From the ‘Prince of Puerto Rican letters’ to Bad Bunny: the urgency of reclaiming Puerto Rico as a linguistic and cultural affirmation
Literature from the US territory is often overlooked despite its power and quality. A literary gathering and various recent publications are working to change this
It’s common for Puerto Rico to be overlooked when the topic is its literature. Both in Spain and Latin America, its literary production remains largely unknown despite its power and quality. With few exceptions, due to editorial policies, what is written in Puerto Rico stays in Puerto Rico. The neglect is widespread. In a book as emblematic as Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano doesn’t mention the island even once. Needless to say, there was no intention to offend. It’s simply a matter of invisibility. Often, perhaps too often, Puerto Rico is simply left out.
It is therefore worth celebrating that (almost miraculously) the third edition of the International Congress of Writers took place in late April. This biennial event is held at the Fine Arts Center in Caguas, Puerto Rico. Heir to the now-defunct Festival de la Palabra —active from 2011 to 2018 and gone after the devastation of Hurricane Maria, the pandemic, and the brutal cultural budget cuts perpetrated by the U.S. federal government—the meeting was made possible thanks to the support of the director of the Fine Arts Center in that city, Ivonne L. Class, as well as private contributions, and the financial backing of institutions from Spain such as the AECID, the General Directorate of Books, and, most notably, the Cervantes Institute.
The event, directed by Puerto Rican writer Helena Sampedro and programmed by the Spaniard José Manuel Fajardo, featured 12 prominent literary figures from Spain and Latin America. And, as the true highlight of the gathering, it included 25 Puerto Rican authors.
Talking about Puerto Rico today inevitably leads to Bad Bunny, whose fierce political commitment to the unincorporated U.S. territory where he was born has given his nation the visibility it had been denied. In Caguas, the singer was one of the focal points of the conversations, although the true center of gravity of the gathering was the 89-year-old playwright and novelist Luis Rafael Sánchez. The most important living Puerto Rican writer and the one with the greatest international reach of our time was the star of two events at the moving closing ceremony.
First, the author—whom one of his admirers, the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, referred to as “the Prince of Puerto Rican letters”—received key 1208 to the Vault of Letters from Luis García Montero, director of the Cervantes Institute. Luis Rafael Sánchez’s legacy has been there, at the institution’s headquarters in Madrid, since last September, but he was unable to deposit it in person due to health reasons. The other highlight of the meeting was when the novelist showed the public the first and (at that time) only available copy of the 50th-anniversary commemorative edition of his most representative work, the 1976 Macho Camacho’s Beat, originally published in Argentina. Considered one of the most brilliant Latin American novels of the post-boom movement, the work deserved glowing praise from, in addition to Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Tomás Eloy Martínez and Alfredo Bryce Echenique, among other first-rate Latin American authors.
Macho Camacho’s Beat is one of the great Latin American novels of the second half of the 20th century, an oracular hymn that celebrates, in a festive, uninhibited, and irreverent way, the overflowing vitality and richness of Puerto Rican Spanish. Incomprehensibly, the special edition is not slated for publication in Spain or Latin America. The book will be distributed exclusively in Mexico, Puerto Rico and the United States. In 2005, Cátedra published an academic edition, but there is none aimed at the general reader.
It’s not all bad news. The same publisher behind the 50th-anniversary edition of Macho Camacho’s Beat, Planeta Mexicana, is responsible for two important titles that put Puerto Rico on the map. The first is Puerto Rico: Historia de una nación (Puerto Rico: History of a Nation) (2026), a work by Jorell Menéndez Badillo, who teaches history at a U.S. university. Rigorous, engaging, and accessible, the book is a tribute to the island as a nation that is not allowed to be one. Also from Planeta Mexicana, PFKNR: Bad Bunny and music as an act of resistance (2026), Vanessa Díaz and Petra Rivera-Rideau, also university professors based in the United States, examine the figure and trajectory of Bad Bunny from the time when he worked in a supermarket until he became the universal icon he is today, paying particular attention to the historical and social context and the impact of his music as a form of political rebellion.
