What do you think?
The Docile Puerto Rican: Essays
English, Chinese (translation)
- GenresNonfiction
137 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1976
About the author
René Marqués
29 books47 followersRenowned Puerto Rican short story writer and playwright. Member of what was known in Puerto Rico as "The Generation of the 40's", a group of intellectuals headed by Lorenzo Homar.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 13, 2024
"El puertorriqueño 'promedio', independientemente de su extracción racial, puede leer una novela, ver una película o seguir una serie de televisión, cuyo tema sea la lucha por la libertad de un pueblo que es o fue colonial (Irlanda, Chipre, Cuba, Polonia, Argelia o las Trece Colonias Americanas, por ejemplo), sin que tampoco, ni remotamente, se le ocurra relacionar lo que lee, ve u oye, con la condición colonial de su propio país."
Todo boricua debería leer esto. Da coraje, y a la vez asombra, lo relevante que sigue siendo este ensayo y cuán correcto estuvo.
Todo boricua debería leer esto. Da coraje, y a la vez asombra, lo relevante que sigue siendo este ensayo y cuán correcto estuvo.
August 1, 2026
Since I had already read Antonio Pedreira's Insularismo, which is a sort of precursor to this work, and since it was Captive Nations Week recently, I decided to choose this work next on my reading list.
As with Insularismo, it was often grating. Philosophers and intellectuals seem to be so captivated by their own cleverness that they take forever to get their point across. Nothing is ever direct and to the point, I found myself reading and rereading because I was often lost in the text.
This is all the more extraordinary given the book's length. It's so short that it could hardly qualify as a book in a technical sense, and it is in fact just a collection of essays by Rene Marques. These deal with the supposed national character of Puerto Rico, and particularly the passivity and docility of the Puerto Rican people in the face of Spanish and American colonialism.
Students of Puerto Rico might wonder why it was that Puerto Rico, unlike Cuba, did not raise a serious revolt against Spain, or later even against the US. Marques provides some answers for this riddle.
One of the major insights he provides, I think, is that Puerto Rico has often been a refuge for conservative and anti-independent elements. Wagenheim described this too, how many Spanish loyalists emigrated to Puerto Rico after Spain lost her empire on the continent.
This was reinforced by the Cedula de Gracias which saw an influx of Europeans loyal to the Spanish Crown migrate to Puerto Rico, and most recently Puerto Rico received an wave of Cuban exiles that fled after Castro's victory in the Cuban Revolution.
All of these people were opposed to Puerto Rican independence and in favor of the colonial authorities, whether they be Spanish or American as the case may be.
I think this is a major factor, and while Marques does mention it, his intention is to establish that Puerto Ricans are docile by nature.
One of the curious things he mentions is the very high suicide rate in Puerto Rico. At the time it was very high, but having looked now it is actually rather lower than in most US states today.
But this high suicide rate he couples with what he believes to be a death wish by the Nationalists. His claim is that the Nationalists had no real expectation of success, and threw away advantages that might have achieved success, because their real goal was just to die. Suicide by cop we might say.
I'm not sure how convincing this is, but it is an aspect of his argument about Puerto Rican docility. The Puerto Rican, he contends, does not expect to win. The majority, of course, do not even try to resist.
He spends a great deal of time discussing Puerto Rican literature, conveniently name-dropping many cultural figures of this period, and a consistent theme he detects is that in fiction the Puerto Rican is much more rebellious and much more desirous of independence than the Puerto Ricans seem to be in reality.
To this he adds a tendency towards pessimism. This is fascinating because on my reading list I have the book 'Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture and the Fictions of Independence,' by Maria Acosta Cruz, which examines this precise disconnect.
That is, the gap between Puerto Rican culture's ideation of independence, and the lukewarm support for it that is actually to be found in the population. Fascinating stuff and I'm happy to be reminded of Acosta Cruz's work.
More interesting insights can be found in some counterfactual suggestions. Berbusse and Wagenheim (I believe) quote some American officials justifying their rule in Puerto Rico with the claim that they saved Puerto Rico from internecine wars and bloodshed, and from despotism, which characterized the rest of Latin America at the time.
