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US Imperialism and Puerto Rican Needleworkers: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Women's Labor in a Deep History of Neoliberal Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2020

Aimee Loiselle
Aimee Loiselle*
Affiliation:
Smith College
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Abstract

In 1898, US occupation of Puerto Rico opened possibilities for experimentation with manufacturing, investment, tariffs, and citizenship because the Treaty of Paris did not address territorial incorporation. Imperial experimentation started immediately and continued through the liberal policies of the New Deal and World War II, consistently reproducing drastic exceptions. These exceptions were neither permanent nor complete, but the rearrangements of sovereignty and citizenship established Puerto Rico as a site of potential and persistent exemption. Puerto Rican needleworkers were central to the resulting colonial industrialization-not as dormant labor awaiting outside developmental forces but as skilled workers experienced in production. Following US occupation, continental trade agents and manufacturers noted the intricate needlework of Puerto Rican women and their employment in homes and small shops for contractors across the island. Their cooptation and adaptation of this contracting system led to the colonial industrialization, generating bureaucratic, financial, and legal infrastructure later used in Operation Bootstrap, a long-term economic plan devised in the 1940s and 1950s. Labor unions and aggrieved workers contested and resisted this colonial industrialization. They advocated their own proposals and pushed against US economic policies and insular business management. Throughout these fights, the asymmetrical power of the federal government and industrial capital allowed the colonial regime to assert US sovereignty while continually realigning exemptions and redefining citizenship for liberal economic objectives. Rather than representing a weakening of the nation-state, this strong interventionist approach provided scaffolding for Operation Bootstrap, which became a model for the neoliberal projects called export processing zones (EPZs).

Type
Labor Activism Under Neoliberalism
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 98: East Europe and the Troubled Memory of “The Worker” / Labor Activism Under Neoliberalism / Lines of Labor, Lines of Production , Fall 2020 , pp. 142 - 172
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc., 2020

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References

NOTES

A warm thank you to Irma Medina and her mother, Aracelis Martínez, for sharing the stories that prompted this research, and to Emma Amador and Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo for their early encouragement and comments. My appreciation also to Barbara Weinstein for her editorial guidance and to the three peer reviewers for their insightful feedback.

1. Richard L. Bolin, “What Puerto Rico Faced in Being the First to Create EPZs in 1947,” The Flagstaff Institute and WEPZA “Award for Creativity” to Puerto Rico/Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company, speech to Latin American Free Trade Zones Committee Conference, Puerto Rico, September 9, 2004.

2. Puerto Rico as a whole consists of many islands and cays. Some scholars and activists emphasize this geography by referring to it as an “archipelago.” For the purpose of this article, I use the term “island” to denote Puerto Rico because my research focuses on the largest island, which is also called Puerto Rico.

3. Melvin Farman, pamphlet, “A Brief History: Arthur D. Little, Inc.” (Cambridge, MA, 1965?); Magee, John F., Arthur D. Little, Inc.: At the Moving Frontier (New York, 1985), 10–16Google Scholar; Schmidt, Samuel, In Search of Decision: The Maquiladora Industry in México (Ciudad Juárez, 2000)Google Scholar, “United States Business People: Richard Bolin,” 221–45.

4. I do not argue Puerto Rico is the first site of any exemption. US businesses often go to municipal and county governments to request exceptions or waivers to rules. Puerto Rico presented a distinct opportunity for an acute and shifting set of exemptions around a remarkable knot of national issues: sovereignty, citizenship, and tariffs as well as investment, labor regulation, taxes, and wages.

5. For a history of contests over Puerto Rican citizenship, see Venator-Santiago, Charles R., Puerto Rico and the Origins of U.S. Global Empire: The Disembodied Shade (New York, 2015)Google Scholar; Thomas, Lorrin, “‘How They Ignore Our Rights as American Citizens’: Puerto Rican Migrants and the Politics of Citizenship in the New Deal Era,” Latino Studies 2 (2004): 140–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. For scholars who frame the Northeast as the starting point, see Timothy Minchin, Empty Mills: The Fight Against Imports and the Decline of the U.S. Textile Industry (Oxford, 2012); Tami J. Friedman, “Exploiting the North-South Differential: Corporate Power, Southern Politics, and the Decline of Organized Labor after World War II,” Journal of American History 95, no. 2 (Sept. 2008): 323–48; Beth English, A Common Thread: Labor, Politics, and Capital Mobility in the Textile Industry (Athens, GA, 2006); Ellen Israel Rosen, Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the U.S. Apparel Industry (Berkeley, CA, 2002); Jefferson Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (New York, 2001); William M. Adler, Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line (New York, 2001); James Cobb, The Selling of the South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936-1990 (Urbana, IL, 1993).

