Travel, Carnival, and Consumption: The Postcolonial Hybrid Nation in La guaracha del Macho Camacho

Eduardo Ruiz

doi:10.5070/t472035434

Abstract

Author(s): Ruiz, Eduardo | Abstract: Travel, Carnival, and Consumption: The Postcolonial Hybrid Nation in La guaracha del Macho Camacho

Highlights

According to its translator Gregory Rabassa, La guaracha del Macho Camacho (Macho Camacho’s Beat), by Luis Rafael Sánchez, “is probably the most ‘Puerto Rican’ novel ever written in that the story, but the language itself is so tied to the culture.” The narrative would first crystallize the meaning of the nation as resulting from a linguistic-cultural complex, and it would go on to claim the given features of the Puerto Rican soul, at least one engendered after the U.S takeover of the island in 1898 and up until the publication of the novel in 1976
Hybridity is the multiple incorporation of cultures, idiolects, dialects, code-switching, levels of speech, and voices that are elicited in highly fluid contact zones
This technique of narrative movement allows for cross-cultural representations of a “nationality in transit” [59], a tension between a colonized homeland and a home abroad, which Sánchez develops in “La guagua aérea” (1983/1997), an essay exploring Puerto Rican identity utilizing the motif of a back-and-forth flight, or “flying bus,” between San Juan and New York

Summary

Introduction

According to its translator Gregory Rabassa, La guaracha del Macho Camacho (Macho Camacho’s Beat), by Luis Rafael Sánchez, “is probably the most ‘Puerto Rican’ novel ever written in that the story, but the language itself is so tied to the culture.” The narrative would first crystallize the meaning of the nation as resulting from a linguistic-cultural complex, and it would go on to claim the given features of the Puerto Rican soul, at least one engendered after the U.S takeover of the island in 1898 and up until the publication of the novel in 1976. The amalgamation of multiple voices, registers, and language levels works to deauthorize the colonial and national canons and to authorize some of the cultural and discursive practices from the margins.

Results

Conclusion