Both books highlight the urgent need to reclaim Puerto Rico as a territory of linguistic and cultural affirmation. In fact, Puerto Rican citizen Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known as Bad Bunny, sought Badillo’s collaboration, commissioning him to write 17 texts to accompany the series of videos based on “Debí tirar más fotos,” his celebrated and most recent album. In succinct explanations, Jorell’s texts are capsules that address important aspects of Puerto Rican history and its struggle against corruption and in favor of independence. After the impact of Bad Bunny’s halftime show performance at the 60th Súper Tazón (as the Super Bowl was called during his performance and is known in Latin America), it is impossible to ignore the weight and political significance of what the 32-year-old musician does.
One of the most interesting events of the gathering held in Caguas was the discussion surrounding the work of another university professor who also believes it’s necessary to break free from the narrow confines of academic inbreeding and engage with the world, where people sing, dance, protest, and twerk. Maia Sherwood Droz, a lexicographer with a doctorate in theoretical linguistics and a member of the Puerto Rican Academy of Language, studied the lyrics of “Debí tirar más fotos,” systematizing its lexicon in “El ABC de DtMF.” And it is here that the connection between Martínez Ocasio and Luis Rafael Sánchez, a staunch defender of what he called the “poetics of the vulgar,” emerges. In Escribir en puertorriqueño (Writing in Puerto Rican),a valuable anthology of Sánchez’s work, there is a 2021 text titled “Bad Bunny, sí.”
Luis Rafael Sánchez’s remarkable character shone through during his speech at the closing event of the conference, where he read a text entitled “My Country, Our Country,” which begins with a fervent tribute to “Puerto Rican identity.” With the humility that characterizes truly great people, the author of Macho Camacho’s Beat avoided speaking about himself, preferring to focus on what it means to be a writer: “Why must the writer always be seen as a kind of translator of idiocy?” he asked. “Writers should begin to learn that their place isn’t always on the stage, in the spotlight, in front of the tape recorders; they also deserve the dignity of silence [...]. It’s better for them to remain silent for a very long time, as has happened with some of our great literary names, who write extraordinary novels today, and no matter how many millions and millions and millions of advances they’re offered, they remain silent until they have something to say [...]. Writers aren’t magicians; they’re laborers of words. Everything that’s easy is frivolous, fleeting, and evaporates.”
The Caguas gathering included important figures in Puerto Rican literature such as Juan López Bauzá and Magali García Ramis, although simply naming them is unfair, as it means leaving out many others of comparable merit. The event’s main protagonist, however, generously and gracefully acknowledged the vitality of the generations destined to succeed him, listing 10 titles he recommended: Travesías (Crossings) by the veteran poet José Luis Vega; Los nidos (The Nests) by Xavier Valcárcel; and Crucero Caribe (Caribbean Cruise) by Ana Lydia Vega, a grande dame of Puerto Rican letters. Mandamás (Boss) by Manolo López Negrón, and Esto también es una casa (This, too, is a house) by Cezanne Cardona, which he referred to as “the post-puppies of the boom”; Antología del olvido (Anthology of oblivion) compiled by Eugenio Ballou; La insurrección del Cacique Humacao (The Insurrection of the Cacique Humacao) by Fernando Acosta; El ABC de DtMF (The ABCs of DtMF) by Maia Sherwood Droz (mentioned earlier); A veces te quiero mucho siempre (Sometimes I love you a lot always) by Edgardo Nieves-Mieles and Cerrar la puerta tras de ti (Closing the door behind you), a collection of short stories by Janette Becerra.
Some important authors who didn’t participate in this year’s event, such as Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, Marta Aponte Alsina, Edgardo Sanabria Santaliz, Eduardo Lalo, and Yolanda Arroyo, are proof that Puerto Rico’s literary scene is vibrant and alive. Although the best way to verify this is to read the masterful work that is Macho Camacho’s Beat, if you can find it.
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