A panoramic history of Puerto Rico from pre-Columbian times to today
"A panoramic history of Puerto Rico from pre-Columbian times to today Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States with a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo provides a new history of Puerto Rico that gives voice to the archipelago's people while offering a lens through which to understand the political, economic, and social challenges confronting them today. In this masterful work of scholarship, Meléndez-Badillo sheds light on the vibrant cultures of the archipelago in the centuries before the arrival of Columbus and captures the full sweep of Puerto Rico's turbulent history in the centuries that followed, from the first indigenous insurrection against colonial rule in 1511--led by the powerful chieftain Agüeybaná II--to the establishment of the Commonwealth in 1952. He deftly portrays the contemporary period and the intertwined though unequal histories of the archipelago and the continental United States."--
"The changing figuration of the nation that Meléndez-Badillo writes about has been nothing more than a precise response to the challenges imposed by the arbitrary gaze of those who introduced the place we call Puerto Rico into the European-Western cultural and material circuits.... The nation is an impulse that responds to the challenges of those diverse modernities to which communities are introduced: it is an act of resistance…. The “history of a nation” that [Meléndez-Badillo] claims as his own is something more than a mere academic exercise. It is true that the nation is formulated through “history,” but it is also a lived experience.
Puerto Rico...is a work that deserves numerous readings. I hope mine will help stimulate a broader discussion on the subject."
---Mario Cancel Sepúlveda, Siglo 22
