos, 144; global racial/ethnic hierarchy, 7–8, 145, 149, 157–66; Miami bank owners, 90; Miami population, 89; New York, 144–73; Puertoricanization of, 145, 149, 150n, 151, 166–71; Puerto Rican statehood as, 7–8; racist stereotypes, 149–50; sociological migration models, 129. See also Afro-Latino Caribbeans; Hispanics; Latin America; Puerto Rican migrants laws: agrarian reform, 56; citizenship, 207–9; civil rights, 139, 153, 196, 209; colonial, 154; Cuban refugee, 117; equal opportunity, 129; quality of life, 76; tax exemption (936 law), 48n, 59, 61, 95, 98. See also environmental regulations; immigration laws; U.S. Congress; U.S. Constitution laziness stereotype, 158–61, 180, 197; Afro-Latino Caribbeans, 33, 149–50; blacks in U.S., 123, 139; Dominicans, 168; Dutch Antilleans and Surinamese, 204; hard workers showcased vs., 32, 139, 159–60, 198, 199; Puerto Ricans, 10, 33, 158, 199. See also hard work left: Latin American, 17, 19; Puerto Rico, 74; Third World, 70–71. See also communism; nationalism; progressives; socialism legal-political incorporation, peripheral zones, 50–53, 66, 179, 181 legal systems. See courts; laws Leninist-Marxist dictatorship, 70 liberalism: Netherlands, 204; nineteenthcentury, 14–16, 36. See also neoliberalism Liberal Party, Puerto Rico, 53, 54 Liberals, Netherlands, 204 liberation movements, vii, 107. See also revolution light industries: labor-intensive, 46, 59, 95. See also manufacturing Lodge, Henry Cabot, 51 logics, geopolitical, 107; capitalist accumulation, 49–50, 54, 79–81, 88–89, 107, 164; deﬁned, 49n; historically

257 contingent, 81; military/security logic, 54, 79–81, 107; redeﬁned, 15–16; semiautonomous, 49, 81; structuring, 49, 79–81; symbolic/ideological, 79–81, 107; of world cities, 79–81. See also economic interests, geopolitical; ideologies; military interests, geopolitical London: British West Indians, 159, 161, 185, 186, 188; racialization, 157, 159, 161 Lungo, Mario, 78–79 Maﬁa, 83, 91, 97 Mahan, Alfred T., 50–52 Maingot, Anthony P., 60 Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 33 males: British Afro-Caribbean occupational distribution, 185; heterosexual elites, 31; male/female axis, 32; patriarchal masculinist imaginary, 36; white elites, 31, 156, 157, 193, 198. See also gender malls, 63 Manley, Michael, 96–97, 106, 120, 126 manufacturing: informalized, 140, 165; Jamaica, 124; Miami and, 93–94; New York, 163, 165; Puerto Rico, 87, 95, 96, 97. See also apparel industries; light industries; manufacturing jobs; textile industries manufacturing jobs, 86, 186–87; France, 184, 201; French Antilles, 184–85; Great Britain, 185, 186–87; Netherlands, 186–87; Puerto Rico, 60, 94–96; U.S., 93–94, 109, 133, 140, 163, 165–66, 168, 185, 186–87, 190 Marcos, Zapatista Liberation Army Subcommander, vii marginalization, 177; blacks in Britain, 210; Caribbeans in Europe, 185, 189, 190, 191, 205, 206, 210; Puerto Rican labor force, 58; Puerto Ricans in U.S., 185, 189, 190, 191, 199. See also cultural racism; discrimination Mariel Cubans, 135, 136, 139, 151n, 169n, 170–71 Martin, John Bartlow, 113–14 Martinique, 67–68; colonial legalpolitical incorporation, 181; manufacturing jobs, 184–85; modern colony, 10–11, 66, 178; negropolitan, 142; public administration jobs, 184–85, 187. See also French Antillean migrants

258 Marx, K./Marxism, 16, 35, 49, 70. See also communism Medellín cartel, 91 melting pot, 129, 162, 198 Mengistu, in Ethiopia, 70 mestizos, Puerto Rico, 163 metropoles: citizens of, 11, 67, 143, 180, 190–99; population of Caribbean migrants, 134–36, 166, 181–82, 219table. See also core zones; world cities Mexican migrants to U.S.: Bracero program, 133; cheap labor, 133, 168; cultural racism, 211; hyphenated identities, 141; racialized, 131, 149; scapegoated, 122 Mexico: free-trade agreement (NAFTA), 74, 124; gold and silver, 82; laborintensive industries, 59, 124n; neoliberal showcase, 3; subalternization of/Mexican-American War (1848), 23–24, 52–53. See also Mexican migrants to U.S. Miami, 78–94, 98–99; capital of Caribbean, 87, 98–99; Cubans, 26–28, 32, 83–99, 106, 110–13, 117–19, 126, 134–41, 149–51, 169–71; drug capital of the world, 83–84, 91; employment distribution, 93–94, 213–14tables; ﬁnancial and producer service center, 86–99, 214table, 216table; as Fort Dallas, 82; Haitians, 27, 89; institutional and physical infrastructure, 91–94; intelligence agencies, 83, 85, 90, 91, 97; literature on, 79; military importance, 82, 91, 97; recently formed world city, 86–87, 93 micronetworks. See social networks middle classes: Cuban backgrounds, 151; Dutch, 204, 206; Haitian black, 115; Jamaican migrants, 120, 122, 182; Miami Anglos, 90–91; vs. Puerto Rican cultural hybridity, 142. See also elites Mignolo, Walter, 1, 20–24, 37, 144 migration: African-Americans to New York, 150, 163, 164; from Caribbean, 103–27, 132–34, 175–211; Dominican, 113–15, 124, 126, 134, 135, 150, 166, 171, 182–83; geopolitics and, 103–27, 132–34; Haitian, 115–19, 122–23, 126, 132, 135, 136; Jamaican, 119–22, 124, 126, 132, 133, 134, 135, 139, 182; labor, 103–27, 132–36, 139–40, 150, 162–63, 166,

