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Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture and the Fictions of Independence
Over the past fifty years, Puerto Rican voters have roundly rejected any calls for national independence. Yet the rhetoric and iconography of independence have been defining features of Puerto Rican literature and culture. In the provocative new book Dream Nation , María Acosta Cruz investigates the roots and effects of this profound disconnect between cultural fantasy and political reality.
Bringing together texts from Puerto Rican literature, history, and popular culture, Dream Nation shows how imaginings of national independence have served many competing purposes. They have given authority to the island’s literary and artistic establishment but have also been a badge of countercultural cool. These ideas have been fueled both by nostalgia for an imagined past and by yearning for a better future. They have fostered local communities on the island, and still helped define Puerto Rican identity within U.S. Latino culture.
In clear, accessible prose, Acosta Cruz takes us on a journey from the 1898 annexation of Puerto Rico to the elections of 2012, stopping at many cultural touchstones along the way, from the canonical literature of the Generación del 30 to the rap music of Tego Calderón. Dream Nation thus serves both as a testament to how stories, symbols, and heroes of independence have inspired the Puerto Rican imagination and as an urgent warning about how this culture has become detached from the everyday concerns of the island’s people.
A volume in the American Literature Initiatives series
Bringing together texts from Puerto Rican literature, history, and popular culture, Dream Nation shows how imaginings of national independence have served many competing purposes. They have given authority to the island’s literary and artistic establishment but have also been a badge of countercultural cool. These ideas have been fueled both by nostalgia for an imagined past and by yearning for a better future. They have fostered local communities on the island, and still helped define Puerto Rican identity within U.S. Latino culture.
In clear, accessible prose, Acosta Cruz takes us on a journey from the 1898 annexation of Puerto Rico to the elections of 2012, stopping at many cultural touchstones along the way, from the canonical literature of the Generación del 30 to the rap music of Tego Calderón. Dream Nation thus serves both as a testament to how stories, symbols, and heroes of independence have inspired the Puerto Rican imagination and as an urgent warning about how this culture has become detached from the everyday concerns of the island’s people.
A volume in the American Literature Initiatives series
222 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 16, 2022
Literary scholar María Acosta Cruz seeks to examine what she identifies as the over-representation of nationalist, pro-independence tropes in Puerto Rican artistic and cultural production, especially in relation to electoral politics in the archipelago throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Exposing a quite stoic, one-dimensional understanding of nationalism, Acosta Cruz berates Puerto Rican authors who romanticize what she vexingly coins as the “dream nation” and the “Lush Land” in their fiction.
Political disagreements aside, I think this book could've delivered a solid academic achievement: the author seeks to explore & juxtapose the preponderance of patriotic allegories and themes with a declining electoral support for independence as a status alternative in Puerto Rico election year after election year. This could've been insightful; instead, the author eschews critical inquiry altogether & instead compiles examples of pro-independence allegories in PRican literature rather unsystematically, complaining alá Bill Maher throughout. No reason is provided as to why these "tropes" are there besides the author just being an elitist independentista, and, very patronizingly, because of independentismo's countercultural allure and "coolness" for the youth: an appeal on its edginess, a parroting of Calle 13 and Tego Calderón’s nationalist rap/reguetón lyrics, characterizing pro-independence sentiment as immatureness & naïveté.
Did the author contextualize or examine anthropologically what "coolness" looks like in Puerto Rico? Why would it have such a hold on people? Or why exactly would it be alluring? Nah. That would entail being a little bit critical, and this is not that kind of book. Beyond a brief exploration on the Caribbean's need for heroes in relation to the region's dubious sovereignty (this could've been interesting to explore further!), we get nothing.
And yes, I'm writing about this for my dissertation. I'll keep ranting over at the word doc, ttyl
Political disagreements aside, I think this book could've delivered a solid academic achievement: the author seeks to explore & juxtapose the preponderance of patriotic allegories and themes with a declining electoral support for independence as a status alternative in Puerto Rico election year after election year. This could've been insightful; instead, the author eschews critical inquiry altogether & instead compiles examples of pro-independence allegories in PRican literature rather unsystematically, complaining alá Bill Maher throughout. No reason is provided as to why these "tropes" are there besides the author just being an elitist independentista, and, very patronizingly, because of independentismo's countercultural allure and "coolness" for the youth: an appeal on its edginess, a parroting of Calle 13 and Tego Calderón’s nationalist rap/reguetón lyrics, characterizing pro-independence sentiment as immatureness & naïveté.
Did the author contextualize or examine anthropologically what "coolness" looks like in Puerto Rico? Why would it have such a hold on people? Or why exactly would it be alluring? Nah. That would entail being a little bit critical, and this is not that kind of book. Beyond a brief exploration on the Caribbean's need for heroes in relation to the region's dubious sovereignty (this could've been interesting to explore further!), we get nothing.
