Archiving Pedro Albizu Campos with Prof. Efraín Agosto and historian Jorell Meléndez-Badillo

What can we learn about Puerto Rican history from the political, cultural, and religious motivations behind the work of Pedro Albizu Campos, known as the “Apostle of Puerto Rican Independence”? 

In this conversation, theologian Efrain Agosto will present archival materials from his research on the life and work of Albizu Campos: as an Afro-Puerto Rican law student at Harvard in the 1920s, as a Nationalist Party leader in the 1930s, his arrest and imprisonment in Atlanta and New York City in the 1940s, and his return to Puerto Rico in 1947, culminating in the Nationalist uprising in 1950 and his subsequent longtime imprisonment. 

Today, the legacy of Albizu Campos lives on in the work of many scholars, activists, and artists. Prof. Agosto will be in conversation with historian Jorell Melendez-Badillo, author of the highly acclaimed Puerto Rico: A National History (Princeton University Press, 2024), which informed the historical elements of Bad Bunny’s hit album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (Rimas Entertainment, 2025). The discussion will touch on Prof. Agosto’s research findings and their relation to Puerto Rico’s current status, as well as perspectives from the Puerto Rican diaspora.

Efraín Agosto is the Bennett Boskey Distinguished Visiting Professor in Latina/o Studies at Williams College and co-editor of Latinxs, the Bible, and Migration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
Jorell Meléndez-Badillo is Assistant Professor of Latin American and Caribbean History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of The Lettered Barriada: Workers, Archival Power, and the Politics of Knowledge in Puerto Rico (Duke University Press, Nov. 2021).

Image: Pedro Albizu Campos raises his hat to a crowd during his “apostolic” tour of Latin America, c. 1936.

This event is sponsored by the Latina/o Studies Program at Williams College.