Index 171, 178–83, 189, 194, 201, 207–9; peasant rural-urban, 78, 182; political stability and, 114–15; Puerto Rican, 128–43; push-pull theories, 104, 181; sociological models, 128–32. See also immigrants; refugees; transmigrants Migration Division Office, Puerto Rico Labor Department, 58, 110, 140, 183 Miles, General, 53 militarism: core, 36, 193; patriarchal masculinist imaginary, 36. See also military; wars military: Caribbean coups/dictatorships, 68, 70, 113–14, 123, 166; Florida forts, 82; German, 51, 57, 82; Puerto Rico forts, 82–83, 97 military interests, geopolitical, 11, 54, 79–83, 105. See also militarism; U.S. military interests in Caribbean military research school, 48–49 mining: Caribbean, 87, 181. See also bauxite industry minorisation, 205–6 minorities: cultural racism and, 195, 199, 200, 204–6; Dutch ethnic, 204–6; middleman, 200; West Indians as model, 159–60. See also ethnic community; race; U.S. internal minorities miracle: Brazilian, 3; Southeast Asian, 3–4, 147n miraculous arms: Cesaire’s, 20. See also subversive complicity missile crisis (1962), Cuba, 110, 116 mixed race, 131. See also Afro-Latino Caribbeans; Creole; mestizos; mulattos Mizquitos, 19 Mobutu, in Zaire, 70 mode of incorporation: ethnic group, 138–41, 162; internal colonialism, 153, 164; migrant labor, 130–32, 136–41, 151, 153, 164–65, 177, 184–91, 201–2; multiple, 138–39; sociocultural, 204–5; sociopolitical, 132, 136–37, 141, 143, 195. See also colonial incorporation mode of production/dependency approaches, 45 modern/colonial world-system, 1–11, 193; critique, 20–21; imaginary, 21–25; regional differences, 31; transmigrants, 29–32, 67. See also capitalist world-system; modern colonies; modern world-system modern colonies, 6, 10–11; postwar

Index Caribbean, 66–70, 103–27, 177–83; Puerto Rico, 2, 4–5, 66 modernity: ﬁrst (1492–1650), 22–23; second (1650–1945), 23–24 modernization theory, 78 modern world-system, 1–25, 193; axial divisions, 31–32, 147–48, 198. See also modern/colonial world-system monarchies, sovereign, transforming into nation-states, 193 Monnerville, Gaston, 200 monopoly capitalism, 50 Moroccans: France, 122, 203; Netherlands, 156, 211 Moynihan, Daniel, 162 mulattos: Cuban, 19, 169n, 170; Puerto Rico, 163; subordinated/disenfranchised in coloniality of power, 24 Muñoz government, Puerto Rico, 65, 108 music, of exotic Other, 33 myths: decolonization, 6–7, 24, 147; universality, 36–39. See also foundational myths NAFTA (free-trade agreement), MexicoU.S., 74, 124 nation: cultural racism and, 195–99, 206–7, 209–11; ethno-nation, 9, 76, 143; imagined community, 7, 141, 156, 193, 195, 198–99, 204; Puerto Rican identity transcending, 143. See also national identity national identity, 147; cultural racism and, 195, 196, 207, 209; Puerto Rican, 61–64, 76–77, 142–43. See also nation nationalism: beyond, 5–11; British, 206–7; colonial mentality, 10; Cuban, 51, 52; internal coloniality, 22–23; and national identity, 62–64, 76, 142–43; political economy perspective, 5–11; Puerto Rican, 44, 52, 54, 61–64, 74, 76; “Yankees or Puerto Ricans” slogan, 61, 62, 63. See also independence; national liberation movements Nationalist Party (Partido Nacionalista), Puerto Rico, 61 national liberation movements, vii, 107. See also revolution nation-states: Caribbean, 5, 11, 51, 67–68, 119, 125, 181–82; class of migrant, 181–82; dependentistas and, 16–17; formation of, 4, 6, 24, 47, 145, 148; in global economy, 47, 74; multiple identity, 151–52; nations without, 76; sovereign monar-

259 chies transforming into, 193; transnational migration literature transcending, 29; as unit of analysis, 17, 147. See also independence Native-Americans: coloniality of power, 148; internal colonial peripheral transmigrants, 29; subordinated/disenfranchised in coloniality of power, 24. See also Indians NATO, 6–7, 46 naval interests, U.S. in Caribbean, 46, 50–52 Nazis, 196, 200–201, 207; defeat, 178, 194; military, 57, 82 negropolitan, Martinique, 142 neocolonialism, 61–69, 193; Dominican, 167n; and independence, 6–9, 11, 61–69, 180; modern colonies and, 6, 66–69, 180; Puerto Rico and, 2, 7, 8–9, 61–69; sociological migration models, 130; transmigrants, 29, 30. See also decolonization neoculture of poverty, 25–28 neoliberalism, 64; Dutch policy, 204–5; IMF, 65, 66, 71, 74; Jamaica, 120–22; Puerto Rico statehood, 65–66 nested hierarchy, 15 Netherlands: and biological racism, 196, 205–6; Caribbean Commission, 179; Caribbean migrants, 33, 67, 125n, 177–78, 182–91, 204–6, 219table; cultural racism, 196, 203–6; deindustrialization, 187, 189; four pillars, 203–4; housing, 186, 187–88, 189; labor force participation rates, 184; manufacturing jobs, 186–87; modern colonies in Caribbean, 179–80; Nazi occupation, 57; North African migrants, 156, 187, 211; Randstad region, 186–87; second modernity, 23; statuses for colonies, 179; Turks, 156; unemployment rates, 184; urban ghettos, 187–88; welfare, 184, 187, 189, 191, 204–5. See also Amsterdam Netherlands Antilles. See Dutch Antilles networks: integrated networks of economic/political/cultural processes, 15–16, 17. See also social networks New Deal, 56 new economic sociology, 25–28, 106 new immigrants, 134–36, 149–50, 199 New Jersey, Union City Cubans, 168–70 New Orleans, 88–89; Caribbean and Latin America market shares, 88 new racism. See cultural racism

