Ortiz Díaz on Lebrón, 'Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico'
H-LatAm Ortiz Díaz on LeBrón, 'Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico' Review published on Monday, July 27, 2020 Marisol LeBrón. Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019. xv + 301 pp. $29.95 (paper),ISBN 978-0-520-30017-0. Reviewed by Alberto Ortiz Díaz (University of Iowa)Published on H-LatAm (July, 2020) Commissioned by Casey M. Lurtz (Johns Hopkins University) Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=54245 In recent years, scholars across fields have developed a rich literature on policing in the United States, and increasingly, the world over. Historians, social scientists, activists, and others are interrogating the violence of the carceral state along racial, class, gendered, immigration status, and political lines at an exponential rate. The growth of this scholarship reflects the urgency of our times, namely massive protests unfolding in the US and elsewhere in response to racialized police and broader structural violence. Marisol LeBrón’s gripping book, Policing Life and Death, traces the rise and excesses of punitive governance in contemporary Puerto Rico, and powerfully contributes to the burgeoning scholarship on policing and state violence. Policing Life and Death is an ambitious study about how different constituencies—including housing project residents, rappers, university students, community activists, and others—have narrated racialized policing and attempted to problem-solve policing inequalities. LeBrón argues that “punitive governance has left an indelible mark on how life and death are understood and experienced in Puerto Rico and has done so in a way that reinforces societal inequality along lines of race, class, spatial location, gender, sexuality, and citizenship status” (p.
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