Diversity Award: The Puerto Rico Citizenship Archives Project

The Puerto Rico Citizenship Archives Project (PRCAP) is a 2019 recipient of the Diversity Award given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The award recognizes outstanding contributions in advancing diversity within the archives profession, SAA, or the archival record.

A collaboration between University of Connecticut (UCONN) teaching faculty and UCONN Library, PRCAP is a digital repository that highlights the historical process of the granting of US citizenship to Puerto Ricans. The PRCAP offers an innovative window to discover and understand the complicated political history between the United States and Puerto Rico and aims to shed light on the lesser known historical record of citizens from US territories. The digital repository serves as a powerful tool to promote much-needed scholarship on the subject of US citizenship and its territories as well as to facilitate research on this important topic for the people of Puerto Rico and the public. The project allows the public an opportunity to see the original documents that were previously difficult to access in one space and creates a historical context for the current experience of Puerto Ricans as second-class citizens.

One of PRCAP’s supporters notes that PRCAP has “unquestionable value as an educational tool for schools and universities, providing free access to the digitized version of all more than one hundred years worth of records that document the critical and sensitive discussions of the benefits, requirements and limitations attached to a ‘granted’ citizenship in all its iterations.”