Documenting pan-Caribbeanism on screen: José de Diego’s trip to Santo Domingo (1915)

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the tumultuous summer of 1915, the Puerto Rican politician José de Diego traveled across the Spanish-speaking Caribbean promoting the formation of what he called an ‘Antillean Union’. This ‘political tour’ stands out not just for its transnational anti-colonial purpose but also because filmmaker Rafael Colorado recorded parts of the event for his actuality Excursión de José de Diego a Santo Domingo (José de Diego’s Trip to Santo Domingo, 1915). As Dominican film scholars have found, in 1915, the Dominican press described this recording as the first ‘native’ Dominican film, although the film’s context of production and exhibition was clearly transnational in nature. Through a comparison of news reporting about the film in 1915 and 1920, this essay demonstrates the changing or reframed meaning of it, and underlines the importance of political rhetoric and journalistic reporting in determining how an originally transnational cultural product received meaning and national value.