Historiography of Puerto Rico

Abstract

Puerto Rican history-writing has been the subject of several studies. In 1953 Antonio Rivera and Arturo Morales Carrion co-authored La enseñanza de la historia en Puerto Rico (The teaching of history in Puerto Rico), an assessment of the principal works published up to that time in the field. In 1969 Isabel Gutiérrez del Arroyo reviewed Puerto Rican historiography from the Melgarejo Chronicle of 1582 to the Boletín histórico (Historical bulletin) of 1914–27. In 1975 Alberto Cibes Viadé examined the works of the main chroniclers of Puerto Rico, and Loida Figueroa published a summary of the more important contributions of Puerto Rican and Spanish writers up to that time.¹ At the Puerto Rican Historians Congress organized in 1983 by the Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Puertorriqueña (Centre for Studies on Puerto Rican Reality) (CEREP), Francisco Scarano reviewed the history produced in Puerto Rico from 1945 to 1970, while Gervasio Garcia and Fernando Pico reviewed more recent work. In an extensive paper, Maria de los Angeles Castro explored the link between the history of the period from the 1940s to the 1960s and‘new history’of the 1970s and the 1980s.² There are also several excellent studies on individual historians and specific historiographical problems. But while there have been university courses covering Puerto Rican historiography, there has been no recent comprehensive publication. Systematic reflection on the contribution of North American, Latin American and European scholars to Puerto Rican historiography is lacking, and the more recent history books are yet to be reviewed.