Luis Rafael Sánchez: ‘Republicans can’t stand the idea of ​​Puerto Rico becoming a US state’

April 23, World Book Day. A morning of brilliant Caribbean sunshine in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, and across the island. Luis Rafael Sánchez, 89, the most important living writer in Puerto Rico, who will turn 90 next November, suggests beginning the conversation — later to continue on the cozy terrace‑balcony of his home — at a discreet and elegant restaurant, where everything seems to pause when the staff catch sight of “Wico,” the affectionate nickname by which the writer is known on the island.

With admiration and affection, some shake his hand, others embrace him — everyone calls him maestro. No matter how small the gesture from those attending to him, the writer responds with generous tips. Wrapped in dim light, the scene evokes a sequence from The Godfather, but without any hint of menace.

The immediate reason for the interview is the release of a commemorative edition marking the 50th anniversary of his most emblematic novel, La guaracha del Macho Camacho. At the time of the meeting, there is only a single copy available, which the author contemplates in satisfied silence as it is handed to him.

A playwright, essayist, and novelist, Luis Rafael Sánchez is, like Cervantes in Spain, James Joyce in Ireland, or Gabriel García Márquez in Colombia, a writer whose work embodies the spirit of his nation.

Everything he has written — whether non-fiction (No llores por nosotros, Puerto Rico / Don’t Cry for Us, Puerto Rico), short stories (En cuerpo de camisa / In Shirt Sleeves), novels (La importancia de llamarse Daniel Santos / The Importance of Being Daniel Santos), and especially his groundbreaking and powerful theatrical work (La pasión según Antígona Pérez / The Passion of Antígona Pérez) — is a joyful celebration of puertorriqueñidad (Puerto Rican identity), a word that, at his request, was incorporated into the Royal Spanish Academy’s dictionary in 2016.

He has lived in several cities. In San Juan, he began as a radio drama actor, but his career was cut short when, with the arrival of television, he was denied any leading man roles because he was mixed-race. He pursued doctoral studies in Madrid, received scholarships that enabled him to live in Rio de Janeiro and Berlin, and in New York — a city that “captivated” him — he completed a master’s degree, took classes at the Actor’s Studio, met James Baldwin, staged plays and musicals, and held a university chair as a distinguished writer.

At different points in his work, he has forcefully denounced racism and homophobia. In Escribir en puertorriqueño (Writing in Puerto Rican), a valuable anthology of his writings, one piece stands out in particular: Bad Bunny sí, written before the singer achieved the level of visibility he enjoys today.

Praised in glowing terms by Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, and Alfredo Bryce Echenique, among others, Luis Rafael Sánchez’s work draws simultaneously on the legacy of Cervantes, the great tradition of the Latin American novel, the theater of Tennessee Williams and Valle‑Inclán, the language of radio dramas, and the classics of bolero and other forms of popular music.

A defender, through Spanish, of the linguistic, racial, and cultural hybridity that defines caribeñidad (Caribbean identity) — one of the key concepts in his vocabulary — it is no exaggeration to say that the language of Cervantes owes him a great debt.

Question: Can you talk about your origins?

Answer. I’m a mulatto from a housing project, which is what they call the houses assigned to low-income families here. My mother was a seamstress and my father a baker, so I bear two stigmas: race and class. Even today, racial prejudice in Puerto Rico is still very noticeable, but I’ve always been proud to come from a poor background and to be mulatto because it’s something that has given me strength and the tools to create and survive.

Q. Last year saw the publication of one of your most striking books, Piel sospechosa (Suspicious Skin), in which you examine the issue of racism from multiple angles.

A. This is a collection of some 30 texts, written between 1973 and today, in which I address the ignominy of racism, which I consider one of the most serious problems on our continent, a world of different races that still struggle to respect one another. I dedicate the book to my uncle, Evaristo Lois Pagán, a Black man of usted and tenga [formal terms used to show respect] as we say here, an extraordinary, respectable, and respected man, an imposing Black man who always wore a suit, tie, waistcoat, and watch chain, and who rose to hold important positions of civic responsibility.

