Within a current moment characterized by widespread diaspora and debate about national identities, the American commonwealth of Puerto Rico stands at an economically perilous, politically liminal classificatory intersection as both American and a “cultural other.” This article presents an on-the-ground, collection-oriented intervention for documenting and interpreting the origins of the island's complex colonial relationship with the United States. Tacking between objects, texts, and photographs, the historical context of the Spanish-American War is explored through the case study of the Puerto Rican Ethnological Collection at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH). The NMNH's assemblage reveals previously unrecognized intercultural exchanges between officer-wife collectors (collectors who were the wives of military officers stationed in Puerto Rico) and local makers. The perspectives of these two differentially disenfranchised, yet agential, groups, which formed part of the ideological formation of Puerto Rico within a nationalist museum imaginary, simultaneously reconstruct and complicate Puerto Rican narratives. [Puerto Rico, Caribbean, Spanish-American War, women collectors, miniatures]

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收集波多黎各殖民地：军官妻子和波多黎各人之间的西班牙-美国战争物资相遇

在当前以广泛的侨民和关于民族身份的辩论为特征的时刻，波多黎各的美国联邦作为美国人和“文化他者”，处于经济危险、政治限制分类的十字路口。本文提出了一种实地的、以收藏为导向的干预措施，用于记录和解释该岛与美国复杂的殖民关系的起源。通过史密森学会国家自然历史博物馆 (NMNH) 的波多黎各民族学收藏品的案例研究，在物体、文本和照片之间进行探索，探索美西战争的历史背景。NMNH' s 组合揭示了以前未被承认的军官-妻子收藏家（收藏家是驻扎在波多黎各的军官的妻子）和当地制造商之间的跨文化交流。这两个不同的被剥夺权利但具有代理性的团体的观点，在民族主义博物馆想象中构成了波多黎各意识形态形成的一部分，同时重建和复杂化了波多黎各的叙事。[波多黎各、加勒比海、美西战争、女性收藏家、微缩模型]