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Feminists, socialists, Afro-Puerto Rican activists, and elite politicians join laundresses, prostitutes, and dissatisfied wives in populating the pages of Imposing Decency . Through her analyses of Puerto Rican anti-prostitution campaigns, attempts at reforming marriage, and working-class ideas about free love, Eileen J. Suárez Findlay exposes the race-related double standards of sexual norms and practices in Puerto Rico between 1870 and 1920, the period that witnessed Puerto Rico's shift from Spanish to U.S. colonialism.
In showing how political projects and alliances in Puerto Rico were affected by racially contingent definitions of "decency" and "disreputability," Findlay argues that attempts at moral reform and the state's repression of "sexually dangerous" women were weapons used in batttles between elite and popular, American and Puerto Rican, and black and white. Based on a thorough analysis of popular and elite discourses found in both literature and official archives, Findlay contends that racialized sexual norms and practices were consistently a central component in the construction of social and political orders. The campaigns she analyzes include an attempt at moral reform by elite male liberals and a movement designed to enhance the family and cleanse urban space that ultimately translated into repression against symbollically darkened prostitutes. Findlay also explores how U.S. officials strove to construct a new colonial order by legalizing divorce and how feminist, labor, and Afro-Puerto Rican political demands escalated after World War I, often focusing on the rehabilitation and defense of prostitutes.
Imposing Decency forces us to rethink previous interpretations of political chronologies as well as reigning conceptualizations of both liberalism and the early working-class in Puerto Rico. Her work will appeal to scholars with an interest in Puerto Rican or Latin American studies, sexuality and national identity, women in Latin America, and general women's studies.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Acknowledgments(p. ix)
• Introduction(p. 1)
• Chapter 1 Respectable Ponce: Deciphering the Codes of Power, 1855-1898(p. 18)
• Chapter 2 Motherhood, Marriage, and Morality: Male Liberals and Bourgeois Feminists, 1873-1898(p. 53)
• Chapter 3 Decent Men and Unruly Women: Prostitution in Ponce, 1890-1900(p. 77)
• Chapter 4 Marriage and Divorce in the Formation of the New Colonial Order, 1898-1910(p. 110)
• Chapter 5 Slavery, Sexuality, and the Early Labor Movement, 1900-1917(p. 135)
• Chapter 6 Saving Democracy: Debating Prostitution during World War I(p. 167)
• Conclusion(p. 202)
• Abbreviations and Acronyms(p. 211)
• Notes(p. 213)
• Selected Bibliography(p. 287)
• Index(p. 309)

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CHOICE Review

In this provocative study Findlay ( American Univ.) explores "the possibilities and limits of sexual politics for creating an emancipatory agenda," admittedly an unusual theme in Puerto Rican historiography. Most of her archival research was conducted in one municipality, and Findlay candidly notes that she cannot draw "definitive conclusions." The 1870-1920 period is crucial in Puerto Rican history: it witnessed the abolition of slavery (1873); a deepening, long transition to capitalism; the founding and growth of the Autonomist Party whose struggles had by 1898 achieved a viable autonomy from Spain. The 1898 US invasion shattered liberal hegemony, and Puerto Rico rushed "to refine the social and political order as proletarianization and capital concentration rapidly accelerated." Findlay analyzes the various honor codes that structured 19th-century life; the male attempt to create both competent rulers and docile workers; the building of a new "de-Africanized" nation through morally reformed women; how moral reform became repressive; US reform focused on marriage and divorce; male labor leaders' dreams of male dominance; and how "ruling" benevolence turned repressive. All of these themes are brilliantly explored. Findlay concludes that "merging racial definitions with sexual norms has often been an integral part of ... state policies in Puerto Rico." Truly, an outstanding work. Graduate level. F. Cordasco; emeritus, Montclair State University

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Eileen Suarez Findlay is Associate Professor of Latin American History at American University.