La palma del Cacique

Alejandro Tapia y Rivera is one of the most important figures in 19th century Puerto Rican literature. An ardent, forward-looking believer in Puerto Rican independence and abolitionism, he also wrote a short novella fusing fact, fiction and legend on the Spanish conquest of the island. Indeed, his Taino-inspired leyenda was what Betances responded to with Les deux indiens. Using the form of a legend and somewhat adhering to the historical rebellion of Agueybana and allied caciques against the Spanish in 1511, Tapia uses a frustrated love triangle of Guarionex, Loarina and Cristobal de Sotomayor to narrate colonial conquest and indigenous revolt.

Although the characterization is limited and the novella ends with the death of Sotomayor and suicide of Guarionex (and Loarina, who chooses to die with him), writing a story like this in the 1850s must have incurred the wrath of Spanish censors. After all, reclaiming the indigenous past was partly an assertion of local autonomy and identity for criollo elites of Tapia's background. Even if the narrator of the tale identifies with the Spanish race, there is no doubt that the legend extolls the landscape and indigenous culture of the island. Guarionex is a hero, in this legend. One short chapter on his role in resisting a Carib attack and liberating his sister establishes his bravery and martial ability. Indeed, had he been European, he would have been a nobleman, like his rival for Loarina's heart.

Betances, on the other hand, seems to have seen the legend of his peer as insufficient, perhaps, for asserting Puerto Rican independence. He seems to have taken more liberty with history to create a tragic romance between an Indian man and a white woman. Instead of Tapia's tale involving Loarina traitorously warning the Spanish of the impending indigenous revolt (due to her love for Sotomayor), there is more Indian unity and purpose in Betances's fictionalized vision of the past. Betances also uses a strong pairing of brothers resisting the Spanish, but only as minor characters with one sibling avenging the death of another. 

Tapia, however, appears to have followed the chroniclers more closely by bringing to life a number of customs and beliefs of the Taino, particularly cemism and the burial of wives with a deceased cacique. Although Tapia's depiction of a cemi ritual does not seem historically accurate, as it involved more than caciques and behiques (or buhitis), he clearly endeavored to portray some of their worldview and belief in fate and divine intervention to justify war and inspire confidence against the Spanish. Thus, despite being outnumbered in some battles and wielding bows and arrows or macanas against Spanish swords and firearms, they could still occasionally resist. The assembly of principal caciques, presided by Agueybana, symbolizes the power of Puerto Rican unity against greater foes. Tapia, Betances, and other supporters of independence must have believed in this essential unity to resist the greater power of Spain. 

Les deux Indiens

Ramón Emeterio Betances's Les deux Indiens is probably one of the most fascinating examples of Indianist literature of the 19th century Caribbean. Written in French and as a response to Alejandro Tapia y Rivera's La palma del cacique, the ardent nationalist Betances subverts the genre. Instead of telling a tale of romance between an indigenous woman and a Spanish male, Betances has Otuké fall in love with Carmen, a beautiful Andalusian. However, due to the brutal and racist Spanish conquest, their romance is doomed. However, unlike, say, Iracema or other examples of Indianist Latin American literature, Carmen bears Otuké's son. This mestizo child, raised by Toba, the warrior brother of Otuké, must be an allegory for the formation of the Puerto Rican people and their opposition to colonial rule. The novel is followed by a short poem that also hints at the fraternal bonds created by the  African and the Indian under Spanish colonialism, another radical instance of anti-colonial sentiment expressed by Betances. 

Perhaps because he was writing in French and had, already by the 1850s, combined anti-slavery, anti-racism and liberal nationalism as the path forward, Betances was able to create the most progressive Indianist literature in the Spanish Caribbean. The indigenous legacy was alive and well, represented in the novella's conclusion by Indians in the forest resisting the Spanish. Toba, son of murdered cacique Ayma of Guanahibo, carries on the fight with Carmen and Otuké's son. Their population may have suffered severe declines and the loss of the cemi and bones of Ayma clearly required a shift in Indian social organization, but Toba and the indigenous resistance must have symbolized an ongoing effort by the Puerto Rican people to liberate the island. Sure, Betances engaged in the typical Romantic-era praise of the island's flora and fauna. Indigenous customs of worship like the cemi appear in the text. But the Indian legacy is a living one, and surely one that a young Betances could have seen in the Puerto Rican population of his day. Undoubtedly, as someone allegedly of mixed-race origins and cognizant of the way historians and travelers had noted the indigenous ancestry of the Puerto Rican population, he would see continuity in the struggle of the indigenous resistance to the conquest and 19th century struggles for independence.

The poem accompanying the novella makes this radical message even more explicit, incorporating the plight of the African into the narrative. This move also brings Betances closer to Haitian writers such as Emile Nau. One wonders if Betances had read Nau or at least heard of his history of the indigenous population of Hispaniola. If so, and in light of Betances's own pro-Haitian views, perhaps his depiction of the indigenous resistance to Spanish enslavement was partly motivated by Nau's history of Hispaniola. There, like in Puerto Rico, the European colonial conquest and subjugation of Indians and Africans was eventually avenged by the birth of Haiti as an independent state. Puerto Rico, suffering under the yoke of colonialism, must follow a similar path which Betances highlights through Toba and Otuké. Unfortunately, Betances's progressive Indianist literature was not followed or developed by subsequent writers.