260 new right, U.S., 9 New York: African-Americans, 134, 139, 150, 161–64, 185; Algerians, 158; banks, 86, 88; Caribbean and Latin America market shares, 88; Caribbeans, 27–28, 29, 62, 115–16, 124, 133–73, 186, 188; racial/ethnic hierarchy, 145, 157–68 Nicaragua: Contras, 83, 97; Costa Rica showcased vs., 3; revolution (1979), 90, 96–97; Sandinistas and Mizquitos, 19; U.S. hegemony, 68, 70 Nicaraguans: black/white, 19; Miami, 89, 90; U.S. refugee policies, 118 Niger, French colonial administration, 200 Nixon administration, 116 nonessentialism, 74–77 northernmania, 12 objectivity, 36, 38 Occidentalism, 13, 20, 23 oil boom (1970s/1980s), 90 oil crisis (1973), 86, 134 oligopolistic/competitive sectors, 133 Omi, Michael, 154, 155 Operation Bootstrap, 108 opportunism, racial stereotypes, 33, 158–59, 197 oppression: African-Americans, 162; blacks associated with, 203; perception of, 34–35; Puerto Ricans, 162. See also discrimination; subalternization Organization of American States (OAS), 116 Orientalism, 12–13, 23 Orthodox Party, Puerto Rico, 53, 54 Osborne, Cyril, 208 Other, 24, 177; Antilleans, 201–2, 206; Dominican, 168; exotic, 33–34; Hispanic, 23; inferior/underdeveloped and backward, 20, 22, 23, 201; North Africans, 201; Puerto Rican, 33–34, 163, 164–65, 168; Surinamese, 206 Pakistanis, Great Britain, 211 Panama Canal, 48, 56, 132 Pan American, 109 Paris: Caribbean migrants, 186, 202–3; racialization, 33–34, 157–58, 160–61; Seine-Saint-Denis, 187 particularism, 37, 38, 39 parties. See political parties patriarchal masculinist imaginary, 36

Index peasants: housing, 56; migration to cities, 78, 182; poverty, 78 Pedraza-Bailey, Silvia, 113, 170 Pennsylvania: reactionary policies, 74. See also Philadelphia Pentagon, 6–7, 46, 48 peripheral zones, 2–25; coerced forms of labor, 24, 193; core-periphery borders, 181, 193; dependency theory, 20, 47; internal imbalances, 104–5; legal-political incorporation, 50–53, 66, 179, 181; mobility of capital to, 86, 97; newly independent countries, 107; postwar, 178–83; racial/ethnic overlap, 146; showcasing, 106; sociological migration models, 130; transmigrants, 29, 30, 31–32, 133; world cities, 79, 87, 98–99. See also Africa; Caribbean; colonial incorporation; Latin America; subalternization pharmaceuticals industry, 46, 59, 60. See also drugs, illegal Philadelphia, Puerto Rican housing, 188 Pinochet, Chile’s, 70 plantation system: sugar, 53, 54, 56, 132, 181; urbanization linked with, 78 Platt Amendment, 52 Point Four Program, Puerto Rico showcase, 46, 57–58, 84, 108, 109 point of view: dependentistas (dependency school of political economy), 16–17, 19–20, 45, 47; nationalist and colonialist perspectives, 5–11; objective, 36, 38; and position in social hierarchy, 35; radical-democratic perspective, 45, 66, 72–73, 75–77; social conﬂict resolution, 37–38; subjective, 37, 148. See also political economy; public opinion; subaltern perspective police force, Puerto Rico, 53 policy: deﬁned, 107. See also geopolitics; public policies political economy, 4; dependency school, 16–17, 19–20, 45, 47; global, 26–27; nationalist and colonialist perspectives, 5–11; Puerto Rico, 5–11, 41–99. See also economy; politics; subaltern perspective political parties: Puerto Rico, 43, 53, 54–55, 61, 76; revolutionary regimes banning, 70; U.S., 5, 38–39 political prisoners, Puerto Rican, in U.S., 38–39 politics: as art of negotiation within a particular relation of forces, 37, 39;

Index autonomous arena, 14–15, 36; clientelistic/caudillista, 68; identity, 34; integrated networks of economic/political/cultural processes, 15–16, 17; pragmatism, 68, 74; Puerto Rico internal, 53–56; vs. racial exclusion, 159; stability and migration, 114–15. See also colonial administration; colonial incorporation; democracy; geopolitics; governors; independence; left; political economy; political parties; right; socialism; statehood, Puerto Rico Popi, 170 population: Dominican Republic, 166; Haitian boat people, 117; Miami, 89; migrants in metropoles, 134–36, 166, 181–82, 219table Portes, Alejandro, 78–79, 104–5, 106, 137, 181 Portuguese empire: expansion to the Americas, 22; Latin American independence, 24; second modernity, 23 postcoloniality, 11–22, 131, 172; racial/ethnic hierarchy, 12, 17–18, 19, 146–48, 153–61, 196–99, 201–2. See also decolonization postindependence, 146 postnational identity, 143 postnational strategies, Puerto Rican, 43 Potter, Robert B., 78 poverty, 66; Caribbeans in Europe, 189, 190; culture of, 25–28, 106, 195–96; Dominican migrants, 151; neoculture of, 25–28; peasants, 78; Puerto Rican migrants, 110, 138, 139–40, 141, 151, 199; Puerto Rico, 108. See also cheap labor Powell, Enoch, 209–10 power: individual habitus and, 27–28; symbolic, 103. See also capital; coloniality of power, Quijano’s; hegemony; politics pragmatism, political, 68, 74 Pratt, Mary Louise, 161 prestige: social, 152, 156. See also symbolic capital privatization, 65–66; of housing, 186 producer service center: Miami, 87–94, 96, 214table, 216table; San Juan, 87, 96, 216table production costs, corporation, 86 production mode, mode of production/ dependency approaches, 45 production of knowledge, 25–26, 28, 36–37, 147

