Abelardo Díaz Alfaro’s Tales: The Tragicomedy of the Dawn of US Intervention in Puerto Rico

Abstract

Abelardo Díaz Alfaro’s work conceptualizes US interventionism as a cultural war and responds with the act of writing to unveil the “nonsenses” of colonial ambiguity and uncertainty. This chapter explores the employment of the folk tale metanarrative by Díaz Alfaro to illustrate power relations in Puerto Rico in the twentieth century. In identifying the influence of folk tale traditions of the Atlantic world, the chapter simultaneously elucidates the function of tragic and comedic tones in the development of reactionary discourses to occupation and colonization. It also examines the transcendence of Díaz Alfaro’s short stories in Puerto Rican intellectual, political, and cultural history and surveys how his folk tales construct culture, race, slavery, violence, and the morality of colonial resistance.

All quotes in Spanish have been translated by the author.