Industrialization and Migration: Some Effects On the Puerto Rican Working Class

Abstract

The following article is the consequence of a collaborative and integrated effort. To ac commodate English language readers, we have translated the first part into English, but have left the second part in Spanish, accompanied by marginal notes in English (the editors).

Industrialization, the Colonial State, and Working Class Organizations in Puerto Rico

“…By the mid-1960s, Puerto Rico's productive system was fully incorporated into the metropolitan economy, and changes in capitalist production on the mainland were immediately implemented in the island. Successive transformations in the forces of production generated alterations in the social divisions of labor so that the occupational structure of Puerto Rico quickly approximated that of the United States (Campos and Bonilla, 1976), with the exception that unemployment on the island was approximately three times that of the mainland. Thus economic growth in Puerto Rico means the preservation, and in certain instances the expansion, of a redundant labor force.…”

“…Colonial state policy toward the working class has consequently been a subsidiary, albeit important, reaction to the changing imperatives of successive transformation in the local forces and relations of production. Although this article focuses on the third stage, it is clear that the formation of the working class and state policy during the most recent period were strongly conditioned by previous political and economic developments (see Quintero Rivera, 1974Rivera, , 1975aRivera, , 1975bRivera, , 1980Campos and Bonilla, 1982).…”

“…Amid the economic chaos, political turmoil, and social deterioration, the Roosevelt administration decided to embark cautiously on a program of insular reconstruction and welfarism (Campos and Bonilla, 1982). Operating directly, and through ideologically allied local political forces (Quintero Rivera, 1980), the metropolitan state initiated a second phase of capitalist expansion, which resulted in important alterations in the island's productive structure.…”