Q. Would you say that Puerto Rican literature has always been ignored in both Spain and Latin America?

A. We have great writers, like Eugenio María de Hostos, René Marqués, and Luis Palés Matos, but they aren’t recognized enough outside of Latin America. One example that particularly pains me is that when discussing great Latin American poets, Alfonsina Storni, Juana de Ibarbourou, Gabriela Mistral, and others who deserve it are always mentioned, but no one remembers Julia de Burgos, who is an immense figure. I believe all of this is related in some way to the fact that we have been colonized, and as a consequence, some people think we are incapable of greatness, whether literary, artistic, or economic. We are denied the possibility of one day becoming a republic, as if we were lacking something intellectually, morally, or spiritually.

Q. Is Puerto Rico a nation or a colony?

A. Puerto Rico is unfortunately a colony, but within that colony are all the constituent elements that encompass the concept of a nation. Puerto Rican identity is lived with fervor and enthusiasm.

Q. What is your position regarding independence?

A. The ideological question has been at a standstill for a long time, due to the presence of several successive pro-statehood governments. We’ve already had three elections in which the pro-independence party I always vote for comes in third or fourth place. An ominous question mark hangs over us. It pains me to see that statehood is gaining more and more supporters every day, but that doesn’t mean the fight is lost. One of the reasons I don’t believe we’ll become part of the United States tomorrow is that Republicans can’t stand the idea of ​​Puerto Rico becoming a state of the American nation. In other words, ironically, right now, the Republicans’ contempt for who we are is what’s saving us.

Q. How does that affect the issue of Spanish?

A. The language issue has been a major uphill battle for years, but some things are undeniable. In Puerto Rico, we speak Spanish, we write in Spanish, and it will always be that way. We have never produced a great writer in English. Those who support the idea of ​​Puerto Rico becoming the 51st state of the Union are bothered when I say this. According to them, we are a bilingual country, but that’s nothing more than a vulgar political maneuver. Puerto Ricans have never needed to speak English. To live my life, I have never needed English, nor do I think anyone here needs it. Our literature is in Spanish. Our best press is in Spanish. Our daily life is in Spanish.

Q. In one of your most insightful works, Sones del Caribe (Sounds of the Caribbean), you explore the idea of ​​Caribbean identity.

A. We are a Caribbean country with a large, often denied, Black presence, yet Blackness and mixed-race identity are the hallmarks of Caribbean identity. In the book, I discuss the four mother countries of this sea: Spain, England, the Netherlands, and France. We are part of an archipelago that also includes islands where Spanish is not spoken, such as Saint Thomas, Saint Lucia, Martinique, and many others. The Caribbean has produced great writers in French, like Aimé Césaire and Édouard Glissant, and in English, like Derek Walcott and Naipaul. In Spanish, there is a veritable plethora of writers who wield the language with complete freedom, such as Alejo Carpentier, Severo Sarduy, Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas, Pedro Mir, and so many more.

Q. What does it mean to write in Puerto Rican?

A. Writing in the Spanish of Puerto Rico. Just as there is Argentine Spanish, Colombian Spanish, Mexican Spanish, or Spanish from Spain, there is Puerto Rican Spanish, which is the one I speak and write in. There are many prejudices about it. When I was studying at the Complutense University in Madrid, a renowned professor congratulated me on how good my Spanish was, and I respectfully asked him what language he thought I was speaking, how could I not speak my own language well? The same thing happened to me on the street. When the owner of the boarding house where I lived in Madrid heard me speak, she was amazed because I didn’t drop my consonants, and I told her, “Ma’am, in the Caribbean we don’t drop our consonants.” This prejudice affects literature. There are those who maintain that we are ruining Spanish, and conversely, many times, when one of my books is reviewed, I am congratulated for my good use of Spanish, as if it were an anomaly, when what I do is write in the living language spoken by my people.

Q. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of your most emblematic work, La guaracha del Macho Camacho, an oracular novel that is a grand celebration of Puerto Rican language.

A. I wrote it with great freedom, with great joy. I will be forever grateful to Mario Vargas Llosa for being the driving force behind it. Mario was here teaching a course as a visiting professor, and I got to know him quite well. One day, he told me that he had been asked in Lima to coordinate the issue of a magazine dedicated to Puerto Rico. He needed some fiction, which he didn’t have. I had published a book of short stories that had received very good reviews, En cuerpo de camisa. In it was a story titled La guaracha del Macho Camacho y otros sones calenturientos [Macho Camacho’s Guaracha and Other Feverish Tunes]. When Mario read it, he told me: “There’s a novel here.”

