the Puerto Rican Radical Tradition

The Puerto Rican Radical Tradition symposium invites academics, activists, authors, and researchers to explore the dynamic evolution of Puerto Rico’s political landscape, highlighting the ongoing struggle against colonialism and the shifts in public sentiment.

On March 1, 1954, Lolita Lebrón led a group of four members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in an armed attack on the U.S. Congress, to dramatize the ongoing colonial nature of the territorial relationship, in the wake of the “Commonwealth” constitution of 1952. Seventy years later, while perspectives on the preferred solution may vary, there remains little doubt as to the colonial nature of that relationship, especially following the imposition by Congress of an unelected “fiscal oversight” board in 2016.

The political landscape in Puerto Rico seems to be shifting in dramatic and previously unexpected ways since then. In August 2019, then-governor Ricardo Rosselló was forced to step down, following a two-week uprising that reflected a heightened disposition to engage in confrontational protest tactics, especially by the younger generation. Developments in the 2020 elections, and in the build-up to the 2024 elections, seem to portend dramatic reconfigurations of the electoral arena, even as global dynamics raise new possibilities and challenges for decolonization. Enduring structural violences and the rise of far right politics in the U.S. also present challenges for an expanding Puerto Rican diaspora no longer concentrated in its traditional political enclaves.