The narrative of the disappearing smallholder was conspicuous in Puerto Rico among intellectuals, political parties, and the agricultural producers’ associations. It also became entrenched in scholarship through the vast influence exercised on the historiography by a number of publications, most notably the works of Baily and Justine Diffie and of Esteban Bird in the 1930s. The literature highlighting the power of the Sugar and Tobacco Trusts has likewise been influential, and has contributed to create a view of extraordinary concentration of landownership at one extreme and rural dispossession at the other following the 1898 takeover of the island by the United States.