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Title
Professor
Area of Study/Expertise
History of Latin America; Caribbean; US Race/Ethnic/Urban
Office Location
B200 Lucy Stone Hall, Livingston Sub-Campus, Piscataway, NJ
Phone Number
848-445-0011
Email
alauria@rutgers.edu

Aldo Antonio Lauria Santiago

Professor

I work as a Professor in the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies and the Department of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. I am a historian of Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latinos in the US, and I specialize in studying peasants and workers, revolutions, ethnicity, and race. My Ph.D. is from The University of Chicago, and my MA is in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from New York University. I studied Mexico’s agrarian, political, and social history at Chicago with Professors Friedrich Katz and John Coatsworth.

My first book, An Agrarian Republic: Commercial Agriculture and the Politics of Peasant Communities in El Salvador, 1823-1914 (Pittsburgh UP 1999), traces the social, economic, and political history of El Salvador during the nineteenth century from the perspective of its regions, municipalities, and peasant communities.

With Jeffrey Gould (Indiana University), I continued work on El Salvador into the twentieth Century with To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920–1932  (Duke UP, 2008). This book is a history of the 1932 peasant and communist revolt of El Salvador and the traumatic memory of state-sponsored mass murder that followed.

I also co-edited two books on Caribbean and Central American studies (Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State: The Laboring Peoples of Central America and the Hispanic Caribbean, Duke UP, and Landscapes of Struggle Politics, Society, and Community in El Salvador, U Pittsburgh P.).

I also researched and began drafting a book on the regional history of the coffee-producing peasantry in Western Mexico in the late nineteenth century.

During recent years, my work has focused on the United States and the Caribbean. I now work on the social and political history of Puerto Ricans (and other Latinos) in New York City and New Jersey. I co-authored a book with Lorrin Thomas (Rutgers University) that examines the history of Puerto Rican struggles for empowerment in the US since the 1950s (Rethinking The Struggle for Puerto Rican Rights).

My work on the history of Puerto Ricans in New York City is ongoing. The first book, forthcoming with the University of North Carolina Press, is a history of Puerto Rican New Yorkers and the first second generation up to 1950. A second volume follows Puerto Rican working-class communities from the late 1940s to New York City’s 1970s crisis. I am also researching aspects of the Puerto Rican migration process and Puerto Rico’s development.

With Ulla Berg (Rutgers, New Brunswick), I coedited the first-ever volume on Latinos in New Jersey published by Rutgers University Press.


At Rutgers, I direct the Center for Latin American Studies and co-coordinate the Latino Studies Research Initiative with Prof. Kathleen Lopez.

I also direct the Puerto Rico Archival Collaboration with grants from the Mellon and Puerto Rico Humanities Foundation.

I have served professionally in different capacities and served as chair of the Department of Latino and Caribbean Studies for seven years.