Q. Alongside the music, the novel’s central protagonist is language itself — a festive, uninhibited, and transgressive language that embraces every form of expression.

A. Some time ago, I gave a lecture titled “Toward a Poetics of the Vulgar,” which is a vindication of the way ordinary people express themselves. I was always concerned by the fact that some people here have established that a swear word disqualifies you. When I gave that lecture, I remember a colleague, now deceased, telling me, horrified, that it was the first time he’d ever heard so many indecent words at the university. But the language I use, without restraint, is the language people use on the street; it’s pure Puerto Rican, and that’s also the language of La Guaracha del Macho Camacho.

Q. In the novel, as in all your work, there is a constant interplay between the Puerto Rican oracular voice and the legacy of the classics. Many of your texts seamlessly incorporate phrases from the great tradition of Spanish‑language literature, from both Latin America and Spain

A. I’ve just finished proofreading El libro de los elogios [The Book of Praises], a collection of three essays: Elogio de la radionovela [In Praise of the Radio Drama], Elogio del sexo oral [In Praise of Oral Sex], and Elogio del ocio y el negocio [In Praise of Leisure and Business]. It was originally going to be titled Vida, nada me debes [Life, You Owe Me Nothing], after the line in Amado Nervo’s poem: “Life, you owe me nothing. / Life, we are at peace.”

The title Elogio del sexo oral suggests something else, but it’s about verbal pleasure, the joy of the oracular, the celebration of language as desire. The book is mindful of both Cervantes’ legacy and the formidable influence radio dramas had on me. Alongside Cervantes, the first, the very first of our language, I place a whole series of mediocre radio dramas with ridiculous titles like El derecho de nacer [The Right to Be Born], Los que no deben nacer [Those Who Should Not Be Born], and El precio de una vida [The Price of a Life], because that’s what truly nourished me as a child and ended up influencing my writing style. As a child, there was only one radio at home, and we would sit down at 6 p.m. every afternoon. My father, my mother, my sister, and my grandmother would all listen to the Palmolive radio drama. I was in seventh grade, 12 or 13 years old, and I fervently read an adapted version of Don Quixote, so my imagination was forged, nourished by Cervantes’s work as well as by the unspeakable models of mediocrity that those radio dramas represented.

Q. Do you remember the first thing you wrote?

A. When I was a freshman in college, my Spanish teacher told me she saw talent in me as a writer and encouraged me to enter a contest, which I won with a story titled El trapito [The Valet], which was a tribute to the Puerto Rican flag.

Q. You keep a close eye on what’s happening with younger generations. What’s going on with younger Puerto Rican writers?

A. The last article I wrote is titled País mío, país nuestro [My Country, Our Country]. In it, I discuss what I consider a true boom in young Puerto Rican literature, something that is happening right now. At this moment, I feel there is a real explosion of young talent in our literature. I pay tribute to 10 examples, and these are just a sample. It’s time for people beyond our borders to pay attention to what’s happening here.

Q. These days, it’s impossible not to talk about Bad Bunny. In an anthology of your writings, Escribir en puertorriqueño, there is an article titled Bad Bunny, sí.

A. It was published in 2023, but I had already written about him quite some time before, when he was just starting to gain traction. In some way, I sensed he was going to grow.

Q. What does Bad Bunny mean as a symbol?

A. What happens at one of his concerts transcends the artistic; it’s a sociological, political, even patriotic phenomenon, a defense of the country and the language. In Bad Bunny, Puerto Rico has found a symbol of affirmation. People show up to all his events waving the Puerto Rican flag. They receive him like a national hero. What he does goes beyond music. The music is bait, a lure.

Q. The language he uses in his songs often fits what you once called a “poetics of the vulgar,” for example when he uses terms like perrear. What is perreo?

A. A dance style that mimics the movements dogs make during sex. Bad Bunny says, “Perrea, perrea,” joyfully incorporating the term into his vocabulary.

Q. Is there an element of political rebellion in all this?

A. People associate reggaeton with disorder, daring, boldness, the sexual freedom to which we are all entitled, and the idea that decency shouldn’t be measured solely by sexual behavior. It’s about liberating all that vocabulary.

Q. Will Puerto Rico ever be independent?

A. It’s a difficult and uncomfortable question. I think it’s fine that you asked it, but I don’t know how to answer it.

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