III.1.5 DIGITAL ARCHIVE 853185
Spanish linguist and literary critic Samuel Gili Gaya (1892–1976) writes in this 1930 article that Puerto Rico cannot derive its cultural wealth from Spain or assimilate its cultural influences from Anglo-Saxon civilizations. Rather, he asserts that the core values of Puerto Rico must emerge from the spirit of the island, and he hopes this will bridge oppositions and controversies among Spanish and Anglo-Saxon cultures. Several decades later, Luis Muñoz Marín (1898–1980)—Puerto Rico’s first democratically elected governor (in office 1949–64)—echoed Gili Gaya’s key concept of bridging cultures. [SEE DOCUMENT III.1.8]. This translation of “Aterrizajes: Cultura e hispanoamericanismo” is from the original publication in Revista Índice—Mensuario de Cultura, a key platform for the Puerto Rican literary vanguard of the 1930s [(San Juan), year 2, no. 15 (June 13, 1930)].
WHEN FUTURE GENERATIONS wish to take the measure of Puerto Rican culture, they will have to focus exclusively on what it possesses that is both substantial and unique to it. [That measure] will surely not consist of the values that Puerto Rico can copy, as if by echo, from Spain; neither will it have to do with what it can assimilate from the Anglo-Saxon civilization, but rather in what it can create from within its own spirit.
We have heard the often-repeated phrase that Puerto Rico is a bridge between two cultures. Just so, sincere men who come from one or the other extreme of this bridge should compel us to say to the Puerto Ricans that, if their country does not become more than a cultural tollway, then its authentic contribution to the creative spirit of the world will remain quite small. Knowledge, information, and facts come to us from the outside, but culture is born from within.
For this reason the educated man is truly sincere; this is to say that he does not deceive himself. This duty of sincerity to oneself could one day oblige the Puerto Rican people to be somewhat like the mambises1 with regard to the culture of Spain or to opposing the adoption of certain Anglo-Saxon customs. In both cases, their duty is epitomized by [the ancient Greek poet] Pindar’s admonition: “Be who you are.”
It would thus be flippant and at the same time false to conceive of “meridians of Hispanic-American culture,” as it would be to accept the passive and colorless role of a BRIDGE without making an effort to create one’s own meridian.
To the good fortune of all, the Hispanic-American civilization is a CULTURE, a lifestyle, a manner of understanding the relationship between man and the world. The young intellectuals of Spain begin to see that our common culture, precisely because it is a CULTURE, looks more to the future than to the past. It is not a matter of crying over the ruins of a former time that cannot and should not return, but rather of listening to the soul of the present, illuminated by the future, by each of the Hispanic-American peoples, and by each of us who shares a common language.
The future will surely bring us unity and diversity. Both traits have flourished and continue to flourish abundantly on the Iberian tree, at once so united and so diverse. Spain has always dwelt in the realm of spirit and so cannot desire a homogeneous America that is docile with regard to its line of thinking, rather [it will prefer] one that grounds her maternal glory in the personality of each one of her children. And for this reason, it is advisable to warn the Hispanic-American and Anglo-American youth that the practice of an obtuse intellectual Monroe-ism would surely break the spirit of America, of all America.
1
The mambises were Cuban insurrectionists who rebelled against Spanish colonial domination.—Ed.