7. María del Carmen Baerga, Género y trabajo: la industria de la aguja en Puerto Rico y el Caribe hispánico (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1993), and “Wages, consumption, and survival: Working class households in Puerto Rico in the 1930s,” in Households and the World- Economy, eds. Joan Smith, Immanuel Wallerstein, Hans-Dieter Evers (Beverly Hills, CA, 1984), 233–51; Blanca Silvestrini, “Women as Workers: The Experience of the Puerto Rican Woman in the 1930s,” in The Puerto Rican Woman: Perspectives on Culture, History, and Society, ed. Edna Acosta-Belén (Westport, CT, 1986): 59–74, and Los trabajadores puertorriqueños y el Partido Socialista, 1932-1940 (Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, 1978); A.G. Quintero Rivera and Gervasio L. García, Desafío y solidaridad : breve historia del movimiento obrero puertorriqueño (Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, 1982).

8. For scholars who study US labor and empire, see Julie Greene, “Movable Empire: Labor, Migration, and U.S. Global Power During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 15 (2016): 4–20; Colleen Woods, “Building Empire's Archipelago: The Imperial Politics of Filipino Labor in the Pacific,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 13, no. 3–4 (December 2016): 131–52; Daniel E. Bender and Jana K. Lipman (eds.), Making the Empire Work: Labor and United States Imperialism (New York, 2015); Catherine Ceniza Choy, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (Durham, NC, 2003).

9. Aviva Chomsky, Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of the Global Working Class (Durham, NC, 2008), 93–116; Cowie, 111–13; Eileen Boris, “Needlewomen Under the New Deal in Puerto Rico, 1920-1945,” in Puerto Rican Women and Work: Bridges in Transnational Labor, Altagracia Ortiz (ed.) (Philadelphia, PA, 1996), 37–38.

10. Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA, 2018); Johanna Bockman, Markets in the Name of Socialism: The Left-Wing Origins of Neoliberalism (Stanford, CA, 2011); Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge, MA, 2011); Val Marie Johnson, “Introduction,” Special Section: Chronologies and Complexities of Western Neoliberalism, Social Science History 35, no. 3 (Fall 2011): 323–36; Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (New York, 2010); David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York, 2005); Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); Wendy Larner, “Neo-liberalism: Policy, Ideology, Governmentality,” Studies in Political Economy 63 (Autumn 2000): 5–25.

11. For those multigenerational workers tied to a specific neighborhood or city, “deindustrialization” occurred in their immediate location. Overall, however, US industrial capitalism was disaggregating—first with textiles and apparel, and later with electronics and automobiles.

12. Augustine Sedgewick, “What Is Imperial about Coffee?: Rethinking ‘Informal Empire’,” in Making the Empire Work, 313; Robert C. McGreevey, “Empire and Migration: Coastwise Shipping, National Status, and the Colonial Legal Origins of Puerto Rican Migration to the United States,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 11, no. 4 (October 2012): 557–9; Virginia E. Sánchez Korrol, From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City (Berkeley, CA, 1994), 19–27; James L. Dietz, Economic History of Puerto Rico: Institutional Change and Capitalist Development (Princeton, NJ, 1986), 85.

13. Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality (Durham, NC, 2011); Lanny Thompson, Imperial Archipelago: Representation and Rule in the Insular Territories Under US Dominion After 1898 (Honolulu, HI, 2010); Julian Go, American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures in the Philippines and Puerto Rico During U.S. Colonialism (Durham, NC, 2008); Jorge Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States (Chapel Hill, NC, 2002), Chapter 2 “The Rich Gate to Future Wealth,” 39–58; Duany, “Portraying the Other: Puerto Rican Images in Two American Photographic Collections,” Discourse 23, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 119–53; Gervasio Luis Garcia, “I am the Other: Puerto Rico in the Eyes of North Americans, 1898,” Journal of American History 87, no. 1 (June, 2000): 39–64.

14. For a history of financial elites in the Global South, see Vijay Prashad, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (New York, 2012).

