Dr. Antonio Sotomayor, Ph.D.
Familia y poder en Puerto Rico: los Sotomayor y sus parentelas entre los siglos XVI y XVIII.
San Juan, Puerto Rico: Editorial Luscinia, C.E., 2025
My 2025 book, Familia y poder en Puerto Rico, documents the ways in which genealogy can be used to study the reproduction of power in early Spanish Puerto Rico. Please read a summary of this book in English at The Gentle Fellowship of the Pelican in her Piety.
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The following is my translation of a book review by Periódico El Adoquín, 27 de diciembre de 2025 (San Juan, Puerto Rico)
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"In Familia y poder en Puerto Rico: Los Sotomayor y sus parentelas entre los siglos XVI y XVIII (Editorial Luscinia C.E.), Dr. Antonio Sotomayor Carlo takes the reader on a clear and well-documented journey through more than two hundred years of family history. Through this study, he shows how a family integrated itself into and influenced the social and political development of Puerto Rico. The book begins with a central figure: Doña Isabel de Sotomayor, born in San Juan in the mid-16th century, heir to a noble tradition linked to the first conquerors of the island.
Her marriage to Captain Pedro Mexía Benítez de Lugo—another lineage connected to the founders from Tenerife—serves as a starting point for an analysis that, far from being limited to genealogy, illuminates the structural background of Puerto Rican society at the time.
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Through the analysis of marriage dispensations, Sotomayor Carlo identifies three key patterns: the use of maternal surnames, the concentration of public and military positions within the same family group, and the frequent practice of marriages between relatives. These elements, presented with documentary evidence and a critical perspective, show how the colonial elites maintained and protected their power. The author explains that these practices did not arise by chance, but rather stemmed from social models inherited from the Iberian Peninsula. In this way, the book highlights the importance of family studies in understanding the political and social life of the Caribbean during the Modern Era. The Los Sotomayor y sus parentelas thus presents itself as an essential work for understanding the origins of the colonial order in Puerto Rico and the role that family networks played in its history."