The University of Chicago to Reach the Isle: Poetics Of

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO TO REACH THE ISLE: POETICS OF THE ISLAND IN PUERTO RICAN LITERATURE OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES BY JUAN DIEGO MARIÁTEGUI CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2021 A mi madre, padre, hermano y abuela Table of Contents Summary…………………………………………………………………………………........iv Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………........vi Introduction. Tracing the Shorelines…………………….……………………………………1 Chapter 1. Towards a Future Isle: Insularismo and the Voyage Home………………………26 Chapter 2. Tracing Faded Borders: The Territoriality of Spanish Exile Writing in the Caribbean, 1940-1954……………………………………………………………………………………..66 Chapter 3. To Rebel is to Redeem: The “Beloved” Island in the Decade of the 1950s….………………………………………………………………………………………119 Chapter 4. Towards a Greater Horizon: Political Space in “El país de cuatro pisos” y La llegada…………………………………………………………………………………………177 Conclusion. To Other Shores………………………………………………………………….231 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………243 iii Summary This dissertation investigates the way in which the geographical condition of insularity has been represented in Puerto Rican literature of the twentieth century. The central idea is what I call the “poetics of the island”, using the term “poetics” in the etymological sense of poiesis, “to create” or “to make”. The “poetics of the island” is a concept that maintains that in the case of Puerto Rican literature, insularity is not an absolute, a priori space but rather a phenomenon that is discursively produced by authors of differing sociocultural and ideological positions. Throughout the twentieth century, intellectuals and poets on and off Puerto Rico have turned to the figure of the island in their texts to confront pressing cultural, economic, and political questions. In doing so, they have produced widely varying accounts of Puerto Rico’s history, the present circumstances in which they found themselves, and its future. Recurrently, these different poetics of the island have been marshalled to examine, and often propose explicit solutions to, one of Puerto Rico’s most intractable issues, that of its relationship to the United States. That link is predicated on the juridical status of “non-incorporated territory”, which makes the island a possession of the United States without formally belonging to it, a dynamic that has produced a host of political and socioeconomic problems for Puerto Rico and its people. I analyze the dialogue that literary representations of insularity establish with the fact of “non- incorporation”, as well as with other important concerns, through texts that develop a gamut of ideological and cultural perspectives with respect to Puerto Rico’s internal and external affairs. I begin with Antonio Pedreira’s essay about national character Insularismo: Ensayos de interpretación puertorriqueña (1934), move on to María Zambrano’s essay Isla de Puerto Rico: Nostalgia y esperanza de un mundo mejor (1940) and Juan Ramón Jiménez’s heterogenous Isla de la simpatía (1981), pass through to Francisco Matos Paoli’s poetic work Luz de los héroes iv (1954), and end with José Luis González’s essay “El país de cuatro pisos” (1979) and novel La llegada (1980). The most fundamental idea this dissertation develops through its investigation is that both the “non-incorporporated territory” and the literary response to it form conditions of possibility for imagining what Puerto Rican culture and society can and should be. The richness of the poetics of the island stems from how these conditions sometimes overlapping and other times conflict. The historical frame covers roughly forty-five years, from the mid-1930s to the late 1970s. The reason I selected this timeframe is that during it, Puerto Rico experienced a number of socioeconomic and political crises that were intimately related to its status as a “non- incorporated territory”. The period begins with the economic devastation of the Great Depression and rising financial control by United States companies, passes through the crucible of World War II and the early Cold War with its projects of democracy and industrialization, and ends in the decade in which those socioeconomic and political programs start to fail. It is in these moments that the figure of the island appears in influential Puerto Rican texts, and often explicitly engages with the issue of Puerto Rico’s dynamic with the United States. The condition of crisis, in which a society’s cultural, economic, and political structures are weakened by either internal or external forces, is important to this project because it serves as the set of circumstances that places the territorial status of Puerto Rico in dialogue with the literary portrayals of insularity. Changing with and growing from eras of instability, the “non- incorporated territory” and the rhetorical figure of the island have often functioned as proposals for the future of Puerto Rico, and will continue to do so until this pressing issue is resolved. v Acknowledgements A dissertation is never written in a vacuum, and this one is no exception. Completing this process has involved not just one kind of dialogue but many different ones, each with their own character, and I hope to account for all of them here. My first word of thanks goes to my mother, father, brother, and grandmother, who have followed me throughout graduate school with unwavering love and patience. They have not only given me a great life, they have also taught me to live it well. My principal debt of gratitude goes to my committee, which has guided me with rigor and generosity since the beginning. Professor Agnes Lugo-Ortiz has done more than anyone to shape my thinking in these last six years, and any progress I have made as a professional is due to her influence. Professor Rachel Galvin has contributed crucially with her largesse and creativity, which helped me even before this project began. Professor Daín Borges, despite joining the committee at a relatively late hour, has been as charitable and insightful as the other members, for which I can only thank him. Finally, I would like to express the sincerest gratitude to Professor Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones, whose trademark erudition and kindness have been a tremendous gift to me and this project. Professors Victoria Saramago, Miguel Martínez, and Larissa Brewer-García have also given me invaluable help both during courses and the dissertation process. If I have learned to read, write, and think, it has been because of all of them. Another group without which I could not have finished is that of my peers in the graduate program. Isabela Fraga, Eduardo Leão, Laura Colaneri, Meriam Pacheco, Daniela Gutierrez, Enrique Macari, and Krizia Laureano Ruiz all shared the struggles and triumphs of the early years, and their friendship has warmly continued. Cristina Esteves Wolff, Ysé Bourdon, and Clara Nizard have made this last year be much less solitary and painful than it could have been, vi and their presence has sustained me in the final months of writing. I would also like to thank Jorge Lefevre, José Estrada, Medardo Rosario, Bastien Craipain, Isaías Fanlo, Chiara Nifosi, and Thelma Jiménez-Anglada for all their advice and friendship over the years. This dissertation owes much of its existence to the Division of the Humanities, which granted me a Mellon Foundation-Dissertation Completion Fellowship for the 2020-21 academic year. The time and security I received from this was fundamental to my efforts in a very challenging and disorienting year. As I leave it, I hope to one day repay the kindness, intellectual provocation, and support I have been shown in my time at the department. vii Introduction. Tracing the Shorelines “we live in the description of a place, and not in the place itself”–Wallace Stevens, in a letter to Henry Church, 1945 “Cada isla nos seduce, nos obliga a naufragar, a llegar, llegar, llegar, a inventar un verbo nuevo”–Manuel Ramos Otero, Invitación al polvo The winds were roaring. From the eyes of the satellites the masses of clouds unfurled massively, as if to blank out whatever lay beneath them. Hurricane María was already devastating the Caribbean, but in the images you could still see a piece of land. In some Puerto Rico seemed terribly vulnerable, in others it looked grimly steadfast. As I viewed these images, I increasingly noted how the contours of the massive storm seemed to reshape Puerto Rico’s geographical outline even as it engulfed it, almost like the island were changing beneath the storm. Soon after, the destruction carried out by the hurricane would become apparent, as well as the continuing political dynamic between Puerto Rico and the United States. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the United States Navy, and the Air Force mobilized to provide emergency aid, though in a notably deficient way. In the days after the catastrophe, the then-president of the United States noted that Puerto Rico was an island in order to defend against critiques that his administration’s response was lagging.1 While Puerto Rico’s geographical status as an island came across as glaringly obvious at the time, what was not immediately clear was the lived experience of insularity and its cultural representations in Puerto Rican history. Prompted by the ravages of the hurricane, the highly flawed North American response, and the image of Puerto Rico seemingly mutating beneath the storm, a

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