History and Stories of Mestizaje in the Spanish Caribbean: Rosario Ferré's Maldito Amor/Sweet Diamond Dust

Abstract

This article offers a critical overview of the discourse of mestizaje and its relationship to national and individual identities in the Spanish Caribbean, particularly in Puerto Rico. Through a close analysis of Rosario Ferre’s novel Sweet Diamond Dust, I examine the discursive mechanisms that the rhetoric of empire and later the movements of independence and nationalism employed to affirm mestizaje in order to unify cultural identity and gloss over differences in race, gender, and class. I argue that Sweet Diamond Dust revises the notion of mestizaje, challenging its totalizing rhetoric with a multiplicity of stories that emphasize diverse social, gender, and racial perspectives. Polyphony and heteroglossia in the novel demystify mestizaje as the cultural symbol of national unison and underscore the conflicts and discontinuities of the Hispanic Caribbean as the basis of its historical and cultural reality.