Global Issues Colloquium: Trans Latin American Revolutionary Solidarity with the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in the 1950s and beyond

Speaker: Margaret Power, Professor of History, Illinois Institute of Technology

Abstract: This presentation will use the stories of Carlos Padilla and Rosa Meneses, two members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party (PRNP), to examine three issues related to Puerto Rico and Latin America in the 1950s. First, the PRPN worked with revolutionary forces throughout the Americas to further the twin goals of freeing all Nationalist political prisoners and securing solidarity with Puerto Rican independence. Second, they were part of trans Latin American anti-imperialist and exile networks that supported each other, worked together, and shared ideas and resources to further their national struggle as well as those of other Latin Americans. Third, their histories reveal an impressive level of solidarity that Latin American revolutionaries, progressives, and nationalists expressed with Puerto Rico in general and the Nationalist Party and Nationalist political prisoners during the 1950s and beyond. The issues this presentation addresses largely occurred prior to the 1959 Cuban revolution, but they provide insight into the revolutionary currents that existed throughout Latin America in the pivotal decade leading up to it.