Historia de Puerto Rico

Ever since Paul G. Miller’s Historia de Puerto Rico (1939) went out of print, the secondary schools have lacked a text in Puerto Rican history. Vivas’ Historia was issued originally in mimeographed form in 1957 when the author was an instructor at Colegio San José, a parochial school in Río Piedras. It first appeared in print in 1960, and the second edition is a reprint of the first edition, to which an expanded index of proper names has been added at the expense of eliminating the bibliography which appeared in the first edition. Like Miller, Vivas is an educator rather than a historian, and both books are based on secondary sources. The last “historian’s history” was Salvador Brau’s (1904). As Vivas points out, “la historia oficial de Puerto Rico está aún por venir.” For all its good intentions Vivas’ Historia is not a satisfactory substitute for an updated Miller. The format and illustrations of Miller are much more attractive. Vivas is shorter in length, and its forty-page appendix is chiefly made up of material too specialized for high school students or too likely to pass out of date rapidly. The Ejercicios following each chapter are largely unimaginative memory exercises. The many typographical errors undermine the reliability of the book and require the user to cheek specific facts against outside sources. Taken as a whole this book is probably a satisfactory civics text, for political history receives predominant emphasis. In the absence of any other recent history of Puerto Rico, Vivas is useful for general reference within the limitations stated above.