261 production services, Puerto Rico, 60 professional and scientiﬁc instruments industries, 60 proﬁts. See economic proﬁts progress, illusion of, 147 progressives, 74–76 protectorate treaty, U.S.-Cuba, 52 Protestants: Netherlands, 204; Puerto Rico, 55 public administration jobs: AfroCaribbeans, 185; French Antilleans, 184–85, 187, 189, 201–2, 203; Puerto Ricans in U.S., 185; Puerto Rico, 60, 95 public housing, 186, 202 public opinion: British anti-immigration bill, 208, 209; ethnic group (perception of), 123, 137–40, 159–60; mode of incorporation, 137–39; symbolic capital, 152. See also discrimination; point of view public policies, and migrant incorporation, 188–89, 190, 191 public utilities, Miami, 94 Puerto Rican independence, 74–76; national identity deﬁnitions, 61–62, 76–77; neocolonialism and, 6–9, 11, 61–69; Puerto Rican opposition, 8–9, 11, 43–45, 61–62, 68–69, 74; Puerto Rican support, 54–55, 56, 62–70, 74–77; from Spain, 53; U.S. economic reasons for, 125; U.S. no longer fearful of, 5, 7 Puertoricanization, of Latinos, 145, 149, 150n, 151, 166–71 Puerto Rican migrants, 2, 58, 128–43, 150; African-Americanized, 151, 163–64; cheap labor, 10, 64, 108, 126, 133, 134, 139–40, 158, 163, 165, 185, 190; citizenship, 133, 140, 143, 199; class of migrants, 135, 141, 150, 167, 182, 218table; coloniality of power, 148; colonial/racial subjects, 27, 162–66; cultural hybridity, 142–43; discrimination vs., 33, 35–36, 38, 125, 140, 141–43, 165, 170; in European cities, 157; expensive labor, 167–68, 199; housing in U.S., 33, 140, 188, 191; identiﬁcation strategies, 141–43; incorporation as ethnic group, 162; incorporation in labor market, 141, 165, 177; labor force participation rates, 184; labor migration, 107–10, 126, 132–35, 139–40, 150, 162–63, 183; manufacturing jobs, 140, 185, 190; Miami, 89; national identity,

262 Puerto Rican migrants (continued) 61–64, 76–77, 142–43; negative social capital, 106; New York, 27–28, 62, 135, 140, 142, 150–51, 157–68, 186, 188; nuyorican, 142; Otherness, 33–34, 163, 164–65, 168; political prisoners in U.S., 38–39; population in metropoles, 135, 181, 182, 219table; public administration jobs, 185; racialized, 131, 145, 149–51, 155, 157–67, 172, 196; racist stereotypes, 10, 33, 149, 150n, 157–58, 162, 199; redundant colonial/racialized labor force, 166; rights in U.S., 10, 140, 165, 199; spiks, 165; urban ghettos, 187, 191 Puerto Rican-ness, 9, 62 Puerto Rico: as Afro-Latino Caribbean state, 7, 62; capital-import-exportoriented industrialization, 46, 84; citizenship, 8–9, 66–67; colonial administration, 4–6, 56, 58, 142, 183; colonial incorporation (1898–1991), 8, 23, 45–56, 82–83, 164, 181; commuter nation, 142; crisis years (1970–90), 58–60; Estado Libre Asociado (ELA)/Commonwealth status, 57, 61, 65, 74, 108, 125, 179; exploitation colony, 7–8, 11, 68–69; governors, 44n, 57, 65–66, 108–9; history (1900s), 48–50, 56–57; internal power relations, 53–56; manufacturing/manufacturing jobs, 60, 87, 94–96, 97; national symbols, 61–62, 64; political economy, 5–11, 41–99; post-cold war period (1991-?), 60–61, 64–66; postnational strategies, 43; postwar, 57–58, 179; public administration jobs, 60, 95; referendums on status, 5, 8, 9, 43–45, 74; Spanish regime, 53, 54; symbolic and ideological interests dominant (1945–80), 64, 106; U.S. economic interests, 45–49, 53–54, 56, 60, 97; U.S. economic transfers, 6, 7, 9, 58–69, 74, 84, 95, 97, 108, 125; U.S. invasion (1898), 46, 53–54, 132, 164; U.S. military interests, 6, 45–49, 52, 53–57, 60, 64, 81–83, 95, 97, 125; U.S. symbolic showcase, 2–3, 5–7, 45–49, 56–65, 84–86, 95, 99, 106–10, 124–25, 137–38, 164, 171–72; U.S. wars drafting citizens of, 8, 10. See also Puerto Rican independence; Puerto Rican migrants; San Juan; statehood, Puerto Rico

Index “puertorriqueñista” colonialism, 61–64 push-pull theories, 104, 181 quality of life: revolutionary effects, 71, 72–73. See also standards of living Quijano, Aníbal. See coloniality of power, Quijano’s race: blood deﬁnitions, 22, 34, 163; dependentistas ignoring, 17; ethnic group as, 162; Puerto Ricans as new, 164–66, 167; sociological migration models, 131; transmigrant, 31–32; U.S. racial categories, 145; U.S. social category, 155, 165–66. See also Arabs; Asians; blacks; civil rights movement; ethnic community; Hispanics; Indians; Jews; minorities; mixed race; whites Race Relations Bill (1968), British, 196, 209 racial formation, 25–26, 154, 155. See also colonial/racial formation racism, 24–25, 39, 195–97; vs. Africans in Paris, 33–34; vs. blacks, 123, 139, 206–10; capitalism and, 13, 18; vs. Caribbeans in Europe, 187–88, 194–95; vs. Caribbeans in U.S., 194–95; coloniality of power, 31, 34, 144–73, 192, 196–97, 198, 201–2; cultural, 25–28, 159–60, 192–211; economic crisis creating, 122; everyday, 33; French colonial policies, 200–201; global racial/gender/sexual hierarchy, 31, 34–35, 193; vs. Haitians, 116–19, 139; identiﬁcation strategies vs., 141–43; knowledge in complicity with, 25–26, 28; labor exclusions, 149–50, 194, 199, 210; Latin American racial democracies, 34; Occidentalism, 13, 20, 23; Orientalism, 12–13, 23; vs. Puerto Ricans, 2, 10, 33, 35–36, 38, 125, 140–58, 162, 165, 199; scapegoating, 32, 122, 127; U.S. colonial expansions, 23–24, 52–53; U.S. migration policy, 116–19, 122, 125, 126, 127; world cities, 157–66. See also biological racism; colonial/racist culture; cultural racism; discrimination; global racial/ethnic hierarchy; inferiority; stereotypes, racist; superiority; white supremacy racisme différentialiste, 195 radical-democratic perspective, 45, 66, 72–73, 75–77 Randstad region, Netherlands, 186–87

