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A review by bahareads
Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870-1920 by Eileen J. Suárez Findlay
informative
reflective
tense
5.0
Eileen Suarez Findlay looks at the discourses of race and gender in forming Puerto Rican national identity. By using the city of Ponce as a case study, Findlay provides a window into the larger national discourses of race, gender and class within Puerto Rican society that was occurring during the 1870s to 1920s. By joining social history with discourse analysis, Findlay attempts to look at what was said in Puerto Rico and what was done in Puerto Rico during the period stated.
The social discourse of respectability shaped sexual practices, racial meetings, and sexual regulatory strategies. By paying particular attention to the popular elite intellectuals who helped create the racially and sexually saturated political discourse, readers can see how these norms and practices were vital to ordering Puerto Rican society. Through the focus on race, class, sex, and region, readers can see internal and local forms of identity formation during the end of Spanish colonial rule and the first two decades of US sovereignty in Puerto Rico.
Much of the research Findlay did for the study was done in the city of Ponce. There are limitations to the sources. In chapter six Findlay can only guess at the relationships prominent activists Herminia Tormes and Olivia Paoli were trying to create with incarcerated women. She states, “without the discovery of more detailed sources, though, we cannot ascertain whether this potential is ever reached.” However, with the sources available to her, Findlay can show that the political struggles and discourses cannot be understood without each other.
The case of Teresa Astacio in chapter one is a source that shows the multi-layered issues of race and gender in Puerto Rican society. White girls marrying or being associated sexually with men of colour shows that the idea of honour in society would be, as Findlay puts it, contradictory. Teresa being linked to a Black man would destabilize the concepts of race and class, yet honour demanded that she be married to the man who tarnished her sexually. The obsession with chastity among the elite class is not seen in the proletarian class in Ponce. Within the case, readers can see the divergent social expectations of women across Ponce’s class and race spectrum produced very different experiences of womanhood.
Honour in Puerto Rican society was a set of concrete practices everywhere in people’s lives. In chapter one, the honour codes Findlay considers are not transhistorical but consolidated in Puerto Rico during the sugar boom of 1800 to 1845. This brings up the issue of the lack of primary sources. Findlay says she uses honour codes produced after the plantation regime and its cultures were consolidated. Honour was a gendered concept in Puerto Rico. Women’s honour came from their sexual reputation, while men’s honour depended on several factors, the most important one being a provision of income.
The idea of honour and society comes into play with the repression of prostitution seen throughout the text. Women being a center and the family foundation meant that wayward women were seen as morally disintegrating society. During the era of World War I, colonial officials would use language when referring to prostitutes like “extermination,” “plague,” “cleanse” and that prostitutes were “the rotting part of the social organism.” The war on prostitution was also one of the state repression. Women as a whole were sexually repressed. However, there were many activists who actively spoke out against the campaign on prostitution and the larger issues of women’s labour that surround it. While there were those that spoke out against the oppression when the earthquake and influenza epidemic of 1918 occurred the state stop their campaign. This led to protests about state repression disappearing.
Middle-class feminists during this era of state repression of prostitutes chose not to openly denounce the state’s crackdown on working women. They also did not critique the sexual double standard during that campaign. This stands in contrast to the U.S. middle-class feminist activists who used critiques of prostitution to protest their suffering from male infidelity and sexual predation. This lack of critique also stands in contrast to the earlier writings of Puerto Rican feminists. It seems the feminist activists compromised their beliefs to appeal to the mainstream to the determent of their fellow persecuted women.
The social discourse of respectability shaped sexual practices, racial meetings, and sexual regulatory strategies. By paying particular attention to the popular elite intellectuals who helped create the racially and sexually saturated political discourse, readers can see how these norms and practices were vital to ordering Puerto Rican society. Through the focus on race, class, sex, and region, readers can see internal and local forms of identity formation during the end of Spanish colonial rule and the first two decades of US sovereignty in Puerto Rico.
Much of the research Findlay did for the study was done in the city of Ponce. There are limitations to the sources. In chapter six Findlay can only guess at the relationships prominent activists Herminia Tormes and Olivia Paoli were trying to create with incarcerated women. She states, “without the discovery of more detailed sources, though, we cannot ascertain whether this potential is ever reached.” However, with the sources available to her, Findlay can show that the political struggles and discourses cannot be understood without each other.
The case of Teresa Astacio in chapter one is a source that shows the multi-layered issues of race and gender in Puerto Rican society. White girls marrying or being associated sexually with men of colour shows that the idea of honour in society would be, as Findlay puts it, contradictory. Teresa being linked to a Black man would destabilize the concepts of race and class, yet honour demanded that she be married to the man who tarnished her sexually. The obsession with chastity among the elite class is not seen in the proletarian class in Ponce. Within the case, readers can see the divergent social expectations of women across Ponce’s class and race spectrum produced very different experiences of womanhood.
Honour in Puerto Rican society was a set of concrete practices everywhere in people’s lives. In chapter one, the honour codes Findlay considers are not transhistorical but consolidated in Puerto Rico during the sugar boom of 1800 to 1845. This brings up the issue of the lack of primary sources. Findlay says she uses honour codes produced after the plantation regime and its cultures were consolidated. Honour was a gendered concept in Puerto Rico. Women’s honour came from their sexual reputation, while men’s honour depended on several factors, the most important one being a provision of income.
The idea of honour and society comes into play with the repression of prostitution seen throughout the text. Women being a center and the family foundation meant that wayward women were seen as morally disintegrating society. During the era of World War I, colonial officials would use language when referring to prostitutes like “extermination,” “plague,” “cleanse” and that prostitutes were “the rotting part of the social organism.” The war on prostitution was also one of the state repression. Women as a whole were sexually repressed. However, there were many activists who actively spoke out against the campaign on prostitution and the larger issues of women’s labour that surround it. While there were those that spoke out against the oppression when the earthquake and influenza epidemic of 1918 occurred the state stop their campaign. This led to protests about state repression disappearing.
Middle-class feminists during this era of state repression of prostitutes chose not to openly denounce the state’s crackdown on working women. They also did not critique the sexual double standard during that campaign. This stands in contrast to the U.S. middle-class feminist activists who used critiques of prostitution to protest their suffering from male infidelity and sexual predation. This lack of critique also stands in contrast to the earlier writings of Puerto Rican feminists. It seems the feminist activists compromised their beliefs to appeal to the mainstream to the determent of their fellow persecuted women.