They claimed to have brought prosperity and freedom to Puerto Rico, a beneficent gift from the Anglo-Saxon to the benighted Hispanic.
What's interesting though is that Marques makes the point that even if the Puerto Ricans achieved independence, they would not at all be done with the United States. Or rather, the United States would not be done with them.
It's not hard to conceive that were the Puerto Ricans to become unstable and unruly, with dictators and caudillos, that the US would have encouraged all of this and had maintained a friendly despot in San Juan as it so often did elsewhere in Latin America. Marques says the experience of Cuba and Nicaragua and so on demonstrates that Puerto Rico will probably never really be free of the US.
This is a depressing realization. Independence ought to be the final goal, and Marques still advocates it in regards to the subject of language. He argues that Spanish cannot truly come into its own in Puerto Rico until the annoying competition of English is purged, which cannot happen until the American authorities are driven out.
But the shadow of the US will still hang over Puerto Rico, as it hangs over all of Latin America.
In line with this, another valuable insight is how Marques discussed the sheer level of repression on the island. He notes that there are numerous duplicate agencies, the FBI, the Insular Police, the CIA, layers and layers of surveillance and repression.
Included in this are the many military bases around the island, some of which were closed after this book was published by the nonviolent and spirited protests of the Puerto Rican people. But the point holds good.
The United States maintains a massive security regime in Puerto Rico, hugely disproportionate to its size or population. Marques provides some optimism with this: it is evidence that the United States fears Puerto Rican nationalism.
And with good reason. Nationalist insurgencies are not easy to combat, and they can be very embarrassing, especially for a nation that pretends that it is not a colonialist power.
Marques makes the usual observations that the Puerto Ricans have no representation, that they have no real power, that the Commonwealth was and is a sham. Here he argues that the Commonwealth is the greatest evidence of Puerto Rican docility.
Puerto Ricans cannot decide what they want to be, a state or an independent nation, so they accept life in a sort of limbo neither one nor the other. Marques goes into some aspects of psychology on this, and believes that Munoz Marin is the champion prevaricator.
All of this is very useful and interesting to bear in mind. As are the stray observations like the female organizations are more spirited and less submissive than the male, which Marques attributes to the matriarchal character of Puerto Rican society, and humorous anecdotes like how Puerto Rican mediums will speak in Nuyorican accents to deliver messages from ancestors who lived during the Spanish colonial period, when Nuyoricans weren't a thing yet.
As one of the question works written by a Puerto Rican dissecting the Puerto Rican character and history, I felt that this was required reading, and I don't regret having read it. But it can sometimes get tedious and I had to reread several parts because I kept losing his point.
As with Insularismo, it was often grating. Philosophers and intellectuals seem to be so captivated by their own cleverness that they take forever to get their point across. Nothing is ever direct and to the point, I found myself reading and rereading because I was often lost in the text.
This is all the more extraordinary given the book's length. It's so short that it could hardly qualify as a book in a technical sense, and it is in fact just a collection of essays by Rene Marques. These deal with the supposed national character of Puerto Rico, and particularly the passivity and docility of the Puerto Rican people in the face of Spanish and American colonialism.
Students of Puerto Rico might wonder why it was that Puerto Rico, unlike Cuba, did not raise a serious revolt against Spain, or later even against the US. Marques provides some answers for this riddle.
One of the major insights he provides, I think, is that Puerto Rico has often been a refuge for conservative and anti-independent elements. Wagenheim described this too, how many Spanish loyalists emigrated to Puerto Rico after Spain lost her empire on the continent.
This was reinforced by the Cedula de Gracias which saw an influx of Europeans loyal to the Spanish Crown migrate to Puerto Rico, and most recently Puerto Rico received an wave of Cuban exiles that fled after Castro's victory in the Cuban Revolution.
All of these people were opposed to Puerto Rican independence and in favor of the colonial authorities, whether they be Spanish or American as the case may be.
I think this is a major factor, and while Marques does mention it, his intention is to establish that Puerto Ricans are docile by nature.