Index Rath, Jan, 205–6 rational planning, 16–17 reactionaries, 74–75 Reagan administration, 65, 96–97, 117–21, 123n real estate: San Juan, 95–96; South Florida, 91, 94 recession, world (1980s), 121 recolonization, 64–66. See also neocolonialism reductionism: culturalist, 14; economic, 4, 14, 15–16, 39, 49; ethnic success story, 27, 32, 131–32; geopolitical, 49, 105–6; racial, 129, 196 referendums: Curaçao status, 67n; Puerto Rico status, 5, 8, 9, 43–45, 74 reforms: agrarian, 3–4, 56, 147n; housing, 187–88; vs. revolution, 71; revolutionizing, 70–73; socialdemocratic, 71. See also social change Refugee Act (1980), U.S., 117 refugees: sociological migration models, 130. See also boat people; Cuban refugees; migration religion. See Christianity retail, Puerto Rican labor, 140–41, 185 revolution: Cuba, 83, 110, 133–34; Grenada, 96–97; Nicaragua (1979), 90, 96–97; reform vs., 71; revolutionizing reforms, 70–73; socialist, 16, 70–72. See also national liberation movements revolutionary reformism, 71–73 right: France, 201; Puerto Rico, 65–66, 75–76; Third World, 70–71; U.S. new, 9. See also conservatives; reactionaries rights: constitutional, 197, 198; group vs. individual, 197–98; human, 116, 117, 119, 123; labor, 53–56, 64, 65, 76, 140; male elites, 193; nation concept and, 195; new racist exclusions, 194; and Puerto Rican identity, 143; racial/ethnic, 197–98; social, 10, 156, 180, 198–99; subaltern perspective, 9, 10; women’s, 72. See also citizenship; civil rights; equal rights riots, British antiblack, 209 “rock-a-bye baby” strategy, 62, 64 Rockefeller, David, 121 Roosevelt, Theodore, 51 Rosselló, Pedro, 44n, 65–66 Rotterdam, 186 Rumbaud, Rubén G., 137

263 Rumi, viii Rusk, Dean, 114–15 St. Augustine, Florida, 82 Saint Maarten, 67 Saldívar, José David, 22 Salvadoreans: Miami, 89; U.S. refugee policies, 118. See also El Salvador Sandinistas, 19 Sandoval, Chela, vii San Juan, 78–87, 94–96, 98–99, 124; employment distribution, 95–96, 215–17tables; ﬁnancial and producer service center, 87, 95–96, 99, 216table; Point Four Program, 84, 108; shantytowns, 108, 138 Sassen, Saskia, 128 SBA. See Small Business Administration (SBA) scapegoating, racist, 32, 122, 127 schools: English-speaking public, 55; French Antilles public, 200; language in, 61, 62, 63, 76. See also education scientiﬁc knowledges: production of, 25–26, 28, 36–37, 147; and racism, 25–26, 28. See also social sciences Seaga, Edward, 120–22 segregation: Caribbeans in Europe, 190; housing, 187–88 self-reﬂexivity, 35–36 semiautonomous geopolitical logics, 49, 81 semiperipheral zones, 192–93; mobility of capital to, 86; Puerto Rico in CBI, 98; transmigrants, 29, 30, 31–32; world cities, 79, 87, 96, 98 Senegalese, in France, 203 service economy, 59–60; Miami, 93, 94, 96; Puerto Rican jobs in U.S., 141, 185; San Juan, 95–96. See also producer service center; social services Sesenbrenner, Julia, 106 sexism: capitalism and, 13, 18. See also gender inequalities sexual division of labor, 72 shantytowns, Puerto Rico, 108, 138 showcases. See symbolic showcases situated knowledge, 21, 35–36 situations, colonial, 47, 146, 147, 154 skin color: racialization and, 155, 161, 165, 208–9. See also blacks; whites slavery, 116–17, 196 Small Business Administration (SBA), 27, 85, 112, 169–70 social capital: new economic sociology and, 25–28, 106; positive/negative, 106, 113; transmigrants, 32

264 social category, race as, 155, 165–66 social change: redeﬁnition, 70–73. See also reforms; revolution social conﬂicts: solutions to, 36–38; U.S. economic intervention in Puerto Rico and, 97. See also social change; wars social contract, 199–200 social imaginary: Euro-American, 2–3, 145, 149–50, 158–69. See also colonial/racist culture socialism: capitalist superiority over, 26, 111–12; Jamaica and, 120; revolutionary, 16, 70–72 Socialists, Netherlands, 204 social networks, transnational, 32, 126, 131–32, 134; class differences, 28; Miami Cuban, 26, 27, 89–90, 91, 92, 99, 113; new economic sociology and, 25n, 26, 27, 106; Puerto Rican, 140, 141–42, 167 social polarization, 66 social positioning, 145 social prestige, 152, 156. See also symbolic capital social relations, Fordist, 67, 86 social rights, 10, 156, 180, 198–99 social sciences: formation of, 36; humanities vs., 13–14; knowledge production, 25–26, 28, 36–37, 147; knowledge/racist complicity, 25–26, 28; nineteenth-century, 14–16, 18, 36 social services, 60. See also public administration jobs; service economy; welfare sociobiology, 25. See also biological racism sociocultural arena: autonomous, 14–15, 36; boundaries crossed by transmigrants, 29; decolonization, 2; Dutch Caribbean incorporation, 204–5. See also culture; social networks, transnational sociodemographic data, 181–91, 213–20tables. See also class; housing; labor; mode of incorporation; population; urbanization sociology: assimilation school, 128–29; cultural pluralist school, 128–29; of knowledge, 35–36; migration models, 128–32; new economic, 25–28, 106 sociopolitical mode of incorporation, 132, 136–37, 141, 143, 195 Somocista dictatorship, 19 Somoza family, 90

