One Hundred Years of Puerto Rican Solitude

Abstract

AbstractChapter 4 examines Puerto Rican Luis Rafael Sánchez’s 1968 La pasión según Antígona Pérez, whose protagonist critics have understood as faithful to the Sophoclean character. This chapter argues against finding similarities between the ancient Antigone and the Puerto Rican character by showing that this Antígona is not accused of the crime of burial but that of theft, which, in the context of Puerto Rican politics in the 1960s, refers to Puerto Rico’s political situation as US property. Through an analysis of the historical minutiae embedded in the play the chapter argues that the play stages a unique political drama in Latin America: the enduring colonial—rather than neocolonial—situation of Puerto Rico. Antígona Pérez is also unique in the corpus in that she rejects marriage (though she is not exactly a virgin), but this chapter shows that her death, in the end, could not but give life, just as the other mother-Antígonas do. The play quilts tragedy with testimony and Brechtian technique.