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Mateo and Juana: Racial Silencing, Epistemic Violence, and Counterarchives in Puerto Rican Labor History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2019

Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo
Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
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Abstract

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, a cluster of self-educated workers that called themselves obreros ilustrados (enlightened workers) sought to dominate the means of knowledge production, reproduction, and documentation. The discourses produced by this group of working-class intellectuals did not challenge but complemented the elite's contempt towards the laboring masses. In order to be legible in the “Archive of Puertorriqueñidad”—an archive crossed by centuries of colonialism, slavery, and imperial violence—these ragged intellectuals created various layers of exclusions that silenced those individuals that unapologetically upheld their Blackness. These silencing practices not only had power in the moment in which they took place but also influenced later historical production. To explore these dynamics, this paper uses the stories of Juana Colón and Mateo Pérez Sanjurjo. Both were highly-respected Black illiterate labor organizers that were absent in the historical narratives obreros ilustrados wrote about the labor movement. Ultimately, this article seeks to create counterarchives by unearthing, imagining, and retelling the lives of those that were not deemed worthy of being represented in the historical record.

Type
Articles
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 96: Blackness and Labor in the Afterlives of Racial Slavery , Fall 2019 , pp. 103 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2019

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the generosity of Ileana Rodríguez-Silva, Eileen Suárez-Findlay, Jorge L. Giovannetti, and Orlando Deavila Pertuz who attentively read earlier drafts of this paper and provided me with substantial feedback. This article also benefitted from comments and suggestions made by Shona N. Jackson, Franco Barchiesi, and anonymous reviewers. I am also thankful for the constant support of Aurora Santiago-Ortiz, Libertad Brouhns-Santiago, and Pipe Meléndez-Santiago.

References

NOTES

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