De títeres a ciudadanos: las representaciones de "los niños de la calle" y el deseo de gobernar (Puerto Rico, 1860-1920)

Abstract

This essay explores some of the ways in which street children were characterized in Puerto Rico during the 1880s and the 1920s. The representations of those children as títeres (scalawag), vagabonds, rascals, abandoned, or delinquents were part of a complex set of characterizations devised during this period as a technique to intervene, mold and govern children and their families. The street became a contested ground in which a disciplinary discourse was deployed in order to transform children into "citizens". In contrast to other studies on children and childhood, which present social-reform campaigns as means to exercise social control of the working classes or subaltern groups, I will strive to demonstrate that the relative success or failures of this campaigns depended on the participation of parents, neighbors, and even children in the development of a modern, hygienic and moralizing discourse that envisioned a better future for oneself, the family, the society and the Nation.

URI: https://dire.upr.edu/handle/11721/1012