On October 17

On this day in ...
... 1981, María Luisa Arcelay (below left) died of a heart attack 87 years after she'd been born in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. (photo credit) She worked initially as a schoolteacher, and then became a businesswoman, operating needlework shops on the island. She spoke out for the rights of Puerto Rican women there and in New York, and founded a civic and cultural club for women in Mayagüez. In 1932 -- the same year "literate women were allowed to vote" in Puerto Rico -- Arcelay was elected the 1st woman legislator in Latin America. In April 1933 her new colleagues marked her achievement by passing a resolution in her honor and inviting her to preside over the parliamentary proceedings.


(Prior October 17 posts are here and here.)

On August 12

On this day in ...

... 1833 (175 years ago today), Chicago was founded. About 350 people lived in the town, which spanned a 3/8-square-mile area that still is at the heart of the city's Loop. Its name is a Native American word, but its meaning is uncertain -- some say it meant "wild onion" or "skunk"; others, "strong" or "great." Today Chicago (flag above right) -- the 3d largest U.S. city, with a population of 2.8 million living in a 237-square-mile area -- is vying with other cities in the world to host the 2016 Olympic Games.

... 1898 (110 years ago today), at 4:23 p.m., representatives of Spain and the United States signed an armistice ending the Spanish-American War. As part of the agreement, Spain gave up its claim to Cuba, agreed to U.S. occupation of the Philippines, and ceded Puerto Rico and other colonial holdings to the United States. (map credit)

Postcard from Puerto Rico

By the time you read this, I will be lying on a beach in Vieques, Puerto Rico -- no longer the site of U.S. bomb and weapon-testing and responsive protests. What's on my summer reading list? In addition to starting Chanrithy Him's When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up under the Khmer Rouge, a well-regarded memoir of a childhood in the "killing fields" and finishing Suketu Mehta's Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, an engrossing non-fiction investigation of modern Mumbai by an emigrant whose criticism is underpinned by his longing for an idealized India (think V.S. Naipaul, only less self-hating), I hope to get to Christina Duffy Burnett's article Untied States: American Expansion and Territorial Deannexation. This piece explores the Insular Cases, a series of early-20th-century U.S. Supreme Court decisions holding that the Constitution did not “follow the flag” to territories annexed by the United States after the Spanish-American War -- relevant not only to my vacation spot of choice but also to current issues in foreign affairs. Wish you were here!