Women and Urban Change in San Juan,
Puerto Rico, 1820-1868
by Felix
V. Matos Rodriguez
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this Book now
Dispelling the common perception
of Puerto Rico as a male-dominated society, Women and
Urban Change in San Juan examines the roles of women
in the economic and social changes that affected the
Puerto
Rican capital during the mid-19th century. Félix V.
Matos Rodríguez studies the full mosaic of Puerto Rican
women during this period, examining the ways in which the
women of San Juan reacted to the pressures of race and
class on their lives.
Matos Rodríguez discusses attempts on behalf of colonial
officials and the local elite to modernize the city by emulating the
development patterns of other American and European
cities. For this effort, they enlisted the help of elite
women, specifically in the areas of education, child
rearing and public morality. While the women of the upper
classes may have wielded more influence, working-class
women, whose lives are vividly described in this book, actively participated
in the process by resisting and reacting to official
efforts at social control.
The only book that examines 19th-century Puerto Rican
women’s history, this work places the experiences of
urban women in San Juan within the larger framework of
Caribbean and Latin American 19th-century life. Because
it offers a solid foundation for discussing race
relations in Puerto Rico, it will begin important conversations about
broad questions of identity in the island’s history.
Félix V. Matos Rodríguez is assistant professor of
history at Northeastern University. He is the author of
several articles on Puerto Rican history and the
co-editor of Puerto Rican Women’s History: New
Perspectives.
1999. 304pp. 6 X 9.
17 tables, 2 maps, notes, bibliography, index.
ISBN 0-8130-1676-2 Cloth, $49.95s
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"This is a fine study, well informed by scholarship in the history of the Caribbean, and Puerto Rican women in particular."--
Feministas Unidas
"A potential
watershed in Puerto Rican historiography. . . . the only
women’s history work which investigates the full
sweep of the
tumultuous 19th century in Puerto Rico, and thus the only
one which has the potential for providing true historical
depth to the study of women’s
experience."-–Eileen J. Findlay,
American University
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