I’m pleased to have Dr. Marisol LeBrón, an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in race, policing, and political activism in Puerto Rico and U.S. communities of color, and an Assistant Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, on to speak about their book, Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico

Download on Spreaker:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/28366501

Book Description

Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico From UC Press

In her exciting new book, Marisol LeBrón traces the rise of punitive governance in Puerto Rico over the course of the twentieth century and up to the present. Punitive governance emerged as a way for the Puerto Rican state to manage the deep and ongoing crises stemming from the archipelago’s incorporation into the United States as a colonial territory. A structuring component of everyday life for many Puerto Ricans, police power has reinforced social inequality and worsened conditions of vulnerability in marginalized communities.

This book provides powerful examples of how Puerto Ricans negotiate and resist their subjection to increased levels of segregation, criminalization, discrimination, and harm. Policing Life and Deathshows how Puerto Ricans are actively rejecting punitive solutions and working toward alternative understandings of safety and a more just future.

Bio:

Marisol LeBrón is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in race, policing, and political activism in Puerto Rico and U.S. communities of color. She is an Assistant Professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. During the 2019 – 2020 academic year Marisol will serve as       a Faculty Fellow at the Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. She is the author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico, and along with Yarimar Bonilla, she is co-editor of the forthcoming volume, Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm. Marisol is also one of the co-creators of the Puerto Rico Syllabus, a digital resource for understanding the Puerto Rican debt crisis.  conversation with author Dr. Marisol LeBrón