15. For a history of cotton's global importance, see Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York, 2014).

16. US Bureau of Labor Bulletins 1901 and 1905, quoted in “Women's Labor and the Home Needlework Industry in Puerto Rico, 1898-1930” by Carlos Sanabria, draft for discussion, 1988, 17, and “Worker Emigrations from Puerto Rico: A Historical Note,” paper for Puerto Rican Women in the Garment Industry, undated 198?, in Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños Collection, Series XII: Research Task Forces (1950–2001), History (1974–1997), Box 139, Folder 13, Centro Library & Archives at Hunter College-CUNY; Baerga, Género y trabajo; Rose Pesotta, Bread Upon the Waters (Ithaca, NY, 1987, original copyright 1944 Dodd, Mead and Company), Chapter 10 “I Go to Puerto Rico.” Ayala and Bernabe, 33–47.

17. Go, “Chains of Empire,” 357.

18. “Special West Indian Commissioner,” March 1901, vol. I no. 4, 123; “The West Indian Exhibit” and “Senorita Davila and Her Embroidery,” Aug 1901, vol. I no. 9, 326 and 329, The Exposition: A Magazine Devoted to the South Carolina Interstate and West Indian Exposition, Osborne Library at the American Textile History Museum.

19. “The West Indian Exhibit” and “Senorita Davila and Her Embroidery,” Aug 1901, vol. I no. 9, 326 and 329, The Exposition: A Magazine Devoted to the South Carolina Interstate and West Indian Exposition, Osborne Library ATHM.

20. Santiago Iglesias, Pan-American Federation of Labor letter regarding the AFL and ILGWU support of workers in Puerto Rico, August 5, 1918; Box 2, Folder 1, ILGWU, Benjamin Schlesinger, President, Records, 1914-1923, #5780/009, Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library. Ayala and Bernabe, 17 and 61.

21. For related labor histories, see Anne S. Macpherson, “Citizens v. Clients: Working Women and Colonial Reform in Puerto Rico and Belize, 1932-45,” Journal of Latin American Studies 35, no. 2 (May 2003): 279–310; A.G. Quintero Rivera, Patricios y plebeyos : burgueses, hacendados, artesanos y obreros : las relaciones de clase en el Puerto Rico de cambio de siglo (Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, 1988); Silvestrini, “Women as Workers”; Miles Galvin, The Organized Labor Movement in Puerto Rico (Cranbury, NJ, 1979).

22. Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, NJ, 2010), 4, 105–7.

23. Ayala and Bernabe, 24–30.

24. Julian Go, “Chains of Empire, Projects of State: Political Education and U.S. Colonial Rule in Puerto Rico and the Philippines,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 2 (April 2000): 346, 352; Ayala and Bernabe, 33.

25. Go, “Chains of Empire,” 346, 352; Ayala and Bernabe, 33.

26. Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, CA, 2005), Chapter 4 “Globalization,” 91–112.

27. For histories of the Insular Cases, see Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco A. Scarano (eds.), Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State (Madison, WI, 2009); Bartholomew H. Sparrow, The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire (Lawrence, KS, 2006), 79–110; Christina Duffy Burnett and Burke Marshall (eds.), Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution (Durham, NC, 2001).

28. George Franklin Edmunds, The Insular Cases: The Supreme Court and the Dependencies (Boston, MA, 1901), 4–5, 9–10. Sparrow, 79–110; Burnett and Marshall, “Between the Foreign and the Domestic: The Doctrine of Territorial Incorporation, Invented and Reinvented,” in Foreign in a Domestic Sense, 6–18.

29. Go, “Chains of Empire,” 344, 350–55; Ayala and Bernabe, 37–38.

30. Ayala and Bernabe, 29–30.

31. Thompson, Imperial Archipelago; Duany, “Portraying the Other.”

32. Boris, 37.

33. Chomsky, 107; New York State Curriculum, “Old Voices, New Voices: Mainland Puerto Rican Perspectives and Experiences,” Organization of American Historians Magazine of History 10, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 39.

34. “Investigation of Minimum Wages and Education in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands,” Hearings, Special Investigating Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor House of Representatives, 81st Congress, H.R. 75, February 1949, 150; The Dorvillier News Letters (1952–1964, 1973–1978), ILGWU/UNITE Collection, Box 1, Folder 5, Centro LAHC; Pesotta, Bread, Chapter 10 “I Go to Puerto Rico.” Ramón Grosfoguel, “Puerto Rican Labor Migration to the US: Modes of Incorporation, Coloniality, and Identities,” Review, Fernand Braudel Center 22, no. 4 (1999): 508.

