Latin-American Studies

Puerto Rico has the highest incidence of female sterilization in the world. Over one-third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age have been sterilized. So common is the operation that it is simply known as ‘la operacion.' Using newsreels and excerpts from government propaganda films, plus interviews with Puerto Rican women, doctors, birth control specialists and politicians, this film explores the controversial use of sterilization as a means of population control.

Dramatizes the life and work of Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922), a Puerto Rican journalist, writer, suffragist, and labor organizer.

Examines the U.S. Navy's control and use of Vieques, a satellite island and municipality of Puerto Rico, as a military training, exercise and deployment base.

Examines the centuries-old tradition in Puerto Rico of using hand-carved santos in Catholic religious practices. The film visits an elderly santero (carver) and his teenage apprentice, revealing the skill and artistry of this ancient craft as well as the importance of the saints in the lives of the faithful.

Surveys the activities of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party in the 1950s, including the background to the shooting incident in the U.S. Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists in March 1954, and the contributions of the movement's leading figure, Don Pedro Albizu Campos.

Examines the history and present-day reality of Puerto Rico, including the history and the contemporary relationship between the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the U.S.; the impact of industrialization on the island's economy, ecology and social life; economic exile and life in New York City; and the history of the Puerto Rican independence movement.

Examines Puerto Rico's `Operation Bootstrap,' the highly vaunted economic development plan undertaken in the 1950s to provide a role model for economic development throughout Latin America.

Chronicles the life stories of four individuals from New York's Puerto Rican community, each of whom has attempted to assimilate to life in America, but who also maintain strong ties to their cultural heritage.

This documentary, featuring interviews with industrialists, economics, and government officials, analyzes the economic development of Puerto Rico, from 1940 through 1994, including the impact of NAFTA on the Commonwealth's economy.

This short drama portrays the efforts of a young woman photographer to uncover the fragmentary and little-known history of an early nineteenth-century Puerto Rican feminist and political activist who was deported for her nationalist beliefs by the Spanish colonial government of the era.

An investigative (but frequently humorous) documentary on the surveillance activities of the New York City Police Department's Bureau of Special Services, known as the Red Squad.

Chronicles the history and contemporary lifestyle of the Carib Indians who dominated the West Indies centuries before the arrival of Columbus, but whose sole survivors today number less than 3,000 farmers and fishermen on a small reservation on Dominica.