REI Colloquium: Making Never-Never Land

This talk will focus on my book, Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico, which argues that despite the endurance of Puerto Rico’s colonial status well into the twenty first century, its path to becoming one of the world’s oldest colonies was not exceptional. Race and law have acted as organizing principles structuring the US-Puerto Rico relationship since its inception. I argue that to fully understand how and why Puerto Rico was organized in law, we must look to a longer history of US settler colonialism and racial exclusion. Puerto Rico, and the federal policies and US Supreme Court law that constructed it, exist within a larger pantheon of law and policy impacting racially excluded groups. This body of law served to carve out states of exception for racial undesirables – Native Americans, African Americans, and the inhabitants of the Insular territories, among others – lacunae of law and special legal designations that allowed the federal government plenary or complete power over these groups.

Mónica A. Jiménez is a poet and historian. Her research and writing explore the intersections of law, race, and empire in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her book, Making Never Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico, which offers a legal history of race and exception in the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, will be published in June 2024 by the University of North Carolina Press.

Dr. Jiménez has received fellowships in support of her work from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation), the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Letras Boricuas Fellow by the Flamboyan Arts Foundation. Her scholarly and creative writing has appeared or is forthcoming in WSQ: Women Studies Quarterly, Latino Studies, CENTRO: Journal, and sx salon, among others.

This is an accessible event. If you are a disabled person and need reasonable accommodations to participate they will be provided. For more information, and to make a request, please contact Ezra Bristow at [email protected]

Host or Publisher Institute of Governmental Studies