Solidarity Across the Americas - by Margaret M Power (Paperback)

About the Book

"Throughout its quest for freedom from colonial rule, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party (PNPR) created strategy through a solidarity that moved far beyond the archipelago. The hemispheric connections between supporters of Puerto Rican independence have been obscured by larger, later liberation movements as well as the island's ultimate failure in its quest for independence, but they were nonetheless at the vanguard of the postcolonial revolutions that swept the world after the Cuban revolution. Margaret M. Power's new history of the PNPR focuses on how it built a broad movement with active networks in virtually all of Latin America, much of the Caribbean, and New York City"--

Book Synopsis

The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party (PNPR) understood that to successfully establish an independent nation it needed to generate solidarity across the Americas with its struggle against US colonial rule. It invested significant energy, personnel, and resources in attending regional conferences, distributing its literature throughout the hemisphere, creating solidarity committees, presenting its case to elected officials and the general public, and promoting the causes of oppressed peoples. The hemispheric outpourings of solidarity with Puerto Rican independence have been obscured by larger, later liberation movements as well as the anticolonial party's ultimate failure to achieve independence. However, as this book shows, they were nonetheless central to anti-imperialists, nationalists, and revolutionaries from New York City to Buenos Aires.

Margaret M. Power's new history of the PNPR focuses on how it built a broad movement with active networks in virtually all of Latin America, much of the Caribbean, and New York City. This hemispheric view introduces a sprawling transnational network, nurtured by the PNPR from its founding in 1922 through its military actions of the 1950s and beyond that included individuals, parties, organizations, and governments throughout the Americas, and it resituates the Puerto Rican nationalist movement as a transnational revolutionary influence and force.

Review Quotes

"Solidarity across the Americas brings the complicated and fraught history of Puerto Rican nationalism to an English-reading audience in all its nuance and complexity. . . . Power's book offers a cogent and accessible reminder of the important role that Puerto Rican nationalism played, not just in the archipelago and the United States but across the region."--Hispanic American Historical Review

"An important new book."--The Progressive

"An urgently needed book to fill in the gaps in our knowledge and to highlight an important but little-known part of United States imperial history. . . . [Solidarity across the Americas] is an important contribution both to our understanding of that history as well the nature and significance of transnational solidarity campaigns."--American Historical Review

"By reconceptualizing Puerto Rico's geopolitical position from a binational relationship between the island and the United States to a hemispheric coalition, Solidarity Across the Americas offers a fresh understanding of the region. . . . The linkages that Power begins to formulate across Latin America deserve further examination by scholars of social movements and transnational solidarities."--Los Angeles Review of Books

"By reintegrating Puerto Rico into a hemispheric context, this book recovers the PNPR as an important piece missing from the history of Latin American anti-imperialist struggles. . . . Highy Recommended."--CHOICE

"Margaret M. Power's fascinating new book situates the Puerto Rican independence movement in the history of anti-imperialism in Latin America . . . [and] draws on an impressive collection of primary material from archives in Puerto Rico, the United States, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Brazil to chart the transnational history of the Puerto Rican independence movement from the 1920s to the 1950s."--Journal of American History

"Power provides a comprehensive account of the development and significance of the [Puerto Rican Nationalist Party]. . . . [A] first-rate analysis."--The Americas

"Power's archival work and interviews document the transnational networks of solidarity that supported Puerto Rican independence, the Nationalist Party, and Puerto Rican political prisoners in the first half of the twentieth century. . . . Power highlights the history of repression against NP members by the US government, including the FBI and the Insular Police from the 1930s on. . . . [This reading] help[s] us make sense of the legacies of US empire and colonialism in Puerto Rico . . . and the ways racial ideologies and formation inform all these topics."--Latin American Research Review

"This book is an excellent, engaging read, an important contribution to the fields of Puerto Rican studies, Latin American studies, and Latino studies. For those who relish historical details, the footnotes are a treasure-trove of specifics and insights, showing the craft of a historian planting seeds for future students to follow in her footsteps."--Latino Studies

"This book [is] critically important to scholars of Puerto Rican, Caribbean, Latin American, and American studies as well as historians of social movements. [Power's] research not only builds on earlier scholarship into political movements, but . . . also challenges some of their findings. . . . While the political nature of nationalism has been debated in earlier scholarship, . . . most of this discussion has been in Spanish. Part of the importance of this book is that it presents some of this earlier research and debates to an English reading audience."--Centro Journal