Por amor en el caserío: Caribbeanizing West Side Story

Abstract

This article proposes a theory of caribbeanization to understand the relationship between the 2013 Puerto Rican film Por amor en el caserio (PAC) and the 1961 motion picture production of West Side Story (WSS). Within the article, the term caribbeanization acknowledges the way(s) in which deploying a dominant narrative from the margins can yield transformative results. Pushing against stereotypes, PAC latches on to WSS’s xenophobic rendition of the growth of Latinx communities and instead uses it to bring into focus an oft-elided segment of Puerto Rico’s population: those living in the caserios. Through a discussion of PAC’s and WSS’s origins and the commentary each film offers in terms of the interplay among race, class, gender, and ethnicity, I show how PAC’s caribbeanization of WSS opens up social and discursive spaces that, albeit sometimes flawed, posit caribbeanization as a tool for cultural empowerment that rejects the prescriptions of tropicalization.