Index South Bronx, Puerto Rican economics, 27–28 Southeast Asia: labor-intensive industries, 59, 124n; miracle, 3–4, 147n. See also Koreans sovereign monarchies, transforming into nation-states, 193 sovereignty, 64–65, 147. See also independence Soviet Union, 107–8, 178–79; authoritarianism, 70, 75; and Cuba, 3, 59, 84, 106, 110, 111, 137–38; developmental model, 2–3, 26, 46, 58, 59, 84, 106, 108–9, 126, 137–38; dissolution of, 60, 70, 122; left-wing Third World regimes supported by, 70; Perestroika, 122. See also cold war Spain: democratic autonomous regions, 74; Dominicans, 211. See also Spanish empire Spanish empire: Arabs and Jews expelled, 22; expansion to the Americas, 22; Florida military outpost, 82; Latin American independence, 24; Puerto Rican regime, 53, 54; pure blood, 22; second modernity, 23; U.S. seizing Cuba and Puerto Rico from (Spanish-American War, 1898), 23–24, 50, 51–53, 82 Spanish language: Academia Real Española, 62; Miami, 89, 90; national identity and, 61, 62, 76; Puerto Rico, 8, 61, 62, 76; “Spanish only,” 62 speaking for/speaking from, 35 Spivak, Gayatri, 13 stagﬂation, Puerto Rico, 58 standards of living: Puerto Rico, 58, 66–67, 74, 84. See also quality of life state, nation. See nation-states state, in U.S. See statehood, Puerto Rico state-centric approach, 147n State Department. See U.S. State Department statehood, Puerto Rico, 5, 7, 43–45; Afro-Latino Caribbean, 7, 62; Congressional debates, 7, 8, 45, 64; dire reality of, 69–70; “English only” condition, 8, 45; Latino, 7–8; progressive or reactionary, 74–76; radical-democratic perspective, 66, 75–77; right-wing neoliberal program, 65–66 Stepick, Alex III, 83, 115–16 stereotypes, racist, 32, 148, 157–62, 180, 197; African-American, 149, 150n, 157–60, 162; Afro-Latino Caribbean, 33, 149–50, 159–60; blacks, 123,

Index 139, 150n, 159, 204, 210; British, 159, 197, 210; dangerous, 33, 123; dirty, 158–59, 197, 204; Dominicans, 168; Dutch Antilleans and Surinamese, 204; opportunist, 33, 158–59, 197; Puerto Ricans, 10, 33, 149, 150n, 157–58, 162, 199; stupid, 149–50, 158–59, 168, 180, 197; uncivilized and untrustworthy, 197. See also criminality stereotype; cultural racism; laziness stereotype strike of capital, 120 structuralism, 136, 201. See also historical-structural approach; structures structures: agency vs., 13–14; multiple levels (global/nation-state/local), 151–52; new economic sociology and, 26; structuring logics, 49, 79–81. See also structuralism stupidity, racial stereotypes, 149–50, 158–59, 168, 180, 197 subalternization: of Mexico, 23–24, 52–53. See also colonial incorporation; subaltern perspective subaltern perspective, 4, 21, 23; colonial difference, 10, 20; coloniality of power and, 20; dominant/subordinate relations, 24, 44; on domination/oppression/exploitation, 35; knowledges, 21–22; and nationalist and colonialist perspectives, 9–11; Puerto Rican, 1–2, 9–11 subjectivity: colonial axis, 148; knowledge, 37 subversive complicity, 9, 20, 71–73 success story, ethnic community, 25–28, 32, 131–32, 138, 145; Cuban refugees, 26–27, 28, 32, 83–85, 89, 106, 113, 138, 149, 170 sugar: planters, 53, 54, 56, 132, 181; trade, 132; U.S. corporations, 46, 53, 55, 56, 57, 132 superiority: capitalism over socialism, 26, 111–12; cultural racism, 195–96, 206; ethnic cultural practices, 28; Western, 3, 12–13, 20, 22–23. See also Eurocentric epistemologies; hierarchies; white supremacy Suriname: colonial legal-political incorporation, 181; independent nationstate, 67, 68, 125, 204. See also Surinamese migrants Surinamese migrants: class, 182; housing, 186; labor force participation rates, 184; manufacturing jobs, 185, 186, 187; Netherlands, 33, 67, 125n,

265 177–78, 184–91, 204–6; population in metropoles, 181, 182, 219table; unemployment rates, 184, 187; in world cities, 158, 161, 186–91 Suriname syndrome, 125 symbolic capital, 3, 80–81, 103; core zone strategies, 106, 108–9; Cuban refugees, 26, 84, 111–12, 170, 172; deﬁned, 80; ethnic community, 137–38, 152, 159–60, 170; and global coloniality, 151–61; global racial/ethnic hierarchy, 152, 159–60, 165, 167, 172; postwar strategy, 179; Puerto Ricans, 137–38, 165, 167; in world cities, 157–61. See also symbolic showcases symbolic showcases, 3, 80–81, 106, 179; Cuban refugees, 84–86, 99, 111–12, 137–38, 169–70, 172; French Antilleans, 200; Haiti, 123n; Jamaica, 120–21; manufacturing of, 3, 147n, 171–72; negative (Cuba), 106, 110–11; postwar Caribbean, 179; Puerto Rico, 2–3, 5–7, 45–49, 56–65, 84–86, 95, 99, 106–10, 124–25, 137–38, 164, 171–72; West Indians vs. African-Americans, 139 symbolic strategies. See global geopolitical symbolic/ideological strategies; symbolic capital; symbolic showcases symbols, Puerto Rican national, 61–62, 64 Taguieff, Pierre-André, 195 Taiwan, 3–4, 147n Tampa, Caribbean and Latin America market shares, 88 tariff agreements, 3, 6, 98 taxes: and labor migration, 105; Manley regime, 120; Puerto Rican exemptions, 58, 59, 65, 95, 108; Puerto Rico as burden on, 125; transnational corporations exemptions (including 936 law), 46, 48n, 59, 61, 91, 95, 98, 108, 120 technical-training programs: Point Four Program/Puerto Rico showcase, 46, 57–58, 84, 108, 109; U.S., 107–8, 109 technological transfers, 3. See also hightech transnational industries; technical-training programs temporal distancing, 12 textile industries, 60, 93, 96 Thatcher administration, 186, 190, 191, 210