One of the curious things he mentions is the very high suicide rate in Puerto Rico. At the time it was very high, but having looked now it is actually rather lower than in most US states today.
But this high suicide rate he couples with what he believes to be a death wish by the Nationalists. His claim is that the Nationalists had no real expectation of success, and threw away advantages that might have achieved success, because their real goal was just to die. Suicide by cop we might say.
I'm not sure how convincing this is, but it is an aspect of his argument about Puerto Rican docility. The Puerto Rican, he contends, does not expect to win. The majority, of course, do not even try to resist.
He spends a great deal of time discussing Puerto Rican literature, conveniently name-dropping many cultural figures of this period, and a consistent theme he detects is that in fiction the Puerto Rican is much more rebellious and much more desirous of independence than the Puerto Ricans seem to be in reality.
To this he adds a tendency towards pessimism. This is fascinating because on my reading list I have the book 'Dream Nation: Puerto Rican Culture and the Fictions of Independence,' by Maria Acosta Cruz, which examines this precise disconnect.
That is, the gap between Puerto Rican culture's ideation of independence, and the lukewarm support for it that is actually to be found in the population. Fascinating stuff and I'm happy to be reminded of Acosta Cruz's work.
More interesting insights can be found in some counterfactual suggestions. Berbusse and Wagenheim (I believe) quote some American officials justifying their rule in Puerto Rico with the claim that they saved Puerto Rico from internecine wars and bloodshed, and from despotism, which characterized the rest of Latin America at the time.
They claimed to have brought prosperity and freedom to Puerto Rico, a beneficent gift from the Anglo-Saxon to the benighted Hispanic.
What's interesting though is that Marques makes the point that even if the Puerto Ricans achieved independence, they would not at all be done with the United States. Or rather, the United States would not be done with them.
It's not hard to conceive that were the Puerto Ricans to become unstable and unruly, with dictators and caudillos, that the US would have encouraged all of this and had maintained a friendly despot in San Juan as it so often did elsewhere in Latin America. Marques says the experience of Cuba and Nicaragua and so on demonstrates that Puerto Rico will probably never really be free of the US.
This is a depressing realization. Independence ought to be the final goal, and Marques still advocates it in regards to the subject of language. He argues that Spanish cannot truly come into its own in Puerto Rico until the annoying competition of English is purged, which cannot happen until the American authorities are driven out.
But the shadow of the US will still hang over Puerto Rico, as it hangs over all of Latin America.
In line with this, another valuable insight is how Marques discussed the sheer level of repression on the island. He notes that there are numerous duplicate agencies, the FBI, the Insular Police, the CIA, layers and layers of surveillance and repression.
Included in this are the many military bases around the island, some of which were closed after this book was published by the nonviolent and spirited protests of the Puerto Rican people. But the point holds good.
The United States maintains a massive security regime in Puerto Rico, hugely disproportionate to its size or population. Marques provides some optimism with this: it is evidence that the United States fears Puerto Rican nationalism.
And with good reason. Nationalist insurgencies are not easy to combat, and they can be very embarrassing, especially for a nation that pretends that it is not a colonialist power.
Marques makes the usual observations that the Puerto Ricans have no representation, that they have no real power, that the Commonwealth was and is a sham. Here he argues that the Commonwealth is the greatest evidence of Puerto Rican docility.
Puerto Ricans cannot decide what they want to be, a state or an independent nation, so they accept life in a sort of limbo neither one nor the other. Marques goes into some aspects of psychology on this, and believes that Munoz Marin is the champion prevaricator.
All of this is very useful and interesting to bear in mind. As are the stray observations like the female organizations are more spirited and less submissive than the male, which Marques attributes to the matriarchal character of Puerto Rican society, and humorous anecdotes like how Puerto Rican mediums will speak in Nuyorican accents to deliver messages from ancestors who lived during the Spanish colonial period, when Nuyoricans weren't a thing yet.
As one of the question works written by a Puerto Rican dissecting the Puerto Rican character and history, I felt that this was required reading, and I don't regret having read it. But it can sometimes get tedious and I had to reread several parts because I kept losing his point.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews