In order to become the governing authority of the emerging
Puerto Rican nation before the invasion of the United States in 1898,
a group of letrados constructed the phantasm of a coherent
and integrated national Self by excluding a phantasmagoric Other (such
as the infirm Puerto Rican iíbaro).The reader will remember that, unlike the majority of
Latin America, Puerto Rico was not an independent republic by the end
of the nineteenth century but remained a Spanish colony. I borrow the
term letrado from Angel Rama. He uses it to describe not only a class
of cultured intellectuals but also a particular type of colonized
consciousness that accepts the arbitrariness of the connection and,
therefore, the implied rupture between signs and referents. A
close examination of the works by members of this educated elite makes
apparent the complexity of the dynamic between discourses of the Self
and the Other that sustains this act of empowerment, as well as acts
of empowerment similar to this one.