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Oscar Lewis's 1966 ethnography, La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty, New York and San Juan, ignited an intense debate between Puerto Rican intellectuals. Autonomists called the book an affront to the Puerto Rican nation. Nationalists interpreted it as proof of the debilitating effects of American imperialism. [Key words: Lewis, Oscar; Nationalism, Puerto Rico; Vientos Gastón, Nilita; Maldonado-Denis, Manuel; Andreu Iglesias, César; Muñoz Lee, Muna]
"The data we have on the [Ríos] family and other families can only be understood in the light of Puerto Rican history and it seems to me that it is an unusually sad history, a history of isolation and abandonment, a history with few glorious moments."
(oscar lewis to muna muñoz lee, 1965)
Oscar lewis and la vida do not hold a place of honor in puerto rican scholarship. Lewis's 1966 ethnography of a family of prostitutes from the notorious slum of La Perla in San Juan, Puerto Rico became a New York Times bestseller and won the National Book Award for non-fiction, but it also provoked strong reactions against it, in 1966 and afterwards. There is more to the story, however. La Vida sparked a debate amongst Puerto Rican intellectuals about the nature of Puerto Rican national identity, the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, and the meaning of Puerto Rican history. Puerto Rican autonomist leaders criticized La Vida for its stunted interpretation of Puerto Rican history and because they feared the book would perpetuate negative stereotypes of Puerto Ricans. Nationalist intellectuals, however, lauded La Vida. Drawing upon ideas from Frantz Fanon, Karl Marx, and Fidel Castro, Puerto Rican nationalists and Lewis used La Vida to document what they saw as the degradation of Puerto Rican national culture caused by American imperialism in the Caribbean.
Building upon years of studies in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and India, Lewis developed a theory that some of the desperately poor in capitalist societies around the world shared a common culture that transcended national boundaries. The culture manifested in family structure and relationships, psychology and personality, and in the relationship between the poor and the larger communities in which they lived. He called this the culture (or sometimes the subculture) of poverty. People living...