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Boriken Syllabus 

As the ASHE community prepares to travel to San Juan, Puerto Rico, it is important to acknowledge the tenuous and contested relationship that Puerto Rico has with the United States. We do this in the spirit of this year’s theme, as we (re)consider borders—what they signify and who they are meant to include (or exclude). Likewise, we recognize that as visitors we must always be mindful of our relationships, connection, and responsibility to place. This requires us to engage with its history, honor its people, and to be in right relation with land, water, and creation. We embrace the opportunity and responsibilities of learning with and being in community with the people of Boriken (Puerto Rico). The unincorporated territory currently known as Puerto Rico was originally known as Boriken by the Taíno people, meaning “land of the great lords.” As a demonstration of our commitment to honoring place and disrupting coloniality, we have titled this syllabus after the Taíno place name for what is now known as Puerto Rico.

This syllabus is organized into four sections:
  • Honoring Place: Understanding Place, Space & Displacement
  • Colonialism, Settler Colonialism, and Soveriegnty: Reflecting on their Role in Higher Education
  • Contested Space: The Enduring Legacy of Colonialism in Puerto Rico
  • The Puerto Rican Higher Education System in an Era of Resistance/Refusal and Turmoil
We crafted these units with the hope that they both build upon and are in relationship to one another, rather than as hierarchical or stand-alone sections. Within each unit, we provide a number of guiding questions to organize the scholarly engagements. We endeavored to provide a variety of formats that include: books, public scholarship, news articles, documentaries, and music. Rather than a set of texts to be read in its entirety, each section offers a number of topical areas and readings that can be engaged individually.
This scholarly collection is not meant to serve as an exhaustive or authoritative list, but rather an entry point for us to engage in our understanding of place; offer some perspectives on responsible local engagement; and nuance our understanding of a currently contested space that is oft-conceived as a playground for visitors. In this spirit, we envision the syllabus as a scholarly space to be in community with ASHE members. We invite you as a community to think alongside us, engage in dialogue, critically reflect upon and (re)consider borders, and extend this work through your own contributions.
We are engaging the web version of the syllabus as a living syllabus and invite ASHE community members to think alongside us and to provide recommendations for additional scholarly engagements. There is a function on the web syllabus that will allow ASHE members to suggest additions to the Boriken Syllabus. As we receive recommendations we will add them to the living syllabus. We are looking forward to being in community with you all, engaging in critical dialogue, and thinking alongside one another.
As you navigate the Boriken Syllabus, we invite you to continually reflect on your relationship with place and engage with the following questions:
  1. How do we understand place? What does it mean to be in relationship with place?
  2. How do we understand a place in order to be responsible visitors? How do we honor its history and come to understand its present?
  3. How do we engage with place as visitors in responsible, respectful, and reciprocal ways?
  4. How do we interrogate the intersections of our scholarly engagements and the local communities that we visit?
Sincerely,
Heather Shotton and Awilda Rodriguez
Local and Community Engagement Committee Co-Chairs

Honoring Place: Understanding Place, Space & Displacement

In this unit, we invite the ASHE community into a conversation that explores how we understand space, place, and displacement. The scholarly engagements in this unit will challenge our understandings and relationships to space as they relate to power, violence, and assumed right to access to these spaces.

Topics Guiding Questions

  • Place based epistemologies
  • Indigenous knowledge systems
  • Puerto Rico history & culture

How do we understand place? What does it mean to be in relationship with place? How do we engage with place as visitors? How do we engage with place responsibly and respectfully?

Scholarly Engagements

  • Dias, V. (2016). In the wake of Matapang’s canoe: The Cultural and political possibilities of Indigenous discursive flourish. In A. M. Robinson (Ed.), Critical Indigenous studies: Engagements in first world locations (pp. 119-149). University of Arizona Press.
  • Goodison, L. (2010). From Harvey River: A memoir of my mother and her island. Atlantic Books Ltd.
  • Ingersoll, K. A. (2016). Waves of knowing: A seascape epistemology. Duke University Press.
  • Kanahele, P. (2005). I am this land, and this land is me. Hūlili: Multidisciplinary Research on Hawaiian Well-Being. Ulukau: The Hawaiian Electronic Library, 2 (1), 21-34.
  • Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding sweet grass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions.
  • McCoy, K., Tuck, E., & McKenzie, M. (Eds.). (2017). Land Education: Rethinking pedagogies of place from Indigenous, postcolonial, and decolonizing perspectives. Routledge.
  • Negrón-Muntaner, F. (2006). Bridging Islands: Gloria Anzaldúa and the Caribbean. PMLA, 121 (1), 272-278.
  • Wildcat, M., McDonald, M., Irlbacher-Fox, S., & Coulthard, G. (2014). Learning from the land: Indigenous land based pedagogy and decolonization. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, Society, 3( 3), 1-25.