35. Ana Juarbe, “Anastasia's Story: A Window Into the Past—A Bridge to the Present,” in Stories to Live By: Continuity and Change in Three Generations of Puerto Rican Women, Oral History Task Force (New York, 1987), 16–18. E.E. Pratt (Chief of Bureau) to William C. Redfield (Sec. of Commerce), Textiles in Porto Rico and Jamaica (Special Agent Series No. 137, report prepared by W.A. Tucker), dated February 14, 1917; Centro No. 47, Reel #1: Records of the BIA, 1900–1934; N.A. Arrangement: Files 27184 Textiles, Centro LAHC.

36. Ayala and Bernabe, 46–47.

37. For intensive studies of the Jones Act, see McGreevey, Borderline Citizens: The United States, Puerto Rico, and the Politics of Colonial Migration (Ithaca, NY, 2018), especially Chapter Four “Citizenship and Statelessness,” 93–117; Solsiree del Moral, “Colonial Citizens of a Modern Empire: War, Illiteracy, and Physical Education in Puerto Rico, 1917–1930,” New West Indian Guide 87 (2013): 30–61; Thomas, 140–159.

38. Ayala and Bernabe, 28, 58.

39. Boris, 37–38.

40. G.L. Jones, “Sweatshops on the Spanish Main,” from The Survey, LI, November 15, 1923, 209–10, in The Puerto Ricans: A Documentary History, eds. Kal and Olga Jiménez de Wagenheim (Princeton, NJ, 2013), 163–64.

41. Jones, 165–66.

42. Carmen Teresa Whalen, “Colonialism, Citizenship, and the Making of the Puerto Rican Diaspora: An Introduction,” in The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Historical Perspectives, eds. Carmen Whalen and Víctor Vázquez-Hernández (Philadelphia, PA, 2005), 40–42; Duany, The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move, 208–11.

43. Whalen, “‘The Day the Dresses Stopped’: Puerto Rican Women, the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union, and the 1958 Dressmaker's Strike,” in Memories and Migrations: Locating Boricua and Chicana Histories, Vicki Ruiz and John Chávez (eds.) (Urbana and Chicago, IL, 2008), 122; New York State Curriculum, 38–41; Celia Alvarez, “El Hilo Que Nos Une/The Thread That Binds Us: Becoming a Puerto Rican Woman,” Oral History Review 16, no. 2 (Autumn 1988): 29–36.

44. “Eva Monje,” 7/8/1984, Box 230, Folder 2, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños Collection, Series XIX: Audio-Visual (1973–1999), Oral History Transcripts, Centro LAHC; Alvarez, 26; Whalen, “‘The Day the Dresses Stopped,’” 122; New York State Curriculum, 37–41.

45. I use the term “related but nonsequential currents” to describe the movements of manufacturing, labor, and investment. As I have argued here, they are related and interactive, but they are not happening in temporal sequence or a geographic line.

46. “Agency History,” The Records of the Offices of the Government of Puerto Rico in the United States, 1930-1993 Finding Aide, Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, Centro LAHC.

47. Chomsky, 59–92; Robert Weible, ed., The Continuing Revolution: A History of Lowell, Massachusetts (Lowell, MA, 1991).

48. “Hunter College/Palmira Ríos (A),” interview, #60, dated 9/30/1984, The Oral History and Audiocassette Collection, Centro Records: Puerto Ricans in New York – Voices of the Migration, Centro LAHC; Whalen, “Sweatshops Here and There: The Garment Industry, Latinas, and Labor Migrations,” International Labor and Working Class History 61 (Spring 2002): 54–56.

49. Stretch-outs manifest in different ways, but they all involve pressing workers for more output or time without a corresponding increase in pay: working faster for the same pay, roles reclassified as piecework for less pay, jobs reassigned to multiple looms or machines.

50. Blanca Vázquez Erazo, “The Stories Our Mothers Tell: Projections-of-Self in the Stories of Puerto Rican Garment Workers,” in Stories to Live By: Continuity and Change in Three Generations of Puerto Rican Women, Oral History Task Force (New York: Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, 1987), 44; Boris, 38 and 44; Dietz, 175.

