Housings with Thatched Roofs in Cortada Beach, Santa Isabel

LMM1886

Fundación Luis Muñoz Marín > Sección X, Serie 3, Colección Luis Muñoz Marín

Santa Isabel

[1948-1964?]

Title assigned by the cataloguing team. The top side of the image has an inscription that reads: "Playa de Cortada (Santa Isabel). Las corporaciones pudieron cerrar los portones, pero no pudieron evitar que Luis Muñoz Marín entrara. Pronto estas 150 familias serán libertadas".

Cortada Beach, Santa Isabel marks a pivotal site in Puerto Rico's sugarcane history. The sugar industry was already largely foreign owned prior to 1898. After the war, US corporations began buying land, especially in rural impoverished areas. Echoing the absentee landlords of the Spanish era, American sugar corporations took over a dominant role in the island’s rural economy, owning lands in which Puerto Rican colonos, or cane farmers, worked and lived. Established in 1918, the American Santa Isabel Sugar Company sought to modernize that industry. Yet, the company’s modernization was more a reimposition of colonial standards, making it a model of oligarchy and colonial imposition in later anthropological research focused on Puerto Rican sugar workers in the mid-twentieth century. The image's inscription alludes to that history as it asserts a message of defiance against corporate dominance, and the hope for an imminent liberation of 150 families upon the arrival of governor Luis Muñoz Marín. Muñoz Marín’s government sought land reform, resulting in the acquisition of much of the island’s sugar estates.

English Rights. (hyperlink)

Fundación Luis Muñoz Marín

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