Puerto Rico

I propose a rich theoretical understanding on Afro-Latino student development based on critical race theory, culturally responsive pedagogy and practice. Addressing racial disparities is about engaging students thereby making their lives better. I believe that creating Afro-Latino pedagogy will create a community of practice in which inquiry is a cornerstone of continuous student self-redefinition through improvement in culturally responsive systems.
We need educators to get involved with Afro-Latino students, our history and the way we occupy space in the Americas in order to address this gap in education.

This project is the continuation of the successful Repair Time Standards research initiative started two years ago to establish accurate repair time standards for vehicles in public transit systems. During this third phase the engine removal and replacement system were ...

Glocal Spirituality:  Consumerism and Heritage in Puerto Rican Brujería
With the recent intensification of the circulation of ritual experts and commodities, folk religions such as Puerto Rican brujería (witch-healing) have entered a transnational arena of ritual experimentation and eclecticism. Concomitantly, the politics of identity, operating at local-political and global-commercial stages, propel the search for origins and the production of essential identities, leading to the revitalization and orthodoxy of folk religions as well as their folklorization, following a local—though globally pervasive—heritage discourse.  Why glocal spirituality? My main argument is that both these forces—the actual insertion into global circulations that promote a high degree of ritual eclecticism and the local demand for an essential Puerto Rican national identity that promote orthodoxy—work in tandem creating a complex set of conditions for ritual practice and meaning.
How can these apparently contradictory processes be theorized within folklore studies? From a historic-pragmatic perspective to ritual and through an intimate ethnographic account that traces the encounters between practitioners, clients and suppliers of ritual goods, I will show how these two processes work in tandem. That is, without an a-priori public recognition of brujos (witch-healers) as repositories of Puerto Rican wisdom (in the context of the unresolved neocolonial political status of the island), the fame and celebrity that enabled the open incorporation of African based rituals, of bureaucratic gestures and interventions, and transnational religious commodities could not have been viable. Critics of the culture industry and consumerism tend to suggest that commercial forces inherently taint the authenticity of culture, and in this case would taint the spiritual effectiveness of brujería. For practitioners and clients, however, material and spiritual progress not only are not at odds but also are intimately connected. Indeed, practitioners are driven by the attainment of “blessings”—defined by material success as well as spiritual power—which presume the spirituality of commodities and the thinghood of spirituality. Especially in a world guided by capitalist modes of production and the sensuous insatiable consumption of life styles and self-images, brujos and their clients take advantage of the opportunities opened up by multiculturalism and identity politics. They openly expand the pantheon of spirits as well as their ritual expertise, protected by the idiom of heritage—yet outside of its constraints, showing that more than endangered species they are active participants in these glocal forces, speaking to them in their own particular modern yet spiritual idiom.

"Guavas for Dummies, American Jíbaras, & Postnational Autonomy: When I Was Puerto Rican in the Hemispheric Turn" (2019) re-engages this text after I taught it in Puerto Rico four years. In this 2009 essay, Santiago’s memoir is said to bridge U.S. and Caribbean lit. WIWPR begins with a remembered Puerto Rico, and ends in the author’s adulthood in the USA. Studying Santiago’s text within a trajectory of immigrant narratives familiarizes the text to readers who are often processing their own entries into the US / its cultural orbit. This essay examines Santiago’s representation of jibaros, a subculture whose place in in Puerto Rico parallels the conflicted relationship many Jamaicans have with Rastafarians. Also, the theme of “Translating and Resisting Imperialism” is developed through a close reading of the chapter “The American Invasion of MacÚn.” Santiago’s treatment of gender roles in her family is also explored.

El Puerto Rico de Operación Manos a la Obra, el de “lo mejor de los dos mundos”, colapsó. La institucionalidad del Estado Libre Asociado fue abolida de dos plumazos: el caso ELA versus Sánchez Valle y la ley PROMESA. El cuadro de colapso se completa con la depresión económica más larga de la historia, “la gran depresión de los 2000”, y la devastación causada por los huracanes Irma y María. En julio de 2019, luego de catorce días de protesta continua y creciente, el gobernador más corrupto de la historia renunció. La pérdida de toda legitimidad de la kakistocracia presagia el colapso de la partidocracia. Puerto Rico está en ruinas y al garete; no hay otro modo de describir el cómo y el dónde nos encontramos en este momento histórico.

For Puerto Ricans, World War I provided the opportunity to test and challenge the linkages between military service, manhood, citizenship and decolonization.  During the war Puerto Rican political leaders, elected officials, and opinion makers sought to advance the socio-economic and political standing of their communities by demanding access to, and encouraging participation in the U.S. military.  In particular, Puerto Rican elites were interested in mobilizing the Puerto Rican peasantry thinking that training would transform them into modern men worthy of self-determination in the eyes of the metropolis.

The use of alternative/complementary medicine has been increasing considerably. Conventional medicine must begin to address issues related to the use, safety, regulation, research and education of alternative/complementary medicine. Integrative medicine combines conventional medicine and alternative complementary practices. Integrative medicine is an innovative approach to medicine and medical education. It involves the understanding of the interaction of the mind, body and spirit and how to interpret this relationship in the dynamics of health and disease. Integrative medicine shifts the orientation of the medical practice from disease based approach to a healing based approach. It does not reject conventional medicine nor uncritically accepts unconventional practices. Integrative medicine is an effective, more fulfilling human approach to medicine based on the benefit of the patient by following good medicine practices in a scientific manner.