Puerto Rico’s Story

  • The Taina route and Indigenous culture in Puerto Rico. Discover Puerto Rico
  • Temporal: Puerto Rican resistance education guide. (2019). Temporal Puerto Rican Resistance. MOCP
  • Puerto Rican Syllabus. Critical thinking about the Puerto Rican debt crisis #prsyllabus. Puerto Rico Syllabus
  • Faria, C. (2016, October 6). Puerto Rico Dept Of Tourism 1950s. [Video]. YouTube
  • Discover Puerto Rico. The heart & soul of the Caribbean. Discover Puerto Rico
  • Bonilla, Y. Aftershocks of disaster film. [Video] Vimeo

The People of Boriken

  • African and Indigenous Connections Sound Field. (2020, December 9). Why Puerto Rican bomba music is resistance. [Video]. YouTube
  • KQED Arts. (2020, June 9). Puerto Rico's bomba, a dance of the African diaspora | KQED arts. [Video]. YouTube

Pulitzer Center Project - A Revolution for Puerto Rico’s Afro-Latinos:

  • Alford, S. N., (2019, September 21). A revolution for Puerto Rico's Afro-Latinos. Pulitzer Center. Pulitzer Center
  • Pulitzer Center. (2020, October 13). Racial identity and representation in Puerto Rico with Natasha S. Alford. [Video]. YouTube
  • Pulitzer Center. (2020, June 1). Meet the journalist: Natasha S. Alford on Afro-LatinX communities in Puerto Rico. [Video]. YouTube
  • theGrio. (2020, December 26). Afro-Latinx revolution: Puerto Rico (FULL DOCUMENTARY). [Video]. YouTube

Afro-Puerto Ricans

  • Hinojosa, M. (2020, April). Reporter's notebook: Afro-Puerto ricans fighting to be visible on the census. [Audio Podcast Episode]. In Latino USA. Futuro Media Group. Spotify
  • Demby, G, & Meraji, S. M. (2020, April). Puerto Rico, island of racial harmony? [Audio Podcast Episode] In Code Switch. NPR. Spotify

The Puerto Rican Flag

  • Agrelo, J. The Puerto Rican flag’s evolving colors say a lot about the island’s relationship with its colonial rulers. Mother Jones. Mother Jones
  • StretchBobbitoVEVO. (2020, December 17). "Que bonita bandera" stretch & bobbito + the m19s band ft Eddie Palmieri, Jeimy Osorio,.. [Video]. YouTube
  • Albertini234. (2008, April 15). Himno Verdadero de Puerto Rico. [Video]. YouTube

In this unit we invite the community to engage with broader themes and understandings of colonialism and settler colonialism, and to consider their sources, purpose, functions, and manifestations. We also interrogate understandings of sovereignty and its connections to self-determination and liberation. The scholarly engagements in this unit serve as a guide to more deeply reflect on our relationship to colonization in the context of the U.S. and its systems of higher education.

Topics

  • Functions and structures of colonialism
  • Relationship with U.S. empire
  • Sovereignty 101

Guiding Questions

  • How is the understanding of the ongoing structure of colonialism instrumental in reimaginations of space?
  • How does higher education function as a structure and tool of colonization?
  • What role can higher education play in dismantling the oppressive systems imposed by colonization?
  • What does it mean to be sovereign?

Scholarly Engagements

  • Barnd, N.B. (2017). Native Space: Geographic strategies to unsettle settler colonialism. Oregon State University Press.
  • Immerwahr, D. (2019). How to hide an empire: A short history of the greater United States. Random House.
  • Kauanui, J. K. & Wolfe, P. (2012). Settler colonialism then and now. Politica & Societa, 1 (2), 235-258.
  • Trask, H. K. (1999). From a native daughter: Colonialism and sovereignty in Hawaii (Revised edition). University of Hawaii Press.
  • Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1 (1), 1-40.
  • Juan Agustin Marquez. (2017, October 7). The last colony - full film - Emmy winner Juan Agustin Marquez. YouTube. Watch here.

Sovereignty

  • Barker, J. (2005). For whom sovereignty matters. J. Barker (Ed.). In Sovereignty matters: Locations of contestation and possibility in Indigenous struggles for self-determination (pp. 1-31). University of Nebraska Press.
  • Brayboy, B. M. J., Faircloth, S. C., Lee, T. S., Maaka, M. J., & Richardson, T. A. (2015). Sovereignty and education: An overview of the unique nature of Indigenous education. Journal of American Indian Education, 54 (1), 1-9.
  • Deloria Jr, V. (1969). Laws and Treaties. In Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (pp. 28-53). Macmillan.

