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Chapter Reference: Independence; Postcolonial Blues; Neocolonialism; Nationalism
The Caribbean has been a major playing field for the great powers of the Atlantic world, from Spain, France, and Great Britain in earlier centuries, to the United States today. As a result, the nations of the Caribbean have been more in the shadow of colonialism than have the nations of mainland Latin America. Puerto Rico and Cuba did not become independent with the rest of Latin America in the 1820s. In 1898, U.S. forces liberated Puerto Rico and Cuba from Spain but continued to exercise a measure of control over both. The national sovereignty of the Dominican Republic has faced similar challenges. Therefore, the national identities of Caribbean countries constitute an interesting problem. Cuban national identity was defined partly in emulation of the United States, partly against it. Dominican national identity has been constructed in contrast to Haiti. Puerto Rican national identity, without a sovereign state or majority aspirations to create one, raises interesting problems of its own. A paper on national identities in the Caribbean should take into account these different modes of constructing identity, noting the cohesive power of defining oneself as like or unlike others. While students may want to narrow their focus to one country, they should keep in mind the general framework in which national identities developed in the Caribbean region as a whole.
Questions for Analysis and Further Reflection:
- A national identity does not depend on national independence, as the Kurds, Palestinians, and Puerto Ricans can attest. How did Caribbean identities develop even in the absence of national sovereignty?
- Nations and national identities are often represented through a standard set of symbols and features, usually including a flag, an anthem, a set of dates of decisive moments in the nation's history, language or dialect, and, among others, clothing, pastimes, and cuisine. Officially or unofficially, racial makeup is also part of the national kit. How did race play into the emergence of national identities in the Caribbean?
- Understanding where feelings of national identity come from is an interesting problem, going far beyond where one is born. What factors can you identify that shape your sense of national identity?
Bibliography: (Titles with ** are good starting places.)
Austerlitz, Paul. Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity. With a foreword by
Robert Farris Thompson. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997.
Glasser, Ruth. My Music is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and their New York
Communities, 1917—1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Guerra, Lillian. Popular Expression and National Identity in Puerto Rico: The Struggle for
Self, Community, and Nation. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.
Morris, Nancy. Puerto Rico: Culture, Politics, and Identity. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995.
** Pérez, Jr., Louis A. On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and Culture. Chapel Hill:
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Press, 1999.
Pérez shows how Cubans used associations with the United States (for example, a taste for baseball) to contrast themselves against Spain (with its national spectacle, the bullfight) beginning in the late 1800s.
Other Resources:
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