266 Third World: left, 70–71; migrants in world cities, 4, 96; neoliberalism, 121–22; right, 70–71; technicaltraining/Point Four program/Puerto Rico showcase, 46, 57–58, 84, 107–8, 109. See also Africa; Caribbean; developmental strategies; Latin America tourism: Caribbean postwar outmigration and, 181; Miami, 82, 90, 91, 93, 94 trade: embargo on Cuba, 106, 110–11, 172; free-trade zone (FTZ), 92; Mexico-U.S. free-trade agreement (NAFTA), 74, 124; Miami, 88, 89–90, 92, 94, 98; Puerto, 74, 97, 98; San Juan, 95–96; sugar, 132; tariff agreements, 3, 6, 98. See also exports; imports transmigrants: Caribbean labor, 132–34; colonial peripheral, 29; colonial semiperipheral, 30; ethnic community, 31–32, 137–38; internal colonial peripheral, 29, 30; in modern/colonial world, 29–32, 67; neocolonial peripheral, 29; neocolonial semiperipheral, 30. See also migration; world cities transnational identity, 143. See also social networks, transnational transportation: air, 108, 109–10, 142, 168; Central American canal, 48, 50–52, 56, 132; Miami, 94; Puerto Rico, 72 Trelenberg, Kenneth, 92–93 Trinidad: modern colony, 179–80; U.S. military bases, 82 Trujillo dictatorship, Dominican Republic, 113, 114, 166 Truman, H. S., 46, 65, 107–9 Tugwell, Rexford, 57 Turks: Germany, 156, 211; Netherlands, 156 underclass: Caribbean migrants in Europe, 186–87; Puerto Rican, 166 unemployment rates: British AfroCaribbeans, 184; Caribbean colonial migration and, 183, 184; Dominican migrant, 150–51; Dutch Antilleans, 184, 187; Europe, 122, 184; French Antilleans, 203; French Caribbeans, 184; Puerto Rican migrant, 141, 150–51, 166, 184, 190; Puerto Rico, 58, 59, 72–73, 95, 124n, 138; Surinamese migrants, 184, 187; U.S., 122, 184

Index Union City, New Jersey, 168–70 Union Party, Puerto Rico, 54–55 unions, labor, 54–55, 76, 133, 140 United Nations, 57, 118, 179 United States: Carter administration, 117; Clinton administration, 38–39, 122–23; colonial, 195; cultural racism, 196, 197–99; Eisenhower administration, 116; Federal Aviation Administration, 109; foreign policy enemies, 130; foundational myths, 197–98; global racial/ethnic hierarchy, 7–8, 23–24, 52–53, 145, 153–66; Good Neighbor foreign policy, 56; HEW Cuban Refugee Program, 26–27, 84, 111–12, 138–39, 151, 169, 171; housing, 33, 140, 186, 188, 191; Interior Department, 46, 56; Johnson administration, 112, 116; Kennedy administration, 84, 112, 116; Labor Department, 112, 163; labor force participation rates, 184; new right, 9; Nixon administration, 116; Pentagon, 6–7, 46, 48; racist migration policy, 116–19, 122, 125, 126, 127; Reagan administration, 65, 96–97, 117–21, 123n; underdeveloped welfare system, 190, 198; War Department, 56, 82–83. See also entries under U.S. universality, Western myth of, 36–39 University of Miami, 83 urbanization: Caribbean, 78–79, 99. See also world cities U.S. Caribbean Defense Command, 82–83 U.S. Congress: on Cuban and Haitian refugees, 118; Democrat-dominated, 5; dictating policy to Puerto Rico, 61; neocolonial recolonization, 65; Puerto Rican statehood debates, 7, 8, 45, 64; referendums suspended by, 5, 8; Republican-dominated, 5, 38–39; vs. West Indian migration, 208; Young Bill on Puerto Rico status, 8. See also laws U.S. Constitution, 198; Bill of Rights, 197, 198 U.S. Custom Service, Andean/Caribbean Help Desk, 88 U.S. economic interests: in Caribbean, 132; domestic, 60; in Latin America, 4; in Puerto Rico, 45–49, 53–54, 56, 60, 97. See also capitalism; developmental strategies; U.S. foreign aid U.S. economic transfers: to Cuban refugees, 26–27, 84–85, 91–92,

Index 111–13, 126, 137–38, 151, 169–72; to Puerto Rico, 6, 7, 9, 58–69, 74, 84, 95, 97, 108, 125. See also U.S. foreign aid; welfare U.S. foreign aid: and CBI, 97; to Jamaica, 121, 122; manufacturing of showcases, 3, 147n; to Puerto Rico, 46, 58, 84; to Third World, 107–8. See also foreign investments; U.S. economic transfers U.S. geopolitics in Caribbean, 68, 107–8, 132–34, 137–38, 178–79; vs. communism, 84, 106, 111, 117–23, 126, 138; nineteenth-century expansions, 23–24, 50–53; Puerto Rican colonial incorporation (1898–1991), 8, 23, 45–56, 82–83; statuses for colonies, 179–80; white elites, 10. See also Puerto Rico; symbolic showcases; U.S. economic interests; U.S. hegemony; U.S. migrants from Caribbean; U.S. military interests in Caribbean U.S. hegemony, 123n; in Caribbean, 8–9, 23, 68, 70, 106–7; over Latinos, 7; over non-European people, 4; in Puerto Rico, 23, 74; “rock-a-bye baby,” 62, 64. See also EuroAmerican hegemony U.S. immigration laws: equal application/differential treatment, 118; Immigration Act (1924), 163; Immigration Act (1965), 119, 133–34, 166, 182; limiting West Indian migration (1952), 208; Refugee Act (1980), 117. See also Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) U.S. internal minorities: blacks, 133, 139, 163, 196, 199; Cubans as model minority vs., 169; Puerto Ricans, 133, 134, 163, 199. See also AfricanAmericans U.S. migrants from Caribbean, 175–211; diaspora, 101–73; history, 132–34; New York, 27–28, 29, 62, 115–16, 124, 133–73, 186, 188; population, 134, 135, 136, 166, 182, 219table. See also Cuban refugees; Dominican migrants; Haitian migrants; Mexican migrants to U.S.; Miami; Puerto Rican migrants U.S. military interests in Caribbean, 55, 82–83, 97, 106–7, 110, 126–27, 132, 171–72; bases, 52, 82, 83, 119; Dominican Republic, 51, 55, 82, 106, 125, 150, 166; Haiti, 51, 55, 82, 119, 123, 125, 132; Miami, 82,

