Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History since 1898

THIRTEEN: Economic Stagnation and Political Deadlock, 1976–1992

NEONATIONALISM, POSTMODERNISM, AND OTHER DEBATES A brief overview of the Puerto Rican literary and cultural landscape since the late 19803 cannot do justice to the many individual contributions and debates that have shaped it. What we can do here is sketch a map locating the main tendencies, touching on some interventions, without in anyway implying they are the only significant ones. Some areas, genres, and authors are inevitably,if unjustly, left out. Forced to choose some trends, welimit ourselvesto three that played amajor role in recent debates. The first is a current, sometimes labeled neonationalist (although there are many variations within it), that enthusiastically embrace affirmations of Puerto Rican nationhood and largelybuilds its political and/or cultural intervention around it. A parallel trend takes critical distance (again with many variations) from past or present visions of Puerto Rican national identity but does not—or at least does not fully or explicitly—abandon the vision of political and social change associated with the anticolonial Left in the past. Finally, there is the current that favors a reconsideration of Puerto Rico's situation from what it describes—as a participant of the postmodern sensibility—as the collapse of the "master narratives" of modernity. As we consider these interventions, we will refer to works by authors on the island and in the United States. By the late 19703, many of the more influential Puerto Rican intellectuals had embraced some brand of socialism. Whether as "new historians," old Marxists, or left-nationalists, the influenceof Marxism waspresent across the differences that otherwise existed between authors such as Angel Quintero Rivera,Jose Luis Gonzalez, Manuel Maldonado Denis, orJuan Flores,to name a few. As the 19803 and early 19903 progressed, this sensibility was subjected to increasing strains. The Reagan presidency marked the start of a formidable right-wing backlash. Optimistic expectations for radical change in the United States and 15 Europe now proved to be unrealistic. The Soviet Union and the regimes allied to it—which many on the Left had seen, if not as a model, at least as a counterweight to U.S. hegemony—collapsed. The Nicaraguan Revolution stalled. The Salvadoran insurgency had to settle for negotiations short of a revolutionary victory. The Cuban regime found itself isolated. Activists were now forced to address the sense, articulated by many in Europe and the United States, that the socialist project was at an impasse. This debate coincided in Puerto Rico with the continuing electoral deadlock between the Partido Popular Democratico and the Partido Nuevo Progresista, with the former playing the cultural card, seeking to portray itself as the defender of Puerto Rican identity. But national affirmation was a much wider phenomenon than PPDcultural politics. Neonationalisms The two decades after 1980 witnessed the rise of what some critics call neonationalism . The 19903 was a decade of newfound pride in being Puerto Rican, from the PPDanti-statehood emphasis on identity to national motifs in commercials and pop music lyrics.The reissue of Rafael Hernandez's classic patriotic song "Preciosa" by salsa star Marc Anthony and the adoration of athletes or performers as emblems of the Puerto Rican nation all reflected the rising neonationalist cultural elan. Annual TV specials on Puerto Rican culture sponsored by the Banco Popular or the cry of "Puerto Rico no se vende" during the 1998 phone workers' strike represented the same sentiment from opposite sides of the privatization battles of the 19703. Already in 1993, statehood ideologist Luis Davila Colon denounced what he labeled a neonationalist wave, which led, through the presence of indepe dentistas in government and private publicity agencies, to the permeation of the public sphere with anti-American messages.1 Sociologist Arlene Davila explored the sponsoring of identity by government agencies and private enterprise while also noting its undeniable popularity. The manufacturers of Winston cigarettes, for example, found it convenient to change the slogan "Yo y mis Winston," which associated the cigarette with the myth of U.S. individualism , for "Winston yPuerto Rico,no hay nada major," which sought to tap the potential buyer's national self-identification.2 Different sectors of the Puerto Rican intelligentsia provided diverse explanations of the new cultural trends. For many independentistas, the so-called neonationalist wave was a welcome development that strengthened the struggle against annexation. These indeNEONATIONALISM , POSTMODERNISM * 317 pendentistas were inclined to favor an alliance with the PPDaround cultural issues. In 1991, PPDgovernor Rafael Hernandez Colon sponsored legislation making Spanish...