The epic battle between Muñoz Marín and Albizu in the fifties transformed Puerto Rican society, but it barely registered elsewhere. If mainlanders think about Puerto Rican history in that period at all, the image that comes to their mind is an entirely different one: juvenile delinquency. Young Puerto Ricans didn’t actually commit many crimes in the postwar period. The evidence suggests that they misbehaved less than other New Yorkers. But as Puerto Ricans poured in from the island, the tabloid press trumpeted sensational tales of their malfeasance. Journalists who had had conspicuously little
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