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

FromRecovering 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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