We said goodbye to the third Yale graduate Student Amanda Rivera, who completed her five weeks with the project at the AGPR. The three Yale grad students made a tremendous contribution to getting this project off the ground as they contributed, with the support of the fellowships provided by Yale Professors Ana Ramos Zayas and Anne Eller, three days per week of labor. We look foraward to working with them in the future. Rutgers graduate Student Rosa Cordero also ended her summer work with the project. They all advanced their own research agendas as well. Please stand by for their historical blogs later in the Fall.
In the meantime, we recruited a new participant. University of Connecticut Professor Charles Venator Santiago will be supporting the work of our project. Venator-Santiago is an Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and El Instituto, Institute for Latino/a, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies. Prof. Venator Santiago leads the Connecticut Puerto Rican Studies Initiative for Community Engagement and Public Policy (PRSI), a community research initiative that will help document and support Puerto Ricans’ vital economic, intellectual, and cultural contributions to Connecticut and provide research-based support for the development of public policies addressing the needs of Puerto Ricans in the State. He is also the author of multiple articles and books on the US citizenship of Puerto Ricans and the organizer of the Citizenship Archives Project.
Starting in September he will provide support for a new assistant who will focus on inventorying collections produced by the US Governors in the early 20th Century, and assist in finding documents relating to negotiations around citizenship, legal rights and territorial status between 1898 and the 1940s.
In the past few weeks students have completed inventorying Department of Labor and Fomento collections and have moved to new collections from the Departamento de Agricultura y Comercio and other entities.
AGPR staff have also brought out new additions from the Fomento Industrial Library. Monica is still developing the list of the Fomento and the older Asociacion Azucarera collection (which also keeps expanding). Archivist Juan Roman is still bringing materials (multiple pallets) from the Fomento offices…
New Fomento Library Items
Meanwhile…at the Coleccion Puertorriquena…Jean and Paola have continued to scan periodicals, pamphlets, reports and other items that now form part of two digital repositories that collaborate in the project. Notable is the completion of La Junta (Administracion de Programas Sociales del Departamento de Agricultura y Comercio) and beginning work on the Boletin Informativo del Senado de Puerto Rico.