The Latin American Studies Program hosted the annual Charles A. Hale Lecture, entitled "Blending Puerto Rico into Latin American History" presented by Francisco A. Scarano, on Tuesday, September 24th, 2019, from 3:30 - 5 pm, in 1117 University Capitol Centre.

Francisco A. Scarano is professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has published important studies on a variety of topics from all periods of Caribbean and particularly Puerto Rican history, including slavery and the plantation economy, reconstituted peasantries, and race and racialization processes.

For much of the twentieth century, Latin American historiography marginalized Puerto Rico as an American possession not adequately encompassed by Latin American studies. Specialists regarded Puerto Rico as somehow “not part of” Latin America, although it belonged to the Spanish empire longer than any other country in the region. This exclusion reflected core tensions in the field of Latin American history and of Latin Americanism in general, as they were elaborated and institutionalized in the United States in the first decades of the 20th century. Scarano's talk will discuss the origins of this tension and its eventual--if perhaps only partial--resolution. It will also discuss how, without much fanfare, Puerto Rico has provided important points of comparison for Latin American history, anthropology, and literature. 

The Charles A. Hale Lecture honors the memory of Professor Charles A. Hale (1930 - 2008), a specialist in Latin American liberalism and intellectual history. He was a distinguished scholar and faculty member at the University of Iowa from 1966 - 1997.

This event is sponsored by the the Latin American Studies Program (LASP), International Programs, the Department of History, and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.