Sponsored identities

the long version

Focusing on the Institute for Puerto Rican Culture - the government institution charged with defining authenticated views of national identity since the 1950s - and on popular festival organizers, author Arlene M. Davila illuminates contestations over appropriate representations of culture in the increasingly mass-mediated context of contemporary Puerto Rico. She examines the creation of an essentialist view of nationhood based on a peasant culture and a "unifying" Hispanic heritage and explores the ways in which grassroots organizations challenge and reconfigure definitions of national identity, through their own activities and representations.