José Juan Arrom (February 28, 1910 - April 12, 2007) was a leading authority on Latin American cultural studies and a pioneer in shaping the field in the United States at a time when most Spanish departments mainly taught about peninsular Spain.
[3] He initially emigrated to the United States in 1928, returned to Cuba in 1930, and then moved back to the US permanently in 1932, where he later attended the Mount Herman School in Northfield, Massachusetts.
Rolena Adorno praised him as "one of the true founders" of Yale's Department of Spanish and Portuguese and explained that "his contributions to the history of Latin American literature form part of the permanent record of the development of our discipline.
"[7] Arrom also lectured over the summers at the Universidad de La Habana (1946), at the Instituto Caro y Cuervo in Colombia (1960), and the University of Arizona (1960), amongst other institutions.
[8] Arrom has written more than a dozen books and numerous scholarly articles exploring a wide range of subjects and time periods.
His studies of the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (Our Lady of Charity) and of the origin and meaning of the term criollo are now classics, and have been reproduced many times.