Puerto Rican Studies Association, Seventh Biennial Conference

Race History/Critical Race Theory: Puerto Rico and the Critical Race Theory Tradition

Charles R. Venator Santiago, Ithaca College

Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans have been involved in the latest developments of the Critical Race Theory movement since the inception of the Latino/a Critical Legal Theory (LatCrit) initiative in 1995. The complexities of Puerto Rico and its place within the United States polity have been both a topic of discussion in various meetings, as well as a physical site for organizing and institution building in the LatCrit initiative.

Historical Context of Critical Race Theory

The Critical Race Theory (CRT) movement has to be understood within a socio-legal tradition in the U.S. legal academy. This tradition can be situated in a series of early debates stemming back to the critiques posed by Legal Realists around the 1930s to the institutions of law. The critique was premised on the idea that legal actors' interpretation of law was more often than not guided by personal beliefs and social prejudices. Hence lawmaking among legal actors was not an objective or formal process of interpreting rules or "black letter" law, but rather a cultural and social process.

In the 1970s a group of legal scholars sought to press the critique further by arguing that legal actors often reproduced the dominant ideologies of ruling elites in their legal interpretations. Drawing on various Marxists traditions, advocates of a Critical Legal Studies (CLS) approach sought to offer a new critique of the relationship between law and society that emphasized various forms of class subordination and a conception of law that framed the debates as an expression of ruling ideologies.

By the 1980s legal scholars of color began to organize various meetings to challenge CLS neglect to take into account the role of race in shaping legal interpretations. Prominent scholars began to meet, by invitation only, on a yearly basis to discuss the role of race and later gender, in shaping the ideologies of legal actors. This initiative is now known as Critical Race Theory (CRT). Among the critiques offered by various scholars, was the idea that race was central to the ideological formation of legal interpretations.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s younger scholars like Francisco Valdes and Angela P. Harris sought to introduce other discussions that expanded the focus of the debates to include issues surrounding other debates informed by queer theories and Latino/a studies, as well as the complexities of intersectional and multidimensional identities. The CRT meetings began to collapse and younger scholars sought to form a more inclusive space to continue these conversations.

In 1995, Emerging from the legal academy of the United States following a 1995 colloquium in Puerto Rico on Latina/o Communities and Critical Race Theory, various legal scholars began to form what has since become LatCrit. ‘LatCrit theory' is a relatively recent genre of critical ‘outsider jurisprudence' – a category of contemporary scholarship including critical legal studies, feminist legal theory, critical race theory, critical race feminism, Asian American legal scholarship and queer theory. That cumulative record has served as LatCrits' point of departure, and our basic twin goals since 1995 have been: (1) to develop a critical, activist and inter-disciplinary discourse on law and policy towards Latinas/os, and (2) to foster both the development of coalitional theory and practice as well as the accessibility of this knowledge to agents of social and legal transformation. LatCrit theorists aim to center Latinas/os' multiple internal diversities and to situate Latinas/os in larger inter-group frameworks, both domestically and globally, to promote social justice awareness and activism.

Puerto Ricans and LatCrit

Since its inception over a decade ago, Puerto Rico and Puerto Rican scholars have been influential in shaping the contours of various LatCrit initiatives, debates and projects. Some of their earliest scholars involved in LatCrit include Professors Pedro Malavet, Ediberto Romáin, Roberto Corrada and Celina Romany. These and other scholars have written on a variety of topics including cultural and status debates and civil and human rights. More recent scholars such as Tanya K. Hernandez and Maria Pabón Lopez have made important contributions to the study of race and immigration respectively.

LatCrit has also held various forums on Puerto Rico which addressed a wide array of social and political issues including the situation in Vieques Island. Participants have included important political figures like Manuel Rodriguez Orellana.

Institutionally, LatCrit has worked on various projects in Puerto Rico. Perhaps the most prominent has been a partnership with the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico School of Law (IAUPR), which has hosted forums like the South-North Exchange, an on-line journal titled CLAVE, and the Tenth Annual LatCrit Conference in 2005.

Future Projects

LatCrit has become a forum for dialogue and action on critical social justice issues. Aside from its partnership with the IAUPR, LatCrit continues to provide an interdisciplinary space for Puerto Rican scholars, and/or other scholars interested in Puerto Rico. As a Critical Race Theory forum, it continues to provide a space for innovative and critical thinking on questions of law and society.
 
 
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