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Silencing Race provides a historical analysis of the construction of silences surrounding issues of racial inequality, violence, and discrimination in Puerto Rico. Examining the ongoing racialization of Puerto Rican workers, it explores the ´class-making´ of race.

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Racial (Dis)Harmony in Puerto Rico PART I Slavery and the Multi-Racial-Racially Mixed Laboring Classes Becoming a Free Worker in Post-Emancipation Puerto Rico Liberal Elites´ Writings: The Racial Dissection of the Puerto Rican Specimen Race and Social Struggles in the Restructuring of Late-Nineteenth Century Ponce PART II Changing Empires US Rule and the Volatile Topic of Race in the Public Political Sphere Racial Silencing and the Organizing of Puerto Rican Labor Deflecting Puerto Rico´s Blackness The Heavy Weight of Silence

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Winner of the 2014 Puerto Rican Studies Association´s Frank Bonilla Book Award

"From former slaves´ murmurs of discomfiture to the loquacious assertions of powerful men, this book listens hard to conversations about race. It resonates in multiple registers, forcing readers to pay attention not just to what people say, but to what they don´t say. Rodriguez-Silva has transformed Puerto Rican history." - Alejandra Bronfman, University of British Columbia

"Ileana Rodríguez-Silva has produced a masterful account of racial formation in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Puerto Rico and its connections with slavery, emancipation, gender, and colonialism. Her multilayered analysis of the ´silences´ surrounding everyday forms of racialization is original, fascinating, and persuasive." - Carlos Aguirre, University of Oregon

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Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva is an assistant professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at the University of Washington.

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