Anemia, witches and vampires: figures to govern the colony

ABSTRACT

In order to constitute themselves as the governing authority of the emerging Puerto Rican nation before the United Sates'invasion in 1898, a group of letrados constructed the phantasm of a coherent and integrated national Self by excluding a phantasmagoric Other (e.g. the infirm Puerto Rican jíbaro). The essay examines the relationship not only between the letrado's discourse of Self and its phantasmagoric Other but also between the letrado's discourse of Self and competing discourses of Self similarly articulated by the changing metropolitan authorities (Spanish first and North American later). It shows that the empowerment by a group of letrados motivates the deployment of a set of devices that paradoxically feeds the fear of miscegenation.(AU)