And yes, I'm writing about this for my dissertation. I'll keep ranting over at the word doc, ttyl
December 15, 2017
Edging on a pro-statehood propagandistic tantrum, the main thesis of the book is that a "majority" of Puerto Ricans have rejected independence so writers shouldn't be writing about it anymore. The introduction makes the dubious case that a "majority" of Puerto Ricans rejected independence electorally, by voting for a one of the two parties that has held power in Puerto Rico for the past fifty years or so, both of which are pro-U.S. (statehood and status quo). The author herself admits that this is not a reliable way to assess Puerto Ricans' views on or desire for independence, so she turns to the most recent referendums on status. She fails to account for the fact that the referendum was designed by the pro-statehood party then in power, so 30% of eligible voters protested the election by not voting and another 30% who did vote left their ballots blank on the important second question that was supposed to determine the will of the people for independence, statehood, or status quo.
Her biased and cherry-picked analysis fails to prove her premise that a "majority" of Puerto Ricans reject independence. (And she never specifies either who counts here: Puerto Ricans living on the island during the time of an election aka those eligible to vote? Puerto Ricans living in the diaspora? Second- and third-generation Puerto Ricans living in the diaspora? She doesn't say.) She at least acknowledges her agenda by saying clearly that she is pro-statehood (unsurprisingliy, as she is a cis het white tenured professor living in Massachusetts).
What's more infuriating for readers is not the skewed statistics and barely-hidden agenda, it's the way it manifests in her language. At times she sounds like a Fox News reporter, claiming that the scholars who consider the colonial context part of the relevant analysis for why Puerto Ricans vote the way they do must be calling Puerto Ricans "dupes" and "docile" and "vicitms." In fact, the emphasis on the language of victimization, shame, and blame is heartbreakingly familiar; and her attempts to put that language into her ideological opponents' mouths is the kind of rhetorical projection that critical readers are familiar with from ultra-conservative media outlets. She is exposing herself as someone who feels this way, likely about herself and by projection about other Puerto Ricans.
She claims that images and stories of independence "validate the better side of the nations self-image and hide the same of dependancy." I would say that shame of dependency only pertains to those who are actively benefiting from and complicit in that dependency (like the author); not those who are fighting it -- we feel anger, not shame.
The manipulative rhetoric continues throughout, including some choice moments like: "The swirl of creativity and controversy evident on display around the rights of marginalized people ... are a reason that la lucha remains a vital presence on the island's culture scene." And later "The chapter also explores how newer generations of writers (including fashionable so-called minorities such as the LGBT contingent)..." Her clearly conservative, anti-civil rights agenda, despite her best efforts, leaks through into the language. She doesn't know how to talk about people as deserving of basic human rights, and the fight for those rights as important even in the face of defeat, and that sadly extends to her view of Puerto Ricans.
The most valuable thing about this book is the list of writers at the back who are independentistas. Reminiscent of a kind of black-list, perhaps compiled to give readers a list of writers to avoid, this list is quite valuable for a reader interested in knowing who the significant contemporary Puerto Rican writers are, at least those who are not interested in producing propaganda for U.S. interests.
It terrifies me to think that this book was published by a respected university press, and that it is potentially being uncritically taught by people less familiar with Puerto Rico than I am. Read with extreme caution.
Her biased and cherry-picked analysis fails to prove her premise that a "majority" of Puerto Ricans reject independence. (And she never specifies either who counts here: Puerto Ricans living on the island during the time of an election aka those eligible to vote? Puerto Ricans living in the diaspora? Second- and third-generation Puerto Ricans living in the diaspora? She doesn't say.) She at least acknowledges her agenda by saying clearly that she is pro-statehood (unsurprisingliy, as she is a cis het white tenured professor living in Massachusetts).
What's more infuriating for readers is not the skewed statistics and barely-hidden agenda, it's the way it manifests in her language. At times she sounds like a Fox News reporter, claiming that the scholars who consider the colonial context part of the relevant analysis for why Puerto Ricans vote the way they do must be calling Puerto Ricans "dupes" and "docile" and "vicitms." In fact, the emphasis on the language of victimization, shame, and blame is heartbreakingly familiar; and her attempts to put that language into her ideological opponents' mouths is the kind of rhetorical projection that critical readers are familiar with from ultra-conservative media outlets. She is exposing herself as someone who feels this way, likely about herself and by projection about other Puerto Ricans.
She claims that images and stories of independence "validate the better side of the nations self-image and hide the same of dependancy." I would say that shame of dependency only pertains to those who are actively benefiting from and complicit in that dependency (like the author); not those who are fighting it -- we feel anger, not shame.
The manipulative rhetoric continues throughout, including some choice moments like: "The swirl of creativity and controversy evident on display around the rights of marginalized people ... are a reason that la lucha remains a vital presence on the island's culture scene." And later "The chapter also explores how newer generations of writers (including fashionable so-called minorities such as the LGBT contingent)..." Her clearly conservative, anti-civil rights agenda, despite her best efforts, leaks through into the language. She doesn't know how to talk about people as deserving of basic human rights, and the fight for those rights as important even in the face of defeat, and that sadly extends to her view of Puerto Ricans.
The most valuable thing about this book is the list of writers at the back who are independentistas. Reminiscent of a kind of black-list, perhaps compiled to give readers a list of writers to avoid, this list is quite valuable for a reader interested in knowing who the significant contemporary Puerto Rican writers are, at least those who are not interested in producing propaganda for U.S. interests.
It terrifies me to think that this book was published by a respected university press, and that it is potentially being uncritically taught by people less familiar with Puerto Rico than I am. Read with extreme caution.
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