Sponsored Identities: Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico (review)

Sponsored Identities: Cultural Politics in Puerto Rico. By Arlene M. Davila. Puerto Rican Studies. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997. Photographs. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xviii, 301 pp. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $19.95.

In one of the few books written in English on the topic, Arlene M. Dávila highlights the struggles of contemporary cultural politics in Puerto Rico. She achieves this through a case study of the pseudonymous southeastern town of Caone. The book consists of six chapters and a conclusion. Chapters 1 and 2 review the hegemonic role played by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (ICP). Since its founding in 1959, the ICP has purported to define what constitutes Puerto Rican culture. The resistance proffered by local grassroots groups to ICP hegemony is precisely the core of Dávila's work in these two chapters. Chapter 2 also reviews the significance of the New Song Movement in Puerto Rico. Lacking here, however, is an analysis of the foundational role played by pathbreaking icons Roy Brown Martínez, and Antonio Cabán Vale, "El Topo."

Chapter 3 begins with a case study of Caone, its cultural center's politics, and the relation of the cultural center to independent (meaning not approved by the ICP) cultural groups. Chapter 4 concludes the study by exploring the role of two grassroots cultural groups in Caone's cultural politics. Notable are Dávila's insights into the class and racial makeup of both groups; the country's African heritage is still a taboo topic in contemporary Puerto Rico. Significant also is her review of beauty pageants and sports competitions as expressions of nationhood in Puerto Rico, a reality that baffles non-Puerto Rican social scientists studying Puerto Rican culture and national identity.

Chapter 5 reviews the rebarbatively ubiquitous presence of U.S. corporations in contemporary Puerto Rican cultural fairs and festivals. The astute observer will note that the presence of these corporate giants underscores Puerto Rico's overall colonial dependence on the U.S. behemoth. Advertising jingles accompanied by folkloric music, the establishment of awards for cultural excellence, and other corporate ploys lull Puerto Ricans into believing that national cultural survival lies in the consumption of U.S. corporate products. These corporations thus help Puerto Ricans sublimate political activism into a preference for one or another U. S. product and forget the island's colonial dependence on the United States.

Chapter 6 wraps up Dávila's theoretical work by adding case studies of two premier cultural fairs, the National Indigenous Festival and the Bacardí Folk Arts Festival. Both case studies augment Davila's review of the themes and analyses of the two Caone cultural groups.

Dávila's work is based on sound ethnographic research. It is a fine contribution to an understanding of the raging struggle for survival that Puerto Rican culture has waged against U.S. colonialism for the last 102 years. Historians of Puerto Rico, and U.S.-Puerto Rico relations, Latin America, U.S. social history, the so-called Third World, and social scientists studying contemporary metropolis-dependent nation relations and cultural imperialism would benefit from Davila's work. While mostly clear, the style is too anthropological at times. Coupled with the book's theoretical approach and conceptual weightiness, this militates against popular reading.

Dávila's work is a resounding testament to the resilience of Puerto Rican culture in fending off the assimilationist, colonialist onslaught of American cultural imperialism throughout the twentieth century. It should also serve as a clarion call to people of good will everywhere who support the inalienable right of Puerto Rican culture to survive in the twenty first century.

JOSÉ-MANUEL NAVARRO, Philadelphia

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