ABSTRACT
A verse by Puerto Rican poet Lola Rodríguez de Tió, Cuba and Puerto Rico are the two wings of the same bird. They receive flowers and bullets in the same heart, still constitutes the dominant representation of the relationship between Cuba and Puerto Rico. This essay uses Rodríguez de Tió’s romantic imaginary as a gateway to revisit the nineteenth-century Hispanic Caribbean. Through a comparative view of the core structures of slavery, colonialism, and modernity, the essay proposes that the narrative of “blood and belonging” underpinning the poet’s metaphor elides the profound and decisive divergences between the two islands. Along with sisterly affinities born from colonial victimization and resistance, there is a dense landscape of differences that deserve to be assessed in order to understand not only the seminal nineteenth century but also our own times.