51. Pesotta, Bread, Chapter 10 “I Go to Puerto Rico,” 103–14; Silvestrini, 67–68; Ayala and Bernabe, 96.

52. Teresa Angleró, “Folded-Arms Strike Wins in Puerto Rico,” Justice, 18 issue 7, April 1, 1936, 11, ILGWU at DigitalCommons@ILR; Rose Pesotta, report on Needle Workers’ Union Local #300, undated, describing Teresa Angleró; Wm. D. Lopez of the Department of Labor in Government of Porto Rico, letter to Charles Zimmerman, July 30, 1934, in Box Number 30, Folder 10, Needle Workers’ Union, ILGWU Charles Zimmerman Papers, #5780/014, Kheel CLM; Pesotta, Bread, Chapter 10 “I Go to Puerto Rico” and Chapter 11 “Island Paradise and Mass Tragedy,” 115–24. Boris, 38–39, 48.

53. Ayala and Bernabe, 100–12, 179-–86.

54. Transcript of Oral Argument on Recommendations of Fabric and Leather Glove Divisions of Needle Work Industries, January 6, 1941, Hamilton Hotel, Washington, DC, Box 1, Entry 18, Folder 1 Puerto Rico-Fabric and Leather Glove Divisions of Needle Work Industries; and Transcript of Hearing on Reports and Recommendations of the Special Industry Committee for Puerto Rico, June 12, 1941, Box 2, Entry 18, Folder 4 Puerto Rico-Miscellaneous Handwork Division of Needle Work Industries; RG 155 Records of the Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Divisions, Puerto Rico Records, Aug 1940–Jan 1942, National Archives in New York City.

55. “Issues for Industry in Puerto Rico,” report dated 1934, R.V.S. 18S36, 34; Reel #1, 1935–1970, Library of Congress, Materials Relating to Puerto Rico; Centro LAHC.

56. Findings and Opinion of the Administrator on Recommendations of the Special Industry Committee of Puerto Rico, November 15, 1940, Box 3, Entry 18, Folder 1 Puerto Rico-Needle Work Industries; and Report Prepared by Statistics and Research Branch, September 19, 1940, Box 3, Entry 18, Folder 2 Report on Puerto Rico: Needle Work Industries; RG 155 Records of the Wage and Hour and Public Contracts Divisions, Puerto Rico Records, Aug 1940–Jan 1942, NA-NYC.

57. The BIA in the War Department did not fully close until 1939. Ayala and Bernabe, 97 and 102–03.

58. Rexford Guy Tugwell, The Stricken Land: The Story of Puerto Rico (New York, 1947); David Ekbladh, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order (Princeton, NJ, 2010), 18–19.

59. Earl Hanson – Planning Consultant, “Planning Problems and Activities in Puerto Rico,” a preliminary report to the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration and National Resources Committee, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 23, 1935, pages 15 and 8; Reel #3: Records of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, Record Group 323: N.A. Arrangement: Records of the Washington Office General Records, 1935–1945; Labor, 1937-1939; FLSA, 1938–1939; Needlework, 1938–1941; Centro LAHC.

60. Grace Kyungwon Hong, The Ruptures of American Capital: Women of Color Feminism and the Culture of Immigrant Labor (Minneapolis, MN, 2006), 100.

61. Iris López, Matters of Choice: Puerto Rican Women's Struggle for Reproductive Freedom (New Brunswick, NJ, 2008); Laura Briggs, Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science and US Imperialism in Puerto Rico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

62. For a history of the FLSA debate, see Macpherson, “Birth of the U.S. Colonial Minimum Wage: The Struggle over the Fair Labor Standards Act in Puerto Rico, 1938–1941,” Journal of American History 104, no. 3 (Dec 2017): 656–80.

63. In 1912, Massachusetts passed the first minimum wage legislation with a non-compulsory recommendation for women and children due to public awareness of the Lawrence textile strike. By 1925, fifteen states had minimum wage laws in some form, but companies repeatedly sued to eliminate them. Vivien Hart, Bound by Our Constitution: Women, Workers, and the Minimum Wage (Princeton, NJ, 1994).

64. Chomsky, 109; Silvestrini, 69–71.

65. The concept of “labor arbitrage” appears in Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Durham, NC, 2006). The concept of “regulatory arbitrage” appears in Philip Cerny, Rethinking World Politics: A Theory of Transnational Neopluralism (London, 2010).

