Buena Vista: Life and Work on a Puerto Rican Hacienda, 1833-1904. GUILLERMO BARALT: Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Abstract

This monograph is the English translation of Guillermo Baralt's La Buena Vista: Estancia de frutos menores, fábrica de harinas, y hacienda cafetalera, originally published in Puerto Rico in 1988. The translation was facilitated by the Association of Caribbean Historians after Baralt's book won the Elsa Goveia Prize for best book in Caribbean history in 1992. La Buena Vista is the story of the transformation of a 'truck farm' (estancia) selling fruits for the local market in Ponce in the 1830s into a coffee hacienda producing for the international market by the close of the century. It is also the story of the owners of the hacienda, the Vives family.