Cuir Colonial Futures in René Marqués’ La mirada

What are the limits of Puerto Rican nationalism? The funds from the CGII will enable me to travel to Puerto Rico and visit the unofficial archive of René Marqués to explore his novel La mirada (1976) and his correspondence with members of the Puerto Rican and Latin American literary canon. The text, which explores the relationship between queerness and nationalism, has been labeled as a literary failure by Puerto Rican literary critics due to the tension between the author’s sexuality and his political ideology. I argue that rather than a rejection of nationalism, the text demands a rearticulation of what it means to be Puerto Rican.