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Will Puerto Rico become a state? For one political science professor, it’s a personal question

Amílcar Antonio Barreto’s political education began in his grandfather’s ice cream parlor in Puerto Rico. Now, he brings his passion for his home country’s complicated politics to studying global nationalism.


Head shot of Amílcar Antonio Barreto in front of the flag of Puerto Rico
Illustration by Zach Christensen/Northeastern University. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

Amílcar Antonio Barreto’s political education began in his grandfather’s ice cream parlor.

That’s not on his CV. Officially, Barreto’s political education began at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico in San Juan. But once a month, while he was in college, Barreto would head to the little town of Lares, the cradle of the island’s independence movement.

Barreto’s paternal grandfather, an activist for Puerto Rican independence, operated an ice cream parlor on Lares’ central square. He plastered the parlor’s walls with pro-independence posters and pictures, including one of the revolutionary leader Pedro Albizu Campos.

“It was like a micro Puerto Rican pro-independence Disneyland,” recalls Barreto. 

The ice cream parlor was also known island-wide for its bizarre flavors: corn, rice and beans, pigeon pea, lobster. 

“He got into trouble with Puerto Rico’s internal revenue [service] because his rum raisin was basically liquid,” Barreto says. “People were enjoying themselves a bit too much with it.” Barreto’s favorite flavor—much more common in Puerto Rico—was parcha (passion fruit).

Barreto has relatives on all sides of Puerto Rican politics. His paternal grandmother (his grandfather’s ex-wife) was pro-commonwealth, in favor of Puerto Rico remaining a U.S. territory. She’d rebelled against her own father’s pro-statehood politics. 

But in spirit, at least, the longtime Northeastern University political science professor takes more after his radical grandfather. From him, Barreto inherited a passionate critique of the status quo for Puerto Rico, the largest territory in the U.S. and home to 3 million people.

“Puerto Rico is in its worst crisis since the Great Depression,” Barreto said at a November 2022 talk on Northeastern’s Boston campus with Juan Dalmau, the Puerto Rican Independence Party’s most recent candidate for governor. “Economic decline, social unrest, and brain drain are now the order of the day.”

Barreto is often quoted in the press about debates over Puerto Rican statehood (he thinks it’s unlikely) and known on the Boston campus for his popular course on nationalism. And he’s got three book projects in motion: one on Christian nationalism in the U.S., one on the rise of the alt-right, and one on what he calls Puerto Rico’s “golden half-century,” from the 1940s to the 1990s. He argues that the U.S. government cared more about Puerto Rico then than it does today.

“It’s going to be painful,” he says of writing the latter. “And I may have certain relatives that won’t speak to me anymore.” 

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