A Hispanofile in Puerto Rico

I'm back from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where I gave a paper to the assembled throngs at the Latin American Studies Association convention (LASA). Actually, the assembled throngs couldn't make it, but my friend Schoellky represented all of them by being the only one to show up to my panel. LASA is so unlike the stodgy MLA -- there's a Gran Baile (sort-of a grown up conference prom) that is so popular we had to wait in line for an hour to get in; you see more conference people crawling the streets of San Juan at 2 a.m. than at your panel; grad students aren't wound up tight waiting for interviews, instead they're dancing the rumba with their advisors; and everyone dresses like they're on their way to or just got back from the beach -- Hawaiian shirts, flip-flops, midriff baring tops -- even when they're presenting a paper. It's all good at LASA 'cause they're fed up and they're not gonna take the MLA empire anymore. I don't blame them. In fact, I think I'll join them again.

San Juan was beautiful, and a great place for a conference (not to beat this MLA thing to death, but why can't the MLA pick someplace exotic? I mean, Philadelphia in December? You can't wear flip-flops in Philadelphia in December.), since you really could tune in and tune out of academia at will. The theme of the conference was Decentering Latin America, which is why someone like yours truly, who studies Spain, snuck in through the conference back door. The conference and all my fellow Cal grad students were incredibly welcoming to an outsider like me, and very tolerant of my accent, my use of vosotros and my symbolic representation of the Spanish empire, which I tried to play down by not yelling "Remember the Maine!" at every opportunity. (That's a really nerdy Spanish-American War of 1898 reference, which I only learned while in P.R.)

Old San Juan -- the part of the city that the Spanish built in part to defend their Carribean empire, deflated in that fateful year of 1898 -- really represented a mix of Spain and Latin America to me. This was, as it happens, my first trip to Latin America, so I spent a lot of time thinking about the similarities Puerto Rico has with Spain, which is my main point of reference. As I wandered the streets of the old city, I felt like I was in one of the pueblos blancos in Southern Spain: the whitewashed hill towns that dot the countryside in Andalucía and Cádiz. Right down to the balconies and the cobblestone streets, old San Juan looked like a Spanish pueblo, or even the Malasaña neighborhood in Madrid. But the differences were just as obvious: the houses in San Juan are painted bright pastel colors, and the cobblestones are blue. In between downhome Puerto Rican lunch counter joints serving plates of arroz con habichuelas (rice and beans) and mofongo (mashed plantains) are Doir and Banana Republic boutiques. And although the Puerto Rican accent reminded me of the way my Extremaduran (Spanish) friend Marce speaks, Puerto Rican Spanish is peppered with English -- "Dame el ticket, por favor" -- and has a cadance all its own. Plus there's the whole tropical weather thing, which Spain doesn't really have going for it in March.

I've returned to Berkeley with a bottle of rum and a newfound interest in exploring more of Latin America. I suspect that in 2009, when LASA goes to Río de Janeiro, I will once again find a pressing transatlantic issue in my research, so I can ditch the MLA and party with the Latin Americanists!