We Are Left Without a Father Here: Masculinity, Domesticity, and Migration in Postwar Puerto Rico(American Encounters/Global Interactions)

We Are Left without a Father Here is a transnational history of working people's struggles and a gendered analysis of populism and colonialism in mid-twentieth-century Puerto Rico. At its core are the thousands of agricultural workers who, at the behest of the Puerto Rican government, migrated to Michigan in 1950 to work in the state's sugar beet fields. The men expected to earn enough income to finally become successful breadwinners and fathers. To their dismay, the men encountered abysmal working conditions and pay. The migrant workers in Michigan and their wives in Puerto Rico soon exploded in protest. Chronicling the protests, the surprising alliances that they created, and the Puerto Rican government's response, Eileen J. Suarez Findlay explains that notions of fatherhood and domesticity were central to Puerto Rican populist politics. Patriarchal ideals shaped citizens' understandings of themselves, their relationship to Puerto Rican leaders and the state, as well as the meanings they ascribed to U.S. colonialism. Findlay argues that the motivations and strategies for transnational labor migrations, colonial policies, and worker solidarities are all deeply gendered.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments ix Introduction. Bregando the Sugar Beet Fields 1 1. Family and Fatherhood in "a New Era for All": Populist Politics and Reformed Colonialism 25 2. Building Homes, Domesticity Dreams, and the Drive to Modernity 59 3. Removing "Excess Population": Redirecting the Great Migration 90 4. Arriving in Michigan: The Collapse of the Dream 118 5. The Brega Expands 148 Conclusion. Persistent Bregas 173 Notes 191 Bibliography 257 Index 295

About the Author :
Eileen J. SuÁrez Findlay is Associate Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at American University. She is the author of Imposing Decency: The Politics of Sexuality and Race in Puerto Rico, 1870–1920, also published by Duke University Press.

Review :
 “A most excellent gendered history of Puerto Rican political and labor history, this book will be required reading for Latin Americanists and labor historians. Essential. All levels/libraries.”  - B. A. Lucero (Choice) "SuÁrez Findlay has managed to weave a transnational history in which the diaspora and the island are equally important for understanding the Puerto Rican experience.... While remaining accessible to undergraduate students, this work is aimed at labor and gender specialists."  - Harry Franqui-Rivera (Hispanic American Historical Review) "We Are Left without a Father Here offers an important contribution to the scholarship on gender, populism, colonial economic development and politics, and migration in the post–World War II era.... This story is a significant one that encapsulates far-reaching and multifaceted implications in an accessible and engaging prose. This book deserves a broad readership." - Carmen Teresa Whalen (American Historical Review) "For scholars of Latina/o history – Puerto Rican history and Puerto Rican diasporas in particular – this study produces a set of powerful arguments with which to investigate the histories of migrants and migration policy from the perspective of the countries of origin and destination.... Above all, the strength of the study lies in its use of gender criticism to interrogate grand narratives such as modernism and colonialism and to produce new connections between the micro and the macro." - Timo Schrader (Gender & History) "This book can be used as a reference or complementary text for a college and graduate level course. It is a valuable source for any course on American, Caribbean, Latino, and Latin American studies, and any other related fields." - Milagros Denis-Rosario (Canadian Journal of History) "What [Findlay] has unearthed is rich, painful to read, but highly recommended to anyone wishing to understand the present moment of colonial crisis." - Maura I. Toro-Morn (Agricultural History) "Adding a gender dimension is an important contribution to the scholarship of Puerto Rico, which has largely understood populism and migration within the frames of colonialism, development, and transnationalism. . . . Scholars of labor and state formation will find this book an excellent analysis of the significance of patriarchy in the politics of migration and populism." - Ismael García Colón (New West Indian Guide)