We Are Left without a Father Here: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico

313 Pages·2014·2.33 MB·English

by  Eileen J. Suárez Findlay

WE ARE LEFT
WITHOUT
A FATHER HERE
American Encounters/Global Interactions
A series edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily S. Rosenberg
This series aims to stimulate critical perspectives and fresh inter-
pretive frameworks for scholarship on the history of the imposing
global presence of the United States. Its primary concerns include
the deployment and contestation of power, the construction and
deconstruction of cultural and pol itic al borders, the fl uid mean-
ings of intercultural encounters, and the complex interplay between
the global and the local. American Encounters seeks to strengthen
dialogue and collaboration between historians of U.S. international
relations and area studies specialists.
The series encourages scholarship based on multiarchival historical
research. At the same time, it supports a recognition of the repre-
sent at ional character of all stories about the past and promotes crit-
ical inquiry into issues of subjectivity and narrative. In the pro cess,
American Encounters strives to understand the context in which
meanings related to nations, cultures, and pol itic al economy are
continually produced, challenged, and reshaped.
EILEEN J. SUÁREZ FINDLAY
WE ARE LEFT
WITHOUT
A FATHER HERE
Masculinity, Domesticity, and Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico
Duke University Press • Durham and London • 2014
© 2014 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ∞
Designed by Courtney Leigh Baker
Typeset in Quadraat by Westchester Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Findlay, Eileen.
We are left without a father here : masculinity, domesticity,
and migration in postwar Puerto Rico / Eileen J. Suárez Findlay.
pages cm — (American encounters/global interactions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8223-5766-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-5782-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Masculinity—Social aspects—Puerto Rico. 2. Migrant
labor—Government policy—Puerto Rico—History—20th
century. 3. Migrant agricultural laborers—Michigan—Social
conditions—History—20th century. 4. Puerto Rico—Politics
and government—1898–1952.
i. Title. ii. Series: American encounters/global interactions.
hq1090.7.p9f56 2014
305.5'63—dc23
2014017561
isbn 978-0-8223-7611-8 (e-book)
Cover art: Puerto Rico Division of Community Education Poster Collection, Archives
Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
To
lucas and amaya,
children of many diasporas, embodiments
of four continents. And to
doris and jim, marta and reynol,
for forging the paths.

CONTENTS
ac know ledg ments • ix
introduction • Bregando the Sugar Beet Fields • 1
1 Family and Fatherhood in “a New Era for All”
Populist Politics and Reformed Colonialism • 25
2 Building Homes, Domesticity Dreams, and the Drive
to Modernity • 59
3 Removing “Excess Population”
Redirecting the Great Migration • 90
4 Arriving in Michigan
The Collapse of the Dream • 118
5 The Brega Expands • 148
conclusion • Per sis tent Bregas • 173
notes • 191 bibliography • 257 index • 295

AC KNOW LEDG MENTS
Many beloved people in Puerto Rico have sustained me over the years as I
moved in, around, and through this project. Magaly Robles has given me
undying friendship and creative inspiration across oceans and de cades. I am
grateful to José Flores Ramos for his wide- ranging scholarly work on gender
in Puerto Rico, for his generosity in sharing ideas and sources, for his insa-
tiable love of the intellectual life, and for his opening of home, family, and
spiritual community. Rasiel Suárez and Annie Maldonado shared their lives,
their home, and their spirits with me and my family during that fi rst sab-
batical leave so long ago when I fi rst stumbled across the sugar beet migrant
letters. Carlos Rodríguez, Laura Nater, Mabel Rodríguez, Jimmy Seale Col-
lazo, and Marilyn Miller gave me loving support then, too. Thanks to Patricia
Silver for all the many long conversations over the years, the collaborative
searching for agricultural migrants, and our shared experience of gringas
buena gente y solidaria en la diáspora.
I am grateful to Mark Overmyer-V elásquez and Blanca Silvestrini for
inviting me many years ago to give the talk at the University of Connecti-
cut that began this whole sojourn. My colleagues at American University
Phil Stern, Andrew Lewis, Kathleen Franz, Katharine Norris, Amy Oliver,
Shelley Harshe, Richard Breitman, and Allan Kraut read and commented
on another early, unruly attempt to understand the sugar beet migration, as
did Nancy Appelbaum. Ellen Feder was the fi rst to see the book hidden in
that crude chunk of writing. April Shelford agreed, encouraged me to “let
it breathe” into its current form, and read several proposal draft s. Marisol
de la Cadena, who always resides in my heart, encouraged me through the
proposal writing pro cess. Anne MacPherson commented thoughtfully on
the archives portion of the introduction, and posed some provocative ques-
tions that I’ve never really been able to adequately answer. Karin Rosem-
blatt, Barbara Weinstein, and Mary Kay Vaughan kept me connected to the
intellectual community of Latin Americanists at the University of Mary land.
Francisco Scarano, Sue Ann Caulfi eld, Frank Guridy, Lorrin Thomas, Aldo
Lauria-S antiago, Jorge Duany, Ismael García Colón, Emma Amador, Arlene
Torres, Deborah Cohen, Lisa Leff , Dan Kerr, Mary Ellen Curtin, Kim Sims,