History of Puerto Rican Literature
From Divided Borders: Essays on Puerto Rican Identity, Juan Flores, 1993.
Updated April 18, 1996
- 1644 Damian Lopez de Haro: earliest history of Puerto Rica (16)
- 1500-1800 "passive formation and accumulation" (19)
- 1806 First printing press in Puerto Rico (24); government owned (28)
- 1800-1898 "awakening and initiation" (19)
- 1880 Jose Marti
- 1898 Spanish-American War; Puerto Rico annexed by US;
- 1900 Ariel by Jose Enrique Roda; explores the Ariel-Caliban delema. These characters
comes from Shakespeare's The Tempest and represent the spirt(Areal) and
savage(Caliban) nature of the people of the Americas (39)
- 1910-1925 Political exile literature
- 1917 Jones Act degreed that Puetro Rican are US citizens
- 1920 Arrival of musicians from Puetro Rico
- 1925 Jose Vasconcales' La Raza Cosmica
- 1936 Spanish Civil War
- 1945 Frst major migration; "Operation Bootstrap"; immigrant literature
- autobiography
- journalistic
- 1952 Assassination attempt on President Truman by Puetro Ricans
- 1960 Beginnings of Nuyorican Literature
- 1973 Second wave of Nuyorican writers
Population of Puetro Ricans in the United States
Year Population
1910 1,513
1920 11,000
1930 52,000
1940 69,000
1950 301,000
1960 890,000
1970 1,400,000
1980 1,900,000
1989 2,300,000
1,000,000 live in New York City; 250,000 live in Northern New Jersey
From Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage,Ramon Gutierrez and Genaro Padila eds., 1993, p. 181.
(Citing US Dept. Of Commerce data)
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