This book examines the history of racial classifications in Puerto Rico censuses, starting with the Spanish censuses and continuing through the US ones. Published twentieth-century censuses have been well studied; we also examine unpublished documents in previous centuries to understand the historical precursors of contemporary ones. Because Puerto Rican censuses were collected regularly over hundreds of years, they are fascinating "test cases" to see what census categories might be available and effective in shaping everyday ones. It is often hypothesized that censuses, especially colonial ones, have powerful transformative effects. We show that such transformation are affected by the power and interests of social actors, not the strength of the state. Thus, we show that despite hundreds of years of exposure to the official dichotomous and trichotomous census categories, these categories never replaced the continuous everyday ones because the census categories were rarely in the interests of Puerto Ricans.

Book Information
ISBN 9783030825171
Author Rebecca Jean Emigh
Format Hardback
Imprint Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Publisher Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Weight(grams) 148g