Higher Education

  • Del Moral, S. (2013). Negotiating empire: The cultural politics of schools in Puerto Rico, 1898–1952. University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Wheatle, K. I. (2019). Neither just nor equitable. American Educational History Journal, 46 (2), 1-20.
  • Lee, R., Ahtone, T., Pearce, M., Goodluck, K., McGhee, G., Leff, C., Lampher, K., Salinas, T. (n.d.). Land-grab universities. Learn more.

This section guides a conversation to understand the history and enduring legacies of colonialism in Puerto Rico, the oldest colony in the world. The consequences of policies such as the Jones Act of 1917, Balzac, and Operation Bootstrap are directly tied to contemporary conversations on the status of Puerto Rico. We consider the centrality of race and gender to conversations on how colonialism comes to impact and function in the daily lives of both islanders and the diaspora. The social, political, and economic challenges faced by the island today--from La Promesa, Hurricane Maria, and the mobilizing to oust the Governor in 2019--are deeply connected to this history.

Topics

  • History of colonization
  • Current debate on status
  • National identity & race
  • Diaspora by design

Guiding Questions

  • How do we understand or read U.S. territories/Puerto Rico in relationship to power/colonialism?
  • How was this relationship established?
  • How has it evolved?

Scholarly Engagements

  • Contemporary Issues
  • Beginning Conversations

Selected Readings and Resources

In this unit we invite the community to consider Puerto Rican higher education’s unique position in the constellation of U.S. systems and how it embodies the description of “belonging to but not a part of.” We interrogate the multiple ways that it is largely rendered invisible in conversations about higher education in the US--although the system serves more students than 12 states. Here, we offer the issues of postsecondary opportunities for students in Puerto Rico and in the diaspora and highlight the ways in which students have fought to gain and maintain access.

Topics

  • Higher Education Landscape
  • Student Activism
  • Diaspora

Guiding Questions

  • How do we understand or read higher education in U.S. territories/Puerto Rico in relationship to power & colonialism?
  • What has higher education represented in Puerto Rico, historically?
  • What are Puerto Ricans’ relationships to U.S. institutions of higher learning?

Scholarly Engagements

Overview of Higher Education in Puerto Rico

Student Activism

  • Brusi, R. (2011). A new, violent order at the University of Puerto Rico. Graduate Journal of Social Science, 8 (1). Journal-08-01--04-Brusi.pdf
  • Martinez, A. & Garcia, N. M. #HuelgaUPR: The kidnapping of the University of Puerto Rico, students activism, and the era of Trump. Frontiers in Education, 3 (84).
  • Rosa, A. (2016). Student activists’ affective strategies during the 2010-2011 siege of the University of Puerto Rico. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 36 (11-12), 824-842.
  • Atiles-Osoria, J. M. (2013) Neoliberalism, law, and strikes: law as an instrument of repression at the University of Puerto Rico, 2010–2011. Latin American Perspectives, 40 (5), 105-117.
  • Montcourt, N. (2019, August 13). Memoria Viva: Una mirada a las luchas estudiantiles: Desde el año 1919 hasta los años 1980.

Diaspora

  • Rodríguez, A., Rosario-Ramos, E., Clasing Manquian, P., & Rosario Colón, A. (2020). College choice, interrupted: Understanding the choice processes of hurricane-affected Puerto Rican students in Florida. Journal of Higher Education, 92 (2), 169-193.
  • Velazquez, M. (2016). Looking forward, working for change: Puerto Rican women and the quest for educational justice in Chicago. Centro Journal, 28 (1), 126-153.
  • Haywood, J.M. (2017). ‘Latino spaces have always been the most violent’: Afro-Latino collegians’ perceptions of colorism and Latino intragroup marginalization. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30(8), 759-782.
  • Third World Newsreel. (2020, December). Making The impossible possible: The story of Puerto Rican studies in Brooklyn College - trailer. [Video]. Vimeo.
  • Irizarry, J. G., Rolón-Dow, R., & Godreau, I. P. (2018). Después del huracán: Using a diaspora framework to contextualize and problematize educational responses post-maría. Centro Journal, 30 (3), 254-278.

Language

  • Bischoff, S. (2017). Is English a Language Barrier to Public Higher Education in Puerto Rico?. Multilingua, 36 (3), 281-311.
  • Carroll, K. S, & Mazak, C. M. (2017). Language policy in Puerto Rico’s higher education: Opening the door for translanguaging practices. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 48 (1), 4–22.
  • Martínez-Roldán, C. M. & Quiñones, S. (2016). Resisting erasure and developing networks of solidarity: Testimonios of two Puerto Rican scholars in the academy. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 15 (3). 151-164.