ABSTRACT
A Hispanic Caribbean, racially mixed colony; a colonial U.S. jurisdiction, with greater poverty and inequality than the federal states; and at the crossroads between the North and Latin America, Puerto Rico is an interesting arena to explore the intersections of gender, class, race, sexuality and nationality that have characterized recent trends in women’s mobilization and have been revealed by the latest feminist post-structural, postmodern, and postcolonial theorizing. In the context of its relationship to U.S. feminism, Puerto Rican feminist mobilization and feminist studies led those in other Latin American and Caribbean countries in its second wave movement emerging in the 1970s. Yet, even when the Island’s stunted development has framed a focus on class inequalities, especially with regard to women’s employment and poverty, it was only in the 1990s that other differences such as race and sexualities were addressed as notable bases for activism and analyses. In addition, issues of gender and their relation to the state and nationality must be deepened in a context of regional and transnational integration.