The purpose of the study was to identify attitudes towards breastfeeding and support for breastfeeding in public in a group of health teachers in the Department of Education. The study design was correlational descriptive. A self-administered questionnaire was used (Cronbach's alpha = 0.83) for 125 health teachers. Descriptive and inferential statistics (chi square and t test) were used for data analysis. 89.6% were women, 47.1% had 39 years of age or less, 76.4% were married, the median of years in the profession was 12.5. Only 8.8% had breastfed exclusively, 46.1% used artificial feedings exclusively, and 45.1% combined artificial milk and breast milk. A moderate/negative attitude towards breastfeeding was shown by 53.1%. 60.3% stated they agreed or totally agreed that in order to breastfeed the mother must follow a specific diet, 36.0% agreed or totally agreed that breast milk should alternate with artificial milk, and 100% of participants do not support breastfeeding in publ...

Insecticidal protein genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) are expressed by transgenic (Bt) crops for effective and environmentally safe pest control. The development of resistance to these insecticidal proteins is considered the most serious threat to the sustainability of Bt crops. Resistance in fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) populations from Puerto Rico to transgenic corn producing the Cry1Fa insecticidal protein resulted, for the first time in the USA, in practical resistance and Bt corn was withdrawn from the local market. In this study, we used a field-collected Cry1Fa corn-resistant strain (456) of S. frugiperda to identify the mechanism responsible for field-evolved resistance. Binding assays detected reduced Cry1Fa, Cry1Ab, and Cry1Ac but not Cry1Ca toxin binding to midgut brush border membrane vesicles (BBMV) from larvae of 456 compared to a susceptible (Ben) strain. This binding phenotype is descriptive of Mode 1 type resistance to Bt toxins. Compari...

Patients with psychiatric disorders often have cognitive impairment. Several deficits have been recognized in patients with mood and/or psychotic disorders. We hypothesized that differences in the levels of deterioration exist between patients with bipolar disorder (BD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and schizoaffective disorder (SAD). The mini-mental state examination, version 2 (MMSE-2), was used with a sample of 160 psychiatric patients to measure cognitive impairment. The aims of this study were as follows: (1) To characterize the differences in cognitive deterioration among patients diagnosed with BD, MDD, or SAD; (2) to explore item difficulty and cutoff points based on the educational level and other variables which are significant for our psychiatric population. Descriptive statistics were used for categorical variables. In addition, a Bonferroni post hoc test and an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) for the continuous dependent variable were performed. Psychiatric diagnosis and years of education adjusted by several covariates proved to be significant. The 25th percentile were obtained to establish the cutoff points. Each item’s difficulty was analyzed using means and chi-square tests. Cognitive deterioration was found in 51% of the patients with SAD, in 31% with BD, and in 18% with MDD.

El objetivo de esta nota investigativa es examinar los cambios en los patrones de consumo de los puertorriqueños y puertorriqueñas desde el 2006, año que usualmente se denomina como el comienzo de la crisis, hasta el 2015. Las estadísticas discutidas apuntan a que la sustitución de importaciones debe ser particularmente enfatizada en cualquier proyecto de desarrollo económico que se plantee para Puerto Rico u otros países en vías de desarrollo en contextos similares, como también se ha enfatizado en otras investigaciones dentro y fuera de la isla.

The role of military service in spreading the Puerto Rican diaspora is an understudied phenomenon of relevance for understanding the Puerto Rican migration and its settlement patterns in the U.S. Active duty military personnel, veterans, and their families have dispersed the Puerto Rican population beyond what has been considered as traditional centers of Puerto Rican migration.

Rainfall-triggered landslides are part of a natural process of hillslope erosion that can result in catastrophic loss of life and extensive property damage in mountainous, densely populated areas. As global population expansion on or near steep hillslopes continues, the human and economic costs associated with landslides will increase. Landslide hazard mitigation strategies generally involve hazard assessment mapping, warning systems, control structures, and regional landslide planning and policy development. To be sustainable , hazard mitigation requires that management of natural resources is closely connected to local economic and social interests. A successful strategy is dependent on a combination of multidisciplinary scientific and engineering approaches , and the political will to take action at the local community to national scale.

Historiografía sobre el desarrollo de las luchas y controles contra la tuberculosis en el Caribe. El periodo de análisis de este tema fue entre los primeros años del siglo XX, hasta mediados de la década de 1940.

VII Cumbre de Historia de Ciencias de la Salud
Tema: Historia, Ciencia y Salud entre pandemias
16 al 18 de septiembre de 2021
Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe
Organizado por el Instituto de Historia de las Ciencias de la Salud (IHICIS)
Decanato de Asuntos Académicos del Recinto de Ciencias Médicas, UPR

El terrorismo de estado ha transmutado su aplicabilidad y utilidad por el gobierno de turno en Puerto Rico. En décadas anteriores se refería a la represión por las fuerzas del estado o la utilización de la policía o el policía federal el (FBI); en este momento histórico tiene su utilidad en los medios económicos estatales (Hacienda) y los sistemas judiciales federal y estatal de la isla.