Center for Puerto Rican Studies to host federal status legislation for Puerto Rico webinar

by Jun 23, 2021Congress, Puerto Rico, Status0 comments

The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in the City University of New York will host a webinar titled “A History of Federal Status Legislation for Puerto Rico – 1898 to the present,” as part of their Puerto Rican Status Archives Project (PRSAP). The webinar is open to the public and will take place on Wednesday, June 23, 2021, at 5:00 pm EST on Zoom.

Between the 56th (1898) and 117th (2021) Congresses, federal lawmakers debated more than 140 bills providing for the resolution of Puerto Rico’s territorial status. PRSAP is an initiative to create a public repository of documents addressing the history of the political status legislation for Puerto Rico.

The webinar will provide an overview of some of the preliminary findings of their initial effort to analyze all the federal status legislation debated in Congress. Attendees will also be introduced to the PRSAP and its potential uses. The webinar will be hosted by author Charles R. Venator-Santiago, Associate Professor with a Joint Appointment at the Department of Political Science & El Instituto in the University of Connecticut, with commentary by José Javier Colón Morera, Professor at the Department of Political Science in the University of Puerto Rico.

Venator-Santiago works on US territorial law and policy and is the coordinator of the Puerto Rico Citizenship Archives Project. Colón Morera is a Puerto Rican Political Scientist who has extensively researched the political status question and human rights issues regarding Puerto Rico’s territorial status.

The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, CUNY is a research institute that is dedicated to the study and interpretation of the Puerto Rican experience in the United States and that produces and disseminates relevant interdisciplinary research. Centro also collects, preserves, and provides access to library resources documenting Puerto Rican history and culture. We seek to link scholarship to social action and policy debates and to contribute to the betterment of our community and enrichment of Puerto Rican studies.

Founded in 1973 by a coalition of faculty, students, and community leaders, Centro is the only university-based research institute solely devoted to the interdisciplinary study of the Puerto Rican experience in the United States.