66. The Puerto Rico Needlework Association, Inc., Daniel Nadal – Secretary, letter to Hon. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, dated September 26, 1938, Centro No. 156; Reel #3: Records of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, Record Group 323: N.A. Arrangement: Records of the Washington Office General Records, 1935–1945; Labor, 1937–1939; FLSA, 1938–1939; Needlework, 1938–1941; Centro LAHC.

67. Victor E. Domenech, letter to Hon. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, October 26, 1938, Centro No. 157; Reel #3: Records of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, Record Group 323: N.A. Arrangement: Records of the Washington Office General Records, 1935–1945; Labor, 1937–1939; FLSA, 1938–1939; Needlework, 1938–1941; Centro LAHC.

68. Edward Leon, letter to Mrs. Charlotte Westwood, dated December 1, 1938, Centro No. 154; Edward Leon, “Puerto Rico and Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938,” report on Puerto Rican needlework industry, no date, Centro No. 148; Reel #3: Records of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, Record Group 323: N.A. Arrangement: Records of the Washington Office General Records, 1935–1945; Labor, 1937–1939; FLSA, 1938–1939; Needlework, 1938–1941; Centro LAHC; “To Seek Wages Act Exemption,” New York Times, August 24, 1938, 4.

69. “Pay Plea for Puerto Rico: Winship Asks Wage-Hour Exemption for Needleworkers,” New York Times, September 21, 1938, 9.

70. “Wage Relief Sought: Needlework Plants in Puerto Rico May Have to Close,” New York Times, August 16, 1938, 20; “Confer in Puerto Rico: Needlework Representatives Seek to Save Island Industry,” The New York Times, August 18, 1938, 8; “To Seek Wages Act Exemption,” New York Times, August 24, 1938, 4; “Needleworkers to Go On: Puerto Ricans Await Word on Status Under New Labor Law,” New York Times, October 26, 1938,15; “Puerto Rican Industries Lay Off 21,343 of 27,457,” The New York Times, November 16, 1938, 8; “Puerto Rico,” New York Times, November 27, 1938, 80.

71. “Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands” and “S. 2682,” summary and text of the bill in Record Group 323: Records of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, Fair Labor Standards Act: Proposed Amendments; Reel #3: Records of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, Record Group 323: N.A. Arrangement: Records of the Washington Office General Records, 1935–1945; Labor, 1937–1939; FLSA, 1938–1939; Needlework, 1938-1941; Centro LAHC; Donald W. McConnell, Economic Trends and the New Deal in the Caribbean (New York: Publication of the Council for Pan American Democracy, 1940), 12–13. Macpherson, “Birth of U.S. Colonial Minimum,” 677–80.

72. “Outline of Information Desired by the Tariff Commission on Handkerchiefs,” report from 1939, Centro No. 145; Reel #3: Records of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, Record Group 323: N.A. Arrangement: Records of the Washington Office General Records, 1935–1945; Labor, 1937–1939; FLSA, 1938–1939; Needlework, 1938–1941; Centro LAHC.

73. Radiogram Confirmation from Mr. Fairbank to Mrs. Graham, PRRA San Juan to Washington, DC, dated September 25, 1938, Centro No. 162; “The Needlework Industry and Its Crisis in the Year 1938,” report from the Department of Agriculture and Commerce, Division of Commerce, no date, page 3 reference to tariffs with Switzerland and China, Centro No. 155; “Importations of Handkerchiefs into the United States with the Exception of Puerto Rico, Similar and Competitive with Those Produced in Puerto Rico,” dated December 1, 1938, Centro No. 153; Reel #3: Records of the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, Record Group 323: N.A. Arrangement: Records of the Washington Office General Records, 1935–1945; Labor, 1937–1939; FLSA, 1938–1939; Needlework, 1938–1941; Centro LAHC.

74. McConnell, 8.

75. Leaders of the PPD “turned to industrial promotion as the road to Puerto Rico's modernization.” Ayala and Bernabe, 189. For a history of early PPD, see chapter 7 in Ayala and Bernabe; Luis Muñoz Marín, Historia del Partido Popular Democrático (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1984).

76. Tugwell, Stricken Land; Tugwell, “What Next for Puerto Rico?” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 285 Puerto Rico a Study in Democratic Development (January 1953): 147. Ayala and Bernabe, 142–6 and 194-–5; A.W. Maldonado, Teodoro Moscoso and Puerto Rico's Operation Bootstrap (Gainesville, FL, 1997); Dietz, 207–09; Findlay, 9.

