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The Puerto Rican Diaspora

Puerto rican photographer frank espada documents more than 20 years of puerto rican life off the island in his book, the puerto rican diaspora.

The Puerto Rican Diaspora Documentary Project was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1979 to 1981. It proposed to document the dispersal of the Puerto Ricans throughout the mainland and Hawaii. It is a long story, beginning at the turn of the century, when the Hawaii Sugar Planters Association recruited over 5,000 Puerto Ricans to work the sugar cane fields of Hawaii after a major storm devastated the island in 1899.
Since then, more than 3 million have been forced to emigrate, seeking jobs and a better life for their children, leaving an island with a broken economy, unable to sustain its people. The project, the first of its kind, documented—with photographs and more than 140 interviews—more than 35 Puerto Rican communities throughout the mainland and Hawaii, culminating in the story of some of those who, tired of their constant struggle to survive, decided to return to their beloved island.
It is a story fraught with the everyday lives of a people that have often been treated as third-class “citizens,” with all of the attendant hardships this implies. But it is more than one of pain and worry, for among us are hard-nosed heroes who have dedicated their lives to improving our situation.
It is also about our ability to preserve our culture: language, food, music, and, most important, our dedication to our families, in spite of the prejudice, racism and marginalization we are victims of.
The resulting book, The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Themes in the Survival of a People, though containing over 230 images, can only scratch the surface of a community in a constant state of flux. We hope we have given them voice, and the respect they so richly deserve, and that we have given the general public a short lesson in our history in this country.