267 91, 97; naval, 46, 50–52; Puerto Rico, 6, 45–49, 52, 53–57, 60, 64, 81–83, 95, 97, 125. See also militarism U.S. Southern Command, 97 U.S. State Department, 46, 47, 48; and Cuba, 111; and Cuban refugees, 112; and Dominican Republic, 114–15; and Haitian refugees, 118; Point Four Program/Puerto Rico showcase, 46, 57–58, 84, 108, 109 U.S. statehood for Puerto Rico. See statehood, Puerto Rico U.S. wars: Mexican-American (1848), 23–24, 52–53; Puerto Ricans ﬁghting in, 8, 10; Spanish-American (1898), 23–24, 50, 51–53, 82. See also cold war U.S. world cities. See Chicago; Miami; New York utopias: left-wing, 71; new, 21, 71; pragmatism vs., 68 Utrecht, 186 Venezuelans, in Miami, 90 Vermont, progressive health care policies, 74 Vieques, island of, 46 violence: patriarchal masculinist imaginary, 36. See also militarism; wars visas, 134; Dominican, 114–15, 166; Haitian, 115–16, 136; Jamaican, 124 wages: eight-hour workday, 73; increases, 58; minimum, 9, 58, 74, 76; New York garment industry, 163. See also cheap labor; income, personal Wallerstein, Immanuel, 13, 14–15, 16, 78, 172 Wall Street Journal, 91 Walton, John, 104–5 War Department, U.S., 56, 82–83 wars: World War I, 82, 133, 139–40, 162–63; World War II, 56–57, 82, 133, 196, 207. See also civil wars, Central America; militarism; U.S. wars Washington, D.C., 81 welfare: Britain, 190, 191, 210; Cuban refugees, 27, 84–85, 112–13, 151; European style, 112, 151; foodstamp program, 59; France, 187; metropole level of development, 188, 190–91, 198; in modern colonies, 11; Netherlands, 184, 187, 189, 191, 204–5; Puerto Rico and, 33, 59, 65–66, 69; workfare vs., 9. See also economic transfers

268 West Indies/West Indians. See AfroLatino Caribbeans; British West Indians; Caribbean West Side Story, 164–65 white elites, 24; Cuban, 19, 169; heterosexual male, 31; male, 31, 156, 157, 193, 198; Nicaraguan, 19; Puerto Rican, 9, 10, 12, 19, 33–36, 62; racialization by, 157–61, 180; U.S. imperial, 10. See also white supremacy whiteness: American, 198; British, 197, 206–10; Cuban, 169; European, 22; and nation building, 145, 148. See also Euro-American hegemony; white supremacy whites: deﬁnitions, 22, 23, 33–34; honorary, 31; imagined community, 162; migrants designated as, 131; migrants taking jobs from, 122, 127; migrants taking jobs shunned by, 163, 202; paying/not paying for labor, 192. See also Anglos; EuroAmerican hegemony; white elites; white supremacy white supremacy, 8, 23–24. See also Euro-American hegemony; superiority; white elites; whiteness Winant, Howard, 154, 155 women’s rights, 72. See also females work. See hard workers; labor; working classes workday, reduction of, 73 workfare, vs. welfare, 9 working classes: Caribbean migrants, 116–17, 134–35, 141, 150, 166; citizenship rights, 193; disenfranchised, 193; Dominican Republic, 114; Netherlands four pillars, 204; Puerto Rico, 53–56, 62, 63, 65, 68–69, 73, 76. See also labor World Bank (WB), 5, 6–7, 65, 66 world cities, 78–99; Caribbean migrants, 96, 158, 159–61, 186–91, 201; com-

Index mand and control, 81; core, 79, 98–99; ethnic economics, 26–28; global logics of, 79–81; global racial/ethnic hierarchy, 4, 33–34, 145, 157–68; as microcosms of empire, 157–61; new racial formations, 25–26, 196; peripheral, 79, 87, 98–99; semiperipheral, 79, 87, 96, 98; transnational corporation headquarters, 87, 89–90, 91–94, 99; urban ghettos, 187–88, 191. See also Amsterdam; Chicago; London; Miami; New York; Paris; San Juan world economy, terminology, 14 world-system, 1–5, 11–21, 172; conceptualization, 49; migration process, 181; modern, 1–25, 31–32, 147–48, 193, 198; postwar, 178–80; statecentric approach and, 147n. See also capitalist world-system; core zones; domination; exploitation; hegemony; interstate system; modern/colonial world-system; peripheral zones; postcoloniality; semiperipheral zones World Trade Organization, 6 World War I, 82, 133, 139–40, 162–63 World War II, 56–57, 82, 133, 196, 207. See also Nazis xenophobia, 122 “Yankees or Puerto Ricans” slogan, nationalist, 61, 62, 63 Young, Andrew, U.N. Ambassador, 118 Young Bill, Puerto Rico status, 8 Zaire, Mobutu in, 70 Zapatista Liberation Army Subcommander Marcos, vii Zea, Leopoldo, 12 Zolberg, Aristide, 107

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