Two wings of an eagle

Abstract

In recent years various Puerto Rican cultural studies have exposed the paternalism and classism that lie behind the island's hegemonic nationalist discourse since the 1930s. They have also exposed the fundamental role of the essay form in this canonic discourse. These studies read Puerto Rican literature as if it were an autonomous discursive field. Few critics have pointed to the similar literary products published in different parts of Latin America—a similarity made striking given the still difficult communications among intellectuals in the region. Among the works occasionally compared are those produced beginning in the 1960s by the Mexicans Elena Poniatowska and Carlos Monsivais and those published in the 1970s by a group of Puerto Rican writers referred to as the los francotiradores, "the gunmen"—an allusion to their well‐evidenced ambition to “murder” the national myths created by their putative fathers two generations before. Edgardo Rodriguez Julia and Ana Lydia Vega are among these writers.