Jennet Rodriguez Betancourt

Rico to develop any type of autonomy, the inhabitants had to be literate because “The
seizing of the means of communication and the liberation of postcolonial writing by the
appropriation of the written word become crucial features of the process of self-assertion
and of the ability to reconstruct the world as an unfolding historical process” (Ashcroft
81). Thus literacy not only produces transformation, but also authority it, “… leads to the
development of historic consciousness. It allows scrutiny of a fixed past. It enables
distinctions to be made between truth and error and so permits the development of a more
conscious, critical, and comparative attitude to the accepted world picture” (Ashcroft 80).
The arrival of the printing press in 1806 dramatically changed Puerto Rico
because more writers began to flourish and institutions like the Royal Academy of Belles
Letters were founded which enormously contributed to the academic and literary
development of the island. In addition, La Gaceta, the first published newspaper began
to circulate. The Spanish government continued to exercise absolute censorship over
newspapers, journals, and creative writing, thus generating a firm literal silencing and
control. However, the literature written by elite Creole or Criollo writers born or residing
in Puerto Rico during the 19 th century slowly began to elaborate the concept of
difference, of “Otherness”.
Writers like young eighteen year old Celedonio Luis Nebót de Padilla who in
1833 published the first literary piece, a drama called Mucén o el triunfo del patriotismo
began signing his work as “joven puertorriqueño” and not “joven español”. Maria
Bibiana Benitez, poet and dramatist, published La Ninfa de Puerto Rico in La Gaceta
(1833). In 1834, Jose Simón Romero Navarro wrote Arrogante Gulleron, Reina de
Nangán, and nine young Puerto Rican writers residing in Barcelona collaborated in
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