Jorell A. Meléndez-Badillo explores how uneducated obreros ilustrados (enlightened workingmen) carved out leading roles in the Puerto Rican labor movement in the first decades of the twentieth century. He shows how those affiliated with the Federación Libre de Trabajadores (FLT) and the Socialist Party gained important positions and power in organized campaigns, creating their own story by using their “archival knowledge” to paint the picture of the workers’ struggle.
First, however, they had to prove their intellectual worthiness. Because most lacked traditional (or elite) qualifications such as academic backgrounds to justify their “intellectual production,” they used “experience” to earn credibility and substantiate claims. To do this, however, they had to distinguish themselves from the laboring masses. They portrayed themselves as the “enlightened” who would guide their less educated and uninformed brothers to respectable citizenship. In the end, though many obreros ilustrados rose in status and were recognized as notable politicians and statesmen, the traditional elite never accepted them as cultural or intellectual equals.
Meléndez-Badillo starts the narrative in the late nineteenth century with the launching of the newspaper Ensayo Obrero, which was commonly referred to as the “organ of the working class.” This newspaper was one among many forms of print media, including anarchist publications from Europe and the United States, used to spread the labor cause. Because of the editors’ close ties to the FLT (affiliated with the American Federation of Labor), and the Socialist Party, the newspaper reeked of Eurocentrism, and it was through this tinted lens that the Puerto Rican labor movement grew and formed its “imagined global community.”
In addition to print media, centros (social and intellectual spaces where workers would read and share ideas) and mítines (public spaces where speeches were made and print material circulated) disseminated labor propaganda. These sites were integral to the movement, for it was here that the rank and file were exposed to national and international ideas and had opportunities to debate labor issues. While serving as fertile grounds to discuss worker rights, cultivate support, and construct an elusive global community, the centros and mítines also reproduced the false narrative of the obreros ilustrados and acted to counter opposing views.
Meléndez-Badillo further argues that because Eurocentric conceptions of the world dominated the movement and because the obreros ilustrados determined what and who would be deemed important and legitimate—“dignified workingmen” or “slackers and miserables”—Blacks and women were rendered invisible and intentionally omitted from the “archival knowledge.” He theorizes that even though both groups were recognized as labor organizers, they threatened, whether directly or by their mere presence, the power and control of the obreros ilustrados.
By the 1930s, the Socialist Party and the FLT had become less relevant. Meléndez-Badillo concludes that not only internal and external worker tensions but also other events, such as the 1933 student strike and the rise of a new generation of labor organizers, contributed to the dwindling influence of these national and international institutions. Nevertheless, the impact of the obreros ilustrados can be seen in the historical and cultural legacy of the movement well into the mid twentieth century, according to Meléndez-Badillo.
Weaving together a plethora of print and archival sources, Meléndez-Badillo uncovers the voices of those often left out of history books, telling the story of the uneducated worker. He convincingly argues that the leaders of the obreros ilustrados shaped the direction of the Puerto Rican labor movement and its historical narrative to include those they perceived as significant actors in the labor campaign and exclude those they did not. Though Meléndez-Badillo vividly portrays national and international worker activities and institutional interactions, the story falls short when it comes to the Black worker. Though there are bits and pieces, perhaps due to a lack of sources, a fuller account of their involvement and voices would have illuminated this otherwise meticulously detailed and compelling narrative.
