The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move

Puerto Ricans maintain a vibrant identity that bridges two very different places — the island of Puerto Rico and the U.S. mainland. Whether they live on the island in the States or divide time between the two most imagine Puerto Rico as a separate nation and view themselves primarily as Puerto Rican. At the same time Puerto Ricans have been U.S. citizens since 1917 and Puerto Rico has been a U.S. commonwealth since 1952.<br/><br/>Jorge Duany uses previously untapped primary sources to bring new insights to questions of Puerto Rican identity nationalism and migration. Drawing a distinction between political and cultural nationalism Duany argues that the Puerto Rican “nation” must be understood as a new kind of translocal entity with deep cultural continuities. He documents a strong sharing of culture between island and mainland with diasporic communities tightly linked to island life by a steady circular migration. Duany explores the Puerto Rican sense of nationhood by looking at cultural representations produced by Puerto Ricans and considering how others — American anthropologists photographers and museum curators for example — have represented the nation. His sources of information include ethnographic fieldwork archival research interviews surveys censuses newspaper articles personal documents and literary texts.