HISTORICAL IMAGES OF PUERTO RICANS: THE CASE OF THE SOUTH BRONX.

This paper was presented in a special session in the American Anthropology Association's 108th Annual Meeting in December 2009 in honor of Dr. Antonio Lauria-Perricelli. It is a research study that explored how a moral panic discourse in the 1970s shaped a public perception of the lower Bronx in New York City, and it examined how media stereotypes of blighted neighborhoods in the Bronx were reworked in social actors' perceptions of local poverty, race, and crime. The Bronx' mediated reputation was analyzed in the context of recent reforms in community policing. These reforms influenced a local discourse on social control and city authority that was infused with media stereotypes of Bronx residents. [media stereotypes, poverty, crime, Bronx, discourse] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]