77. Ayala and Bernabe, 187–94; Briggs, 111–2; Reinerio Hernandez-Marquez, “The Puerto Rican Industrial Policy Debate of 1940–1947: The Limits of Dependent Colonial Growth,” Berkeley Planning Journal 3, no. 1 (1986): 76–104.

78. Earl P. Stevenson, “‘Scatter Acorns That Oaks May Grow’: Arthur D. Little, Inc., 1886-1953” (New York, 1953); Schmidt, 330; John Magee, “Operations Research at Arthur D. Little, Inc.: The Early Years,” Operations Research 50, no. 1 (2002): 149–53; William Thomas, “Operations Research vis-à-vis Management at Arthur D. Little and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s,” Business History Review 86 (Spring 2012): 99–122.

79. Arthur D. Little, “Report on New Industries for Puerto Rico to the Puerto Rico Development Corporation,” C-57289 (Cambridge, MA, 1942), 1–18, 117–20.

80. Bolin, “What Puerto Rico Faced,” 2; Schmidt, 226–40.

81. Ayala and Bernabe, 189; Dietz, 209–210.

82. For a history of New Deal policies in the South, see Cobb, The Selling of the South.

83. Bolin, “What Puerto Rico Faced,” 1–2. Patrick Neveling, “Export Processing Zones, Special Economic Zones and the Long March of Capitalist Development Policies During the Cold War,” in Decolonization and the Cold War: Negotiating Independence, eds. Leslie James and Elisabeth Leake (London, 2015), 63–84; Ayala and Bernabe, 179–80 and 183–4; Whalen, “Sweatshops Here and There,” 47; Palmira N. Rios, “Export-Oriented Industrialization and the Demand for Female Labor: Puerto Rican Women in the Manufacturing Sector, 1952–1980,” Gender and Society 4, no. 3 (September 1990): 322–4; Dietz, 193–4.

84. “Textron Building Puerto Rican Mill: Planning 5 Others,” New York Times, December 8, 1948, 51.

85. Ayala and Bernabe, 105–06.

86. Briggs, 112.

87. Félix O. Muñiz-Mas, “Gender, Work, and Institutional Change in the Early Stage of Industrialization: The Case of the Women's Bureau and the Home Needlework Industry in Puerto Rico, 1940-1952,” in Puerto Rican Women's History: New Perspectives, eds. Félix O. Muñiz-Mas and Linda C. Delgado (Armonk, NY, 1998), 194–8; Briggs, chapter 4 “Demon Mothers in the Social Laboratory: Development, Overpopulation, and ‘the Pill,’ 1940-1960, 109–41, and chapter 5 “The Politics of Sterilization, 1937–1974, 142–61.

88. Ayala and Bernabe, 180–81; Whalen, “Sweatshops Here and There,” 49–50; New York State Curriculum, 38–40.

89. “Descriptive Summary,” “Historical Note,” and “Agency History,” The Records of the Offices of the Government of Puerto Rico in the United States, 1930–1993 Finding Aide, Archives of the Puerto Rican Diaspora, Centro LAHC.

90. “Howard Clothes,” dated April 20, 1951, Centro No. 266; “Fairway Skirt,” April 2, 1952, Centro No. 213; multiple job orders, Reel 351, Box 2054, Folders 1–24; “Employment Program Staff Meeting,” June 4, 1964, Centro No. 1100; Reel 351, Box 2055, Folders 9–11, in Easy Jobs?: Puerto Rican Employment Program in NY, 1948–1991, Centro LAHC.

91. “Annual Report: To Stockholders, 1953-1969,” American Thread Annual Reports, 1953-1979, Box 1, and “Millworkers of Willimantic, 1979-1980,” Box 45, Center for Oral History Interviews Collection. Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. “Puerto Rican Progress Report,” Bridgeport Post, Aug 20, 1957, clipping, Box 2, Folder 1 Bridgeport—Puerto Ricans, Hispanic Collection, 1961–1989, Ruth Glasser: Research on Puerto Ricans in CT, Connecticut Historical Society; “Conn. Sunbeam Sees Light on Minimums After Quicky Halt,” Justice, 46 issue 7, April 1, 1964, 5. Ruth Glasser, Aquí Me Quedo: Puerto Ricans in Connecticut/Los Puertorriqueños en Connecticut (Middletown, CT, 1997), 93; Eleanor E. Glaessel-Brown, “A Time of Transition: Colombian Textile Workers in Lowell in the 1970s,” in The Continuing Revolution: A History of Lowell, Massachusetts, Robert Weible (ed.) (Lowell, MA, 1991), 348 and 360–61; William Hartford, Working People of Holyoke: Class and Ethnicity in a Massachusetts Mill Town, 1850-1960 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1990), 202–05.

