This book is an insightful and sympathetic view of the turn-of-the-century Puerto Rican peasantry and landless population. According to Rosa E. Carrasquillo, colonial policies promoted “land privatization,” namely the formalization of land titles, particularly after the 1880 Mortgage Law. Predictably, land title requirements intensified along with the need to avoid the possibility that former slaves emancipated in the 1873 – 76 process of abolition would find informal access to a plot of land. She bases her interpretation on a seminal article by Juan Giusti and Michel Godreau that states the importance of the Mortgage Law of 1880 and a similar set of regulations of 1884. These dispositions left the initiative of claiming property title to individuals interested in putting land to productive use. Unevenly enforced, the principle of productive use of land had determined ownership since the eighteenth century, throughout the series of export booms and busts that the island...

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