92. Ayala and Bernabe, 190–91. Whalen, “Sweatshops Here and There,” 47–48.

93. Arthur D. Little, Ten-Year Plan for Puerto Rico to Puerto Rico Economic Development Administration, (Cambridge, MA, 1951), iii–vi.

94. Arthur D. Little, Ten-Year Plan, 1–12; Bolin, “What Puerto Rico Faced,” 1–3.

95. Irma Medina, conversation with the author, at residence, Springfield, MA, February 17, 2018; Aracelis Martínez, written interview questions from the author, translated by Irma Medina, Springfield, Massachusetts, February 10, 2018.

96. Medina, conversation, 2018. Carolyn Robbins, “Gemini Prospers in Century-Old Plant,” Springfield Sunday Republican, February 17, 1985, B9; Kevin Claffey, “Clothing Maker Has Jobs, Needs Daycare, Parking Space,” Springfield Daily News, September 1, 1979, 3, clippings, folder SPFD 670-Business, Gemini Corp.; Springfield History Library and Archives, Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History. Richard Rumelt, former ILGWU district manager for western Massachusetts, telephone conversation with the author, notes, March 28, 2019.

97. J.K. Galbraith and Carolyn Shaw Solo, “Puerto Rican Lessons in Economic Development,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 285 Puerto Rico a Study in Democratic Development (January 1953): 55.

98. James P. Davis, “Puerto Rico—Unique Training Ground for Point Four,” in Point Four in Action: Interior Department's Role (Washington, DC, 1951), 34–36. Bolin, “What Puerto Rico Faced,” 2–3; Jong Yoo, “National Planning for Development: The Case of Korea” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1968), 109–17; Rosen, 46–48; Chomsky, 115–6.

99. Rosen, 154; Adler, 207–16; Office of Private Enterprise, International Cooperation Administration, “Foreword,” Arthur D. Little, Report on Ten-Year Plan for Puerto Rico to Puerto Rico Economic Development Administration, (Cambridge, MA, 1951; reprint Washington, DC: International Cooperation Administration, Office of Industrial Resources, 1961).

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101. Edna Bonacich and David V. Waller, “Mapping A Global Industry: Apparel Production in the Pacific Rim Triangle,” in Global Production: The Apparel Industry in the Pacific Rim, Edna Bonacich, Lucie Cheng, Norma Chinchilla, Nora Hamilton, and Paul Ong (eds.) (Philadelphia, PA, 1994), 28–30; Chomsky, 116. Schmidt, 68, 98, 224–6, see 146 and 155 for two of many references to Bolin and Arthur D. Little; Neveling, 72.

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105. For studies of global resistance, see Annelise Orleck, “We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now”: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages (Boston, MA, 2018); Lynn Stephen, Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon (Durham, NC, 2007); Karla Slocum, Free Trade and Freedom: Neoliberalism, Place, and Nation in the Caribbean (Ann Arbor, MI, 2006); Nancy A. Naples and Manisha Desai (eds.), Women's Activism and Globalization: Linking Local Struggles and Transnational Politics (New York, 2002); Deborah Barndt, Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail (Oxford, 2002).

106. “History,” “Influencers,” and “Officers,” WEPZA, accessed July 5, 2017, http://www.wepza.org/history, www.wepza.org/gallery-of-honor/, and www.wepza.org/officers/.

107. “History,” “Influencers,” and “Officers,” WEPZA; Bolin, Director Emeritus, “Why Export Processing Zones are Necessary,” No. 1 Ver. 1.02 (Flagstaff, AZ, 2004); Barbara Emadi-Coffin, Rethinking International Organisation: Deregulation and Global Governance (London, 2002); Etienne L. Nel and Christian M. Rogerson, “Special Economic Zones in South Africa: Reflections from International Debates,” Urban Forum 24 (2013): 205–17.

108. Michael Engman, Osamu Onadera, and Enrico Pinali, “Export Processing Zones: Past and Future Role in Trade and Development,” OECD Trade Policy Working Papers, no. 53, (France, 2006): 5–11.

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